Billionaire and famed psychiatrist Henry Jarecki has been relatively unscathed by his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, even though he is prominently displayed in Epstein’s Black Book with at least 13 contact numbers, and he also appears on Epstein’s flight logs. And like Epstein, Jarecki owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands.
In 2024, Jane Doe 11 filed a lawsuit contending that Epstein introduced her to Jarecki for the treatment of depression that was the result of Epstein’s abuse, and Jarecki raped Jane Doe 11 on her initial visit. She also accused Jarecki of “coercing her into being his modern-day sex slave” over the course of three years.
The lawsuit alleged that Jarecki was Epstein’s “go-to-doctor” for his victims.
The lawsuit also claimed that Jarecki used testosterone pills to increase his sex drive, and he frequently forced Jane Doe 11 to have sex with other men in front of him.
Jarecki has adamantly denied her allegations, claiming the relationship was consensual.
Brad Edwards, a lawyer for the accuser, wrote in an email to CNBC, “A ‘consensual’ relationship to describe a patient 60 years his junior, referred by Jeffrey Epstein, and known to be a sexual abuse victim, is a creative ‘defense,’ if nothing else.”
Jane Doe 11 ultimately recanted her accusation about Jarecki. And the lawsuit was “dismissed with prejudice,” which means the case is permanently closed and barred from being refiled. A case dismissed with prejudice indicates the case was settled or the judge dismissed it due to a party’s wrongdoing or lack of evidence.
Prior to suing Jarecki, Jane Doe 11 received compensation from a fund established for victims of Epstein.
Astonishingly, Epstein sent Jarecki an email on September 9, 2011, that excoriated Jarecki for mistreating people! Is Epstein’s email a monster excoriating a monster?
as your memory seems compromised. I think you should consider the option that it is YOUR behavior that drives everyone away.. they are ready to love , others are ready to be friends. , others business assoc. try as they might, and though you talk a good game . they are treated to selfish , cheap, intrusive actions. The result has to be , what is has been, and then poisons the water for future candidate as the reputation becomes widespread.. you drive away these girls.. they start out open to a love relation„ and then , .. you torture, and mistreat each. and then i guess take comfort in the fact that you were right not to think it possible
The Epstein files that have been released demonstrate that Epstein and some of his ilk were fond of literal torture, so we don’t know if Epstein’s email to Jarecki is referring to torture in a literal or figurative sense.
Though the Epstein files are filled with absolute horrors, an extremely outlandish email was sent from a Jarecki assistant to Epstein under the auspices of Jarecki writing a prospective book with Epstein: What if I Get Caught. In the book outline, Jarecki listed various means a perpetrator might deploy to avoid the long arm of the law, but in the case of billionaires it’s generally the short arm of the law.
Of course, Jarecki included deconstruction of the victim’s credibility: “…gather evidence on veracity and character of victim(s) and prosecution witnesses (private detectives and internet).”
But he also had contingencies if the victim’s credibility couldn’t be decimated, and flight from the law was unavoidable. In the section “Post Trouble,” he included “disguises,” “plastic surgeon,” and “documents generation: birth certificate, driver’s license.” He also included “multiple passports.”
It’s rather telling that a psychiatrist and billionaire would even conceive of such a book: A reader of the outline might think the good doctor has contemplated being a fugitive from the law.
Jarecki’s three sons, Nicholas, Andrew, and Eugene, are successful auteurs. Nicholas has had great success over the years with documentaries, docuseries, and narrative films. He directed the documentary Capturing the Friedmans, which was produced by HBO in 2003 and was a breakthrough sensation. The Friedmans seem to be a typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family, but, then, the father, Arnold, and his youngest son, Jesse, are arrested and charged with multiple counts of child molestation.
The documentary was a tour de force. The film premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim as well as the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. The film went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
However, Andrew Jarecki created an ambiguity about the guilt of Arnold and Jesse Friedman by withholding several facts from the audience.
Six former victims of Arnold and Jesse Friedman publicly criticized the documentary for ignoring key evidence and distorting facts to generate sympathy and doubt regarding the convictions of the father and son pedophiles. The documentary also left out a 1989 prison confession by Arnold Friedman and failed to mention a co-defendant’s guilty plea. Nonetheless, Andrew Jarecki continues to be committed to the belief that Jesse Friedman is innocent, and he has attempted to have Jesse’s conviction overturned.
Like Jeffrey Epstein, Henry Jarecki owns two islands in the Virgin Islands. Unlike Jeffrey Epstein, Jarecki founded a “youth development” organization in the Virgin Islands: the Youth Empowerment Project. According to the Founding Family’s Message:
Inspired by a simple mission – to provide a safe and enriching place for East End kids to come after school – the Jarecki Family and BVI leaders joined together to establish the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) in 2005.
More than 20 years later, YEP has benefitted over 5,000 BVI children, providing more than 1 million hours of instruction and opportunity after school and during holidays and summer. From computer classes and homework help to outdoor sports and arts and crafts, the focus is on enabling kids to learn new things, develop leadership capabilities, and, most importantly, have fun.
And YEP is growing! Following successful pop-ups in Road Town and Virgin Gorda, YEP is partnering with Unite BVI to bring its signature programming to a permanent location in Virgin Gorda. This will expand YEP’s reach beyond YEP’s original location on East End, Tortola to serve a total of more than 300 children each year.
We are grateful for the enthusiasm of so many members of the BVI community who join our family in supporting YEP. Together, we know that investing in our youth is the best possible path to a brighter future – for the BVI and for us all!
Jarecki Family
Guana Island and Pirate’s Bight
Jeffrey Epstein, who was a child molester and a true monster, thought that Dr. Henry Jarecki was an even bigger monster. In the aforementioned email Epstein sent to Jarecki, excoriating him, I’m unsure if Epstein was referring to Jarecki’s torture of women figuratively or literally, because one never knows with the Epstein class. But given our understanding of Dr. Jarecki thus far, I don’t believe he’s the right guy to start a “youth development” organization that has “benefitted over 5,000 children.”
The Epstein case and its cover-up by state and federal authorities are, in many ways, a carbon copy of a child trafficking network that was covered up 35 years ago by state and federal authorities in Nebraska. I wrote a book about the latter trafficking network: The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal.
According to a Florida grand jury, Jeffrey Epstein never molested a minor. And though I have a list of 60 alleged victims, compiled by a Nebraska State Senate subcommittee, who had been abused and/or trafficked by the “Franklin” network, a Nebraska state grand jury and a Nebraska federal grand jury concluded that the network was nonexistent and not a single child had been harmed.
The mainstream media, like the grand juries, called the “Franklin” network a “hoax.” Despite an abundance of evidence demonstrating that numerous children in Nebraska were trafficked, the Wikipedia page on the Nebraska network, “Franklin child prostitution ring allegations,” continues to refer to the trafficking network as a “hoax,” even though many people have attempted to introduce a modicum of reality to it. Finally, in March of this year, a mainstream media magazine, Omaha, had the courage to publish a truthful account about the Franklin network: "UNSILENCED: Franklin, Epstein, and the Patterns that Protect the Powerful.” But, unfortunately, additional media haven’t followed in the wake of Omaha.
At the center of this perverse tale is a brave young woman, Alisha Owen, who at 20 years old risked her life by refusing to recant accounts of her abuse by influential powerbrokers and businessmen.
Alisha comes from a religious, blue-collar family, but at the young age of 13 she develops a rebellious streak. When invited to a party by a teenage boy at a luxury apartment building in downtown Omaha, the impressionable teen is groomed and enticed into a parallel universe that will encompass sexual abuse, trafficking, and the destruction of scores of children by a massive cover-up perpetrated by state and federal authorities.
Alisha is not only trafficked in the mid-1980s from the age of 14, but she is also trapped in a conspiracy that ran from the heartland of America to the highest levels of government in Washington D.C. Alisha forcibly attends sadistic pedophilic orgies in Omaha and elsewhere. When she starts to balk at the abuse, henchmen beat her and threaten the lives of her family members.
Two pimps run the nationwide child trafficking network that ensnares Alisha. One is Lawrence King of Omaha, Nebraska. King is a rising African-American political powerbroker and the manager of Omaha’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union. King recruits vulnerable children who have fallen through the cracks, children in corrupt foster-care homes, and children from Boys Town, the venerable orphanage near Omaha.
A second ringleader lives in Washington, DC: lobbyist Craig Spence. Like Jeffrey Epstein, Spence’s source of wealth is obscure, and his DC mansion is wired for audio-visual blackmail. Unbelievably, Spence arranges midnight tours of the Bush White House for underage trafficking victims as gifts for their services.
In 1988, Nebraska social services personnel inform both federal and state law enforcement about King’s nationwide pedophile network, but they’re ignored. Finally, in 1989, Nebraska state senators form a subcommittee: the “Franklin Committee.” The Franklin Committee starts to investigate the trafficking network as well as King’s plundering of millions from the Franklin Credit Union.
After the formation of the Franklin Committee, Alisha and fiveother victims who were trafficked as minors summon the courage to come forward and name Lawrence King as a pedophilic pimp to the Franklin Committee’s investigators. Five of the victims, including Alisha, discuss being flown to different locations around the country where they were abused.
Alisha’s sworn testimony implicates Omaha luminaries, including a judge, the publisher of the Omaha World-Herald, Harold Anderson, department store billionaire Alan Baer, and Omaha police chief Robert Wadman.
The FBI pressures victims to recant their stories of abuse, but Alisha refuses. Extremely corrupt Nebraska state and federal grand juries release reports on their findings after ostensibly investigating King-related child abuse. The grand juries remarkably proclaim that the allegations by the victims are a “carefully crafted hoax,” but the hoaxster is never named. The grand juries exonerate King and the other alleged perpetrators, and Alisha is indicted on 16 counts of perjury. She is staring at 200 years in prison, but she refuses to recant her accounts of abuse. Alisha becomes a victim on trial, an enemy of the state, because she refuses to recant.
During Alisha’s 1990 trial, the FBI, US Department of Justice, and two grand juries viciously assassinate her character. The state deployed dirty tricks to rig Alisha’s trial, because it represented much more than a simple case of perjury: her jurors would also be deliberating on the findings of the grand juries that disavowed the existence of a pedophile network. In essence, Alisha’s guilt would protect the rich and powerful men who had been provided with children.
Big-time media outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ Magazine, and CBS News take their cue from the government and trumpet the government’s smear campaign. A United Kingdom documentary team got wind of the grave injustices that had occurred in Nebraska, and they produced a film about the case for the Discovery Channel. But the filmmakers are thwarted at every turn and ultimately the documentary is shelved and never airs.
Throughout her ordeal,Alisha also endures the mysterious deaths of her 17-year-old brother, the Franklin Committee’s investigator, whose private plane explodes in mid-air, and the mysterious deaths of other people who are affiliated with the network. The pedophilic pimp Craig Spence in DC also commits suicide before Alisha’s trial.
On August 8, 1991, a kangaroo court finds Alisha guilty of 8 counts of perjury and sentences her to between 9 and 15 years in prison. Alisha’s trial is fraught with numerous injustices, and her attorneys file numerous appeals. She is released from prison as her appeals are litigated. But even before her appeals are exhausted, she is returned to prison in 1996.
The authorities try to destroy 20-year-old Alisha by confining her to solitary for two years, but, conversely, she undergoes a profound metamorphosis from a fragile victim to a confident young woman with a steely will who refuses to knuckle under to the crooked system. Finally, on September 20, 2001, after serving a total of four and a half years in prison for perjury, Alisha, an exemplary prisoner, is granted parole, even though she never recants her innocence. Her treatment by federal and state law enforcement is one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the annals of American jurisprudence.
Today, despite experiencing trauma that would drive most people to ubiquitous despair and hopelessness, Alisha is a productive member of society and also the Associate Director of Epstein Justice.
She is an inspiration to all survivors, and her life demonstrates that the human spirit can be indestructible.
Despite the wealth and power Jeffrey Epstein amassed, his voice had a slight but indelible Brooklyn, working class inflection. As I augered into Epstein’s genetic pool, I had to contend with a jigsaw puzzle whose various pieces often didn’t interconnect. I’ve found that cobbling together a coherent genealogy of Epstein has a degree of difficulty that is like cobbling together a coherent understanding of his life.
Epstein’s first set of paternal great-grandparents, Samuel Tesher and Esther Goldfarb, were Ashkenazi Jews born in Russia. According to the 1900 Census, Samuel was born in 1850 and Esther was born in 1858. The 1800s were not an auspicious era to be Jewish and living in Eastern Europe or Russia, because it was a hotbed of antisemitism: Jews were subjected to pogroms and other unsavory treatment.
Samuel Tesher immigrated from Russia to America in 1884. His wife Esther and their two oldest children, Max and Bessie, immigrated to America in 1891. At the time, Bessie, who would become Jeffrey Epstein’s maternal grandmother, was 4 years old. Samuel listed his occupation as a “tailor.” Samuel and Esther would have four additional children: George, Louis, Sarah, and Mammie, who were born in New York City.
The next set of Epstein’s paternal great-grandparents, Morris Epstein and Sarah Kaplan, were Ashkenazi Jews native to Poland. Morris was born in 1862, and Sarah was born in 1865. An eastern swath of Poland had been subjugated by the Russian Empire earlier in the century, and it was a hotbed of antisemitism, too.
Morris Epstein and Sarah Kaplan were married in circa 1881, and the couple became a procreating dynamo, bearing a brood of at least 9 sons and 6 daughters. Morris, Sarah, and their children fled Poland in 1899 and landed in New York City.
The couple’s oldest progeny, Julius, was Jeffrey Epstein’s paternal grandfather. His World War II “Registration Card” for the draft states that he was born on September 15, 1882, in Białystok, Poland, even though the 1920 Census states he was born in Russia. The 1920 Census also states he was naturalized in 1907.
Julius Epstein and Bessie Tesher were married in January of 1916.
Julius’s World War I Draft Registration Card, 1917–1918, states that he and Bessie lived at 769 Willoughby Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, which, at the time, was a vibrant working- and middle-class Jewish community. Under “Present Occupation” was written “truckman,” which meant Julius was a truck driver.
Though Julius dropped out of school in the 8th grade, he proved to be industrious. The 1920 Census lists Julius as the “proprietor” of a Brooklyn-based “house wrecking” company, and the 1930 Census lists his occupation as a “house wrecker.” The coffers of Julius’s demolition company were enhanced by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal initiative to employ largely unemployed Americans to build public infrastructures like roads, schools, and parks. The 1940 Census lists Julius as a “contractor” who was in the business of “house wrecking.”
Oddly, Julius registered for the WWII draft when he was 60 years old. Apparently, Julius had relinquished his demolition company, because he listed Nostrand Estates as his employer. Nostrand Estates owned various properties in Brooklyn that were used for manufacturing. He rented a three-bedroom apartment in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The oldest son of Julius and Bessie, Seymour, was born on December 4, 1916, and he would ultimately sire Jeffrey. The couple had a second son, Arnold Harold Epstein, in 1923. After the birth of her sons, Bessie suffered a “nervous breakdown” and underwent shock therapy.
Seymour dropped out of high school and worked for his father's demolition company. In the 1940 Census, Seymour lists “clerk” as his occupation and “House Wrecking” as his industry. Seymour’s 1940 World War II Draft Card states his age as 23 years old and his address as 510 Crown Street, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Seymour’s World War II Enlistment Records show that he enlisted in the Navy in 1941 when he was 25 years old. Moreover, Seymour’s “Voter Registers” from October 11, 1945, state he is on “Terminal Leave” from the Navy, which is the final authorized absence of a sailor when he or she uses up their accumulated, unused leave (time off duty) right before they are discharged or retire from active duty.
However, the World War II Hospital Admission Card for a Seymour Epstein maintains that his “Admission Date” to the Navy was January of 1944, and his “Discharge Date” from the Navy was January 1944. The Hospital Admission Card states that he was unfit for service, because of hallux valgus, which sounds like a rare, terminal disease. But, in actuality, hallux valgus is a minor foot deformity in which the big toe curves toward the second toe, causing a bony bump near the big toe that can cause pain, swelling, and difficulty wearing standard shoes.
The contradiction is inexplicable.
Julius died in 1944. He was 62 years old and interred at Wellwood Cemetery in West Babylon, New York.
Upon Seymour’s return to civilian life, he held various jobs that included construction work, selling cutlery at Macy's, and working as a subway conductor. The 1950 Census lists his vocation as a clothing salesman.
In 1952, as Seymour was bouncing from job to job, he married Pauline “Paula” Stolofsky. Paula, a native of New York, was born in 1918. Paula’s father, Max Stolofsky, born in 1893, was a native of Lithuania. According to the 1910 Census, Max immigrated to the United States in 1909 and worked as a tailor for Mercy Coats. The 1930 Census states Paula’s mother, Sora-Leia “Lena” Berlin, was a native of Poland and born circa 1895. The 1920 Census notes that she arrived in the United States in 1914. She married Max Stolofsky in 1916. Max and Lena had four daughters: Paula, Frances, Ruth, and Miriam.
After Seymour and Paula were married, they moved to Coney Island, where Paula’s parents were living. At the time, Coney Island was a haven for middle-class Jewish families. Seymour ultimately found vocational stability in 1956, working for the New York City Parks Department as a gardener, earning less than $8,000 a year. Paula was initially a homemaker who then became a middle school aide.
Seymour and Paula would have two sons: Jeffrey Edward, born on January 20, 1953, and Mark Lawrence, born on July 14, 1954.
The Public Records Index notes that Seymour and Paula relocated to West Palm Beach in 1987. In the 1980s, their eldest son, Jeffrey, was on the escalator to upward mobility, but he didn’t purchase his Palm Beach mansion at 358 El Brillo Way for $2.5 million until 1990.
Thus far, Jeffrey Epstein’s background doesn’t seem remarkable. Granted, the dates and the countries of origin for some of his forebears are not entirely in sync, but record keeping at the turn of the 20th century was extremely archaic. However, Seymour’s obituary on the site ancestors.family.search is initially perplexing. The obituary correctly notes that Seymour was born on December 4, 1991, and he worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a groundskeeper and gardener. It also states that he entered the military in 1941, which coincides with his World War II Enlistment Records. However, the obituary mentions that he died in an accident on December 14, 1991, in Cleveland, Ohio, while working for the Administration of Environmental Quality and Housing Programs. The sites Geni and Wikitree also maintain that Seymour died in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1991.
The Administration of Environmental Quality and Housing Programs oversees the following:
Given Seymour’s employment history, lack of vivacity, and his move to Florida after his retirement, he fits into the mold of a retiree who receives a full pension and fades away from the nine-to-five. He definitely doesn’t fit into the mold of a sexagenarian who retires with a New York City pension and then becomes a federal employee of the Administration of Environmental Quality and Housing Programs.
Seymour’s “Death Record” reveals that he was in a fatal crash in Cleveland on December 14, 1991, and pronounced dead at 5:25 AM. Seymour was 75 years old.
Seymour definitely seems to be a retiree who would be difficult to dislodge from the sunny and balmy climes of Florida for frosty Cleveland in December.
Seymour’s “Death Record” states that he wasn’t referred to a coroner, and his death was certified by a physician. Cleveland is in Cuyahoga County, so I phoned the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office. I was provided with two extremely surprising facts. First, I was told that the case of an automobile accident fatality is almost invariably referred to a coroner instead of a physician. Second, there is no record of a Seymour Epstein dying on December 14, 1991, in Cleveland. But his death was recorded at the Cleveland Clinic, which is a nonprofit academic medical center based in Cleveland that offers preeminent and cutting-edge health care for myriad conditions and maladies.
After I talked to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, I typed “Seymour” into the Justice Department’s “Epstein Library” search engine and gleaned 305 “results,” many of which were redundancies.
An email exchange between Jeffrey Epstein and Mark Epstein, his brother, on June 25, 2016, provides Seymour’s rationale for visiting Cleveland in December. Jeffrey writes the following in his characteristically butchered grammar: “i had some angio edema. my lip swelled up from nowhere. they asked if paula or seymour ever had the same / I have no recolalection ? you” And Mark responds with an email: “When Seymour was in Cleveland at the end he had some edema but that was from the operations and his not getting over them well. He died, but I doubt that is a connection to your current situation.”
(Angioedema is caused by a fluid buildup in deep skin tissues, and it produces a sudden swelling under the skin that often affects the eyes, lips, hands, feet, or throat. If angioedema becomes an impediment to breathing, it requires emergency care.)
So, apparently, Seymour was being treated for angioedema at the Cleveland Clinic.
Seymour was interred at the Star of David Cemetery in Palm Beach County.
Paula died in 2004, and she was interred at the Star of David Cemetery in Palm Beach County.
Jeffrey Epstein would be interred at the Star of David Cemetery next to his parents in 2019.
I delved into Jeffrey Epstein's genealogy to see if there was a salient tell with regards to his extreme deviance. But I seemingly found only normality, which makes his story all the more horrifying.
Alan Dershowitz, the bosom buddy of Jeffrey Epstein, believes that child abuse material should be legal. In two op-eds that Dershowitz wrote for Penthouse, one in August of 2002 and one in October of 2002, Dershowitz argues that child abuse material should be legal. The following quotes are gleaned from the two op-eds:
"…we do not know whether the viewing of child pornography is dangerous; we only know that many people believe it to be."
"So far as we know, the vast majority of people addicted to child pornography never actually molest, and the considerable number of those who have in fact molested a child do not look at child pornography."
"Even if child pornography does whet the appetite of some potential perverts or rapists, it nonetheless is unconstitutional to bar it from the vast majority of readers and viewers in whom it does not stimulate harmful behavior."
The esteemed Harvard Law professor emeritus Dershowitz seems to miss the tautological fact that child abuse material often requires child abuse.
I'm not aware of Epstein expressing his views on the legality or illegality of child abuse material, but I believe that the smart money would fall on the belief it should be legalized. According to the Justice Department, Epstein had "ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography." Of course, the Department of Justice lied when it stated that all of Epstein's child abuse material was downloaded from the internet. Epstein was emailed JPGs of a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old.
In January of 2015, Virginia Giuffre named Dershowitz as a perpetrator when she was a minor in an affidavit filed by her attorneys, Brad Edwards and former federal judge Paul Cassell. In the affidavit, Giuffre stated Dershowitz molested her on "at least six" occasions. Dershowitz then mounted a scorched-earth counteroffensive against Giuffre and her two attorneys.
Dershowitz proclaimed Giuffre was a liar of the first magnitude. He also declared that Giuffre's attorneys were deliberately lying and vowed that he wouldn't "stop until they're disbarred." Edwards and Cassell sued Dershowitz for defamation. Hey, guess what — after all of Dershowitz's chest-pounding, Edwards and Cassell are still practicing law, and Dershowitz proved to be a minor inconvenience.
As Dershowitz was fighting his faux war with Edwards and Cassell, he gave an interview to American Lawyer in January of 2015, vindicating himself as a perpetrator: "I've been married to the same woman for 28 years," he said. "She goes with me everywhere. People know that I won't argue a case or give a speech unless my wife travels with me." Shortly after Dershowitz gave that interview to The American Lawyer, I put Epstein's flight logs and Black Book on the internet.
Epstein's flight logs show that Dershowitz accompanied Epstein on a December 1997 flight from Palm Beach to New Jersey's Teterboro Airport, and they were accompanied by one unidentified "female," as well as a "Hazel," a "Claire," and child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. A 2005 flight log shows Epstein and Dershowitz traveled from Massachusetts to Montreal with a "Tatianna," et al. Dershowitz's wife is noticeably absent on those flights and others. In the Gawker article I wrote about the flight logs, Dershowitz's steel-trap mind became rather rusty.
As for who else was on those flights, Dershowitz couldn't recall. Hazel? "I don't know." Claire? "I have no idea." Tatianna? "I think that was a woman in her 20s who was Epstein's girlfriend, but I never flew with her." The unidentified female? "That could have been my mother." The Professor Who Doth Protest Too Much had been busted, and now his very serious offensive to clear his name defaulted to joking around.
Dershowitz was also the architect of Epstein's 2008 sweetheart deal, whereby he served a mere 13 months in county jail, even though the Justice Department had a list of 40 Epstein victims. Dershowitz's strategy was to firebomb the credibility of Epstein's victims.
Though Dershowitz assiduously attempted to distance himself from Epstein, he couldn't outrun quotes from a 2003 Vanity Fair article: "Alan Dershowitz says that, as he was getting to know Epstein, his wife asked him if he would still be close to him if Epstein suddenly filed for bankruptcy. Dershowitz says he replied, 'Absolutely. I would be as interested in him as a friend if we had hamburgers on the boardwalk in Coney Island and talked about his ideas.'"
The Harvard professor emeritus paints such a quaint picture of himself and the serial child molester. It almost evokes tears as I think of longtime pals Alan and Jeffrey eating a hamburger on the Coney Island boardwalk, talking about Epstein's "ideas." But if they actualized some of "his ideas," that probably would've taken place under the boardwalk.
In my Minneapolis youth, or yoot as might be said in various New York City enclaves where I currently live, my family was Democratic, and the family of my best friend, who lived next door, was Republican. Back then, the fact that my family was Democratic and his family was Republican had no effect whatsoever on our friendship or the friendship of our parents. We merely embraced different political philosophies, and there wasn't antipathy or the threat of a fight to the death in the Octagon, where tapping out was verboten.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, even child trafficking and abuse have become a politicized Right versus Left issue.
In November of 2023, Senate Democrats went after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for not reporting the various junkets he took that were subsidized by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. I realize that Thomas is a darling of the right who withstood a "high-tech lynching" to become a Supreme Court justice. Thomas, however, is the subject of a blog I wrote, and he is, in fact, a seriously depraved individual, misogynist, and liar who's declared war on the American people.
During the Senate hearing on whether or not to authorize subpoenas for Thomas's subsidized junkets, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to issue a subpoena against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to obtain a list of passengers who traveled aboard his infamous plane—"the Lolita Express." Blackburn's call for a subpoena was a tit-for-tat ploy. She had years to call for such a subpoena, but she only made that demand in the wake of the Senate's hearing to subpoena records related to Clarence Thomas. For people who want to see justice in the Epstein case, which includes thousands of survivors and their advocates, Blackburn seemed like a beacon of hope, but, in actuality, she had cynically politicized child sexual abuse.
I initially thought that Blackburn's ploy was the only effort by our federal lawmakers to investigate Epstein et al., but I was wrong. Five Democratic members of the House's Committee on Oversight and Accountability—Carolyn Maloney (D-NC), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Jamie Raskin (D-MA), and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL)—attempted to investigate the malfeasance involved in the Epstein case in December of 2019. But their investigation was apparently quashed.
Four years later, on December 11, 2023, Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN) wrote a letter to James Comer, who was the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, requesting "documents you deem appropriate and necessary to determine who are among the scumbags Epstein counted as clients and highlight any who are or previously were government officials." Burchett's appeal for an investigation also went nowhere.
Despite the Byzantine machinations of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and the Trump administration, Thomas Massie, a Republican, and Ro Khanna, a Democrat, came together and forced a vote on a "discharge petition" for release of the Epstein files, which bypassed the House's leadership and committee chairs and forced a vote on the House floor. When a majority vote on the discharge petition became inevitable on the House floor, both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump.
Though the Trump administration initially fought the Epstein Files Transparency Act tooth and nail, it should be noted that the Epstein coverup has been perpetrated by four administrations—George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, and now Donald Trump. Two of the administrations have been Republican and two have been Democratic. The Epstein coverup has been, and continues to be, a bipartisan effort.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act showed us that a near two-decade coverup can be partially eroded when Democrats and Republicans work together in the best interests of our America. However, the Right and Left have become fatally balkanized by our politicians and the media, and Americans have become easy prey to a strategy that was codified by Sun Tzu in the Art of War circa 500 B.C.: divide and conquer. "If your foe's troops are united, the goal is to separate them so they cannot support each other," wrote Sun Tzu. Jesus also chimes in on divide and conquer in Luke 11:17: "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall."
The Romans had a motto for divide and conquer: "Divide et impera." However, the motto was not of Roman origin. According to ancient lore, Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, used this motto as he conquered the independent Greek city-states by playing each against the other via diplomacy, marriage, political leverage, and military might.
I was on the Shawn Ryan Show, and in the Comments section, I took heat for the statements I made about the respective theologies of QAnon and Woke and how they've divided Americans. I also realize that many "conservatives" tune into the Shawn Ryan Show, and they took umbrage at me comparing QAnon and Woke. And I was even accused of being a deplorable, dreaded liberal.
I should mention that I've been swimming in the cesspool of American politics and its concomitant blackmail for 23 years. Given the corruption I've encountered, I currently find it impossible to vote for a Republican or Democrat. So, I don't have a dog in that fight. My beliefs are also an amalgam of conservative and progressive.
The theologies of QAnon and Woke have exacerbated that ever-widening Right/Left chasm. In fact, I recently met someone on the Right who said America needs a two-state solution.
QAnon was ostensibly initiated by a "high-ranking government" official, but, in actuality, it was most likely the cynical creation of Jim and Ron Watkins. According to QAnon theology, the Democratic political elite are Satanists who are abducting and killing children, and Donald Trump will save all the children. Over the course of Trump's presidency, none of the many perpetrators in the Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking network have even been arrested, with the exception of Ghislaine Maxwell.
Extreme elements of Woke theology on the Left have further widened the chasm between the Right and the Left. Incarcerated men have, in fact, identified themselves as women and sexually assaulted women prisoners. Men identifying as women in various sporting competitions is also an outgrowth of Woke. Post-pubescent males have 15 times the amount of circulating testosterone as post-pubescent females, which translates into a 10%–12% performance advantage in running and swimming and a 20% advantage in jumping events. Needless to say, these outgrowths of Woke are insane.
The vast majority of Republicans don't believe that the Democratic elites are Satanists abducting children, and the vast majority of Democrats don't believe that men should be incarcerated in women's jails and prisons, and they also don't believe that men should compete as women in sporting competitions.
But these extreme examples of the Right and the Left have been accentuated by politicians and the media, further driving a seemingly irreconcilable wedge between the Right and the Left. As of August 2026, the Congressional approval rate is 15%, which demonstrates that 87% of Americans do not think that Congress is acting in their best interests. The Right blames Congressional representatives on the Left for all the problems that are currently arising in our society and, of course, vice versa.
Representatives Massie and Khanna have demonstrated that real change can occur when Republicans and Democrats work together.
I found myself renting a room in Brooklyn from a person who boiled vinegar to expel germs from the apartment. The cat seemed to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome too. Searching for science reporting gigs, I straddled homelessness and fought a relentless depression. Having grown accustomed to 99¢ Key Foods' chicken pot pies, I managed to eke out a subsistence via science publishers and a friend who edited a new age magazine. (I should mention that I will never eat another chicken pot pie ever again.)
I watched the Jeffrey Epstein case unfold from Brooklyn. It seemed to share some legal aberrations with The Franklin Scandal, and I surmised that Epstein may be as malevolent as Franklin. Though my pursuit of the latter had left me impoverished and emotionally decimated, I felt I had to investigate the former, because once more I couldn't shake the apparently peculiar notion that children shouldn't be destroyed with impunity.
Though my finances were tenuous, I flew to Florida in 2011. On my first Florida sojourn, I acquired Jeffrey Epstein's "Little Black Book" and Palm Beach Police Department documentation on the Epstein case. The Little Black Book had the numbers of scores of victims. I started phoning them. Some were willing to talk off the record, and they gave me an idea of the size of the Epstein network. One victim said that she and other girls had been flown to an island. At that time, the media was packaging Epstein as a lone pervert in Palm Beach. But my outing to Florida indicated that he was overseeing a pedophile network. I also contacted former Palm Beach Police Department Chief Michael Reiter. He was reluctant to talk, but our phone call lasted some 15 minutes.
The Little Black Book had scores of names, some of whom were perpetrators. It also had the names and numbers of Epstein's inner circle. Only one of them answered their phone—Sarah Kellen. She wanted me to commiserate with her, because she felt the media had treated her harshly. Given the fact that Kellen was integral to Epstein's child destruction machine, I couldn't muster any sympathy for Kellen. In fact, I couldn't even feign sympathy for her.
I had no idea that my phone calls would be the prime mover of a chain of events that would have ramifications for me 16 years later.
Although my first trip to Florida was a resounding success, talking to victims took an emotional toll on me. I sank into deep depression and wondered if I had the will to investigate a second child trafficking network cover-up. Disinterring victims' nightmares, and the relentless media rejection, had taken their toll on me. But confronting the destruction of children with impunity once again galvanized my will. Fortified with the Little Black Book, I pitched an article on Epstein, emailing many of the editors I'd pitched Franklin to. Only two responded, and both rejected the proposed article. A book publisher offered me $5,000, but I knew that would never cover an Epstein investigation. And, at that point, I didn't have the resources to fund such an investigation.
In 2015, I met John Cook, an editor for Gawker, who was game to publish the Little Black Book, plus the passenger manifests I had acquired in the interim, with accompanying articles. I found it ironic that Gawker, the delinquents of media, had the fortitude to publish my articles on Epstein, when the so-called mainstream media, ostensibly overflowing with journalistic integrity, wouldn't touch an article about the wanton destruction of children by powerful elites.
My Gawker article on Epstein's flight logs garnered 443,620 hits, and the Little Black Book article, 247,520 hits. Yet no one in media contacted me.
Four years later, on July 6, 2019, Epstein was finally arrested for child trafficking. To my astonishment, Vanity Fair journalist Joe Pompeo wrote an article on my involvement in the story, "DECODING JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S MYSTERIOUS, STAR-STUDDED BLACK BOOK." The subtitle read "'A LOT OF POWERFUL PEOPLE...COULD GO DOWN': THE JOURNALIST WHO PUBLISHED JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S BLACK BOOK AND JET PASSENGER LOGS COMES IN FROM THE FRINGE." Pompeo neglected to mention that I had been banished to the conspiracy theory ghetto because of my outlandish notion that children shouldn't be destroyed without retribution. The Vanity Fair article also included quotes from Eamonn Bowles, the president of Magnolia Pictures, which had optioned The Franklin Scandal.
So, when Epstein was arrested in 2019, and I was endorsed by Vanity Fair, I thought my extensive knowledge of the Epstein case, now corroborated by major media, would translate into outlets contacting me. But nary a call or email ensued, and the pitch I wrote was rejected by every magazine I pitched.
I then wrote an article about the case that sought justice for the Epstein victims by calling for the perpetrators to be indicted. I had noticed that the media had been highly effective at digging up salacious dirt on Epstein et al., but I couldn't find a single article that demanded justice for the victims by calling for the perps to be indicted, even though the media and civil lawsuits had named many alleged perpetrators and procurers. The article I wrote was rejected by numerous mainstream magazines and websites. It was finally published by ScheerPost, a website that receives moderate traffic.
Fast forward to January of 2026, and the sweeping release of Epstein documents.
Among the Epstein files is an email in which a redacted individual, who I'm surmising was in Epstein's inner circle, and possibly Sarah Kellen, sent an email to individuals who were in Epstein's inner circle. The subject line states: "journalist calling around." He sent the email issuing a "heads up" because I "was calling around again." Ominously, the email had a picture of me, and it further states: "His name is Nick Bryant. This is what he looks like so you are all aware." The email reads like the sender of the email put out an all-points bulletin on me.
There were two follow-up emails about me from Epstein henchwoman Leslie Groff to Epstein, and both emails were sent on October 11, 2011. At 1:45, Groff sent an email for Epstein to contact me. The subject line of the email: "Alarm - remind JE to call Nick Bryant." A second email from Groff to Epstein didn't have the gravitas of her first email. The subject line was "Call List," and my name was among six names for Epstein to phone.
Unfortunately, Epstein never phoned me. Since I've discovered the emails, I've wondered what a conversation between Epstein and me would've entailed. I've also wondered if he would've threatened me.
I also found a January 23, 2015, email in which Ghislaine Maxwell breaks it to Epstein that his "entire address book" has been published by Gawker.
Epstein was miffed that Gawker and I had published his "address book." And he expressed his umbrage to his crony Peter Thiel in a May 25, 2016, email, because Thiel was in the process of financing a legal team that would sue Gawker into oblivion.
Gawker outed Thiel as gay in 2007, and the billionaire crypto fascist committed himself to financing lawfare that would deliver Gawker into extinction. Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan's invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker. The lawsuit was launched by Hogan in October of 2012, because Gawker had posted a clip of Hulk Hogan and Heather Clem, the estranged wife of shock jock Todd Alan Clem, having an amorous liaison that was surreptitiously recorded by Clem. Hogan had been the best man when Clem married Heather.
Hogan sent Gawker a cease-and-desist order to take the video down. But Gawker declined, citing the First Amendment. A judge issued an injunction ordering Gawker to take down the clip, but, again, Gawker refused. Gawker's recalcitrance set the stage for the courtroom showdown—Hulk Hogan v. Gawker in 2012. The Thiel-financed lawsuit ultimately awarded Hogan $140 million. Gawker settled the case for $31 million, declared bankruptcy, and wended into oblivion.
In the previously mentioned email from Epstein to Thiel on May 25, 2016, Epstein offers to help Thiel underwrite the expenditures involved in the Gawker lawsuit: "I would have gladly share your expenses for the gawker suit. . chomsky fri dinner if you are in new"
Because the $130 penalty had already been awarded to Hogan in the Gawker lawsuit, I'm uncertain if Epstein shared in the subsequent litigation that ultimately resulted in the $31 million settlement.
My name is Nick Bryant. In addition to being the Director of Epstein Justice, I’m the journalist who put Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book on the Internet in 2015, four years before the case broke nationally. And I’m also in the Epstein files! My harrowing odyssey that resulted in my appearance in the Epstein files in January of 2026 began in 2002.
Prior to 2002, I’d written extensively about children's issues, and then I stumbled across a 1987 US Customs Service report on a "child abuse investigation" the Customs Service was conducting into a cult called the Finders. (Though the subject matter of the USCS report is horrific, I urge readers of this blog to read the report with the caveat of a trigger warning.) The Customs report was written by Ramon J. Martinez, Special Agent, who took part in executing a search warrant on the Finders warehouse in Washington, DC. An excerpt from the report states:
“On Thursday, February 5, 1987, Senior Special Agent Harrold and I assisted the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department with two search warrants involving the possible sexual exploitation of children. During the course of the search warrants, numerous documents were discovered which appeared to be concerned with international trafficking in children, high tech transfer to the United Kingdom, and international transfer of currency.”
By early April of 1987, Martinez hadn’t heard a peep about the investigation, so he visited the DC police station, and talked to an officer who was only willing to talk “off the record.” Martinez ended his report on a rather ominous note:
“The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report has been classified SECRET and was not available for review. I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired. No further information will be available. No further action will be taken.”
Whoa! It’s against the law for the CIA to operate in the US, and I wondered why in hell it would quash an investigation into a strange cult that’s seemingly engaged in child abuse. Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” came to mind: “There’s something happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” The USCS report certainly triggered a paradigm shift within me—I suddenly became willing to entertain ideas that I previously would have discarded.
(In 2019, the FBI released a tranche of documents about the investigation into the Finders, which essentially portrayed them as an innocuous group of counter-culture sorts. The FBI documents also relegated Ramon Martinez to fantasist. In 2021, Elizabeth Voss, of Mint Press News, wrote a 3-part series on the Finders, “The Finders: CIA Ties to Child Sex Cult Obscured as Coverage Goes from Sensationalism to Silence,” in which she showed that the FBI whitewash was lacking in veracity.)
At the time I read the USCS report on the Finders in 2002, I found it nearly impossible to glean information on the cult. No one was talking.
After reading the USCS report, I started to entertain ideas that I otherwise wouldn't have. I then found myself en route to Omaha, Nebraska, the internet being rife with reports of a child trafficking network there that had been covered up by local, state, and federal authorities. During my week or so on the plains, I encountered palpable fear in people who had been touched by the scandal, which included a rash of mysterious deaths.
I managed to garner on-record interviews with a purported victim of the network and “blackmail” photographer the network utilized. I also talked with figures close to the scandal, including a former state senator who had headed a Nebraska Senate subcommittee that attempted to expose the network, a social services employee who alerted federal and state law enforcement to the network, and the former wife of an investigator for the Senate subcommittee who had died in a plane crash as he investigated the network. These three refused to go on record. However, I managed to collect documentation that the Senate subcommittee’s investigator had compiled before his death. One of the documents had the names of 60 victims.
After a week in Nebraska, I started coming to the realization that the pedophile network had been much bigger and more malevolent than I ever could have imagined, and that it had been, indeed, covered up by local, state, and federal authorities, with state authorities going so far as to describe the child trafficking allegations as a “carefully crafted hoax.” During my visit to Omaha, I had been followed and a death threat was dispensed to me on my last night in Omaha. When I returned to New York City, I started to receive very strange phone calls.
By the time I left Omaha I was shattered. I was free falling in a wormhole to a parallel universe, one that coexists with the realm of Little League, Boy Scouts, Disneyland, and the other hallmarks of wholesome, youthful Americana—a universe where lies masquerade as truth, where shadows reflect light, and where innocence is condemned.
My first trip to Nebraska left me overwhelmed by dread. But I made twelve trips there over the next six years, attempting to find victims whose names were on the list the subcommittee investigator had compiled before his death. I found them in shelters, projects, and a prison. I even looked for a victim in a crack house whose managerial team was quite hostile towards me. (Apparently, my fashion statement wasn’t crack chic.) About half the victims I found were willing to go on record with me.
The majority of victims I located had been to prison. A built-in protection mechanism of trafficking networks is that the victims are often from disadvantaged and dysfunctional backgrounds, and the adult or adults luring a child frequently introduce their underage victim to drugs and alcohol. When the victims lose their youthful marketability and are expunged by the network, their abuse is typically too horrific for them to process mentally. They often turn to drugs to ameliorate their pain, which erodes their credibility. I experienced immense anguish myself as victims told me of the nightmares that were their childhoods.
Four years into the investigation, a victim named Alisha Owen went on record with me. Alisha had been abused by the network as an adolescent, and FBI agents had pressured her to recant her accounts of abuse. Although other victims had quickly folded when subjected to the intimidation of FBI agents, the then 21-year-old refused to recant. She was sentenced to between 9 and 15 years for perjury, and spent nearly two years in solitary confinement. I also managed to acquire the sealed exhibits and testimony of one of the grand juries that had disavowed the existence of the trafficking network, and that documentation enabled me to see how thoroughly corrupt that grand jury process had been.
As I was making sojourns to Nebraska, my agent and I attempted to sell an article and/or book on my investigation, but our efforts came to naught. The editors and publishers I pitched experienced acute cognitive dissonance. The story was truly horrific, featuring children trafficked throughout the country, including Washington, D.C., and their extreme abuse by figures in positions of authority. Editors and publishers could either agree I was on to something and help me expose the network, or they could write me off as a crazed “conspiracy theorist.” They invariably chose the latter course.
I was finally able to land a book deal with a small publisher on the West Coast. The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal was published in 2009 (Omaha’s Franklin Federal Credit Union served as the front for the nationwide pedophile network I investigated). The book was meticulously sourced, but no one in mainstream media would touch it. I turned to giving interviews to various podcasts, whose interviewers ranged from well-meaning and sane to a tad unhinged. The latter wanted me to discuss the Illuminati and even shape shifting extraterrestrials. I would bring those interviews to a polite but abrupt end.
Although I had published investigative articles before The Franklin Scandal, I primarily made my living as a freelance science reporter covering science conferences. Throughout my years as a science reporter, I had socked away significant savings, which subsidized my Franklin investigation. By the time The Franklin Scandal was published I had enough money to last another year. During the period when I was traveling to Nebraska, the science publishers I had reported for were being driven into extinction by the internet.
But I felt a year was enough time to promote my book and produce a documentary based on it. I threw all my energies in that direction. I had friends in the media and friends who were very successful writers, but only one, Malachy McCourt, attempted to help me. He introduced me to a publisher and a famous director, but both snubbed me. I grew up in Minneapolis, and a friend of mine from there who I had known for nearly three decades had become a media darling. He witnessed my “Franklin” investigation from its inception, but save for one paltry Tweet he wouldn’t assist in publicizing my book.
With my resources diminishing I doubled down on my risk. I made a jaunt to Los Angeles to sell a documentary on The Franklin Scandal which I had embarked on making two years earlier. I had several videotaped interviews of victims that had been spliced into a rough trailer. Following an intense flurry of networking a dozen entertainment executives granted me meetings. One of the individuals who had been instrumental in setting these up was a friend of a friend. He had a showbiz background and lived in Southern California. He’d read The Franklin Scandal and earnestly sought to help me, setting me up with two executives in their early thirties.
After I met with one of those executives, my newfound friend sent me an email between the two executives on which he had been CC’d. Without even having read the book, the executives had concluded what was true and untrue about it! After a series of rebuffs, I left L.A. without a deal that would salvage my apartment.
After my trip to L.A., I found myself pondering my future from the living room of the one-bedroom West Village apartment that I was on the precipice of losing. I had bet all my chips on at least one media hotshot not being apathetic about the industrial destruction of children. I had lost my wager. I debated leaving New York City, and whether to even continue my writing career. I had been a professional writer for 20 years, and a freelancer for 15. When I’d driven around L.A. the preceding week, I had passed various fast-food mascots standing in front of their respective eateries, and I contemplated the transition from a writer to fast food mascot. My partner of four years had left me a year earlier, and my approaching destitution reopened that wound. Our relationship had its challenges, and I’m unsure if it was salvageable, but my fixation on writing The Franklin Scandal wasn’t exactly conducive to our romance.
I should start this post by saying I'm nonpartisan.
I haven't voted for a Democrat or Republican in many years. So, what are we to make of Reid Hoffman?
Many have anointed Hoffman as a knight in shining armor, because he helped finance E. Jean Carroll's lawsuits against Donald Trump that yielded two substantial judgments.
A 2023 jury found that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. A second jury, in 2024, found him liable for defamation and awarded $83.3 million in damages to Carroll.
Both judgments were upheld on appeal. Hoffman also helped the antiexploitation organization World Without Exploitation produce a PSA for Monday Night Football, which averages 15 million viewers per game, and a 30 second spot costs an average of $500,000. The one minute PSA aired during a commercial break in the fourth quarter of the Cowboys-Raiders game on November 17, 2025, and it featured Epstein survivors calling for Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the House and Senate were voting on the following day.
Hoffman even tweeted about his contribution on X: "The Epstein Files must be released, in full. Tonight, I supported World Without Exploitation to run this ad on Monday Night Football, calling for exactly that."
Hoffman, however, had yet to realize that the Epstein Files portrayed him in a very negative light. Business Insider reports that Hoffman wrote: "My few Interactions with Jeffrey Epstein came at the request of Joi Ito, for the purposes of fundraising for the MIT Media Lab. Prior to these interactions, I was told by Joi that Epstein had cleared the MIT vetting process, which was the basis for my participation." Ito was the director of the MIT Media Lab, but he resigned after his financial ties to Epstein were exposed.
But after the tranche of Epstein files was released in January, Hoffman confessed that he had meetings with Epstein from 2016 to 2018, even though he had previously said they last met in 2015. In November 2014, Hoffman and Ito took a private flight to Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein then paid for Hoffman to fly to New York, and Hoffman spent the night at Epstein's Upper East Side mansion.
Afterward, Hoffman attended a breakfast with Bill Gates and other high profile guests that was organized by Epstein. On Christmas Eve of 2014, Hoffman sent a pair of presents to Epstein: ice cream for Epstein and "the girls" and "something that may strike your funny bone for the island." The present for the island was from an artist who creates sculptures of little monsters out of recycled metal.
A spokesperson for Hoffman later stated that "the girls" were adult members of Epstein's team. In a January 8, 2015, email, Hoffman was evidently aware of Epstein receiving unflattering "recent press" due to his status as a pedophilic perpetrator, and he wanted to assist Epstein in counteracting the spate of bad press by "looking for help on the online front."
In an email dated August 20, 2015, from Epstein to Tom Pritzker, Epstein wrote that he had a "wild" dinner with Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman. The dinner was hosted by Hoffman in Palo Alto. The New York Post reports that Epstein even set up a meeting with Hoffman and the individual formerly known as Prince Andrew.
From the Hoffman and Epstein emails, it's easy to discern that Hoffman doesn't really care about the Epstein survivors. He's using them for political expedience, because of his antipathy for Trump.
Hoffman epitomizes one of the major issues that are depriving the Epstein survivors and, for that matter, Americans, from seeing justice in the Epstein case: partisanship.
The right blames the left for the Epstein coverup, and the left blames the right for the Epstein coverup. However, the Epstein coverup has been perpetrated by four administrations: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, and now Donald Trump. Two of the administrations have been Republican and two have been Democratic. The Epstein coverup has been and continues to be a bipartisan effort.
How is it that the politicians of the USA have descended to such a state of moral degeneracy that they've made child abuse and trafficking a partisan issue?
ZeroHedge published an article, "Are The Epstein Survivors Being Exploited Yet Again?", on June 28th.
The article scrutinizes the advocacy organization World Without Exploitation, and its interaction with the Epstein survivors.
Stan Pottinger and the Epstein Coverup
A January 7, 1996, New York Times article, “Powerful Lawyer’s Path to Hot Author,” reports that Pottinger had retired from Wall Street as an “investment banker” in the mid-1990s and become a novelist. Ballantine Books fronted Pottinger a staggering $500,000 for his first novel The Fourth Procedure, a medical thriller. Pottinger wrote four novels: “I’m content now, he said. “The writing life is the best there is.”
Though Pottinger had retired from a life of coverups and facilitating CIA arms trafficking, he either volunteered to coverup the child sexual abuse of Jeffrey Epstein, his old friend and business partner, and/or markers were called in for him to fulfill the obligations of his Faustian pact.
In 2008, Edwards was practicing law in Hollywood, Florida, and he was the first attorney to represent an Epstein victim in civil litigation. His initial Epstein-related client, Courney Wilde, had been molested by Epstein when she was 14 years old. I’ve come to believe that Edwards did not harbor ulterior motives when representing the victims of Epstein other than justice—unlike some attorneys who would subsequently represent Epstein victims.
Edwards wrote a book, Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein, about his representation of numerous Epstein victims that also delved into Epstein’s personal animus and threats towards him. Edwards displayed tremendous courage as he persevered through great difficulties, including a major risk to his career, as he fought to actualize justice for the Epstein victims he represented. Relentless Pursuit also discusses how Pottinger inserted himself into the Epstein case.
After living in Australia for 13 years, Virginia Giuffre moved back to Florida, because she wanted to help Edwards litigate the Crime Victims’ Rights Act case on behalf of the Epstein victims. The Crime Victims’ Rights Act mandates that the Justice Department notify victims of crimes that their case is being adjudicated, but the Justice Department contravened that law: Epstein’s victims were notified after his sentence and non-prosecution agreement had been finalized, so they were denied a dialogue with Epstein’s prosecutors and/or the opportunity to confront Epstein. In a further glaring injustice, the Justice Department attempted to ensure that the Epstein plea deal would remain forever secret by sealing it.
Shortly after Edwards had his first meeting with Giuffre, he was at home and in bed at 11:30 when Pottinger phoned him and introduced himself. He said that he was a former assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. Pottinger had ostensibly retired from a career of government cover-ups and dirty deeds, and he was writing novels. But he told Edwards that he “sometimes works with David Boies.” Boies, the senior partner of Boies Schiller Flexner is one of America’s most powerful attorneys in the country, and he was also representing some of Epstein’s victims.
Pottinger told Edwards that he represented an Epstein victim, and said that he and David Boies would “like to work with” Edwards on the behalf of the Epstein victims. Throughout Relentless Pursuit, Edwards harbors suspicions that Pottinger was affiliated with the CIA.
Boies, too, had been in Epstein’s orbit. Edwards had an Epstein “message pad” that had been impounded by the feds, and Boies had phoned Epstein on February 25, 2005, but he did not leave a message. The latest tranche of emails and documents, released by the Justice Department contains an August 20, 2010 email from a redacted source and the subject line is “Yom Kippur Breakfast Guest List-Jeffrey Epstein. Boies is one of the invitees. I’m not aware of any Epstein victim represented by Pottinger or Boies who was told of their prior relationship with Epstein.
According to CBS News, Pottinger would represent “20 Epstein accusers,” but it’s unclear of the exact number of Epstein victims he represented.
One Epstein victim who’s very damaged alleged that Pottinger “sodomized” her.
Epstein survivor, Sarah Ransome, wrote an autobiography, Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back, about her brutal life, which included repeated molestations by her step-father. Her prior damage made her easy prey for Epstein and Maxwell and also for Pottinger and, for that matter, Boies.
After Boies conscripted Pottinger to abet his “representation” of the Epstein victims, he continued to represent serial rapist Harvey Weinstein. And legal scholar Deborah L. Rhode wrote a November 9, 2017, New York Times Op-Ed about his underhanded tactics on behalf of Weinstein’s defense. Boies is fond of deploying Black Cube, a private intelligence agency founded by Israeli intelligence officers, that specialize in dirty deeds. In November of 2017, The New York Times announced that it had severed its ties with Boies, because he deployed Black Cube to spy on its reporters and prevent the publication of a damaging story about Weinstein—while Boies was defending the Times in a libel case. Rhode notes Boies’ various ethical transgressions when he represented Weinstein, but Boies experienced no consequences for his “egregious” behavior. Boies also deployed Black Cube on Rose McGowan, who was in the first wave of actresses who accused Harvey of sexual assault.
After the Rhode Op-Ed, Boies and Pottinger devised a plan to redeem Boies’ good name, and it included a very reluctant Sarah Ransome. She ostensibly wrote a New York Times November 15, 2017 Op-Ed stating that Boies was a bellwether of compassion and understanding: “Having read the article by Prof. Deborah L. Rhode criticizing the lawyer David Boies, I doubt that she has any firsthand experience with how Mr. Boies deals with rape and abuse victims. … When I was in the depths of despair from having been trafficked by very powerful, wealthy people, I was unable to find anyone who would take my abuse seriously. Mr. Boies heard me and came to my rescue.”
But, according to a Law360 article from August 22, 2022, the Op-Ed bestowing Boies’ virtues was a sham: “Ransome also alleges she was asked to put her name to an op-ed, written by another attorney who works closely with Boies, John Stanley Pottinger, titled ‘How David Boies Saved Me.’” An excerpt from the article discusses Ransome’s reluctance to support the Pottinger and Boies’ scheme: “Ransome agreed to say she had written the piece, but said she felt as though she couldn't say no, according to the grievance. Pottinger did not respond to a request for confirmation or comment.”
Ransome was represented by Boies Schiller Flexner when she attempted suicide in 2018. As she was recovering from her suicide attempt, and receiving both psychiatric and pain medication, Pottinger pressured her to accept her settlement from the Epstein Victims' Compensation Program. “We are just on the verge of racking up larger costs as the case comes closer to trial and there will be more depositions, more travel, the retention of expert witnesses, and the like,” Pottinger writes in an email. “But right now, neither side has accumulated big costs. Which suggests this is a time to settle if settlement is a possibility.”
Pottinger’s predatory email accentuated the importance he placed on Epstein Victims’ Compensation Fund, because Epstein victims who settled with the Program signed a release stating that they wouldn’t initiate lawsuits against other perpetrators—like Ghislaine Maxwell. The Program was a superb tool to cover up the crimes of Epstein’s co-conspirators not only by quashing civil litigation but also by negating the victims’ depositions.
Pottinger’s name appears in email exchanges between Epstein and Kathy Ruemmler, who was formerly Obama’s White House Counsel and then Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel at Goldman Sachs—she resigned from Goldman Sachs after the latest tranche of emails was released. The email exchanges between Epstein and Ruemmler discuss Donald Trump “supposedly” molesting a 13-year-old girl at Epstein’s home in 1993. But Epstein’s emails to Ruemmler are difficult to decipher: ""pottinger worked his way into my office to te=l me that " very annoyed I called and got his telling me the a=ove.”
In the 1970s, Southern Air Transport was exposed as being owned and operated by the CIA. In 1979, the airline was sold to James Bastian, a former CIA lawyer, and Bastian disavowed that Southern Air Transport had any connections to the CIA.
But Bastain’s repudiation of the airline’s affiliation with the CIA changed in October of 1986. On October 5th, 1986, a C-123K military transport aircraft, owned by Southern Air Transport, took off from the Ilopango Military Base in El Salvador, carrying a stockpile of rifles, ammunition, and explosives that were to be air-dropped into the Nicaraguan jungle for the Contras, which were the “freedom fighters” the CIA was illegally supplying with arms. But the C-123K never made it to its destination, because it was shot down by Sandinista forces, killing three of the four-man crew. The sole survivor, Eugene Hasenfus of Wisconsin, was subsequently captured. Under interrogation, he began to detail what he knew of the wide-ranging plot to arm the Contra rebels.
Hasenfus’ confession would ultimately unveil a nasty little secret of the CIA: The CIA deployed Southern Air Transport planes to illegally ship weapons to Iran, using Israel as a middleman, and using the profits to arm the Contras against the leftist Nicaraguan government. Ergo, Iran-Contra.
Drop Site News reported: “Miami International Airport made plans to demolish the hangar where Southern Air Transport was suspected of smuggling cocaine, a former U.S. Army depot that had been used by the CIA for more than twenty years. With Epstein acting as Wexner’s “logistics man” in Ohio, in 1996 Southern Air Transport finished relocating its world headquarters to Columbus to deliver products from factories in Hong Kong and southern China directly to Wexner’s network of Limited Brands’ stores.”
Indeed, in October of 1998, Southern Air Transport declared bankruptcy shortly before the CIA Inspector General released its official findings on the Iran-Contra that linked the airline to allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking from Nicaragua.
The New York Times and Epstein
The New York Times obviously had an agenda to disavow Epstein’s connections to intelligence—foreign and/or domestic. It’s repeated omissions are blatant. The Times interviewed Brad Edwards for “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons,” but, apparently, its reporters didn’t read his book or they, once more, cherry picked.
In Relentless Pursuit, Edwards provides an interesting anecdote about his various encounters with Igor Zinoviev, one of Epstein’s bodyguards. ‘You don't know who you're messing with and you need to be really careful,” Zinoviev told Edwards. “You are on Jeffrey's radar and somebody that Jeffrey pays a lot of attention to, which is not good, you don't want to be on Jeffrey's radar.” Edwards asked Zinoviev who he should be afraid of. Zinoviev looked across the table and whispered “C-I-A.’” According to Edwards, one of Zinoviev’s first assignments during Epstein’s 13-month detention in 2008 was to visit CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There, he says, he attended classes for a week as the only private citizen in the room. At the end of the week, the director or assistant director — Zinoviev couldn’t remember — handed him a book with a handwritten note inside. He was told not to read it and to deliver it directly to Epstein in jail.
