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Alexander brothers

Will These Millennial Sex Traffickers Squeal On Epstein's Cronies?

This week, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released an incisive accounting of how Trump’s Department of Justice has managed to avoid – nothing to see here – investigating ANY of the men in the Epstein files accused of sexual assault and rape, including Trump himself. It is the most damning official document yet published, not only linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes against women and girls but accusing Trump himself of rape.

The House Judiciary Democrats’ report makes clear what we at the Freakshow – and anyone even casually familiar with the files – already know:

The record shows that Epstein and Trump, working with other predators like Paolo Zampolli and John Casablancas, exploited the thin veneer of professionalism offered by the 1990s modeling industry to lure victims into their orbit. The evidence, much of it still hiding behind redactions in DOJ vaults, shows that Trump lied about kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and strongly suggests that Epstein introduced Trump to his wife Melania. The evidence demonstrates that Trump has lied about the nature and extent of his relationship with Epstein dozens of times—incriminating behavior for someone who supposedly has nothing to hide.

Whether the report turns out to be a blueprint for future investigations if and when Democrats control the committees, or does nothing more than gin up pre-midterm attention on the Trump-Epstein connection, remains to be seen.

But its release coincides neatly with the sentencing of Tal Alexander and his year-younger twin brothers Oren and Alon for sex trafficking. They are the only people in America, other than Ghislaine Maxwell, mentioned in the Epstein files to be investigated and sentenced to prison despite the known cohorts and fellow travelers in the files. Meanwhile, as we’ve noted before, European countries including France, England and Norway have opened investigations into high profile men, all the way up to and including the de-princed Andrew.

The brothers were convicted of federal sex trafficking. They deny guilt, but a jury convicted them of a laundry list of heinous sex offenses, mostly involving group roofie rapes and the videotaping of inert victims. Their “sex trafficking” doesn’t appear to have involved the kind of commercial sex Epstein orchestrated, just inducements to party in fancy hotels and resorts – venues that, for the women, turned out to be the horror equivalent of Bluebeard’s cave.

Since late 2024, the three Alexander brothers have been sitting in a federal prison in New York that now also houses Luigi Mangione and Nicolás Maduro. They will soon be moved to institutions where they will serve out 30 year sentences. Prosecutors had asked for life.

For more than a decade, the Alexanders occupied a privileged position in the Trump-Epstein demimonde and luxury real estate world. They were well known to Trump and Epstein, Leon Black, the Witkoffs, Ivanka and Jared (whose Indian Creek mansion purchase two of the brothers handled in an off-market $24 million deal in April 2021) and other Trump pals.

The Southern District of New York arrested the brothers in December 2024, after Trump’s second election and not long before his inauguration. Their trial commenced in January 2026, the same week the DOJ dropped a huge tranche of Epstein files into public view under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Alexanders appear in both images and email exchanges.

But on the night of the document dump, the BBC ran images of a government spreadsheet from the files in which allegations against the Alexanders were placed just below a box naming Trump and Clinton. That box included a 14-year-old victim’s allegation that Trump punched her in the head during sex. That accuser turns out to have been a woman who, as we reported earlier this year, the FBI had earmarked as “Protect Source” and whose FBI interviews have been held back from release for unknown reasons.

The Alexander-Epstein Venn diagram is worth studying.

For at least a decade, they were millennial members of the same skeezy underworld inhabited by Trump, Leon Black, Epstein, and other horny, powerful, desiccated men. They palled around with Alex Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate dealer (for whom Oren handled at least two deals in Miami) who currently serves as Trump’s Special Envoy for Peace Missions.

Oren and Tal, in red MAGA hats, were at the Trump 2016 victory party in New York, along with their boss and one of Trump’s closest pals, Howard Lorber – a scene captured on Israeli TV. After Trump lost in 2020, Oren and some of his family were guests at the White House Hanukkah party. “Spare your political views. The president just served us kosher food in his house and wished us a Happy Hanukkah,” he wrote on Instagram.

They were welcome at Trump Tower and the White House, but the brothers insist they never went to Epstein’s properties – even though one woman has claimed they raped her upstairs at his mansion.

In the Epstein files, Oren appears in photographs with some of the high profile female recruiters/victims, and appears to have dated at least one of the girls Epstein was trafficking.

One of their pals was Ukrainian Anastasiya Siroochenko (who goes by Siro), a recipient of so many off-the-books millions from Leon Black that she attracted the attention of the IRS. Siroochenko was supposedly “selling major works of art” to Leon Black in 2014, including a Louise Bourgeois. In 2015, when Anastasiya was spotted around town with Oren Alexander, she received more than $1 million in gifts from Black, listed separately here.

The trafficking of Siroochenko is explicit in the files, in exchanges like this one between Epstein and model “scout” Ramsey Elkholey in 2011:

Images and emails in the files also indicate that the brothers ran around with Anastasiya’s buddy and Epstein attaché Svetlana “Lana” Pozhidaeva. We profiled Pozhidaeva in our Red Sparrows column earlier this year, as a prolific recruiter of Russian girls who now calls herself a victim and is living under a new name.

In one exchange in the files, Jeff – ever the love guru – advises Lana on how to confess to a boyfriend that she made out with Oren. In another, he asks for details about Oren and Alon’s birthday party.

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01198272.pdf


Black, Pozhidaeva Leon Black flanked on the right by Lana Pozhidaeva

In the decade before their arrests, the Alexanders were dynamic, high profile luxury real estate agents working the high end Manhattan-Miami-Hamptons scene as protégés of Howard Lorber (according to Trump, Lorber is one of his only two friends in New York, the other being real estate magnate Richard LeFrak).

Oren became a sort of made man in New York real estate when, in 2013, at the age of 26, he handled a record Trump Tower sale – a $16.5 million condo. He went on to do other Trump real estate deals, including the first Trump Tower sale after the 2016 election. On January 12, 2017, a week before Trump’s first inauguration, the NY Post reported Tal and Oren Alexander as listing brokers on a “blinged-out” condo that had been on the market for almost a year.

The Alexander team also sold a Trump Park Avenue condo for $9.9 million in 2019. They represented Qatar in a 2014 purchase of a $100 million New York townhouse. And as Trump rose to power, the brothers were flying high: in March 2016, the Alexander Team listings included, in addition to a Trump Tower condo, a $50 million Upper East Side townhouse, a $39 million listing in Tel Aviv, and a $39 million house in the Hamptons.

The brothers also handled a $47 million deal on Indian Creek Road in 2012, at the time the most expensive home in Miami. But the brothers’ biggest Miami deal was Faena House, an ultra-luxury condo building developed by Argentine hotelier Alan Faena and Ukrainian-Russian billionaire Len Blavatnik, who poured a million dollars into Trump’s 2016 inaugural fund. Leon Black bought a condo there for $16 million, seemingly never lived in it, paid it off and then sold it almost immediately in a 2016 deal handled by Oren.

In 2012, Anastasiya Siro, then a model at Jean-Luc Brunel’s agency (and Epstein’s trafficking front MC2), was under a one-year contract as a model to Faena.

Among his other off-work diversions, Oren and sometime Epstein pal multi-millionaire Benny Shabtai co-chaired Friends of the IDF galas at least three times. In November 2023, they hosted an IDF fundraiser at the Faena Forum in Miami Beach, raising $9.2 million for the Israeli military. At that event, Oren publicly played the role of host. Disgraced Hollywood producer and Epstein files figure Brett Ratner, who had absconded to Israel after a major sexual abuse scandal but who sometimes still hung his hat at Faena Hotel, sat front and center with Mike Tyson.

The connections between Donald Trump, Leon Black, and Howard Lorber go back years and involve moneymaking ventures together in the lawless frontier of post-Soviet Russia, as we reported in What Happens in Russia.

A quick thumbnail history of that web: in 1994, businessman Bennett LeBow managed to retain control of a company he had founded called New Valley through a restructuring of debt controlled by Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management. LeBow was already doing big business in Moscow and had acquired commercial real estate across from the Kremlin. Leon Black’s brother-in-law was LeBow’s right-hand man at the time. A restructuring of New Valley enriched Black, and Howard Lorber was installed as president and CEO.

In 1996, Lorber, Black, and Trump went to Moscow together. Black soon formed a joint venture with Lebow and Lorber to develop the Kremlin real estate. In the early 2000s, after selling the Moscow properties to an offshore entity, New Valley gained control of real estate concern Douglas Elliman, where Howard Lorber became chairman and CEO.

Trump with Lorber. LeBow and Black Howard Lorber, Donald Trump, Bennett LeBow, and Leon Black at Lorber’s birthday party in New York, 2008Photo by Rob Rich

Later, Lorber partnered with Paolo Zampolli’s real estate company Paramount (where Zampolli bragged that he drew inspiration from Trump and used models as brokers). Lorber also gave the Alexander brothers their own group and made Oren an Elliman vice president.

And that brings us to today.

The investigation, arrest and convictions of these relatively junior figures in the Epstein files – but no one else – suggest that maybe the feds found it easier to go after the low-hanging fruit while leaving the whales alone.

The Alexanders were close enough to Epstein, Black’s Russian “friends” and some of the other younger women the brothers knew to be “working girls,” that the old bulls might have seen them as loose ends.

They were young, ambitious, and well-connected in Epsteinworld. And now they’re going to prison.

The question is: What did they see, hear or know about the old bulls? Does anyone in power have an interest in finding out?

Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Katie Chenoweth is associate professor of French at Princeton University and an investigative researcher

Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow

Harry Loy Anderson

Father Of New Mrs. Don Junior Was Palm Beach Banker Who Did Favors For Epstein

Poor Donny Jr. can’t escape the reek of Epstein, no matter where he goes. It follows him and his siblings from bedroom to boardroom, from New York to Palm Beach to Indian Creek Island, the Bahamas and beyond. Like a leaky propane tank.

Everyone in Manhattan knows Junior’s daddy was Epstein’s closest buddy in the city for more than a decade. Undeniable.

But eau d’Epstein permeates Florida too, including Junior’s fairytale marriage to “classy” Palm Beach blueblood Bettina Anderson. Junior’s father-in-law, Harry Loy Anderson, was not unlike so many powerful men who did business with Epstein and gave him special treatment.

Anderson, according to communications and other records we have discovered in the DOJ’s Epstein files, was listed as the primary officer on Epstein’s personal accounts in Anderson’s bank. He personally intervened to give Epstein special consideration in the early 2000s, while Epstein was using these accounts to pay for his “massages” and the “young females” who visited him.

As owner and president of Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Co. in the early 2000s, Anderson repeatedly instructed bank employees to bypass normal requirements to issue credit cards or raise credit limits for Epstein, his employees, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s personal assistants in New York. In one instance, Anderson phoned in special instructions regarding the Epstein accounts – from Utah.




When Palm Beach National Bank was sold to a holding company in May 2002, Anderson remained president of the branch. The most damning evidence about the cash withdrawals and payments involving Epstein comes under the name of that holding company, Colonial Bank. Under Anderson’s ownership, not a single Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) was filed with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network regarding Epstein’s activity.

Within six months of Colonial’s purchase, however, their corporate HQ began filing a series of SARs about what it described as a pattern of structured cash withdrawals from Epstein’s accounts at the Palm Beach branch headed by Anderson.

The amounts were not insignificant. In December 2002, JPMorgan filed a SAR, flagged for suspected money laundering, over about $1.9 million in cash withdrawals from an Epstein account that was being funded through his Colonial account in Palm Beach. JPMorgan had filed a SAR about similar activity earlier in 2002, before Anderson sold the bank, concerning suspicious cash withdrawals funded from Epstein’s account at Palm Beach National Bank.

And yet, as late as 2005 – the year police learned Epstein was receiving sexual massages from teens at Royal Palm Beach High School – his employees were still routinely able to withdraw cash in $1,500 increments, often multiple times a week, from the “household” account at Anderson’s bank. Anderson’s daughter Bettina graduated from the elite St. Andrew’s school that same year.

Epstein and the Andersons are also connected through Epstein’s assistant and paralegal Story Cowles, who visited him in prison around 130 times per CNBC (“no one visited Epstein more”). Cowles dated Epstein’s assistant and self-described victim Sarah Kellen and claimed on his resume that, during the same period he was working for Epstein, he was president of a charitable fund founded by Bettina and her brother, Loy Anderson, called The Paradise Fund (The fund itself doesn’t list Cowles as president in its tax filings, but he is listed as a member of the “Host Committee” on an archived website and was photographed with Bettina and her brother at Paradise Fund events; in a 2012 email, after Cowles asks a redacted person if they plan to attend a Paradise Fund event, the person responds: “Are you involved with the charity again?”).

The late Trump chronicler Wayne Barrett, and later the New York Times, reported that Anderson once wrote a letter supporting Epstein’s application for tax breaks in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the letter, he described Epstein as “a gentleman of the highest integrity” who “enjoys an excellent reputation in our community.”

The connection between Harry Loy Anderson, the Anderson family and Epstein is not really shocking. Florida is rife with slimeballs, and banks do business with them. In one 1997 newspaper item, Anderson is even quoted giving a character reference for one Paul Prosperi – a sometime Epstein business associate who was on trial for tax fraud and money laundering – describing him as “a very honest, forthright individual.” The item also says the banker was “taken aback” when prosecutors reminded him that Prosperi had given his daughter a car. (The daughter could not have been Bettina, who was 11 at the time.)

Bettina Anderson is about the same age as the girls Epstein abused in Palm Beach. She is their generational peer – but born on the right side of the tracks. Bettina is the kind of insider who might have been found sitting across from Jeff at a dinner party, not unlike Kathy Ruemmler – except not a buddy, just a social acquaintance – clinking champagne flutes over candlelight. She is definitely not the girl living a mile away across the causeway bridges giving naked happy ending massages to the old man in the creepy house of horrors run by G. Max. Maybe Jeff Bezos can fork over some money to help Bettina, who played lacrosse and attended parties at the Polo Club, produce or even star in a series: a tale of two cities, a Rich Girl Poor Girl about the interconnected flipsides of the Palm Beach in which she grew up.

Her mother, Inger, was a Swedish model. Coincidentally, Epstein had a thing for Swedes. His longest-running girlfriend was Eva Andersson, a Miss Sweden who remained a close confidante until his death, and whose Swedish nannies have talked. More on that here in Jeff and the Blondes.

Of course Bettina – now Bettina Trump – would have a fairytale wedding to her beloved on a private island in the Bahamas. Little Pipe Cay: 38 acres, five plantation estates, infinity pools, tropical sunsets. The set and setting, owned by longtime friends of the Anderson family, was everything a girl could dream of. (It turns out the files also contain evidence that the owners of Little Pipe Cay were also very tight with Epstein.)

Big Daddy Trump, notably, chose to miss number one son’s second wedding. It’s not entirely clear why he felt compelled to give a speech at Rockland Community College in New York while the blessed event was taking place thousands of miles south. Trump watcher Rob Shuter claims the President and Barron boycotted the wedding because Melania refused to go. It is well known that there’s no love lost between the First Lady and Ivanka – who did attend.

The wedding pictures are all high production value, involving drones, HMU, multiple cameras, videos and stills, all edited and released on social media to incite envy in wannabe billionaire wives and longing in online MAGA fans whose own future wedding dresses will come off the rack from TJ Maxx. Maybe a little overpriced – thanks to Dum-ocrats and Biden!

The pictures are mesmerisingly disgusting: a glimpse into a dime-store tropical version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. In the middle of the US-Israel war on Iran, a month after The Boss promised “a whole civilization will die tonight,” there’s Bettina walking on the sand in a sheer dress, Junior in his white linen. The drone shots of the couple entering the little chapel look like a spectacle produced to mimic the JFK Jr.-Carolyn Bessett secret wedding off the coast of Georgia.

But even Bettina’s Palm Beach pedigree can’t quite deliver the thing the Trumps are always trying to buy: class. The Trump family has raked in hundreds of millions from World Liberty Financial crypto, an intake valve open for influence and bribes. Even the crooks are shocked; read the interview with their ex-partner Justin Sun in New York magazine. The Trumps are richer than ever, but will never be more than the degraded version of the Kennedys as America’s “First Family” presiding over the sunset of an empire.

There is no greater evidence of that than Bettina and Junior accepting a six-figure, two-day wedding party from a Putin pal. According to the investigation by Pro Publica:

Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin … footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

Junior has seen his wealth increase by hundreds of millions, not just through WLF but through taxpayer-financed mining deals and Pentagon contracts. Conservative estimates say the Trumps have been enriched by at least $2 billion during the second term alone.

The boys learned from their dad: If the government or taxpayers or fleeced investors or Trump U suckers or one or Putin’s tools will pay up, be my guest.

Responding to the story, Bettina posted more wedding party pictures on Instagram and declared that “our dear friend Umar” did not finance their very private family-only wedding, but only threw them a big two-day party later. Kremlev is a former member of the fascistic Russian Night Wolves biker gang who went to China with Putin and is personally sanctioned by Ukraine for his role in abducting children, according to journalist and author Anne Applebaum, who writes frequently about Russia.

But hey. What are dear friends for?

Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Katie Chenoweth is associate professor of French at Princeton University and an investigative researcher

Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow



Behind Epstein File Redactions, A Rogue's Gallery Of Misogynist Malefactors

Behind Epstein File Redactions, A Rogue's Gallery Of Misogynist Malefactors

“We did not redact images of any men unless it was impossible to redact the woman without also redacting the man. We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”

That was Todd “Boy Cohn” Blanche earlier this year, explaining how the Department of Justice was handling redactions of sensitive information as it complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA).

At the same press conference, Blanche also promised DOJ was going to prosecute men involved in trafficking. “If we learn about information and evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will.” But then he added this qualification: “I don’t think that the public or you all are going to uncover men within the Epstein files that abuse women.”

Regular readers of the Freakshow will know at a glance that that statement is not true. The files contain plenty of information and evidence suggesting that some men – both named and unnamed – appear to have participated in Epstein’s trafficking operation as scouts or johns, while many, many more appear to have been aware of the activities but done nothing about them.

And over the past six months, we have uncovered the names of numerous men – and one non-victim woman, Kathy Ruemmler – whose identities are concealed in some or all versions of the files. Among the mysteriously redacted: the late sex traffickers Daniel Siad and Jean-Luc Brunel; Steve Bannon; former Prince Andrew’s top aide David Stern; Epstein’s brother Mark Epstein; Epstein’s great benefactor Les Wexner; Wall Street titans Leon Black and Glenn Dubin; former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana; former British ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson; disgraced Dubai businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; former French minister Jack Lang; Kathy Ruemmler; and former Sen. George Mitchell.

How we uncovered these names varied from case to case. In many instances, there was another, unredacted copy of the same email, text message, or photo elsewhere in the files (suggesting a concerning lack of consistency in the redaction process). We also made some determinations based on an abundance of context clues.

Here is a sampling of some of the mystery-man redactions we have identified:

Daniel Siad is redacted in this conversation with Ghislaine Maxwell. The context of the email is that Epstein and Maxwell had just returned from Havana, where they had a five-hour lunch with Fidel Castro. Four days later, Siad sent Maxwell an email (“Hello from Havana”), which she forwarded to Epstein. For some reason, DOJ saw fit to redact Siad’s name.

Peter Mandelson can be identified as the redacted sender of this email reading: “Find me someone to be really nice to in Dubai.”

References to Leon Black are redacted multiple times in this email from Epstein recruiter Irina Chernova, discussing with Epstein a “good bye gift” she had received from Black (more on the relationship between Black and Epstein’s Russian recruiters in our The Billionaire and the Recruiters Freakshow series). Black is also redacted in this court filing from the U.S. Virgin Islands’ litigation against JPMorgan over the bank’s financing of Epstein’s trafficking there. Many other men are named in the document – but another Wall Street titan, hedge funder Glenn Dubin, is redacted. Dubin and his wife spent considerable time on Epstein’s island and they are also named in a deposition by an Epstein employee who alleged that one of their nannies was a terrified underage Swede who said Ghislaine Maxwell had taken away her passport in the Caribbean.

Les Wexner, the Ohio billionaire who was Epstein’s great benefactor, and Jean-Luc Brunel, the modeling agent accused of procuring girls for Epstein, are both mysteriously redacted in some copies of a 2024 internal FBI document summarizing the Epstein case and laying out the investigation timeline.

Former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana is the redacted sender of this email; the redacted recipient is Ghislaine Maxwell. Pastrana mentions Maxwell’s plans to “be in Arkansas with Clinton” and he is redacted again in an email from Maxwell mentioning Jeffrey’s “ideas for the conference.” Pastrana had flown to Cuba with Maxwell and Epstein a week earlier and afterwards sent Ghislaine a warm email in Spanish – his name again redacted – saying that el Comandante had a wonderful time.

Note: In an email the previous day, Daniel Siad mentioned that he was in Havana “taking care of” someone he calls “Andreas a great gentelement [sic],” a possible reference to Pastrana. The Freakshow has so far not determined what “taking care of” meant.

Some redactions look less like victim protection and more like protection from embarrassment.

The DOJ went to town with the blackout ink on former Prince Andrew’s aide David Stern. Stern can be identified as the redacted sender in numerous emails to Epstein on the topic of “lots of P” (P being Pussy), because in other messages, he is not redacted while discussing exactly the same thing.

Here is Stern wishing Epstein “lots of P” for his birthday in 2012, and again for the new year; making plans with Epstein to buy the Dukes Hotel in London with “room for lots of P”; on the lookout for new assistant P for Jeff in St. Moritz; and lamenting the hot weather and lack of good P in London.

Here, comedian Bobby Slayton is redacted while wishing Epstein a Happy New Year and, of course, a year with lots of pussy.

Some of the redactions do indeed look accidental. Tom Pritzker is all over the Epstein files, but is redacted in one entirely anodyne Maxwell email from 2001: “See you at 71st at 9.15pm Then I will feed you [sic].” It’s also possible that this single redaction is only one of others yet unmasked.

Other examples are harder to explain. Why would the late Wall Street tycoon and Epstein mentor Ace Greenberg’s name be redacted from Epstein’s Bear Stearns background check paperwork? Reputation protection? Brother Mark Epstein’s name and relationship to Jeff are redacted in the same file.

There are mysteriously redacted male faces in photographs, too. Redactions in two photos cover the face of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Two men flanking a woman or girl are concealed in this image. And in another redacted image, Sen. George Mitchell sits beside Jeffrey Epstein, holding a redacted small child (probably Mitchell’s child and not a victim).

Some redactions were contested early on. In February, Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, who had seen both the original and redacted documents, grilled Blanche about the hidden identities. Massie pointed to a document containing 20 names, 18 of which had been redacted. Blanche claimed the document had “numerous victim names” and that DOJ had “unredacted all non-victim names.”

At the same hearing, Blanche also defended the redaction of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem’s name in a notorious email in which Epstein tells the redacted Sultan that he “loved the torture video.” Blanche claimed it was initially redacted because the material contained an email address constituting personally identifiable information.

A February 2026 report to Congress, signed by Pam Bondi and Blanche, alphabetically listed the names of dozens of men and a few women – from Alexander Acosta to Paolo Zampolli – who were government officials or “politically exposed” and/or appeared in the files at least once. The letter stated that “No records were withheld or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignitary.”

Melania Trump is on the list, along with Donald Trump, but based on our review, that list is incomplete. The missing include Dubin, Stern, Pastrana, Greenberg, and Mitchell. Mitchell’s omission can’t be explained simply by his being deceased since Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin are both included.

If we take DOJ at its word that nobody was omitted or redacted to spare embarrassment or reputational harm, then there must be some other explanation for masking those men.

The only official excuse is in a footnote to the February report:

Any omissions from the list are unintentional and, as explained in the previous letters to Congress, a result of the volume and speed with which the Department complied with the Act. Individuals whose names were redacted for law-enforcement sensitive purposes are not included.

It’s entirely possible that some of the redactions (and un-redactions) are mistakes. But others are clearly deliberate. And Blanche has never defined what “law-enforcement sensitive purposes” actually means.

Blanche made his first public statement on the Epstein files on July 22, 2025 to announce that he would be interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell in person.

Six months later, announcing DOJ’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, he cautioned that the public’s “hunger or a thirst for information” would probably not be satisfied by the documents because he “[didn’t] think that the public or you all are going to uncover men within the Epstein files that abuse women.” Now that he is Attorney General, Blanche has repeatedly doubled down on that position.

Meanwhile, his and DOJ’s explanations for what remains hidden continue to evolve. Tellingly, the excuse they’re using now for withholding handwritten FBI notes – that they are “duplicative” – was never mentioned in the early explanations.

Journalist Katie Phang’s lawsuit against Blanche prompted the DOJ to acknowledge that 200,000 pages in the files had been redacted or withheld based on various privileges. The judge in that case has so far appeared to side with Phang on the transparency issue and has threatened the DOJ with a contempt of court citation for failing to adequately explain various mystery redactions.

Protecting the men in the files from embarrassment or worse is apparently of higher importance than investigating any of them for knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s crimes.

This is not the case in Europe. Norway is investigating two Epstein pals. At least two of the DOJ’s redacted men – Lang and Mandelson – are under investigation in France and the UK. Daniel Siad was also under investigation in France before he died.

So we have another sordid Trumpy milestone: his top law enforcement agency stands alone among the Western nations, not only turning a blind eye to a global trafficking and influence network with abused girls and women at its core, but actively hiding their names in file releases demanded by Congress.

Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Katie Chenoweth is associate professor of French at Princeton University and an investigative researcher

Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow

New Documents Renew Scrutiny Of Billionaire Leon Black And Epstein's Recruiters

New Documents Renew Scrutiny Of Billionaire Leon Black And Epstein's Recruiters

The Indy 500 is zipping around our capital, but the wheels of American justice are slow. Attorney General Todd “Boy Cohn” Blanche – with the help of FBI agents flagging documents with the acronym POTUS for special review – has thrown enough roadblocks into the Epstein Files Transparency Act to defend his boss for now.

Maybe not for long, since a judge is threatening him with contempt of court.

And at least one other powerful man is feeling the heat.

That man is Epstein’s biggest “tax client,” master of the universe and Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, whose lawyers and fortune have managed to shield him from accusations, responsibility and questions for years. His imperial impunity may finally be reaching its limit, at least at the congressional level, where the House Oversight Committee is threatening to hold him in contempt of Congress if he continues to refuse to turn over nondisclosure agreements.

Earlier this summer, when the NDA issue came up, Black stalked out of the Oversight Committee with his phalanx of lawyers. The Committee has been hashing out next steps with them ever since and has apparently ran out of patience: Black is now threatened with a contempt citation next week.

“If Mr. Black refuses to provide the Committee with responsive documents or refuses to appear for his scheduled deposition on September 3, 2026, the Committee will use all tools at its disposal, including contempt,” Comer said in a letter to Black’s lawyers.

Black was Epstein’s biggest known client, having paid him about $170 million, according to Senate Finance Committee ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). Black has said the money was for “tax and estate planning,” and documents in the files indicate that Epstein was indeed involved in his financial life.

But there are also plenty of communications between the two men – or between Epstein and his recruiters referencing Black – to suggest that their relationship edged in the direction of Epstein’s side business trafficking women, and is worth further investigation.

We covered Black’s involvement with two of Epstein’s Russian recruiters in a Freakshow last month. And now, in newly discovered communications, we see Victoria Housez telling Epstein that an office space she was looking at for her “scouting” business with trafficker and spy Daniel Siad would be a place where “Leon” “can feel comfortable.”

Black has specifically denied to the Oversight Committee that he knew anything about the sex trafficking operation until Epstein was arrested at Teterboro stepping off his private jet: “With the benefit of hindsight, I now know -- as does the world -- that Epstein was engaged in horrific, sordid activities. I feel terrible for Epstein’s victims. I want to state clearly that I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019.”

But we have discovered previously unreported messages between Black and the global sex trafficker that suggest otherwise. Their communications are filled with Epstein’s innuendo about his real business.

In August 2017, Black and Epstein had the following exchange:

Leon: “You OK? Hopefully not overexerting …”

Jeff: “Home tonight. Did you see mickey mouse as the sorcerers apprentice. Fantasia . Overwhelmed bu what he wished for [sic]”

Leon: ???

Jeff: You used to be able to understand when you were younger! Soooo many new

A year later, in August 2018, they shared another exchange, this one with casually racist undertones.

A few hours later, Black replied, prompting Epstein to explicitly mention “photos.”

And then there are the photos themselves.

We have uncovered previously unpublished photos of girls that Epstein sent to Black without explanation. One thing we know from Epstein’s communications with recruiters is that he was avidly collecting – often demanding – pictures of potential marketable women and children.

A reasonable person might assume that the recipient of the images Epstein sent without comment was at least dimly aware of the sender’s habit of (at the very least) collecting photos of young women to share with his friends.

Below are some examples of photos Epstein shot into Black’s phone or inbox.

He sent this one in August 2011, four days after the first exchange between Epstein and recruiter Victoria Housez mentioning Leon Black:

In July 2016, on Black’s 65th birthday (for which Black’s wife Debra had solicited a story for a birthday book), Epstein sent the below photo, unlabeled, off to Leon personally:

Epstein sent the following image to Black in November 2016, apparently taken while Epstein was in Saudi Arabia visiting MBS on the eve of the 2016 election. An hour earlier, Jeff had texted Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen: “I’m in Riyadh,” and later sent Terje a photo of himself laughing with MBS. (Michael Wolff has said that Epstein told him he smuggled “girls” disguised as flight attendants into Saudi Arabia – a serious crime there.)

The above photo appears in the same thread in the DOJ files as two screenshots related to Jared Kushner and a photo of Leon Black at the US Open with Jared and Ivanka.

Black, who claims his relationship was entirely businesslike, also appears in the files making milkshakes with Epstein’s redacted “assistants.”

Just good clean fun.

Throughout these newly unearthed communications, Black not only seems to be a friend of Epstein’s – he explicitly calls him “friend” and even “dear friend.”

“Happy New Year my friend!!!” he wrote Epstein during the Jewish holidays in 2018.

Black told the committee he decided to give Epstein a “second chance” but now regrets it: “I did know that Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to State charges relating to prostitution involving a minor. Epstein had told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID. Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not.”

In fact, he was giving Epstein a second chance quite a bit sooner than that. As we reported last month, an Epstein recruiter named Irina Chernova – who ultimately became a recipient of Black’s largesse – planned to accompany Black in 2009 to visit Epstein while Epstein was still under house arrest for his Palm Beach conviction.

In the email arranging the visit, Chernova said she would also bring at least one [redacted] girl; Epstein replied that he would “talk to Leon” about the visit and says [redacted] “can bring her sister or friend” (apparently some new girls Epstein had not yet met).

Like Trump, Black is in the infamous 50th birthday book, with a sexually insinuating note. He called Epstein “dear friend,” and signed it “love and kisses, Leon.”

When the committee pressed him on those effusions, he said, “Friendship is an amorphous term … We were never best friends. Was I friendly with him from the point of view of enjoying his Rolodex? Yes. Did I think he was very smart as a professional adviser? Yes.”

Black was also dismissive about the significance of his family foundation, which he appointed Epstein to run. “I don’t think that entity did a whole lot,” he said.

Depends on your definition of “whole lot,” apparently.

In just the five years between 2000 and 2005, IRS 990 forms filed by the Leon Black Family Foundation show that it donated over $19 million to at least 41 different organizations. During that period, the forms list Epstein as the foundation’s only director other than Leon Black and his wife.

Time will tell whether Black’s lawyers can keep running interference between the Wall Street whale and Republican-led Congressional committee. Team Black, picking up the refrain from Epstein’s other non-friend friend, Donald, calls it a “witch hunt.”

But whatever happens, there are ominous signals here for Epstein’s old buddy, the Predator-in-Chief.

In his letter to Black’s lawyers threatening contempt, Comer described the investigative “scope and intent” in terms that should put both Todd Blanche and Donald Trump on notice.

The scope includes:

(i) the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, (ii) the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein’s death, (iii) the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, (iv) ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and (v) potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

The Oversight Committee chairman (a Tennessee Republican, remember) also made clear that NDAs, documents Trump relied on to shut people down throughout his career, are not ironclad against the eyes of the law. At long last, the legally binding, lip-zipping bribes that wealthy predators use to silence victims and witnesses might be subject to some legislative oversight or restriction.

Comer wrote:

Mr. Epstein, and his associates, used a variety of tools to control his victims and other individuals in his orbit. The Committee is aware that Mr. Epstein used non-disclosure agreements to silence his associates, some of whom have since come forward as victims and survivors of his abuse … The Committee is also aware of the existence of at least one non-disclosure agreement between your client and a woman who was connected to Mr. Epstein. The pursuit of this investigative pathway––and relevant facts surrounding it––is necessary to determine the nature and extent to which Mr. Epstein and his associates used these confidential agreements, which in turn will help determine whether legislation is necessary and if so, how to craft such legislation to prevent such activity from reoccurring.

Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Katie Chenoweth is associate professor of French at Princeton University and an investigative researcher

Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow

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