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Behind Steve Bannon's Election Unreality Show, A Gang Of Supervillains

Behind Steve Bannon's Election Unreality Show, A Gang Of Supervillains

Three weeks to go and this season of The Trump Show is barreling toward its riveting midterm denouement.

A dawn DHS raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house – a timely stunt to remind xenophobes that their hero can do something about a brown woman in a headscarf. ICE blasting away with live ammo on the streets of New York for maximum attention. Armed National Guardsmen posing by DC ballot boxes.

And now, the big crowd-pleasing reveal: a shrieking diva cast into oblivion.

Yes, they’re throwing Kimberly “The Best is Yet to Come!” Guilfoyle under the bus. The Mar-a-Lago-faced hellion has had a long career as a brazen hustler; her game was well known before she was confirmed as America’s ambassador to Greece. Trump always casts a few women who can play borderline personality disorder, and Guilfoyle will serve as a timely pre-election distraction from the catastrophes of war, gas prices, environmental ruination, self-dealing and the Grand Grifts of the Brothers and Son-in-Law.

Plus – someone else has likely bid high to live in the State Department’s luxurious Athens mansion for the next two years.

If you’re not MAGA, you’re probably not tuned in to the chief midterm narrator explaining all this. But “War Room” podcaster and Trump whisperer Steve Bannon continues to mesmerixe millions of MAGA sheeple who still buy that he’s a populist on their side – even though, just like the man he shills for, the most cursory reading of the Epstein files shows him to be an Epstein Class A all-access passholder.

As we have reported before, with receipts, Bannon is one of the great wannabe globalists, leveraging his insider knowledge of the White House and Epstein’s contacts to gain access to the highest echelons of Gulf royalty and the EU’s Nazi-adjacent political backrooms.

The House Oversight Committee has not yet bothered to subpoena Bannon, even though he was one of Epstein’s closest late-in-life buddies and his communications with Jeff suggest at least an awareness of the trafficking schemes. Bannon did prison time for blowing off his last congressional subpoena, so that might factor into the committee’s considerations. His “I fought the law and the law won” four month prison stint followed by Trump’s pardon have made him as immune as Big Daddy in some ways. For the moment anyway.

Since 2020, Bannon has been cheerleading a right-wing coup, broadcasting twice a day via a media company called Real America’s Voice (RAV). He admits that The Big Lie is the tentpole of the MAGA movement, calls for armed guards at polling places and urges his listeners to serve as election deniers (aka meddlers) on precinct committees. He even suggested that they might carry weapons to their polling places. At a “Fraud Fighter Summit” this summer, he gave activists a dozen congressional districts to target, adding that legal sidearms would not be a bad idea. “We need to be at every precinct. If you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are.”

The claque of supervillains behind RAV, the media company that platforms Bannon’s two-hour twice-a-day bray, is so baroquely evil that the concept of it probably wouldn’t even fly in a Marvel Comics writers’ room.

RAV founder Robert Sigg makes Rupert Murdoch look like Jimmy Stewart. He is a convicted felon and fraudster with a long rap sheet. The federal case against him involved a large identity theft scheme in which he and his cohorts ran help-wanted ads in a Denver newspaper to solicit job applicants, “promising salaries of more than $100,000, for the sole purpose of obtaining the applicants’ personal identification information to obtain the fraudulent mortgage loans.” His rap sheet, according to a Denver news site, also includes: selling or distributing drugs; burglary; assault; assault and battery; resisting or obstructing arrest; domestic violence; driving under the influence of drugs; being a habitual traffic offender; harassment; and drug possession.

But wait – there’s a chip off the old block! Sigg’s son Austin is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence in Colorado for kidnapping a fifth grader off the streets of suburban Denver when he was 17, zip-tying and sexually assaulting her before dismembering her. The lad’s defense included the allegation that his mom – one of Robert Sigg’s wives – sniffed glue while pregnant.

Austin’s younger brother, Parker Sigg, is RAV’s vice president and has been serving as Bannon’s War Room White House pool reporter. When the five major pool outlets recently boycotted Trump coverage in solidarity with their banished colleagues at CNN, Parker Sigg and RAV stepped in to do their own “free pool coverage.” They are continuing to provide it to this day, meaning this super sketchy “news” outlet now has top-level security access to the White House and Trump’s travel.

“We’re gonna continue giving real time updates to everybody,” the younger Sigg chirped on a recent War Room podcast. “This is extremely unique. There are other systems that have been around that the legacy media has used. I don’t believe there’s been anything as streamlined or sophisticated as this. We did this in little to no time. We set this up and beta tested it in 24-48 hours. People are really enjoying it. We’re going to continue to put updates out, make it easier to use, and make it more accessible.”

Through RAV, Bannon is in deep with the Siggs financially, as was his corrupt Chinese pal Guo Wengui, whose backers bought in early. It is still possible to be amazed at how, even for bottom-feeder Bannon, there is no rock under which the failed Hollywood auteur won’t look for a business partner.

Maybe it pays off: RAV is becoming the media home of choice for die-hard election deniers and conspiracy theorists too far gone for FOX or OAN. RAV platformed Jack Posiobiec, the first person to tweet “Stop the Steal,” and just launched a new Ed Martin show to platform his election conspiracy theories. The former Missouri politician and lawyer was a lead organizer of Stop the Steal and a fundraiser for the J6 rioters, who also oversaw their mass pardons as acting DC Attorney. He left the DOJ in August after overseeing another raft of eye-popping and allegedly corrupt Trump pardons but – to his professional detriment – failed to fulfill The Boss’s lawfare vengeance schemes.

Among RAV’s other graduates cavorting in the sweaty DC MAGA clubhouse is Beni Rae Harmony, who once posed in a “Fuck Biden” shirt with an AR-15 strapped across her chest. Big Daddy Donald has made Beni Rae understudy to the new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia. (Zacharia is another lady nutter who could be in the running to become Trump’s next Guilfoyle/Noem/Omarosa. She apparently agrees that Trump sends QAnon-coded messages from rally podiums, with the number of times he sips from a water bottle supposedly carrying a secret signal.)

Last week, War Secretary Hegseth announced, during a RAV interview with Jack Posobiec, that Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad would be livestreamed for the public. Will RAV get the exclusive pay-per-view?

In the run-up to the election, Real America’s Voice is ever more a contender in the contest for market share of MAGAs with an appetite for crazy. FOX News is giving more play to Trump criticism, even inviting Muslim “communists” like Abdul El-Sayed to parlay with Jesse Watters. The DOJ is pursuing an antitrust probe against the mainstream media companies over their boycott last month, while the White House press office veers deeper into the extremist swamp. RAV and Bannon are uniquely positioned to fill the widening gap between reality and unreality with the laughing gas of MAGA midterm delirium.

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



Hegseth

How Hegseth's Secret Pentagon 'Influencers' Defended Trump On Epstein Files

Trumpworld survivors know that good optics are the cardinal rule with the big guy – second only to successfully executing open-air corruption.

Thick-browed Pete Hegseth is nothing if not a Trumpworld survivor – for now anyway. We expect the day will come when this Fox Weekend chest-beater, currently running a real war involving the smoking ruin of U.S. bases, death and global havoc, is finally thrown under the bus.

Hegseth arrived as a Trump nominee plagued by alcohol abuse and roofie-rape allegations. Once confirmed, he delivered exactly the performance the White House reality show casting director wanted. He dubbed himself “War Secretary,” and, with a cartoonish strut, became a walking case study in steroid overuse.

A warrior caricature is as essential to the Trump show as Betty Boop femininity. But when Trump faced the greatest real challenge of his presidency – the forced release of the Epstein files in January 2026 – he needed extras as backup.

Enter Hegseth’s three social media influencers, riding to the rescue. Between them, these Three Musketeers have a combined one million X followers, more fans on podcasts and TV, and, as it turns out, Trump government positions too.

The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe broke this delicious story (he also revealed the airport food cart caper and is one reason to maintain your Wapo subscription – despite Bezos, the place still has great, well-sourced journalists on staff).

Lamothe did not report on the substance of the trio’s social media activities in relation to the Epstein files, but the timeline speaks for itself. About a week after the files were released, Hegseth announced he was cutting Pentagon ties with Harvard and creating a task force to review military war colleges and other academic institutions. He staffed this woke-hunting task force with the aforementioned trio of former military men turned right-wing social media figures. They were given civil service acronyms – HQE (Highly Qualified Expert) or SGE (Special Government Employee) – and “.civ” government emails. The Pentagon refused to tell Lamothe whether, or how much, they were paid, or what their jobs were or how long they would be in them.

Retired Air Force colonel Kurt Schlichter, a popular right-wing flame-throwing trial lawyer, Townhall columnist, and former standup comic, is probably the best known of the three. He has 620,000 X followers whose favorite word – judging by their enthusiastic, if often grammatically incorrect, replies to his posts – is “retarded.”

Schlichter, a self-proclaimed “major influencer,” is a reliable source of MAGA snark on Fox, Newsmax, and beyond, having been around since Andrew Breitbart hired him years ago. Whether he’s still actively practicing law is anyone’s guess – his name is no longer on his firm’s website (he was still listed as recently as June).

In a crowd of surly manosphere influencers, though, Schlichter’s woman problem stands out as particularly… acute. He rarely misses a chance to trash females.

Responding to former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, he wrote: “Frigid wine women fear and loathe the things of men. This is why they should be patted on their empty heads and directed to the kitchen to prepare sandwiches” (you might recall that “make me a sandwich” is a rape-propaganda Tate Brothers meme spewed at female teachers by brainwashed preteen boys).

Schlichter has also called Democratic political women “fat, ugly and retarded” and liberal white women “an abomination.”

Given this penchant, it’s no surprise that he frequently dismisses Epstein’s victims as “hookers” or prostitutes and liars. From his very first comments on the files – in the form of a ranting YouTube video – he cited his experience as a trial lawyer, called the case “lies” and “nonsense,” and, apropos of nothing, mentioned that his mother is a judge. Unlike Hegseth’s mother, Kurt’s mommy has yet to weigh in on her son’s radical misogyny. He has repeatedly called those interested in the Epstein case “retarded.” He insists there is “no global sex trafficking ring.” and that he, along with former Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), “is laughing at how stupid” people are for believing there is.

The second Musketeer, is another former colonel and civilian lawyer named Thomas R. Anderson, who has racked up 320,000 followers on X under the nom de guerre Cynical Publius. As the files came out, Publius too shifted right on cue to slamming the Epstein case. There is no “there there,” he whined in one tweet. Some other greatest hits include: “We know everything there is to know;” There is “very little” in the files; Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna are “narcissistic charlatans bent on harming Donald Trump;” “Trump was the first person to report [Epstein] to the police” (despite not having a shred of evidence to back that up); and our personal favorite, “There is no ‘Epstein List.’”. Anderson/Publius also claimed that making any Trump and Epstein connection was defamatory and slanderous.

Mississippi-based podcaster Rob Maness, the third Musketeer with a Pentagon HQE title, spent months calling for the release of the Epstein files. But on the day the Wall Street Journal dropped its story on Trump’s contribution to Epstein’s 50th birthday book, Maness abruptly reversed course. After firing off two final tweets on July 17, 2025, he never mentioned Epstein again:

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

barron trump

How Trumpworld Turned Tates' Rape Propaganda Into A Business Model

Now that the Brits have charged Andrew and Tristan Tate and their long criminal history is out in the open and undeniable, Trumpworld wants to slither away from its old pals. But it can’t hide those long-standing ties to the pimp-pornographer rape cheerleaders for very long. The brothers are integral to the larger Trump Predators’ Ball: No White House in American history has been so packed with, or allied with, men accused of domestic violence, roofie rape, infidelity and pedophile protection.

For years, the Trump team has cynically nurtured and profited from its connection to the Tates – to the detriment of American women’s health and safety, and with quantifiable political and economic gain.

As we wrote last week, Barron Trump could and should be subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. He is widely credited as the link that brought the Tates and their blinkered, insecure younger male followers into Trump’s orbit. Men under 30 swung toward Trump by 15 to 20 percentage points in 2024.

But Barron is hardly the only Trumpworld character with Tate ties who should be hauled in. And the family’s relationship with them isn’t just political. Don Jr. – back in his weak-chinned, pre-beard days – first invited Andrew Tate to Mar-a-Lago in 2017.

As Tate has described it, the bromance started online and ended up with him inside Trump Tower for four hours, meeting Big Daddy himself.

“I followed [Don Jr.]. He followed me back. I DM’d him and said, ‘You guys are literally the heroes of the West.’”

Tate soon began tweeting support for Trump, with his signature brand of enthusiastic profanity (the n-word).

Now remember, at that point, Andrew Tate was already promoting sex trafficking online and teaching young men how to do it. He appeared on livestreams bragging about emotionally manipulating vulnerable women into sex work (much like his predecessor Epstein) and beating them to keep them in line. He was running a super creepy subscription-only “War Room” that would be exposed as a cultish sex-trafficking op.

But “creator” Andrew Tate was going to be useful for far more than just fluffing the bros. He would soon be making the Trump family and its allies money.

The Tate-Trumpworld connection lives inside a parallel economy that builds an audience and enriches itself – literally – off a sewer of misogynistic propaganda and trafficked women.

Why would Don Jr. and the self-described “patriotic capitalists” behind 1789 Capital (including Chris Buskirk and billionaire spawn Rebekah Mercer) want rape-promoting dirtbags like the Tates in their investment portfolios?

One reason, of course, is political. The Trump 2024 strategy was to juice and inflame male resentment over MeToo and DEI, redirecting their grievances (that should have been aimed at the financialized titans laughing at them all the way to the bank) toward women.

In an interview with Vanity Fair last week, Tate lawyer Joseph McBride – whose ignominious client list includes NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere, Alex Bruesewitz, and a pigpen of J6 rioters – warned that “if Trump doesn’t support him, and if the next people who are going to be running for office potentially are just like, ‘Yeah, down the river he goes,’ that young cohort of people will break with the Republican Party in the next election.”

But the other reason – perhaps the more important one in the long run – is cash.

By 2022, Meta had banned Tate, YouTube had removed him, and TikTok was suppressing him and related content. That left millions of Tate followers with nowhere to go. Trumpworld didn’t simply hand him a microphone. It built an economy around the audience he brought with him.

Junior was an early investor in the right wing media platform Rumble (like Peter Thiel and JD Vance, who had invested in 2021). He soon banked himself a $7 million multi-year contract to platform his “Triggered” podcast. In late summer 2022 (right before now-Commerce Secretary and Trump pal Howard Lutnick took it public), Rumble reportedly gave the Tates a $6 million contract (Andrew claims it was $9 million) to produce five days a week of programming after they had been deplatformed almost everywhere else.

What influencer could possibly be worth that kind of money? Even Tucker Carlson, freshly booted out of Fox in 2023, couldn’t resist flying to Romania for a two-and-a-half hour interview (in a previous shorter interview on Fox, he had allowed Tate to get away with lying that he had not been criminally charged). The show was Carlson’s first post-Fox interview and has reportedly been viewed 110 million times.

To put that in venture-capital terms: Tate isn’t just content – he is a customer acquisition channel.

The Tates delivered millions of highly engaged viewers to Rumble after being banned or restricted on mainstream platforms. Rumble monetizes through ads, branded campaigns, “premium” subscriptions and livestream revenue, all areas where the Tates generated value. Even just a small percentage of Tate followers creating Rumble accounts and subscribing to Premium would have been lucrative.

Former Bank of America banker Omeed Malik invested alongside Don Jr. in Rumble before forming 1789 Capital, a fund explicitly created to support businesses in the “anti-woke economy.” Its founders – people from the Trump political donor network – see strategic value in platforms like Rumble, Truth Social and PublicSquare as distribution networks for politically useful dirtballs like the Tates.

Malik – surprise! – has had his own problems with women. An allegation of workplace harassment (which he denied) is probably the defining point of both his financial and political career.

Of course, 1789 Capital has also invested big money in Tate ecosystem allies, including, a few months after his big Tate interview, Carlson’s digital media company, Last Country, Inc. The financiers also invested in Happy Dad hard seltzer, the principal consumer brand of Tate ecosystem node and Nelk Boys founder Kyle Forgeard. Forgeard is another social media meathead with ultrawhite veneers and a key cross-promoter of the Tates. He and other performative Neanderthals endlessly fluff one another through livestreams, podcasts, and exclusive clubbing at places like Executive Branch in Georgetown.

Besides the Tates, the crew includes people such as Alex Bruesewitz (the media strategist behind Trump’s most racist and offensive Truth Social memes), the Full Send Podcast, and Justin Waller, a Deep South version of the Tates sometimes called their “third brother,” who is also credited with connecting Andrew to Barron Trump.

Beyond Junior’s investment, Trump Media purchases cloud, video, advertising and infrastructure services from Rumble in a “wide-ranging” technology partnership.

The Trump family benefits in other ways too. Andrew Tate has promoted and traded their World Liberty Financial token. He steered millions of his gullible crypto-obsessed followers toward the Trump crypto business, even though he himself lost around $67,500 while shilling for it. Later reporting calculated that his overall crypto losses were close to $1 million, much of it tied to the WLFI token.

But whether Tate made or lost money is beside the point. He repeatedly directed his millions of followers toward a Trump-family financial product.

Another point of affinity between Trumpists and the Tates is a sense of victimhood and shared scorn for legal norms. Trump’s own felonious history needs no recounting here, but even Chris Buskirk, aforementioned 1789 founder, has a sketchy record. According to Reuters, court records show that “between 2011 and 2015, Buskirk and his wife were sued at least 11 times over unpaid debts – by business partners, debt collection companies, their dry cleaner, and others.”

Do the real victims in this sick game – American women – have any recourse? A functioning civil society would offer some route to legal retribution. Impunity for a similar large-scale propaganda movement like the Tates’ promoting violence against Black people or Jews in this country would be unthinkable.

Alas, any lawsuit would be unlikely to survive a motion to dismiss, thanks largely to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the so far ironclad shield protecting everyone from Nazi-promoting Musk to rape-promoting bros from liability for content posted by “third-party users.” When Andrew Tate uploads misogynistic or violent content, Rumble can simply claim to be the platform not the speaker.

But Rumble doesn’t merely host the Tates. It employs them. Investors like Don Jr. profit from that relationship. Rumble recruited Tate, negotiated a multimillion-dollar contract, paid him to produce specified amounts of content, and promoted him as a featured creator. A plaintiff could reasonably argue that Rumble wasn’t merely carrying Tate’s speech; it was financing, commissioning, marketing and amplifying it as part of its business strategy.

Bottom line, although this is hardly news: There is no point too low on the anti-social behavior scale for the Trumps or their Trumpworld strategists and donors.

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

Tate Brothers

All Choked Up: Enabled By Trump, Tate Brothers Strangle Women And The Law

“Slap, slap, grab, choke. Shut up, bitch. Sex.” – Andrew Tate

For more than a decade, Andrew Tate has publicly advocated for and bragged about personally choking, slapping, and violently dominating women into submission across dozens of podcasts, interviews and online broadcasts. Rumble, the video hosting service backed by investments from the likes of Peter Thiel and JD Vance, paid Tate at least $6 million a year to spread his brand of propagandized violence against women.

During that same period, at least eight women have publicly alleged that Andrew or his brother Tristan Tate strangled them during sex, several saying they lost consciousness. They include Lauren Southern, Brianna Stern, three women pseudonymously quoted in the New Yorker, and four anonymous women in a UK civil case. The brothers deny the allegations, but given their long public history of bragging about doing exactly that to unnamed women, their denials ring hollow.

The Tate brothers are Sons of Epstein. There is an ideological and criminal lineage between the Boomer global sex trafficker and these Millennial monsters: shared misogyny, assumption of impunity, underage victims, and of course, the pimping business model. Only the style has been updated. Every video of the brothers oozes psychopathy. Their brand of caricatured manhood is derangement on steroids.

To our shame, the American government has treated these stranglers like international heroes instead of global pariahs and a significant threat to women and girls worldwide.

One of the Trump administration’s first acts was helping the brothers escape rape and trafficking charges in Romania by flying them to Miami. Ric Grenell, a “diplomat” with the extra special title of Special Envoy for Special Missions of the United States, pressured Romanian officials to lay off the Tates, who had been released from prison but ordered to remain in the country. A month after Trump’s 2025 inauguration, they were out and delivered to Miami by private jet. No announcement, no explanation – unless you count this deleted Roger Stone tweet crediting Grenell:

Just another pair of freaks for the Predators Ball assembling in Washington.

A year and a half after getting his mojo back, Andrew was interviewed at the Milken Conference by Melania’s former “agent” and Trump Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli – who had just distinguished himself by having ICE deport the mother of his child. The Tates’ Trump-granted impunity and connections opened doors for them in Dubai, Russia and Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, the brothers never stopped upselling their PHD (Pimping Hos Degree) to millions of men and boys. Their followers are a new class of young men who insult their female teachers and classmates, creating such a negative impact at schools that educators have held conferences about it.

The unofficial official administration position on this pair of stranglers came from occasional Laura Loomer walker, tiny incel Paul Ingrassia, who has called Andrew Tate the “embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence” for his “sheer physical prowess,” “sharp as a tack” and full of “willpower and spirit.” Ingrassia has since been demoted from his personnel office perch near the White House inner circle to the GSA – not due to his support of the Tates, but because his Nazi-adjacent views came to light.

It turns out Ingrassia was not the Tates’ real White House connection. Don Jr. has called their prison time in Romania “absolute insanity.”

But according to reports in Forbes and the New York Times, the real Tate link is the Boo Radley of the Trump family: Barron Trump. During the 2024 campaign, Barron reportedly became such a fan of the Tates that he turned his father onto the notion that they could help him with young men.

Barron has largely escaped scrutiny. First, because he arrived on the national scene as a preteen. And second, just by virtue of the parental combination of an icy mother and a depraved father. Now a young adult, this towering spectral figure, publicly silent, still gets a pass, despite reportedly being tied not only to the Tates but also to the family crypto business and rumors that he cashes in on prediction markets via insider knowledge of his father’s antics.

Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) has formally asked the House Oversight Committee to investigate the Tates’ access to the administration, including subpoenaing Barron Trump to determine whether he used his position to interfere in any of the brothers’ legal proceedings.

Her request is completely reasonable: investigating why and how the Trump administration aided two men credibly accused by at least eight women of strangling them – some to the point of unconsciousness – is at least as urgent as the Epstein investigation.

Naturally, her office has been deluged with hate mail for daring to suggest Barron answer for himself.

Beyond exposing the Trump incels and misogynists who welcomed the stranglers back onto American soil, the Rumble platform should be investigated for giving the brothers a $6 million contract (that Andrew Tate claims was actually $9 million) and platform from which to spew their violent misogyny.

In a functioning civil society, women and girls would have some avenue to sue the Tates, along with the companies that have disseminated their messaging. This isn’t just hate speech. It has quantifiable effects. Researchers are finding that the increasingly common teen habit of strangling women during sex has become so widespread that young women are suffering brain damage. That research briefly made headlines and disappeared while Andrew Tate continued proselytizing to millions of boys in junior high (and maybe, younger, who knows) that nearly murdering a woman can be sexually gratifying.

Tate stans blame women instead. John Mac Ghlionn wrote in the Hill last year:

Schools, particularly in Western countries, have become increasingly hostile to traditional expressions of masculinity. Boys are expected to behave like girls — to sit still, be passive and suppress their natural instincts ... A toxic society, not toxic masculinity, made Andrew Tate famous.

This combination of whining – hostile to traditional expressions of masculinity – and sweeping framing – Western countries – rather than just, say, Oberlin, is standard rhetorical fare among the MAGA literati.

Cheering on men who publicly celebrate – and are credibly accused by multiple women of – choking women to unconsciousness are laundered into soldiers in Project 2025’s greater campaign against feminism.

That narrative began to crack on July 19, when the Brits decided to not only reopen their investigation but to add dozens of new charges. They may have been shamed into action after journalist Heidi Blake published her exhaustively reported New Yorker article in early June, documenting harrowing stories from women in England, Romania, and elsewhere. (If Blake doesn’t win a Pulitzer, the oversight will rank up there with the egregious long delay in Julie K. Brown’s recognition for her 2018 Epstein series in the Miami Herald.)

After the arrests, there was a burp of MAGA support online. But as the deeply distracted, disaster-ravaged White House hasn’t signaled it will get involved, the usual suspects have not been stepping up. That includes women like Trump lawyer Alina Habba, who once told Andrew Tate on his podcast, “I’ve got your back.”

The Tates’ own lawyer (a meathead named Joe McBride who posts pictures of himself packed into suits like warm, rancid sausage in a casing) warns that comparing his client to Epstein will get him murdered in jail.

Desperate to get some traction with Big Daddy, McBride is using Twitter to try to gin up conspiracy theories, curry favor with Trump, play the commie card, and threaten Rep. Ansari – sometimes all in a single post:

If Andrew Tate were free, he would be dismantling this communist psychopath in real time and raising an army to unseat her for going after Barron Trump.
The Tate Bros are one of the most powerful weapons the conservative movement has.Their absence is the point.

The thing is, Tate is no Epstein. And Barron Trump, Ric Grenell, Paul Ingrassia, and Joe McBride are definitely not an assemblage of white shoe lawyers waiting to save his sorry ass.

Soon, one hopes, Andrew Tate will be pulling kitchen duty in prison, where inmates can line up and bark one of his favorite misogynistic slogans – the same one his legion of preteen fanboys have been scrawling on papers they turn in to their female teachers: “Make me a sandwich.”

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



How Daniel Siad, Suddenly Deceased 'Model Recruiter,' Fit Into Epstein's World

How Daniel Siad, Suddenly Deceased 'Model Recruiter,' Fit Into Epstein's World

This week, another Epsteinworld recruiter, Daniel Siad, was found dead in his home outside Paris. He was 69 years old and under investigation in France over allegations of rape and trafficking. Siad joins Epstein and fellow French sex trafficker Jean-Luc Brunel in Hades, although there’s no indication he took his own life like the other two. Initial reports point to a cardiac arrest, but an autopsy is planned to determine the exact cause.

As usual, the sudden death of a man who appears in the Epstein files more than 2,000 times immediately sparked conspiracy theories. Epstein was already acquainted with the Swedish-French-Algerian Siad during his Palm Beach years and by 2009, Siad was in regular communication with him about “scouting” women. According to DOJ records, Epstein routinely wired money to Siad’s accounts in Sweden and Dubai, sometimes as much as $25,000 at a time.

Although French, Siad, like many in Epsteinworld, seems to have had an unusual number of connections in Russian circles. He apparently hung out with Russophilic French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen. He showed up at Fidel Castro’s funeral in 2016 and later told Epstein that Castro’s son wanted to meet him. He also introduced Epstein to a Russian spy’s daughter, Svetlana Pozhdaeva, who went on to recruit for – and report on various prominent men to – Epstein.

What makes Siad significant at this point in the ongoing Epstein cover-up and congressional inquiry is that, for at least a few years in the 2010s, he partnered with another Epstein associate and recruiter, a Russian woman named Victoria Housez. And, as we reported in a recent Freakshow, The Billionaire and the Recruiters, Housez had a financial – and maybe personal – relationship with billionaire Leon Black. Housez’s emails and other DOJ records indicate that Black repeatedly sent her money in 2011 and 2012, perhaps more than $50,000, while she was actively recruiting for Epstein and seeking to establish some kind of larger-scale “scouting” operation.

Within weeks of agreeing to scout for Epstein in May 2011, Housez had connected with Siad. “i go now with Daniel to see the boats outside of paris to book it for Russian receptions [sic],” Housez wrote in June 2011.1

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM DANIEL?” Epstein emailed Housez in August 2011. “yes, he call me all the time [sic],” she replied.

Two weeks later, Housez told Epstein, “With Daniel we will do scouting together, he is waiting when i come back [sic].” In that same email, she asked about September travel plans and mentioned Leon Black: “please tell me when exactly i need to fly to NY? 5th? or better discuss it directly with Leon [sic]?”

Siad and Housez were both based in Paris – a crucial hub for the movement of Eastern European women into Epstein’s operation, as detailed in the Freakshow’s French Connection report. Multiple emails from Housez to Epstein discuss Black alongside updates on her scouting activities with Siad.

“Leon just left from Paris,” Housez emailed Epstein in October 2011. “we decided i ll fly to NY in a few weeks. are you coming here? i saw Daniel, we were talking about the system of scouting. [sic]

“I want to send you money,” Epstein emailed Siad in February 2012.

Around that time, Housez told Epstein that she was flying to Moscow to discuss opening a Paris office for World Fashion Channel, a cheesy network that served as a lure for aspiring models, and where Daniel Siad served as “Development Manager.” The network is owned by Russian billionaire Igor Kesaev, who has reported ties to the Russian government and security services, including the FSB. A few months after reporting her Moscow visit to Epstein, Housez became the “official representative” for World Fashion Channel in France.

Housez then emailed Epstein to inquire about Black sending her money to start a company that she claimed “he wanted me to do.” She wrote: “whats going on with Leon? … i saw him last time in december and received his little help at the beggining of January. its march soon, i really need a money to develop company (thats what he wanted me to do) .he wants to see me? it could be better every month, then to wait 2-3 month without money. [sic]”

A month later, Siad wrote Epstein: “In Paris ,helping Victoria ,very excited to start the TV project that will help us more for Scouting [sic].” DOJ records indicate Black sent $20,000 to a redacted recipient that same day. While the identity of this recipient is uncertain, other payments from Black to the same person closely align with dates Housez says she met with him.

The emails also suggest Housez and Siad were looking for a Paris office space from which to run their joint business. “Did you and vic find offices.?” Epstein asked Siad in April 2012. “me and Victoria are visiting different location we are waiting for answers,” Siad replied. “I have already a lots of models because. I have a new name cards from World Fashion Chanel it’s easy to stop a models [sic].”

In mid-June 2012, Housez was still updating Epstein on the office hunt and checking in about Black (“Leon plan is still actual?” she asked. Five days later, Black was in St. Petersburg for an advisory board meeting of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and was scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin the following day.) She invited Epstein to visit a space she liked, and Epstein let Siad know “victoria found great offices.”

“Great let’s move then ,I found a great girls too [sic],” Siad replied. Epstein advised him to coordinate with Housez.

The Siad-Epstein-Housez-Black nexus appears to have still been going strong in the fall of 2012. On September 18, Housez wrote Epstein, using parentheses as her signature shorthand for the smiley face emoticon: “i checked and spoke today with Daniel , he found a lot for you )))) we are waiting for you.” She followed up the next day, happy again: “Leon wrote me sms he wants to see me in Paris beg. of November ))).”

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

Epstein and Ruemmler

What Today's Epstein Testimony May Reveal About Foreign Election Interference

Today, regretful Jeffrey Epstein pal and former superlawyer Kathy Ruemmler appears before the House Oversight Committee as the members look into the powerful network the international sex trafficker cultivated. Tomorrow, President Donald Trump will address the nation to warn about “foreign interference” coming for America’s elections - an obvious ploy to pave the way for grabbing ballots, posting troops at polling places and whatever other anti-democratic plots he and his henchman - like Steve Bannon - have planned for our midterms.

The two events don’t look connected on the surface. But, actually, they are.

The Epstein files reveal that Ruemmler, Epstein and Bannon were mutually obsessed with the Mueller investigation into foreign interference into Trump’s 2016 election win and one of its shadiest actors.

Among Ruemmler’s clients after her stint as President Obama’s chief legal counsel was a man named George Nader. Ruemmler represented him as he became a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation into Russian efforts to help the Trump 2016 campaign.

Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, was a kind of free agent in the foreign influence campaign that boosted the TV reality show star into his first presidency. His name appears more than a hundred times in the final Mueller report in connection with both Russian and Middle Eastern efforts to influence the Trump campaign.

Nader is also now a convicted pedophile serving a ten year prison sentence, but a decade ago he was a key actor in multiple foreign influence ops aimed at helping Trump, involving Gulf oil monarchies, Israeli social media manipulators and, yes, Russians.

Nader’s exploits were once newsworthy and well-covered; but, the avalanche of absurdity and menace that is the Trump Two-era has buried him in the memory hole. Ruemmler’s client, though, was of intense interest to Epstein and Bannon. And the DOJ Epstein files reveal that Ruemmler was feeding both of them information about Nader and the Mueller investigation, as this text indicates.

Nader’s role in Trump-Russia actually came around the inauguration in January 2017, when Nader helped arrange and attended a meeting in the Seychelles between mercenary and Trump supporter Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian sovereign wealth fund executive with close ties to Putin. Mueller’s team would later regard the meeting as a potential attempt to establish a secret back-channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin.

During the Mueller investigation, newly minted best buds (more on their affairs here and here) Bannon and Epstein were laser focused on Nader. They call him “George” or, when Epstein mentioned him to Bannon, “your boy George.” At the time, Epstein was connecting Bannon with the Gulf monarchs he had spent several years cultivating.

And Kathy Ruemmler - who Epstein bragged was his feminist “arch-defender” - was the insider who kept them up to speed on how “George” was faring with the Mueller investigators. The following string of their relevant communications could open a worthy line of inquiry at the Oversight Committee today — if for nothing else than to remind Americans of the depth and breadth of the foreign influence operations that helped Trump get elected in 2016.

In April 2018 Epstein first mentioned Ruemmler’s Nader connection to Bannon writing, “as you know Kathy is Nader s counsel. She s very busy [sic]”.
Four days later, he texted Bannon: “Kathy coming now to download” followed a few hours later he updated with “Im sittin here with Kathy rummer. If you have any questions [sic]”.
A few weeks later, Bannon texted Epstein: “Just got summoned to Abu Dhabi for meeting with mbz for Monday night.” A few days later, Bannon was making plans to meet with Dubai billionaire Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem — then chairman and CEO of global logistics giant DP World, now a disgraced Epstein john. Epstein texted Bannon: “you are going to have FUN”; to which Bannon replied: “I’m here @ least thru Sunday —- need to close this” [sic].

Around the same time, May 2018, The New York Times exposed a secret Trump Tower meeting Nader had with Donald Trump Jr. in the summer of 2016, where Nader pitched him on the UAE and Saudi princes wanting to help Trump win. According to the Times investigation, mercenary contractor Erik Prince put Nader together with the squirrelly scion to tell him of the princes’ aim. Nader also brought along Joel Zamel, whose Israeli company employed former intelligence officers who specialized in “collecting information and shaping opinion through social media” according to the Times. Zamel reportedly provided an “elaborate multi-million dollar proposal” for a social media “manipulation effort” to get Trump elected. (After Trump was elected, Nader paid Zamel $2 million – for reasons never made clear)

Two days after the article, Epstein wrote to Bannon: “Going to get more complex , - Susan Rice is one of the ‘when did she know? She is represented by the same lawyer as your boy, Nader - Kathy Ruemmler.”

Epstein often joked about Ruemmler and Bannon getting romantically involved, calling Bannon “your boyfriend Steve” in messages with Ruemmler and referring to Ruemmler as “your girlfriend” in texts with Bannon. The three of them met together on several occasions in 2018, during the Mueller investigation, based on the communications.

In an October 2018 text to Ruemmler, Epstein wrote “i think your boy [i.e., Bannon] is going to see george” to which she replied, “Hopefully they stay out of trouble”.

In January 2019, Ruemmler emailed Epstein a Reuters story on NSA cyberspies thwarting enemies of the UAE. In March, Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General Bill Barr. Six days later, Epstein reported to Bannon: “Girl going to see George on sat in germany.”

Ruemmler’s appearance today on Capitol Hill is, among other matters, an opportunity to remember that Trump’s 2016 campaign was so rife with foreign interference that it kicked off a series of massive, years-long investigations that revealed the real - not the cocked-up Big Lie-connected - threats to American elections. When Trump speaks to the nation Thursday night, he will be flanked by leaders of a gutted and craven national security community looking for proof that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Meanwhile, Americans have all the proof we need that the 2016 election was contaminated with foreign influence. And if the President wants to warn Americans of the ongoing threat, he could start with a confession.

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

How 'Epstein Class Supervillain' Bannon Still Prospers As A Fake Populist

How 'Epstein Class Supervillain' Bannon Still Prospers As A Fake Populist

No Epstein class supervillain has paid any meaningful public or legal price for his crimes, other than throwing around cash settlements in exchange for silence. Evading justice is, of course, one element of supervillainy.

But there are gradations of evasion – from shamed hiding to gleeful skating.

This week, we want to take another look at one Epstein fanboy still smirking under the radar. The self-described “Leninist” strategist Steve Bannon masterminded one of the greatest political tricks in years: convincing poor whites that the Republican party – the party of the moneyed, the corporations and the borderless oligarchy, led by a nepo-baby fake businessman – is the faction that really cares about the welfare of “low propensity” voters.

But the guy who made “elites versus working people” and “smash the administrative state” into right-wing rallying cries was also one of Epstein’s coziest pals in Trumpworld. In fact, DOJ records suggest that Epstein was the pivotal man in Bannon’s transformation from right-wing American douchebag with a string of failed marriages and a simmering resentment at Hollywood libs into an international man of mystery with a Bernard-Henri Lévy hairdo (maintained, on Epstein’s recommendation, with “simply silver” shampoo), cutting deals across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Bannon has so far not only avoided Epstein-related subpoenas or testimony of any kind, he has also managed to escape scrutiny from the very audience he spent years ginning up with Deep State pedo theories – an audience that Trump won over, in part, by promising to expose Epstein’s pals. He remains such an influential figure in MAGA world that he is poised to play a major role in Trump’s plan to cheat the midterms.

Besides Trump, Bannon is almost alone among exposed members of the Epstein class in remaining in good odor with the MAGAs who, a mere year ago, were demanding public shaming and legal action against all of Epstein’s pals.

The DOJ files reveal Bannon to be not just a pal of Epstein, but someone single-mindedly keyed into Epstein’s access to the global elite. Within weeks of their first meeting, Epstein connected him with influential UN diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, who helped ease Bannon’s entry into geopolitical and financial hunting grounds like the Gulf monarchies and Mongolia, of which Bannon told Epstein, “we can make that place a crypto capital.”

Epstein seems to have advised Bannon as he broke away from Trump and set out to build his own “grassroots army.” He conferred with Bannon on launching his own dark money organization, “Citizens of the American Republic,” with $100 million in bitcoin, discussed with MIT’s Joi Ito the idea of helping Bannon finance his movement with a crypto “deplorable coin,” and encouraged Bannon to create a new “world bank of the people” for his “workers party.” Before long, Steve was hooked up with the director of Davos and moving and shaking with the sheiks.

Epstein called him “lambchop.”

The Epstein-Bannon bromance began around the fall of 2017, a few months after Bannon bottomed out of the White House. At the time, he claimed he had been liberated: “I feel jacked,” he told The Weekly Standard, “I’ve got my hands back on my [media] weapons.”

He fell even further out of favor with Trump by early 2018, when Michael Wolff quoted him calling Donald Trump Jr. “treasonous” for meeting with Russians at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. Bannon soon lost not just Trump but also the critical, lavish support of his eccentric billionaire patroness, Rebekah Mercer.

Enter Jeff.

The first mentions of Bannon and Epstein getting together appear in October 2017, when Wolff tells Epstein that Bannon “wants a secret meet.” Epstein was, of course, fine with secrets. He instructed Wolff to “suggest to SB that my meeting with him is just he and me. better to have total privacy on certain issues [sic].” A few days later, he cast another lure, advising Wolff, “you can tell SB , I have some ideas for him [sic]”.

The beautiful friendship kicked off with this February 2018 exchange:

Soon, Wolff was reporting that Bannon was “all hepped up on Saudi stuff.” “I told him you were the man,” Wolff wrote Epstein. “He seemed to know that.”

Within a few months, Epstein was jetting Bannon over to the Middle East to meet some of his other special friends among the Gulf oil monarchies. “All the boys are celebrating ramadan but will see you if you want,” Epstein wrote in a May 2018 text exchange. “Only there for 2 days and going out in desert with mbz [sic],” replied Bannon, referring to the leader of the United Arab Emirates.

Epstein also played sideline cheerleader as Bannon got dragged into the various 2018 congressional probes into Trump’s sleaze, urging him to “stay mentally tough” in the face of subpoenas from the House Intelligence Committee and the Mueller investigation. He even offered Bannon the surveillance-resistant safety of his mansion, which, he bragged in one email, “is similar to a SCIF.”

Bannon ultimately agreed to cooperate with Mueller, just days before his first in-person meeting with Epstein in early 2018.

Epstein’s lawyer and pal Reid Weingarten (who we covered last week) was excited about bringing Bannon into the Epstein claque. “Try to make the bannon [sic] meet happen with me there,” he wrote Epstein in early 2018. “There is play here…”

Epstein was also consulting his feminist “arch defender,” superlawyer Kathy Ruemmler, about Bannon, while looping him in on the activities of her client, Lebanese businessman George Nader. Coincidentally – or not – Ruemmler was representing Nader, a convicted pedophile, who, like Bannon, was cooperating with the Mueller investigation.

Bannon’s communications with Epstein reveal more about the behind-the-scenes geopolitical activities that involved national security, great game rivalry with China over tech, and, presumably, money.

In one lengthy May 2019 exchange – as Bannon was planning a trip to Kazakhstan arranged by Epstein – they discuss Saudi Arabia using China’s Huawei for 5G, which the U.S. felt would give China a surveillance edge in the Middle East. “You saw where they begged us to give 90 day reprieve on huawai [sic],” Bannon writes. “Yes of course,” Epstein responds. “The real game is in the shadows … as usual.” Their “game” somehow involved the Kazakh government: “kazakh daughter the key,” Epstein advised before telling him, “Im asking for a meeting with the pres and intelligence chief [sic].”

Bannon was no stranger to the dark side. He actually got his new friend Jeff quite worried about his relationship with Chinese fraudster Guo Wengui, on whose private jet Bannon flew around the country stumping for Republicans in summer 2018, possibly violating campaign finance laws. Two years later, Bannon was lolling aboard Guo’s $28 million yacht when he was arrested for defrauding small “big beautiful wall” donors. (Trump later pardoned him.)

Last week, Guo was sentenced to 30 years in prison for massively defrauding investors. But for several years, Bannon had a million-dollar consulting contract with him.

In their emails, Bannon and Epstein refer to Guo as “Kwok” – “Miles Kwok” being another name Guo used. Epstein seems to have become wise to the real Kwok/Guo before Bannon did, and he warned him repeatedly.

“Do u know my man miles kwok [sic],” Bannon texts in one thread.

Epstein cautioned that the Chinese businessman was going to get them both in trouble. “Careful,” he warned Bannon.

In the same thread, they joke about the movie Chinatown and the famous scene in which Roman Polanski slices Jack Nicholson’s nose. Jeff writes: “my very close friends as a favor , also would like you safe … if either one of us , in different investigations will need to testify publicly, it would be preferred to do it with two nostrils instead of one [sic].”

It’s not clear which of Epstein’s “very close friends” wanted Bannon “safe” – or what exactly they thought Guo could do to them.

Later in the same exchange, Epstein writes, “re kwok , honybear ok. icarus not [sic]”. “Will explain kwok later-- like trump an instrument,” Bannon responds, to which Epstein replies, “I am very well informed there. , didn’t know it was him [sic]”. (Epstein’s “honeybear” remark is a reference to Bannon’s favorite nickname for himself: “Honey Badger.”)

By December 2018, six months before Epstein’s arrest, the two men were such close buds they were yukking it up about the #MeToo movement – “so many guys caught in the me too . reaching out to me [sic],” Epstein wrote – and joking about organizing a “million man march” on Washington where everyone would wear “pink dick hats.” Another favorite target was their mutual acquaintance Donald Trump. “If you Google the word idiot, a picture of Donald Trump comes up …” Epstein texted. “Pop-up picture ---signed,” Bannon quipped back.

Bannon has recovered from his fall after Trump 1.0. His pardon in the fraud case and his stint in jail for blowing off a congressional subpoena only burnished his legend as a rebel against the Deep State. He remains extremely influential through his War Room media platform, the same platform he used for years to juice the Epstein Deep State conspiracy.

This Epstein class insider has remained a leader of the “deplorables” – perhaps not so shockingly, given that a million of them recently let Trump fleece them with his crypto coin for a reported $3.8 billion.

Bannon’s War Room doesn’t have the reach of Fox. But it is available across a wide range of platforms, including Real America’s Voice, Apple Podcasts, Rumble, Spotify, as well as X and email lists. It now functions as a powerful political organizing tool. Bannon always gives his listeners something to do: show up at school boards, pressure members of Congress, flood phone lines, organize local conventions, challenge elections, and support specific candidates.

He has kept the pedal to the metal on the 2020 election lies.

If anything, his influence is greater in the second Trump administration than it was in the first. War Room is now a key stop on the right-wing DC media circuit. And it is gearing up to serve as a critical node in the alliance between influencers, right-wing media and the White House as they prepare the vote suppression and election fraud plot to subvert the midterms.

There is one reliably incendiary topic, though, that Bannon has jettisoned along the way to his current position as the King of Fake Populists.

It begins with the letter E.

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

Enabling Decades Of Epstein Coverup Was A Sprawling Legal Power Network

Enabling Decades Of Epstein Coverup Was A Sprawling Legal Power Network

One of the unprecedented benefits of the Epstein Files Transparency Act is that the records expose how power actually works – especially among lawyers. A whale like Epstein, a locus of money and influence, attracted elite lawyers no matter how dirty a client he was. The legal circle around him was filled with insiders who began their careers wearing the white hats of federal prosecutors before switching sides to defend immense fortunes and powerful men like Leon Black, Donald Trump, and Epstein himself.

Some of Epstein’s lawyers – Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Jay Lefkowitz, Roy Black – are practically household names now thanks to the infamous Palm Beach plea deal they helped craft, cutting their client loose to traffic a thousand more women and girls before his death.

Others are more private. But their names come up again and again in the Epstein files – not always actively representing him, but also chatting with, socializing with, and hanging around the sex trafficker and his johns. Some dished more passive assists to the cover-up, such as producing exonerating reports or leading Trump administration efforts to tie prominent Democrats to Epstein.

Together, these lawyers possess decades of confidential info on colossal financial (and other) crimes, matters that extend far beyond Jeff. They represent the institutional knowledge of the power networks they have served from well before the 2008 crash, through the second Epstein investigation, and into Trump 2.0’s orgy of corruption. Of course, they are masters of the fine art of the confidential settlement and NDA – the silence-for-money mechanism that the House Oversight Committee has only recently tried to peel back in its Epstein investigation.

Here we take a closer look at four lawyers who matter not just to Epstein, but to the Epstein class: DC-based white collar criminal lawyer Reid Weingarten (2285 mentions in the Epstein files); Brad Karp, former chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (1801 mentions in the Epstein files); Dechert LLP partner Andrew Levander, who oversaw the “independent investigation” that exonerated Leon Black; and Manhattan’s current chief federal prosecutor Jay Clayton, who never represented Epstein, but was tasked with the only Epstein-related investigation of Trump’s second term and whose office oversaw most of the Epstein file review for the Department of Justice (Clayton is also Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence).

Brad Karp famously became the first Big Law leader to bend the knee to Trump’s outrageous – and ultimately illegal – threat to bar Democratic-supporting lawyers from federal court buildings. Karp lost his chairmanship of the firm as a result of his exchanges with Epstein, made public in the files.

Their communications are chummy and indeed embarrassing. Among the emails, Epstein calms Karp’s fears about some unspecified public embarrassment and recommends doctors for the attorney’s unnamed maladies.

Karp often strategized with Epstein on how to protect his client, Leon Black. “I genuinely believe that the two of us are the two people on the planet who he most trusts and who he understands try to protect him at all times,” Karp wrote to Epstein in a 2018 email.

The two also discussed whether Black was using cocaine. Epstein wondered if the drug was behind what he called Black’s “aggressiveness” and “high risk taking.” According to Epstein, Black admitted to using it in his younger days, but said he no longer did.

In a 2015 email, while brainstorming with Karp about how Black should handle a woman threatening to go public about their affair, Epstein suggested hiring either his own longtime lawyer and buddy, Reid Weingarten, or another attorney, Andrew Levander, to help.

Reid Weingarten is a former federal anti-corruption prosecutor turned white collar defense lawyer. His clients have included an Enron miscreant, two of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet Secretaries, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein post-2008 financial crash, and countless other high profile (accused) corporate fraudsters. He also represented Roman Polanski, who remains wanted in the U.S. for a decades-old charge of having sex with a 13-year-old.

A consummate Washington player, Weingarten has been involved in numerous politically sensitive cases.

In 1992, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hired him to belatedly investigate the “October surprise” allegations, that Reagan’s henchmen had secretly cut a deal with Iran to delay the release of American hostages until after the 1980 election in exchange for weapons traded through Israel. Weingarten concluded that the prime sources for the story were “wholly unreliable” and that there was nothing to see, when in fact, as author Craig Unger has written, House investigators had already found actual receipts from the Iranian payments.

One of the key players in the nothing-to-see-here report was former federal attorney Stan Pottinger, who was himself investigated for selling arms to Iran, and a man with whom a young Epstein happened to share an office. (The Freakshow has previously uncovered evidence of Epstein’s travels to Israel timed to the Iran–Contra deal.)

Weingarten was not part of Epstein’s Palm Beach defense team, but he appears to have advised him on the wave of post-2008 civil suits brought against him by the victims. The two remained in close contact. Weingarten appears throughout the DOJ Epstein library, including in a photo sitting behind a desk surrounded by young women whose faces have been redacted. For years, Weingarten served as a sounding board for Epstein and was a frequent visitor to the New York mansion for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. In a 2011 email, Epstein offered the frazzled attorney some signature advice: “time to relax. go get a massage.” Weingarten replied: “I wish.”

Weingarten led the defense team after Epstein’s arrest in 2019 and has indicated he believes Epstein was murdered in jail.

Andrew Levander is a straight-out-of-central-casting Manhattan white-shoe lawyer. Bowtied and bespectacled, he looks like he has an apt quote from Horace for every occasion.

But Levander has long been comfortable operating in darker company. He once served as personal attorney to legendary arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and his relationship with Epstein was almost longer than Donald Trump’s. Epstein even once recommended Levander to Leon Black as a possible lawyer to handle a mistress who was demanding money.

As a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) during the 1980s, Levander reportedly enlisted the ambitious Coney Island thug morphing into Jeff Bondstein to help track down money related to the collapse of Drysdale Securities, according to James Patterson’s Filthy Rich. This early Epstein adventure – as a government tool of sorts – deserves further attention, which we will someday give it. It also occurred around the same time he was working for British arms kingpin Douglas Leese.

Years later, Levander was just the man for the job to produce the so-called Dechert Report, the findings of an “independent investigation” commissioned by Apollo’s Board in 2020 that ultimately exonerated Leon Black in the Epstein matter. After interviewing Black and twenty people and reviewing some financial records, Levander concluded that Black neither knew about nor participated in Epstein’s crimes against women.

Apollo and Black have leaned heavily on that report ever since – including before the Oversight Committee last week, shortly before Black walked out of the hearing.

Here are some of the risible and easily disproven statements in the Dechert Report:

Black stated that he was repulsed by the details of Epstein’s crimes … witnesses agreed that Black was shocked when the allegations became public … witnesses noted specifically that they did not believe Black would have allowed Epstein to be introduced to Black’s wife and children if Black had had any suspicion that Epstein had done anything inappropriate or illegal with girls or young women.
Dechert has seen no evidence that Black or any employee of the Family Office or Apollo was involved in any way with Epstein’s criminal activities at any time. There is no evidence that Epstein ever introduced Black, or offered to introduce Black, to any underage woman.
[See last week’s Freakshow on Black’s payments to recruiters here.]
Black viewed Epstein as a confirmed bachelor with eclectic tastes, who often employed attractive women. However, Black did not believe that any of the women in Epstein’s employ were underage. Black has no recollection of ever seeing Epstein with an underage woman at any time.
[The use of the word “underage” here hedges the fact that Epstein provided Black with a so-far unknown number of women, alluded to in this November 2016 email below.]

The word “underage” does a lot of heavy lifting for Epstein’s pals, like Black. The DOJ files are rife with evidence that Epstein introduced Black to numerous young women whose exact ages remain unknown, but who often seem to have been in their early 20s. As we’ve discussed before, the “pedo” designation for Epstein and his johns was useful for ginning up the baby-eating liberals MAGA conspiracy theories that juiced Trump’s campaigns, but it also obscures the harm done to an untold number of vulnerable young women. And it has also allowed the men Epstein was supplying with trafficked young women to skate or at least buy time.

Finally, we come to Jay Clayton.

Clayton worked for the venerable Manhattan law firm Sullivan & Cromwell until 2017, specializing in mergers and capital market offerings. During the 2008 financial crisis, he was one of the lead attorneys advising Bear Stearns and handled JPMorgan’s acquisition of the collapsing investment bank.

Clayton, a reliable friend to Wall Street and corporate America, easily sailed through his years as Trump’s first term SEC chief. “Over time, Clayton pushed through more than two dozen measures that eased regulations for corporate America,” Reuters reported.

Then, suddenly, in the fraught summer of 2020, in the midst of COVID and mere months before the presidential election, something curious happened. Just as New York federal prosecutors were preparing to take a second bite out of the rotten Epstein apple by indicting still-at-large Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr tried to sack Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for SDNY, and replace him with Jay Clayton.

The excuse for this odd shuffle? Barr claimed Clayton really wanted to live in New York, even as COVID was still circulating and most sentient beings with money were parked outside the city.

The timing of the switch, however, is almost comically precise as it relates to the Maxwell indictment. Between June 11-18, 2020, a draft of an indictment circulated inside the SDNY office. On June 19, AG Barr told Berman he wanted to replace him with Clayton, but Berman refused to step down. Barr then informed him that Trump would be sacking him and Berman resigned on June 20.

Democrats immediately cried foul, albeit without identifying the reason for the scheme.“Jay Clayton can allow himself to be used in the brazen Trump-Barr scheme to interfere in investigations by the U.S. Attorney for SDNY, or he can stand up to this corruption, withdraw his name from consideration, and save his own reputation from overnight ruin,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said on Twitter.

Clayton stayed in Washington. SDNY Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss replaced Berman, and became the public face of the Maxwell case. A few days after she announced the indictment, the FBI apprehended Maxwell in her coastal mansion hideout in Maine, where she’d wrapped her phone in tinfoil in an effort to evade surveillance.

Jay Clayton remained at the SEC until the end of Trump’s first term. Soon after Biden entered the White House, Leon Black’s company hired him. A few days after Biden was inaugurated, Apollo released Andrew Levander’s “independent investigation,” which concluded that Black had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Nevertheless, the now publicly known gargantuan sum he paid to Epstein for “tax and estate planning” was hurting the firm’s reputation.

In February 2021, Apollo named Jay Clayton its “lead independent director.” One month later, Black announced he would step aside as chairman and that Jay Clayton would become the “non-Executive Chairman of the Board.”

Clayton sat out the Biden years at Apollo.

Then Trump returned.

Within months of taking office, Trump appointed Clayton – Leon Black’s handpicked “non-executive” and a man who’d spent four years in the HQ of a major Epstein cover-up – as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He took office just as Trump administration elves were poking through the SDNY’s Epstein files and finding – whoops! – Trump’s name often enough to raise panic in the White House. Clayton held onto millions of dollars in Apollo stock while overseeing the final review and redaction of the DOJ files before they were released to the public.

As Congress began digging into the case, Rep. Ro Khanna observed that the first name survivors often mention is Leon Black.

The Epstein cover-up legal revolving door has come full circle.

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

Linked To Epstein's Trafficking In Emails, Billionaire Black Will Soon Testify

Linked To Epstein's Trafficking In Emails, Billionaire Black Will Soon Testify

Leon Black paid an international sex trafficker with no known accounting skills $170 million between 2012 and 2017. Why – and for what – may never be definitively answered. Black’s billionaire pockets have afforded him enough top-shelf lawyers to protect his privacy as long as he lives. But the public dump of millions of pages of Epstein files has opened a window into at least some of the answers.

In a March 2026 letter sent to Black, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said: “According to federal government records reviewed by my investigators, you have made at least $8 million in payments between 2015 and 2018 to women of Eastern European origin that were potentially involved in prostitution and possible victims of Epstein’s trafficking scheme.” Wyden also suggested that Black may have used “gifts” as a way to evade taxes and that he was “surveilling and paying off” women.

We looked into some of the women who discussed Black with Epstein, who seem to have been significantly familiar with the billionaire, and who appear to have had financial dealings with and/or received gifts from him. As Black is due to testify before the House Oversight Committee later this week, we offer up the following discoveries for potential lines of questioning.

Two of the women openly emailed Epstein about recruiting for him. Both were young Russians and both received significant sums of money from – and spent considerable time with – Leon Black between 2009 and 2019, when Epstein was arrested. The women often refer to “Leon” or “L,” a designation that Sen. Wyden believes refers to Black, as do we.

The first woman we identify as Irina Chernova. She is in the DOJ files, and Wyden has stated that Black made payments directly to her between 2009-12. That allowed us to confirm that emails to Epstein during this period referencing “Leon” from “Irina” were sent by Chernova.

Chernova was born in 1984 in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and worked in television journalism. Based on the files, she appears to have recruited dozens of women for Epstein, and in 2011, introduced him to Karyna Shuliak, the Russian model and eventual dental student to whom Epstein later bequeathed his estate.

In one January 2011 email exchange, he pressures Chernova to bring him new girls.

Chernova was also one of the largest recipients of Leon Black’s money. According to Sen. Wyden, she received “hundreds of thousands of dollars” directly from Black’s Bank of America accounts between 2009 and 2012.

It seems Chernova was already close enough with Black in 2009 to accompany him to visit Epstein while Epstein was still under house arrest for his Palm Beach conviction. In the email arranging the trip, Irina says she plans to bring at least one [redacted] girl; Epstein replies that he will talk to Leon about the visit and says [redacted] “can bring her sister or friend” (apparently some new girls Epstein had not yet met).

In January 2010, Chernova emailed Epstein about a trip she planned to Paris and London, writing,” Leon is going to China on Feb 1 for a week.”

Two months later, she reported to Epstein that she was going to Paris, London, and then Russia for Easter, adding “It’s between us, I didn’t tell Leon about Paris, only about Russia.”

That August, after losing her phone, she asked Epstein for Leon’s number. Epstein in return asked for the number of a redacted woman. Two days later, she followed up to say he had given her Leon’s number in the Hamptons, but she wanted his cell phone number as well. In that same email, she also confirmed two appointments for Epstein with individuals whose names are redacted.

The following month, Epstein sent Chernova birthday greetings, to which she responded, “Leon just left, can you please call when you have a minute.”

In February 2012, Chernova asked Epstein to intervene and secure her “a good-bye present” from Black. Epstein assured her it would be “generous.”

Apparently, however, it was not much of a goodbye.

Five years later, Chernova wrote to Epstein that “thanks to L’s good bye gift I’ve enjoyed being a full time mom for most of this time. [We’ve been exchanging texts and planning to meet for lunch with L since I left, but we haven’t met. Yet :) Hope he’s doing good.]”

A month after that email, Epstein’s calendar showed back-to-back meetings with both Black and Chernova. Shortly afterward, Chernova emailed that she and Black were “back together” and later asked about a $100,000 payment Black had promised her. Epstein indicated that he himself had already sent her $28,000.

Another Russian recruiter appears to have also benefitted from Black’s largesse over the years that she “scouted” and introduced Epstein to women.

The second woman, Victoria Housez (now Victoria Ginzburg), hailed from the Russian hinterlands and attended South Ural State University before popping up in Paris on the fringes of the fashion world. Records in the DOJ files suggest Black may have gifted Housez more than $50,000 in 2011 and 2012, while she appears to have been actively recruiting girls for Epstein and looking to potentially establish some kind of larger-scale trafficking operation. After personally reading 1200 emails in the files from that time period and studying the email signatures as well as the instances in which Housez’s name is left unredacted, our analysis suggests the following exchanges can be connected to her.

Housez frequently discussed Black in emails with Epstein. At one point, she asked if Leon’s secretary could wire money to her account because she “does transfer all the time.” In the same email, she asked Epstein to share her Russian bank account information with Black because “french ask too many questions.” Epstein replied: “cannot”.

She also wrote that Black wanted to give her money to start a company – one that, based on the surrounding context, seemed to mean a modeling agency or another similar entity that could operate as a trafficking front. Epstein spent a considerable amount of time coaching her on how to deal with Black and present her case.

“Do not bother with business plans for agency,,, concentrate on deomstrating [sic] that you have an eye and can get the job done . we will have fun” Epstein wrote in one email. Housez replied: “As we agreed model business does not bring money. i can do scouting for something else … Lets have some Fun ;) as you say”.

While she tried to talk money, Epstein focused on rating the women in photos she sent him, chiding her for providing him with girls he rated at about a five out of ten, and berating her for not providing enough new girls.

A typical interaction between them involved questions of money and female flesh like this one from 2011:

VH: all the girls i just sent you till 21YO and much much more ))
JE: try to get real mnumbers 2.5 million is not realistic
VH: do you mean the number of users in 1,5 year?
JE: no dollars wanted for start up
VH: for scouting big network we need almost nothing,its already working, we could control all Russian model network and place models need numbers? but if you dont like the whole idea i will think about another one ;))) how are you today?
JE: send photos of you

These exchanges occurred while Black was publicly expanding his involvement with Russia during a period of relative economic détente, as Vladimir Putin sought greater investment from the West.

Epstein paid close attention.

In July 2011, he emailed his scheduler, Lesley Groff, with the dates of the Russian Direct Investment Fund board meeting with Putin in Sochi that Leon Black planned to attend. Epstein apparently intended to go himself.

In September 2011, Black was announced as a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a $10 billion state fund set up to attract foreign investment in Russia. That month, Reuters reported that he attended its launch event at the International Investment Forum in Sochi and had a private, one-on-one meeting with Putin.

In July 2011, Epstein told Ghislaine Maxwell he was thinking of making Housez his “Europe asst.” In August, Housez emailed Epstein about firming up her September plans: “You said better if i contact him [Black] directly about it. will you give him my number and to me his?” As Black was being named RDIF advisor, Housez wrote to Epstein: “I wanted to ask you, its normal that L. asked me bank account and nothing?”

Throughout the fall of 2011, Housez and Epstein frequently discussed Black, his whereabouts, her need for his money, and her hopes that he would set her up in a Paris apartment. She planned to ask Black “where he thinks i have to work.”

Some emails suggest a more intimate relationship between Housez and Black. For example: “I am at home all the time, Leon is very happy that i am not going out (like you said).” And then a few months later: “ready to go to ny next weekend, he is not answering, hope he still likes me :)” She also reported that she’d been going to the gym to be “in perfect shape for beginning [sic] of November,” when Black was due to be in Paris. She wondered at one point why he hadn’t been in touch: “still strange…that he doesn’t want to see me, i was good.”

It is not clear exactly what kind of work Housez thought she was doing for Black.

One March 2013 exchange is especially revealing. Housez thanked Epstein for Black (“for leon thank you, but i worked for it as well”) and defended her work record, while Epstein excoriated her, “after two years and thousands of euros. you can do better than thsi (sic).”

The files also contain multiple FBI raw interviews with redacted victims, called 302s, in which women (not minors) said Epstein introduced them to Black after telling them they would be asked to give massages. According to those interviews, Black instead became sexual.

One woman who met Black was later introduced to former Barclays CEO Jes Staley, another Epstein pal. She told investigators Staley “forcefully put her hands on his crotch area,” and the encounter ended in “rough sex” that she told Staley she did not want. (Staley has previously denied, as reported by The Guardian, any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.) There is also a second-hand account of a woman giving Black a blowjob she didn’t want to give and being “grossed out” by it.

What does appear clear, however, is that Housez understood the work she was doing for Epstein.

On April 4, 2012, Epstein berated her in another familiar exchange: “you have produced photo s after photos. , nothing more” to which she replied, “not just photos:)) but its true didnt have conditions for this.. help me in real to have conditions and budget and i can produce more not worse then [redacted];).”

By September of that year, things were looking up. “i found super scout for you ) .. the guy serbian 25yo, doing just this, placed in ny, london,paris ),” Housez wrote to Epstein, “you will love what he has, i spoke with him for possible collaboration.” Epstein responded: “give me your bank details.”

Housez replied, “here is my bank acc !!!! THANK YOU !!! “

Asked about the relationships with Chernova and Housez, Susan Estrich, an attorney for Black, responded with this statement:

As we have said repeatedly, Mr. Black called for an independent investigation of his relationship with Epstein. The Dechert Report reviewed more than 60,000 documents and interviewed more than 20 people —including Mr. Black— without any restrictions on business and personal matters. The investigation, which was led by a former prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, found that Mr. Black paid Epstein for tax and estate planning advice for his family office and found no evidence that those payments were for anything other than those services. The investigation further found that Epstein’s work had been vetted and approved by best-in-class law and accounting firms. It also found that he had no awareness of the criminal activities that led to Epstein’s arrest in 2019.

Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow



Behind TPUSA's 'Christian' Education Program, A Conviction For Child Porn

Behind TPUSA's 'Christian' Education Program, A Conviction For Child Porn

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic of American Gothic literature, The Scarlet Letter, set in Puritan New England, centers on the punishment meted out to a woman who has a passionate affair with her pastor, becomes pregnant and then is sentenced to wear a red letter A for Adultery around her neck for the rest of her life. The novel is a piercing 19th Century critique of the effects of a repressive, sin-obsessed society on the health and happiness of its people.

Erica Kirk’s TPUSA, as I wrote last week, is one of the more insidious organizations wielding regressive influence in an America where women are already bodily and legally under siege by the Trump administration’s predators’ ball. TPUSA joins Christian nationalist churches in the broader MAGA effort to promote female submission to men, early marriage and wifely obedience to husbands in both private and public matters – including one vote per household, with the man of the house filling out the ballot.

It’s brazen, it’s lunatic, and it’s effective, as TPUSA’s women leaders serve as an auxiliary to the broader Epstein class cover-up protecting abusive men.

Besides the antediluvian ideology, though, there’s another element to the TPUSA scene that reminded us of the Hawthorne novel. Instead of their conspicuous crosses, many could be wearing a red H for Hypocrisy, for passing righteous judgment on a supposedly sin-infested culture, while living with – and in some cases hiding – sexual abuse among their own.

One of the talks at the TPUSA Women’s Leadership Summit was “Why Christ-Centered Classical Education Changes Everything,” delivered by the organization’s education consultant, Heather Lloyd. Lloyd is sometimes listed in TPUSA materials as a member of the leadership team. She is currently with Erica Kirk in a Chicago suburb promoting “classical Christian education” to educators and parents. Her day job is as executive director of Concordis Education Partners, affiliated with white nationalist Idaho pastor Doug Wilson.

To the conference audience, Lloyd delivered a denunciation of “government education,” accusing public schools of being rife with “crazy sin.” For example: “One percent of our population right now identifies as transgender. That’s actually a large number. Now the problem is that we tend to think that that’s the issue. But I’d like to argue today that this is the symptom, not the issue … True public education is the church providing education for biblical fluency for the community,” she declared. “The Puritans wanted every child to be able to read God’s word.”

The goal is lofty and unapologetically atavistic: eradicate secular education and get kids fearing God and reading Bibles again. In her talk, Lloyd also cheered an audience member’s claim that the Texas school voucher program – in which taxpayer education money is diverted to parents opting into private schools – had caused 14 fund-starved school districts to shut down. (The declining number of public school students is partly due to those private school vouchers and partly to the falling birth rate – another obsession of the right.)

But for someone aiming to Make Puritans Great Again, Lloyd has a peculiar challenge: Her husband, Alex Lloyd, recently spent two years in prison for possession and distribution of child pornography. Court records indicate the materials consisted of 10 videos and 3 images, including at least one involving a prepubescent minor, obtained through the Kik messaging platform. He initially pleaded not guilty, then later entered a guilty plea to a federal offense involving possession of child pornography as before facing a jury trial. He spent two years in prison and was released in 2024 as a registered sex offender. A condition of his release includes a ban on unsupervised time with children, including his own grandchildren.

Alex Lloyd was a deacon at Doug Wilson’s Moscow, Idaho-based Christ Church. Wilson is a controversial white Christian nationalist whose influence has exploded under the Epstein-class-protecting Trump administration. He is a favorite pastor of Pete Hegseth and has addressed – sermonized, actually, in flagrant violation of the separation of church and state – service members called to mandatory gatherings inside the Pentagon.

As a consultant, Heather Lloyd helps sell hundreds of Christian schools on the programs and curriculum of the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), an accreditation network of hundreds of private schools and colleges in the United States, founded in 1993 by Wilson. His abhorrent ideology when it comes to women is not overtly stated in the material, but according to some parents I’ve spoken to and who shared their experiences publicly it permeates the schools.

Wilson has suggested marital rape is not possible, although he has walked that back. Earlier this year he tweeted “Husbands are prohibited from bluster, bossing about, selfish grasping, and all the rest of it, but the Bible nevertheless requires wives to obey their husbands. This obedience is to be cheerful, complete, reverent, all the way down, and across the board. … Now I am fully aware that in our current cultural climate this is a perfectly outrageous thing to say and teach. It may even be illegal in some states. “

He also co-wrote a textbook used in the curriculum Lloyd promotes with a fellow church affiliated educator who openly groomed a high school student he was teaching. The church never charged him because the girl was 18 by the time they had sex, but Wilson did take the man’s name off the textbook.

The church has a history of leniency toward abuses like that (and worse). Marital rape is not uncommon, detailed in harrowing firsthand accounts, and claims about pedophiles within the church’s ranks are diminished or said to be overlooked. The father of one victim said that when he reported the abuse, church officials threatened to bring him – the father – under church discipline for failing to protect his daughter. “It would be like me getting robbed and the police coming over and arresting me because I didn’t have five locks on the door, only one,” he told reporters for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which published an article about the saga. “It was just bizarre.”

Alex Lloyd’s family called Doug Wilson to pick him up from the Moscow, Idaho, police station after his 2022 arrest. The church soon dismissed Lloyd from the deaconage, but in its public statement, did not mention the child pornography charges, instead claiming he confessed right away to a porn addiction, and blamed his problem on “the pornification of the culture.”

What her husband’s sex offender status means in practical terms for TPUSA education missionary Heather Lloyd – who has personally taught Wilson’s Christian classical methods to children at schools in Arizona and Idaho over the past two decades – is that she cannot drive onto school grounds with her husband in the car and would likely be required to disclose that she lives with a registered sex offender if applying for new jobs involving children. As of 2019, according to one church member’s post praising her “faithful obedience,” she was running a summer camp for teenage girls.

It’s not clear that she is teaching anymore and TPUSA did not return a comment confirming (we will update if and when they do). But Heather Lloyd goes in and out of schools with administrators across the nation. When parents at one school discovered her husband’s conviction and Sex Offender status and attended a meeting, she batted away concerns claiming Alex “accidentally” opened child porn - “about 19 seconds worth” - and quickly deleted it. She told parents there were “no issues, he can see his grandchildren.”

A parent present for that discussion said “Heather is insane to be in this business with such a skeleton in the closet, but she is just one piece in a larger organization, where people are in cahoots pushing Doug Wilson’s system. And she would not pass a school background check! if you live with a registered sex offender you can’t take a kid on a field trip yet somehow she is an education consultant at TPUSA.”

The fact that Erica Kirk’s TPUSA would front the wife of a registered child porn sex offender as an education consultant and advisor suggests that, like other well-financed Trump-supporting PACs and organizations, this leviathan of Christian right extremist influence shares with the Epstein class a sense of impunity rarely seen in modern American political history.

They will say they’re just trusting in the Lord.

With this clan, perhaps one and the same.

[Turning Point USA and Heather Lloyd, contacted together — as Heather Lloyd is a consultant — did not respond to a request for comment.]

.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




Pam Bondi

Pam Bondi's Swan Song: Ex-Attorney General Scheduled For Oversight Testimony

In 2013, then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a $25,000 political donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation for her re-election PAC – and soon received it. Days later, Bondi’s office abandoned plans to join a New York lawsuit investigating fraud allegations against Trump University.

It is against the law for charitable foundations to make political contributions. But in the universe of Trump corruption, $25,000 was laughable chump change. It just proved to him how cheaply Pam Bondi could be had.

Fast forward a few years. Bondi, no longer in elected office, got serious about money as a $115,000-a-month lobbyist with the DC-based influence giant Ballard Partners. Her client list included deep-pocketed private prison corporations and the government of Qatar (for whom she was specifically registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act for “dealing with matters pertaining to combating human trafficking”). When Trump nominated her to be his attorney general in early 2025, she didn’t bother mentioning those clients in her statement of potential conflicts of interest.

So far so good: lies and omissions are standard operating practice in Trumpworld.

His initial pick for attorney general was Matt Gaetz, who might have been a more fitting choice to oversee the Epstein cover-up, having himself been investigated for child sex trafficking and found to have violated Florida’s statutory rape laws according to the House Ethics Committee. Gaetz had skated on all of it, but was ultimately too tainted even for the slavish Senate Republican majority that would have to approve the nomination.

Still, Bondi was something of an unusual choice for a Trump casting. His preferred front-of-house women tend to be more colorful and histrionic – Pirro, Loomer, Omarosa, Noem. Bondi, though from Florida herself, for some reason never went full Mar-a-Lago face, though it’s not clear self-mutilation would have saved her.

Managing the fake release of a fake politically-motivated conspiracy while simultaneously curating the cover-up of real files tied to a real conspiracy was always going to be a tall order. One day she was riding in the presidential limo with Trump to the Statue of the Union address. The next, she was out in the cold.

To add insult to injury, this week, Pam, the defenestrated private citizen recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer, will have to endure a day of questioning about her role in the Epstein cover-up. While her former DOJ deputy – Trump’s personal attorney Todd “Whiteout” Blanche – wins the Old Man’s heart by erasing January 6 criminals from the DOJ website and rewarding violent coup plotters like Stewart Rhodes with taxpayer money, Pam will, at least for a day and maybe longer, become the public face of the Justice Department’s Epstein files cover-up.

In advance of her star turn on the Hill, here is a Freakshow timeline of Bondi’s ignominious reign as the nation’s top law enforcement official, and how she became Trump’s Brer Rabbit in the tar pit.

January 2025

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the Justice Department orders the Southern District of New York, which has an active investigation still underway, to send all Epstein-related evidence to Washington. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD.) would later state that “neither the survivors nor the SDNY prosecutors knew that the purpose of this transfer was to terminate the case.”

Despite the fact that Trump won the 2024 election in part by juicing the Epstein conspiracy and promising to reveal the sordid details, the Senate Judiciary Committee advances Bondi’s nomination without asking anything about the files.

February 4, 2025

The Senate confirms Bondi, by a vote of 54 to 46, with all Republicans and one Democrat – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania – voting in favor.

February 11, 2025

Republican Reps. Jim Comer (R-KY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), as chairs of House Oversight and the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets respectively, send a letter to Bondi requesting an ASAP briefing on documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

February 21, 2025

Bondi goes on Fox and famously announces that the Epstein “client list” is “sitting on my desk right now to review” as part of a directive from President Trump himself.

February 27, 2025

Bondi incites an influencer revolt by inviting a pack of MAGA fake journalists, including Laura Loomer, to the White House and passing out binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” They pose for a photo op, thinking they are holding “declassified” material, only to realize that none of it was ever classified and much of it was already public (Epstein flight logs had been available since 2021).

Worse, the redactions are so badly mishandled that dozens of victims’ names – but not the names of their abusers – enter the public record.

With the stunt having failed, Bondi hops on with Fox News’ Mark Levin and shifts the blame to the New York federal prosecutor’s office, claiming they are “sitting on thousands of pages of documents regarding Epstein.” She promises that America will soon see “the full Epstein files” and then writes a letter to Kash Patel demanding delivery of the “full and complete Epstein files” to her office by 8 AM the next morning, while also demanding an “immediate investigation” into why her orders to the FBI were not followed.

February 28, 2025

James Dennehy, head of the FBI’s New York field office, is fired.

March 2025

Bondi tells Sean Hannity that the DOJ has received “a truckload of evidence” and department staff begin processing 100,000 pages of the Epstein files in Winchester, Virginia. The job takes too long, so two weeks later, Bondi reportedly pressures the FBI to increase staffing and intensify efforts. A whistleblower later reports that she and Patel put crime-fighters on 24-hour document redaction shifts, with instructions to look out for Trump’s name. Sen. Dick Durbin’s letter about this episode contains many questions Bondi has not yet been asked publicly.

May 2025

Bondi reportedly tells Trump during a briefing that his name appears in the Epstein files.

June 5, 2025

Elon Musk claims that the Epstein files have not been released because Trump is in them. “Time to drop the really big bomb: [Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” House Democrats immediately fire off a letter asking Bondi and Patel whether Musk’s claim is true.

July 4, 2025

A weekend of mysterious, panicked scrambling unfolds between Main Justice in Washington and the FBI’s New York office to get additional copies of Epstein file photos to Todd Blanche’s office.

July 7, 2025

The DOJ and FBI release an unsigned joint memo stating their “exhaustive review” found no co-conspirators, “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” and that no further disclosure of documents was warranted. At the end of the letter, officials link to video footage of the MCC Epstein cell area. Bondi never releases any materials related to the “exhaustive review.”

July 15, 2025

Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

July 16, 2025

Trump posts that the Epstein files are a “Democrat hoax” on Truth Social, then repeats that claim in person from the Oval Office. That same day, Maureen Comey, lead prosecutor in the New York Epstein investigation, is fired.

July 17, 2025

The Wall Street Journal publishes the first of its “birthday book” stories, revealing that Trump gave his old friend Jeff a lewd drawing as a gift. Trump denies that it’s real and eventually files a $10 billion lawsuit that is later tossed by a judge. As another distraction, Trump instructs DOJ to seek release of Epstein grand jury materials. A day later, Bondi and Blanche ask the federal court to release the transcripts.

July 22, 2025

Pam Bondi posts a statement from Todd Blanche announcing that she directed him to communicate with Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys.. “If Ghislane [sic] Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.”

Two days later, Blanche meets with Maxwell in Tallahassee. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson, trying to head off a vote on the Epstein Transparency Act, shuts down House business for the rest of the summer.

August 1, 2025

The Bureau of Prisons, a DOJ agency, transfers Maxwell to a low-security prison despite BOP guidelines for convicted sex offenders.

October 7, 2025

Pam Bondi appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She seems flummoxed by questions about photos of Trump in Epstein’s safe, as described by Michael Wolff, and deflects questions about DOJ failures to investigate Epstein’s finances by blaming Democratic administrations.

November 14, 2025

At Trump’s behest, Bondi asks New York U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton (a lawyer previously brought into Epstein associate Leon Black’s hedge fund for reputation rehab) to “take the lead” on investigating Epstein’s involvement specifically with Democrats, including Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, and other institutions.

December 21, 2025

Bondi tweets that the Justice Department will bring charges against “anyone involved in the trafficking and exploitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.” She claims the DOJ has already met with “many victims” and urges others to reach out to her, Blanche, or the FBI “and we will investigate immediately.”

(NOTE: Victims have repeatedly said that Bondi never talked to any of them and the DOJ has so far not prosecuted anyone other than Ghislaine Maxwell.)

February 11, 2026

Bondi testifies before the House Oversight Committee – prickly, cornered and occasionally unhinged – while refusing to acknowledge a group of Epstein victims in the audience. The spectacle likely ended her run in the Trump cabinet reality show.

As The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles put it:

These hearings, like so much political theater now, are staged for an audience of one: the great and powerful Donald Trump. So while Bondi thought she was playing the role of loyal defender, her sneering responses and burn book takedowns turned her into something else: the Angry Woman. And that is not something her boss would order from Central Casting.

February 17, 2026

American Freakshow reports the existence of three missing FBI interviews related to a sexual assault allegation against Trump by a woman whose redacted name is marked with the unusual label “protect source.” The story gets picked up by NPR, and after two weeks of denials, the DOJ finally acknowledges the three interviews. But questions remain about what other materials might be similarly withheld.

April 2, 2026

Trump fires Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files. There’s a difference between suave, brazen disregard for the law in quiet practice and full-frontal rudeness to the legislative branch. It’s a difference her replacement, Acting AG Blanche, having auditioned as Trump’s Roy Cohn for the last several years and grown increasingly willing to put his client’s kingly immunity into practice, understands.

He immediately announces that there will be no more Epstein file releases.

.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

Epstein Class Act: MAGA Misogynists Link Up At Big Beverly Hills Finance Confab

Epstein Class Act: MAGA Misogynists Link Up At Big Beverly Hills Finance Confab

Two accused rapists loll in giant black pleather chairs against a backdrop of mint green book shelves and a cold hearth: the Beverly Hills version of a cozy YouTube fireside chat.

Earlier this month, proud sex trafficker Andrew Tate and “modeling agent” Paolo Zampolli linked up at, or in the vicinity of, the annual Milken Institute Global Conference, where business leaders and wannabes congregate to discuss “Leading in a New Era.”

The annual confab is sometimes described as the American business version of Davos. The 2026 conference announcement invited attendees to the Beverly Hilton to “reflect on the disruptions and innovations of the recent past and translate lessons learned into building meaningful, healthy, and prosperous lives for all.”

Milken Global is named after one of the great Wall Street fraudsters of all time – a man who, as they say, did the crime and did the time, then came roaring back into polite society.

Kind of like, come to think of it, a guy named Jeff.

This annual networking conference, tailored for C-suite executives, investors, and policymakers is of course open to both men and women… at least for now (let’s see how America looks after Scott Yenor’s vision becomes the law of the land).

But the fact that roofie-rape-accused Zampolli – the guy who pulled strings to have ICE deport his baby mama when she became inconvenient – AND a multiple rape and battery-accused global sex-crime-cheerleader scumbag like Andrew Tate were both present is proof positive that the Epstein Class is still in control of American business echelons in 2026.

Then again, perhaps we should not be shocked that an Andrew Tate would be skulking around with a Paolo Zampolli at a major American confab named after a Wall Street felon.

Michael Milken was originally sentenced in 1990 to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to six felony counts related to securities and reporting violations tied to the Drexel Burnham Lambert scandals. Of course he did not serve the full sentence – he did less than two years due to good behavior and cooperation with prosecutors. Though permanently barred from the securities industry, Milken retained massive informal influence through his relationships, family offices, philanthropy, advisory networks, and the Milken Institute ecosystem.

The annual Milken Institute Global Conference became central to his rehabilitation, evolving into a sought-after gathering of CEOs, politicians, billionaires, celebrities, intelligence figures, tech founders, and global investors. Over the decades, attendance by these establishment figures effectively normalized Milken, and in 2020, Trump pardoned him, erasing his federal conviction.

And last fall, the historic federal-style Riggs Bank building a short walk from the White House and U.S. Treasury got a new name: the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. It’s billed as a kind of museum with “interactive exhibits” focused on education, health, finance and entrepreneurship.

What better way to signal that the founding principles of the American commons – thrift, honesty, hard work, respect for law and order – have morphed into something rather more …barbaric… during the Epstein years. And not just in his mansion or Mar-a-Lago.

The word “Milken” appears 723 times in the Epstein files released so far – most often in connection with his institute, which invited Jeff to its events. But the men were certainly friendly. In one 2012 scheduling email, Epstein was to have breakfast with Leon Black, and the sender (an Apollo company employee) suggested Mike Milken might join them. In another email, Epstein described Milken as “leons [sic] closest friend.”

Epstein did attend at least one of the Milken conferences, in 2013, though he dismissed it afterward as having “wasted my time.”

But the Milken reputation-rehab method was always an option for Jeff. In fact, Valerie Post – the Council on Foreign Relations’ director of events at the time – suggested it to him in a 2010 email.

Of course Paolo Zampolli, currently a Trump-invented “special envoy” would grace the Milken Institute Global Conference with his presence. But hanging with Andrew Tate, whose malignant effect on teen boys worldwide has prompted whole seminars of concerned educators, adds insult to Trumpian injury.

Making this spectacle infinitely more odious is that the conference took place not far from the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Tate – in a 2025 incident reported to police – “violently beat and choked” a woman named Brianna Stern, who later filed a lawsuit against him in Los Angeles. The details are harrowing: Stern claims they were having consensual sex when Tate began to choke her, and she “began crying and begging for him to stop. He would not.” Days later, she was diagnosed with a concussion after seeking medical attention, according to the complaint. She told NBC, “I was terrified that I might die.”

(Tate has denied the allegations and filed a $50 million countersuit against her, though a judge tossed parts of his case in December. Stern’s suit is scheduled to go to trial next year.)

Numerous other women have lodged rape and choking allegations against Tate, including conservative political influencer Lauren Southern, who detailed a choking rape in her memoir last year. A UK civil case brought by four women is inching through the London court system over alleged incidents between 2013 and 2015. One woman says Tate pointed a gun at her face and raped her. Another claims he frequently strangled her, while a third says he continued having sex with her after she lost consciousness from choking. One filing also states that he said he was “debating whether to rape” her.

In 2023, Tate was indicted in Romania, along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women, on charges of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organized criminal group to sexually exploit women. He has bragged on record about trafficking women and treating them “like slaves.” Romania charged him with imprisoning women tattooed with “Tate Girl” and forcing them to perform webcam sex acts for hours at a time.

None of that disqualified him from our national Predators’ Ball. When Trump won the 2024 election, Tate tweeted that his Romanian rape case would be “dismissed” and added, “Watch this space ;-)”. That case remains open, but pro-Tate freaks in the Trump administration – likely including his former lawyer and current administration tool, Paul Ingrassia, who once called Tate a paragon of western masculinity – managed to spring him and his brother from Romania and fly them to Miami. There, they have resumed their rape-cheerleading influencer enterprise.

Zampolli, meanwhile, has gone on a misogynistic rampage of his own since his ex, Amanda Ungaro, accused him of cutting a deal with Melania to keep himself in Trump’s good graces. He has been raging in the Italian media against “whores” who accuse him of roofie rape or support his ex-wife in Brazil.

Zampolli clearly finds in Tate a kindred spirit and the rape-bro’s content creation den a safe space. There, he bragged to Tate about selling Boeing jets to Uzbekistan during one of his “envoy” jaunts for Trump: “$20 billion in 20 minutes, by the way. This is the art of the deal, the art of impossible.”

Tate replied, “I only did $19 billion in 20 minutes, so you’ve beaten my record.”

Zampolli accepted the compliment:

Well, if you also would be selling Boeing like me, we have to compete. Like I told Jeff [presumably Jeff Shockey, Boeing’s EVP of Government Operations, Global Public Policy & Corporate Strategy] for the head of buying that as I’m the second best served person after the president of the United States of America, which he beat me a lot, and they told me, ‘Would he be upset?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not. This is called fair competition.’ More Boeing we sell, more job we give to America [sic].

Trying to imagine a Boeing executive forced to pretend to respect this depraved Epstein demimonde apparatchik almost makes me feel sorry for him.

A spokeswoman for the Milken Institute emailed the Freakshow that “Andrew Tate was not registered for and did not attend the Milken Institute Global Conference. He also did not attend any Milken Institute-hosted events alongside the conference.” She added that Zampolli had been invited by a sponsor. “There are many events held on the sidelines of the Milken Institute Global Conference with which we do not have any connection or oversight. I believe this is where Zampolli and Tate spoke.”

Well, Tate was undoubtedly slinking around and proud of it. In a video tweeted from what appears to be a private jet, he boasted about not having to pay for his Milken ticket and said he was invited “because I’m a rich n---, I’m there doing rich n--- shit.”

In the video with Zampolli, he was less profane: “We met earlier at the Milken conference. I’m taking this so seriously. I’ve even got some written down questions because I know you’re a serious businessman who’s done some very serious things… Are you enjoying the Milken conference? What do you think? This is my first one, but there’s some interesting people here.”

Zampolli replied with the signature obsequy that has made him the perfect Trump tool. “Oh, well, I want to thank Mr. Milken to have invite me here for sport diplomacy. There is big panels of sport. We have a lots of sport people… And it’s an honor to be – thank you, Mr. Milken for inviting me” [sic].

It’s 2026. Jeff’s been dead eight years. The mansion is shuttered, the island swept clean of predators.

But there is still always a cozy conclave in America where the Epstein class can schmooze

.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
Top Hegseth Aide Is Former Mob Lawyer Linked To Epstein And Trump Coverups

Top Hegseth Aide Is Former Mob Lawyer Linked To Epstein And Trump Coverups

Steve Bannon is our favorite felonious Epstein supervillain. He’s actually fun to talk to and has brilliant media instincts (flooding the zone with shit – his great insight – most certainly works). As the information sewer overflows, it becomes impossible to keep track of rampant abuses of power, open-air corruption and the networks that keep the sordid operation going. The shit-flood and the scoop-obsessed news cycle work together like a bomb going off and burying the witnesses.

Sometimes it pays to stop and dig around. In the age of the Epstein cover-up, it behooves us not to forget the unanswered questions.

Today we will revisit the career of Pete Hegseth’s top aide, former New York mob attorney Tim Parlatore.

Parlatore – born Timothy Payne – attended Brooklyn Law, like Trump’s better-known guard dog and personal lawyer, Acting Attorney General Todd “Whiteout” Blanche. Not Yale. Not Harvard. These guys might not be Roy Cohn, but they came up cold and hard through the same Gotham legal networks that enabled Donald Trump’s game for decades.

Parlatore got his start in criminal defense law at the knee of Bruce Cutler, mobster John Gotti’s famously combative lawyer. His first case that garnered media attention was in defense of a Marine Corps reservist and Iraq War veteran charged with animal cruelty for kicking his girlfriend’s dog. It’s not clear why he changed his last name from Payne, but a guy named “Parlatore” probably jived better with the likes of Gambino family “made man” Joseph Sclafani and Bonanno family soldier Anthony “Skinny” Santoro. (For more on Parlatore’s curious path, read national security writer Seth Hettena here.)

At the Pentagon, Parlatore has distinguished himself by drafting unconstitutional restrictions on the press while simultaneously propping up his flop-sweating former client, Pete Hegseth. He got to know the philandering, boozing Fox News host while helping settle a roofie rape accusation against him. Before that, Parlatore had won virility-obsessed Hegseth’s loyalty by successfully defending a truly psycho Navy Seal charged with war crimes in Iraq (fellow SEALs alleged that the man bragged about killing women and children and boasted of a “kill rate” of 10 to 20 people a day).

But Parlatore is not just a Pentagon macher. He is one of the top guardians Donald Trump has relied on to protect his dirtiest secrets.

Which brings us to Epstein.

Parlatore is in the Epstein files, representing the MCC guard who accompanied Epstein’s body from his jail cell to the hospital where he was pronounced dead – one of the first people to communicate with the duty guards responsible for watching over the incarcerated international trafficker.

But Parlatore also has another much deeper Epstein connection. He boarded the Trump train when post-presidential Donald needed “killer lawyers” to defend him against federal charges tied to the theft of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. A month after taking that case, Parlatore brought Darren Indyke into his law firm – yes, the same Darren Indyke who spent decades serving as Jeffrey Epstein’s personal lawyer.

This is the sequence of events: In September 2022, Parlatore publicly defended Trump on TV after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago; in October 2022, he hired Indyke; by November 2022, Parlatore was formally part of Trump’s legal team handling the classified documents investigation.

Parlatore later stated that he personally oversaw and organized searches for classified documents at other Trump residences. He has scoffed at reporters who find the timing and fact of his hiring Epstein’s lawyer odd. After all, he was just giving the poor guy a break.

We still don’t know what Trump took or why. The indictment charged him with 37 federal counts – later increased to 40 – for willfully retaining classified documents, conspiring to obstruct justice, and making false statements after leaving office. The details are sketchy, but alarming. Trump made off with material related to nuclear information, U.S. and foreign military capabilities, contingency attack plans, intelligence sources and methods and other highly compartmentalized national security details.

We may never find out more because a Trump-appointed Florida tool, AKA Judge Aileen Cannon, tossed the case, sealed the record, and muzzled everyone under the threat of criminal charges.

Congressional Democrats who attended a closed briefing with special prosecutor Jack Smith could only sputter hints as to what they’d seen afterward. The Trump-retained materials were among “the most protected materials held by the federal government,” including a document so sensitive that access had reportedly been limited to “only six people” in the U.S. government.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said a public hearing would have been “absolutely devastating to the president.” One box of documents had allegedly been scanned onto a Trump aide’s laptop and uploaded to the cloud, which he argued created an entirely separate set of security concerns.

Raskin also said investigators found documents “pertinent to [Trump’s] business interests,” which he pointed out, raised questions about why the records were retained in the first place.

None of this should surprise anyone. Donald Trump has never been known to leave easy money on the table – from the post-Great Recession Trump University scam to the small vendors in Atlantic City he bankrupted by stiffing them for pianos and carpets at his doomed casinos, and now the latest, “Trump phones.”

Fleecing the government is also a family tradition. Daddy Fred Trump profiteered off of World War II GI Bill construction money, the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud, Donald Trump evaded federal taxes for at least a decade, and now his conflicted son is making billion dollar deals with the Pentagon.

Back to Mr. Parlatore. Now that the depth and breadth of Epstein’s international networking and backchannel connections to U.S. government agencies are becoming known, the presence of an Epsteinworld insider like Indyke in the vicinity of the stolen documents case becomes even more interesting.

Before Tim Parlatore picked him up, Indyke had reportedly been laying low in South Florida, banking multimillion dollar profits from Epstein’s trust and working as a real estate agent. Parlatore says he felt sorry for him, and that Indyke assured his benefactor that the FBI had already interviewed him and found him blameless. Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t really hold up. In fact, several years prior, a 2020 settlement with Deutsche Bank noted that Indyke withdrew $800,000 between 2013 and 2017 in $7,500 increments – an amount clearly chosen to deliberately skirt the reporting triggers that would attract attention.

Indyke has since said the money was for “meals, gifts, and gratuities,” though DOJ files suggest Epstein’s global trafficking business was peaking during those same years. Any presumption of Indyke’s ignorance further eroded as the Files revealed him running numerous shell companies for Epstein. And COURIER recently discovered that Indyke lied to the House Oversight Committee about a $3 million house he received as a gift.

Darren Indyke’s sole qualification as a lawyer for the Parlatore Law Group is a career spent managing the legal and financial affairs of a global sex trafficker with deep ties to American and foreign power networks. Indyke possesses the kind of unique “skills” and knowledge that would undeniably come in handy if and when the Epstein cover-up gets too close to Trump.

The cover-up is vast – a vault of secrets going back decades and involving some of the most powerful men in the world. Epstein knew what those secrets were worth. Trump certainly does too.

The Parlatore Law Group, with attorneys playing both sides, should be on the House Oversight Committee’s radar.

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

Possible Epstein Suicide Note Looks Real -- And May Prove He Killed Himself

Possible Epstein Suicide Note Looks Real -- And May Prove He Killed Himself

A federal judge has released a scrawled “suicide note” Jeffrey Epstein’s quadruple-murder-convicted cellmate says he found in a graphic novel left behind after the sex trafficker was moved out of his cell several weeks before he died. The note has been sealed for years in a case involving that inmate and a feud between lawyers. The New York Times recently petitioned to have it released and last night the paper of record published it.

“They investigated me for months — FOUND NOTHING!!!” the note begins. “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note continues.

“Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!

“NO FUN,” it concludes, with those words underlined. “NOT WORTH IT!!”

Unauthenticated note allegedly found in Jeffrey Epstein's cell after his alleged suicide in the Metropolitan Correctional Centr

The Times added that the note has not been authenticated.

The “bustin out cryin’” phrase doesn’t sound at all like Epstein, and already online armchair sleuths and Epstein-ologists are declaring it fake for that reason.

But it appears to have been a pet phrase of his. We’ve found three emails in the DOJ library over the years in which Epstein talked - with a friend and with his brother - about “bustin’ out cryin.”

In a New Year’s Eve 2016 email to childhood friend Terry Kafka, in a discussion about missing their friend Warren Eistenstin, who died in 2014, Epstein wrote “Whatcha want me todo / bust out cryin” adding “I get very nostalgic and truly miss warren. On nites like tonite.”

Earlier that year in an email to his brother Mark Epstein, who informed him that their cousin had become a grandfather, he had written “whtchoo want me todo -- bust out cryin” .

Three years later in a March 2019 email to his brother, (subject line: “tits”), just a few months before his arrest, he wrote “what would you like me to say , do ? bust out cryin”

The similarity of the language and the oddness of the phrase certainly suggest that note is authentic. And in fact, Epstein was deemed suicidal by the Bureau of Prisons, had been found unresponsive in his cell and taken to the prison hospital several weeks before he was found dead in his cell.

The question of whether he was murdered or killed himself has been hanging over the saga since practically the day he was found dead, with a broken hyoid bone. The New York medical examiner officially ruled a suicide.

But Epstein’s brother Mark - among many including Epstein’s lawyers - who believed he was murdered - hired the highly regarded independent pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who served as New York’s chief medical examiner in the 1970s and who has weighed in on high profile murders over the years.

Baden concluded that Epstein’s injuries, including fractures to his larynx and hyoid bone, were “extremely unusual in suicidal hangings” and more consistent with “homicidal strangulation.” He urged authorities to look further: “There’s evidence here of homicide that should be investigated, to see if it is or isn’t homicide,” he said.

But he admitted his observations were not conclusive. And New York Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said she stood “firmly” behind findings in her autopsy report, which ruled Epstein hanged himself and temporarily quelled much of the speculation surrounding the financier’s death.

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