Well, I dare to say my belief. The whole setup of the last 15 years and publication frenzy after the (obvious) murder of JE, is pushed as agenda of the Secret Western World government to keep the leaders as hostages. Their is a legal gun pointing on their head and if they don't comply, it will fire. Else, they will never be touched.
Have about 20 emails daily, 6000 a year… obviously for 1.4 million emails more than one person is needed. And much more than one when I see all the other activities day and night going on in parallel.
Jack Blanchard in the Politico podcast (almost as good as Odd Lots if you're fine with listening to stuff at 2x speed on commutes) remarked that one of the most important aspects of the response to the publicization of the first 2% of the Epstein Files is that it may be a watershed moment where the better parts of citizen journalism have become completely competitive with institutional journalism, due heavily to the faster turnaround times of the former.
It's hard to see conventional pipelines doing a faster job of parsing scattered mentions of rare phrases like 'jerky' across a million documents than the competitive environment of individual entrepreneurialism could.
The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from it.
The level of tinfoil hat theories (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth off of which to build more theories is really something. The unfortunate thing is - in our current environment, the crazy speculation and knowingly dealing in just shit you made up seems to actually pay off when pressuring public officials.
I am glad the files were released. A lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. I don't actually think this ends up going anywhere, but we'll see.
Also btw just in case: This volume could provide approximately 2,600 to 3,500 individual pH adjustments for a 15,000-gallon pool. The main pool-house on the island has about 20'000 gallons of certainly-clean water in it, as far as I can reckon. The hypothesis for the other option: a complete acid wash of the pools, implies approximately 22 to 33 average-sized residential pools were to be washed that day, a dangerous process requiring a professional staff, that stuff is nasty. You do not want to scrub your pool every day, week, or month, you will need to redo the whole surfacing soon enough after a few scrubs. You also do not want that super dangerous liquid in large quantities around to save on bulk-purchase costs, storage and safety make this a no go as far as cost-savings are concerned.
No trace of contracts with pro pool cleaners coming for a scrub in the files, but I did not look hard. This is a cop's job.
The theory that Sulphuric acid would have been used for cocaine production also does not pass muster: you would need to have a large quantity of raw leafs on ships inbound to the island for that volume, and some serious breaking-bad type setup there. This kind of dangerous activity is best done far away from billionaires enjoying the final product.
Good luck asking your friendly SOTA LLM any questions of the form: "how many gallons of sulphuric acid to fully dissolve 40 kg of organic matter?"
> The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well.
I saw a video on Instagram claiming (or at least insinuating) that Epstein had access to all of Lifetouch's photos, because "the company is in the Epstein files!". Turns out, it was a single line item for $109 in what looked like banking records. In comparison, that same selection of files mentioned Whole Foods ~250 times.
For those outside the US, Lifetouch does school photos for about half the schools in the US (or something like that) so you can understand how that's a thread that conspiracy theorists can pull on. But there's nothing there. Just a single payment to the company in a sea of thousands and thousands of normal, every day purchases.
There is a book “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” which you might want to consider before deciding truth doesn’t matter anymore. It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives.
Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
> It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives.
For someone who wants an intro to the subject, this 2016 paper by RAND is pretty good; 'The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model':
> The experimental psychology literature suggests that, all other things being equal, messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive. Quantity does indeed have a quality all its own. High volume can deliver other benefits that are relevant in the Russian propaganda context. First, high volume can consume the attention and other available bandwidth of potential audiences, drowning out competing messages. Second, high volume can overwhelm competing messages in a flood of disagreement. Third, multiple channels increase the chances that target audiences are exposed to the message. Fourth, receiving a message via multiple modes and from multiple sources increases the message's perceived credibility, especially if a disseminating source is one with which an audience member identifies.
Kind of. Corporate propaganda (ads) are very much still in the old Bush-era paradigm of “repeating a lie until it becomes true”. Coke and Pepsi don’t want you to believe “nothing is true”. They want you to believe their cola is superior. Coke isn’t going to waste money creating confusion about that topic.
The Kremlin will amplify conflicting opinions. Even critics of the government. Later it will come out that those critics were sponsored by Putin, undermining any critics by association.
nixosbestos’s comment was in response to a post about how an arbitrary brand new conspiracy theory didn’t have compelling evidence in the emails. It seems like saying “who cares” to what kind of reads like “technically there’s an infinite amount of conspiracy theories that aren’t proven in the emails” is saying the opposite of “truth doesn’t matter”
Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary.
As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews.
Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church.
Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
>It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists.
The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent.
So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested.
I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits.
You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
1 The Epstein story has an interesting Mossad angle, maybe they contacted him or even paid him
2 Lunatic antisemites (and probably many bots) are overrunning the internet with medieval-style antisemitism in which Epstein is still alive, babies were eaten, etc.
I am not Jewish, and must be lucky to hang out in the parts of the internet where I haven't seen it. (Except for Breitbart comments - I pop in there when I want to know the subtext of what right wing politicians are saying. There's plenty of anti-semitism there.)
> Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
I have no interest in dying on this hill, but there's 3 different technical terms which describe distinct kinds of attraction people have to children in relation to puberty, and that term does not describe 14-15 year olds. For whatever that is worth, with regards to the legality in parts of Europe indeed age of consent can vary widely across nations, and even states within nations. But let's be clear - what Epstein did was illegal even if it was done to adults. That's human trafficking.
I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved.
He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.
You aren't taking into account all of the effort the Republicans spent ginning up conspiracy theories about Satanic pedophile cults within the Democratic Party and how Trump's base made that and "releasing the Epstein files" their entire identity, or the absolute clownshow debacle of the Trump administration trying to stall, prevaricate and memory-hole the entire thing after it became clear how implicated Trump himself was.
Also the number of celebrities and powerful people (including the sitting President) involved makes it a bigger story.
That said, yes the antisemites have come out in force around this, just as they did around Palestinian activism, and just as they always do. But I think most people's outrage is focused on systems of privilege and power and on the Trump administration in particular, not anything about "the Jews."
Thanks for the perspective. It could be that I am being overly sensitive to the discourse around this.
As someone who avoids forums where these ideas are promoted, it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.
> it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.
That came straight out of /pol/ so it definitely was, although I suspect that as with "cultural Marxism" it got diffused enough within the right wing that the antisemitism got obscured for most people, but the roots are still there. Trump tweeted this image of Hillary Clinton in 2016, after all[0].
But I think that it's important not to mistake online discourse for societal norms. All of that is intentionally engineered by social media platforms and political interests to maximize the effect of radicalism and extremism, and Twitter explicitly for right-wing ends. I think in the real world, most people don't fall in for that sort of thing.
> (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth
I haven’t seen any indication of “people that didn’t previously believe in cannibal elites now believe in cannibal elites after reading the emails” being a phenomenon that actually exists.
I’ve yet to interact with anyone that has seriously said “I didn’t believe they ate babies on Tuesday but it is Thursday and now I believe they were eating babies.” but people are posting like that’s a thing that happens frequently now. It’s almost like the tinfoil hat theory I’ve seen the most isn’t “pedophile cannibals” but rather “reading the emails will make you go crazy and start believing in cannibal pedophiles” like they are an actual real-life Lovecraftian hazard, which is a much more outlandish idea than… kooks and hucksters continuing to be kooks and hucksters.
If it helps explain where my comment was coming from, my friend I advised to take a break from the files was neck deep in every single new speculation because he himself was a survivor of CSA. He sent me a lot of stuff and was on the "believing in cannibal pedophiles" track for sure, and by the videos I was sent, lots of other people are on that track too.
It was especially bad for his mental health, all of these new speculative theories.
I don’t doubt that. I’ve read a lot of the emails, had to tap out myself, and seen a lot of people tap out as well. What I haven’t seen is some sort of contagion where the cannibalism stuff is all of a sudden being embraced by a new group of people. It’s pretty much just been people that have had the Clinton’s adrenochrome theories and blood libel etc. in the stuff they that they read for a while that are talking about it.
I’ll put it this way: if somebody believes that it is more likely that people were eating babies than the fact that it’s actually somewhat common to refrigerate beef jerky, it’s because they’ve already been primed to think that way; there are several leaps in belief that have to take place before that becomes an even acceptable notion to consider let alone something to earnestly take as gospel.
I’ve seen 20x more people have to stop after reading about Leon Black than the cannibalism/“he’s still alive” stuff (because there aren’t actually that many people that believe in cannibal elites, they’re just very vocal). Heck, I’ve seen quite a few more people have to step back after reading about Epstein funding the bitcoin devs than after reading the more kook stuff. If there’s any sort of general “hazard” in the emails it’s not the things that aren’t true, it’s the things that are.
I have read the jerky emails, and watched a long discussion of them between a bunch of folks, and I still don’t know a single person that went from not believing in cannibals to believing in cannibals.
The range of responses I ultimately saw was “this proves my existing belief that they were eating babies” to “wow that guy’s colon must’ve been a disaster”. The “I already believed they were eating babies” crowd lost a lot of steam and went quiet as soon as someone pointed out that there are several reasons why people refrigerate jerky (high-fat jerky, lack of nitrites in the recipe, humid conditions, etc.)
> What a fucking joke. This site is a joke. This discourse is a joke. The entire pretense of these bullshit conversations are a joke.
Don't take it out on me. I am outraged. I can't be outraged every minute of every day, and certainly not at the very-unlikely-to-be-true worst theories from the files. I am so sorry my post did not live up to your expectations.
You're right about something:
> you know, than remarking on the fact that once again, nothing will happen.
Any kind of pretense that justice ever got served to Epstein and his co-conspirators is a joke. We all know it. The system is a joke - a joke that's on us.
Sorry, I regretted this pretty much after I wrote it. I'm upset, didn't need to be at you. I'm having a bit of a hard time compartmentalizing? all of this, despite my default cynic attitude.
You were right the first time, the holier-than-thou sanctimony is a bit much, especially as it relates to these developments.
Nearly half the potentially responsive files still withheld (per reports of ~6M pages collected but only ~3.5M released, plus heavy redactions and privilege claims), and HN top commentary is about not rushing to judgement and conspiracy theories... maybe it's because the government is literally running an active cover up on a child abuse scandal that involves the billionaires, the elites, and threatens to take down entire governments.
Institutional journalism has done everything in its power to kill this story for 7 years. You don't need a fast turnaround time when the fourth estate is also busy protecting the wealthy. Note how we have all the goods on Matt Gaetz and everyone just conveniently forgot about him because daddy knows who to buy off. DOJ has all the time to pursue rinky dink charges against Letitia James for what would be at best a losing civil case by her lender but we can't go after a known sex trafficker with good connections.
Journalists have been on it from a long time ago. It's a Florida journalist who managed to 'get' Epstein.
The issue is that the line between 'opinionist' and 'reporter' journalists is blurred, while the difference between an investigative journalist and reporter journalist grow. I think it's due to a bigger personification of reporters (they are now filmed doing stuff, involving themselves instead of listening and taking notes/pictures in the background). The profession is split in two. And for sure, on part of the split seems to have sided with opinionist (mostly in televised media. Somehow written journalism is still good)
The degree to which this is true is I think still underestimated, and comments like these need more upvotes.
You don’t need to appeal to shadowy cabals to explain why media professionals have been desperate for this stuff to not be true (and why, every day these days, you can still read examples of them absolutely writhing as they are obliged by public outrage to continue to report on it).
All you really need is to remember that a) they have mortgages to pay, too, so why rock the boat, and b) the people who end up writing for the WSJ and the people who end up in Jeffrey’s rolodex are by and large the same class of people. They went to the same colleges, they consume similar culture and media, they play the same games of keep up with the joneses, they read the Economist on their days off and fret over Gen Z slang and wonder whether the Chase card or the Amex will get them enough airline miles to fly to London for free with their spouse etc etc. They recognize themselves in the “Epstein class” — not in their crimes, but in their manners. So why would they be party to showing the world that class is so profoundly rotten? It’d give the lie to their whole lifestyle.
(And yes, to anticipate a critique here, of course there’s a difference between a producer at NBC and a billionaire! Not denying that. But they are cut from the exact same cultural and social cloth. The best proof of this is in the Epstein files themselves: not in the creepy or criminal bits, but in the mundane stuff. How he talks, what’s on his mind, the advice he gives, etc. It’s all American upper middle class humdrum stuff.)
You'd think this would be the story of the century, and that every news outlet would be running it 24/7 and falling all over each other to scoop new information. Child sex trafficking to wealthy and/or well known celebrities and government officials, including the actual president of the US! What news agency in the world wouldn't be salivating for something like this?
Yet, here we are, no media wants to report on it, and they all wish that we all just forget about it and go back to buying khakis.
That's an interesting point in general. On this particular topic I would go so far as to say that the citizen journalists are far more than what professional journalists are producing. I would guess that this is more a function of the idiosyncrasies of this particular data source. Most journalists are experts in tracking down hearsay and getting specific people to talk. The house Epstein email releases are just a massive pile of open data where someone with a more data-centric background can walk in and apply their skills.
Massive piles of documents, released erratically and possessing apparently random and sloppy redactions with inconsistent formatting rules are a common tactic in some corporate cases as well, since they intend to wear down opposing counsel through exploitation of reptile theory.
AFAICT it's not well considered by DoJ that this works roughly in proportion to the technical aptitude of opposing counsel. The public has excellent technical aptitude when motivated and none otherwise and this is clearly a situation of motivation.
1) The slow and steady institutional journalists who are reporting on the government
2) The fast and loose citizen journalists who are reporting on the government
3) The government who is saturating the attention of both of them while they look for something that exists in the 98% portion of unreleased documentation about government wrongdoing
I mean who’s the idiot? Maybe it’s the government interns who need to read 100% to release 2%.
Respectfully, you also said that "we now know" that taking the COVID19 vaccine could have killed you earlier today, which is completely false. I don't think you are getting your news from reliable sources, and I see this comment as further evidence of that. I'm sure there's lots of information on 4chan about the identity of mass shooters, and that some of it is accurate, but most of it is probably wild speculation, outright trolling, and mistaken identity. Like when Reddit pinned the Boston Marathon bombings on a series of innocent people who were standing on a rooftop or missing because they had killed themselves.
To be honest, my working heuristic for over a decade now has been to assume that if someone openly admits to reading 4chan without any hesitation, caveats, or embarrassment, they can quite likely be lumped in with a general basket of deplorables.
Is it totally fair? No. Is it reasonably high probability? IMO, yes. Is there likely information value on 4chan that could be difficult to find elsewhere? Probably. Is it worth my time and aggravation to sort through it? No.
There’s actually more, though the Justice Department is deleting them in real time. The Justice Department used the same filenames for pdfs and the source media so hours of surveillance video from Epstein’s last days in custody was available as well as videos from all his devices including censored child porn with some of the other pedophiles unredacted. https://old.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1qx81dj/type_this_...
The most shocking reveal to me is that from 2002-2011 Prince Andrew worked a special trade envoy role for the UK, and was passing non-public trade info immediately to Epstein. Epstein, in turn, immediately leveraged it with JP Morgan, and they made fn billions.
Not just one treasonous man, not just a few rich perverts, the whole thing is a supranational criminal syndicate looting everything they aren’t raping.
The circle of dirt does extend very wide and the scoundrels really are worried prosecution of the guilty will collapse everything.
This article is not about who was mentioned in the files or emails, but who was sending and receiving emails. Even then, it limits itself to only the top email senders and receipients. Trump might be mentioned often in the emails, but if he is not among the top couple of hundred senders/receivers of emails, then he’s not going to be mentioned in this article.
You'd think the guy that appears >1M times in the files would at least have its existence acknowledged in any article about who was in Epstein's sphere.
Trump is mentioned about a million times, according to the (less redacted) docs searched by a congressman.
Much of that is probably the news articles and gossip Epstein was known to circulate as the walls were closing in. Still, their friendship goes back decades and they were neighbors both in NYC and Florida.
Honestly I’ve been sick to my stomach these past few days. I wasn’t even looking for the files and saw some in my feed on Reddit.
Basically take the most sad and disturbing Eastern European horror and put it in email form.
I had to stop my Seinfeld rewatch because I saw one email were he just happened to be boating by and stopped by the island for lemonade.
The richest people and political elite were openly trading prices on children, leaving rave reviews on child services and how great that torture film was that was sent
I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't buy the "separate the artist from the artwork" line.
I can't say I've ever watched Seinfeld, but there are plenty of other artists whose work I just won't consume anymore because they've done things I find despicable (and that I know of).
Why would I want to see or hear them or even think about them while trying to enjoy something?
Go look at the photos and tell me that everyone is overreacting. If anything people are under reacting.
After the 3-4th blacked out little girl showing her genitals so they can be sold, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if someone is connected to the island they need to be thoroughly investigated. That’s not a stretch.
Replies like yours are what’s sick downplaying the most prolific industrial child rape in modern America and only one person is sitting in prison. And none of the customers.
I haven't seen those photos. Are they so bad that they justify smearing someone who was only mentioned in a huge trove and regardless of context? Will I go into a righteous omnidirectional rage if I see them too?
I didn’t smear anyone. I said I stopped my rewatch.
After investigating Jerry further, yeah dating a 17 year old high schooler and picking her up after school is equal distressing.
So thank you for your astute analysis and defense of a person who drove to a high school to have a physical relationship 21 years younger but I’ll hold off on watching Seinfeld for now. If that’s not too controversial.
It’s a factual statement that email exists. If it is true or not is another thing.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say someone with a history of pedophilia (yes a grown 38 yo man 17yo highschooler is pedophile) being mentioned a the island should at least step back and investigate it.
In my European country, the age of consent it 15 (or 13?), but it is also in the law that if the adult have a hierarchical/coercive power on the minor (parent, teacher, public servant, host/landlord, boss, probably other), the consent is automatically removed and this is pedophilia. It is the same in Spain, and I'd bet in Portugal.
The age of consent being this low is to avoid prosecuting 15-20 yo having sex with each other. Not for gross old men to coerce minors into having sex with them.
Why does minority/majority matter? Minors are considered inferior to majors. They can't vote, and can't decide most of their life by themselves (loans, bank account...). We consider it 'normal' for them to get yield at/beaten by their parents (and once upon a time, teachers). The _minimum_ society can do to make up for them is protecting them as much as it can. And that means protecting them from predators like Epstein or even Seinfeld.
> The age of consent being this low is to avoid prosecuting 15-20 yo having sex with each other. Not for gross old men to coerce minors into having sex with them.
I don't buy this argument. That is addressed by age gap laws which some countries have or in the U.S. where there age of consent is different if one of the parties is over 18 and 21.
You can't honestly be claiming that these type of relationships don't occur in these countries. The fact is that in homogeneous populations there seems to be way more tolerance for these kind of age gaps.
I'm not. I'm claiming that if, as a teacher, employer, parent, or anybody the justice system recognize have power over a minor, you have a relationship with him or her, the consent is waived, even if they gave you explicit consent. That's all.
So as long as any victims is a minor, even if the victim is 17 and gave explicit consent, if the predator have provable power over her, the consent is waived and it is a pedophilic sexual assault
Exchanging a home for sexual favours to a minor in France is considered pedophilia, you can find articles about a recent case.
Sorry I am repeating myself but I want to be sure you understood my main point and engage with it rather than with a straw man.
You've broken the site guidelines extremely badly by attacking another commenter in this way, and your other flamewar posts in this thread are not good either. This is not the kind of discussion we want here, so please stop.
Nice spin on what I said. Never "defended" Epstein or claimed what he did was legal, rape, sex trafficking...
Nor did I defend "old farts fucking teenagers".
What I did do was point out that this behavior seems to be viewed differently when the participant is a Jewish man than when he is French or Anglo.
> By the way, if you're trying to truly combat antisemitism, it would be wise of you to avoid mentioning that you are jewish and defend old farts fucking teenagers in the same comment.
Between this and your comments that you believe Epstein was eating children, it's hard for me to take your advice as being in good faith.
There are multiple different conversations which you are referencing there which is making it difficult to respond to your points.
On Epstein, I do think the Catholic Church scandal was of a similar magnitude, considering the number of priests and victims involved. The main point I was trying to convey is that the coverage of Epstein is greater than anything I have seen and there is a danger of it being used to promote anti-semitism. Just search the topic on X to see thousands of examples.
Regarding my comments on the age of consent, I am sensitive to words used to describe someone like Seinfeld. Pedophilia and specifically acting on it is one of the worst crimes anyone can commit. Branding someone a pedophile is a very serious accusation. That is a common trope used to describe Jewish men.
Jerry may be a lecher or a scumbag or a pervert, but I have difficulty using that word in his case, and I think in that context the mores in different countries is important. Maybe I am being paranoid and seeing anti-semitism where it isn't.
I understand the reporting is like "LOOK AT ALL THESE CRIMES" but the files themselves are stuff like "Tee hee I know some girls for you".
How do you get from that to an arrest or conviction? If you unredacted that person, identified them and called them would they tell you that the girls were all 18 or older? Or would they incriminate themselves? Do you know it hasn't already been followed up on?
I honestly dont understand what people are expecting here.
Just some examples. If you watch the hearings from two days ago, you'll see that DOJ refuses to interview or speak to the victims to gather more info, and ignored a report from DJT's limo driver that he spoke with a (now deceased) victim that was murdered (head blown off, cops said it couldn't be suicide). That report asserts that DJT and JEE raped her, but they never even spoke to him or followed up.
There is a clear pattern of inaction, going back several administrations.
There's an great photo of Pam Bondi avoiding looking at all the Epstein victims when they raise their hands to indicate that they have not been contacted by the Justice Department to follow up their complaints, it is only a day or two old.
Watch the Pam Bondi video this week where she is getting grilled about the Epstein files, and her rebuttal is that we should thank Trump for the Dow Jones being over 50,000. Watch the interaction with the Epstein survivors in the room.
So is the issue that, the files were released and we now have 100000 people to lock up.
Or is the issue that, now we have some transparency, we can see the FBI is misallocating resources?
Because I keep hearing the former, but if the issue is that theres a bunch of crimes that have been reported that werent investigated, thats more of a process issue.
In the files there are scanned documents from the FBI reporting direct testimony from the victims of rape, violence, murder from prominent politicians, bankers, et cetera.
Start with... investigating that?
Ask them: why this person should be going around telling people you raped her? Have you ever met?
You know, like law enforcement does when there is the suspect of a crime.
>>but the files themselves are stuff like "Tee hee I know some girls for you".
Really? Like the multiple "thank you for the pizza" e-mails which the sender was censored, or the whole obsession they have around "jerky" and how to cook jerky, "walk the jerky", or when it was mentioned that Epstein would eat less jerky because he was having some intestinal issues? Even mentioning these things, it still is such a small portion of all the sick shit that is on the files, pictures with literal children, a video of Epstein using a magnifying glass to burn a woman, and you're literally calling it a nothingburger?
> It is amazing that this has to be confirmed on a website...
I think it has a lot of memetic power because it’s plausible given the other things she’s said, like trying to deflect to economic “success” by pointing out the DOW ~is~ was over 50,000.
It also doesn’t need to be an attributed quote in order to reflect the countering sentiment: “Yes, prosecute those in the Epstein files no matter the geopolitical and economic cost.”
It also has a certain whiney, servile tone to it that makes it just annoying enough to trigger the leftist “ick” instinct.
Idk, I hope the 50,000 dol- meme picks up and people stop spreading this fabricated quote.
She’s won so far, already got away with this twice as Florida AG, didn’t try to go after Epstein when he lived there and after Trump donated 25000 to her, she stopped the prosecution of his TrumpU fraud in Florida. GOP owns Justice Department for three more years and Dems were pretty toothless in previous administration.
Because it's based on no evidence, and framed to imply a government official openly breaking the law is somehow the victim here (The files are already meant to be released by law, many of the redactions are illegal).
If Bondi doesn't want to execute the duties of the office she can resign.
I'm not arguing anything is okay, that is you in your political anger shoving words into my mouth. I am simply saying that it is easy to understand.
And again, you're being incredibly naive - there's no chance you'd be doing anything different in her position unless you are totally fine with sacrificing yourself, your parents, wife, children etc.
It seems that you think "criminal threats" from elites are something that only happen in TV shows, not real life. I'm not sure why this is your perspective because the Panama Papers murders were real, whistleblowers are killed all the time, etc.
> Pam Bondi said if the DOJ went after everyone the whole system would collapse is why.
This is a criminally colluding Pam Bondi saying this. I guarantee that every single person on the Epstein list is replaceable many times over. There is not a single person on that list that is indispensable in any role they play in society. Full stop. Don't fall for it.
It's just the way the system is built. Even Pam Bondi is replaceable (and should be replaced) by many, many actual qualified people.
> But most often the emails our LLM flagged were with young women or little-known accomplices. This pattern may be because it failed to spot incriminating messages sent to prominent contacts or because redactions are protecting people.
https://archive.ph/yk80x
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Well, I dare to say my belief. The whole setup of the last 15 years and publication frenzy after the (obvious) murder of JE, is pushed as agenda of the Secret Western World government to keep the leaders as hostages. Their is a legal gun pointing on their head and if they don't comply, it will fire. Else, they will never be touched.
I can't even imagine being such a prolific emailer, even just one liners. Damn
Have about 20 emails daily, 6000 a year… obviously for 1.4 million emails more than one person is needed. And much more than one when I see all the other activities day and night going on in parallel.
Right? Obviously didn’t have enough real work to do. Idle hands make… idk, you just chill out if you don’t like rape
That was his real work. He's a social network for the davos crowd.
Jack Blanchard in the Politico podcast (almost as good as Odd Lots if you're fine with listening to stuff at 2x speed on commutes) remarked that one of the most important aspects of the response to the publicization of the first 2% of the Epstein Files is that it may be a watershed moment where the better parts of citizen journalism have become completely competitive with institutional journalism, due heavily to the faster turnaround times of the former.
It's hard to see conventional pipelines doing a faster job of parsing scattered mentions of rare phrases like 'jerky' across a million documents than the competitive environment of individual entrepreneurialism could.
The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from it.
The level of tinfoil hat theories (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth off of which to build more theories is really something. The unfortunate thing is - in our current environment, the crazy speculation and knowingly dealing in just shit you made up seems to actually pay off when pressuring public officials.
I am glad the files were released. A lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. I don't actually think this ends up going anywhere, but we'll see.
Yes, and... the 330 gallons of sulphuric acid did come as a surprise to me.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545409/330-gallon...
Half of the files were released, and instead of the congress mandated removal of victim names, perpetrators were blanked out.
Also btw just in case: This volume could provide approximately 2,600 to 3,500 individual pH adjustments for a 15,000-gallon pool. The main pool-house on the island has about 20'000 gallons of certainly-clean water in it, as far as I can reckon. The hypothesis for the other option: a complete acid wash of the pools, implies approximately 22 to 33 average-sized residential pools were to be washed that day, a dangerous process requiring a professional staff, that stuff is nasty. You do not want to scrub your pool every day, week, or month, you will need to redo the whole surfacing soon enough after a few scrubs. You also do not want that super dangerous liquid in large quantities around to save on bulk-purchase costs, storage and safety make this a no go as far as cost-savings are concerned. No trace of contracts with pro pool cleaners coming for a scrub in the files, but I did not look hard. This is a cop's job. The theory that Sulphuric acid would have been used for cocaine production also does not pass muster: you would need to have a large quantity of raw leafs on ships inbound to the island for that volume, and some serious breaking-bad type setup there. This kind of dangerous activity is best done far away from billionaires enjoying the final product. Good luck asking your friendly SOTA LLM any questions of the form: "how many gallons of sulphuric acid to fully dissolve 40 kg of organic matter?"
Приятных снов y'all
> can’t help with anything involving harming an animal or figuring out how to destroy a body.
> The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well.
I saw a video on Instagram claiming (or at least insinuating) that Epstein had access to all of Lifetouch's photos, because "the company is in the Epstein files!". Turns out, it was a single line item for $109 in what looked like banking records. In comparison, that same selection of files mentioned Whole Foods ~250 times.
For those outside the US, Lifetouch does school photos for about half the schools in the US (or something like that) so you can understand how that's a thread that conspiracy theorists can pull on. But there's nothing there. Just a single payment to the company in a sea of thousands and thousands of normal, every day purchases.
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There is a book “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” which you might want to consider before deciding truth doesn’t matter anymore. It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives.
Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
> It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives.
For someone who wants an intro to the subject, this 2016 paper by RAND is pretty good; 'The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model':
> The experimental psychology literature suggests that, all other things being equal, messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive. Quantity does indeed have a quality all its own. High volume can deliver other benefits that are relevant in the Russian propaganda context. First, high volume can consume the attention and other available bandwidth of potential audiences, drowning out competing messages. Second, high volume can overwhelm competing messages in a flood of disagreement. Third, multiple channels increase the chances that target audiences are exposed to the message. Fourth, receiving a message via multiple modes and from multiple sources increases the message's perceived credibility, especially if a disseminating source is one with which an audience member identifies.
* https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
See also Steve Bannon's 'flood the zone' technique:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone
Bannon seems to have connections with Epstein (who is may have links to Russia):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Connection_to_Jef...
“Flood the zone” is the speech version of what the Kremlin does.
If it came out that some anti-Trump terrorists were actually backed by MAGA, it would be analogous to what the Kremlin does.
> Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
In the age of easy to fake video, photos, audio, etc, who wouldn't be?
Except you and everyone you agree with I'm sure
Fuck the Kremlin. Corporate America calls the same damn thing marketing, advertising, sales, and public relations respectively.
Kind of. Corporate propaganda (ads) are very much still in the old Bush-era paradigm of “repeating a lie until it becomes true”. Coke and Pepsi don’t want you to believe “nothing is true”. They want you to believe their cola is superior. Coke isn’t going to waste money creating confusion about that topic.
The Kremlin will amplify conflicting opinions. Even critics of the government. Later it will come out that those critics were sponsored by Putin, undermining any critics by association.
Thank you.
nixosbestos’s comment was in response to a post about how an arbitrary brand new conspiracy theory didn’t have compelling evidence in the emails. It seems like saying “who cares” to what kind of reads like “technically there’s an infinite amount of conspiracy theories that aren’t proven in the emails” is saying the opposite of “truth doesn’t matter”
This, and also a lot of antisemitism seems to have been enabled.
Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary.
As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews.
Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church.
Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
>It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists.
The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent.
So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested.
I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits.
You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
Yeah, but 2 things can both be true:
1 The Epstein story has an interesting Mossad angle, maybe they contacted him or even paid him
2 Lunatic antisemites (and probably many bots) are overrunning the internet with medieval-style antisemitism in which Epstein is still alive, babies were eaten, etc.
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>Not to downplay
Yet you go on to victim card yourself.
I am not Jewish, and must be lucky to hang out in the parts of the internet where I haven't seen it. (Except for Breitbart comments - I pop in there when I want to know the subtext of what right wing politicians are saying. There's plenty of anti-semitism there.)
> Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
I have no interest in dying on this hill, but there's 3 different technical terms which describe distinct kinds of attraction people have to children in relation to puberty, and that term does not describe 14-15 year olds. For whatever that is worth, with regards to the legality in parts of Europe indeed age of consent can vary widely across nations, and even states within nations. But let's be clear - what Epstein did was illegal even if it was done to adults. That's human trafficking.
I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved.
He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.
You aren't taking into account all of the effort the Republicans spent ginning up conspiracy theories about Satanic pedophile cults within the Democratic Party and how Trump's base made that and "releasing the Epstein files" their entire identity, or the absolute clownshow debacle of the Trump administration trying to stall, prevaricate and memory-hole the entire thing after it became clear how implicated Trump himself was.
Also the number of celebrities and powerful people (including the sitting President) involved makes it a bigger story.
That said, yes the antisemites have come out in force around this, just as they did around Palestinian activism, and just as they always do. But I think most people's outrage is focused on systems of privilege and power and on the Trump administration in particular, not anything about "the Jews."
Thanks for the perspective. It could be that I am being overly sensitive to the discourse around this.
As someone who avoids forums where these ideas are promoted, it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.
> it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.
That came straight out of /pol/ so it definitely was, although I suspect that as with "cultural Marxism" it got diffused enough within the right wing that the antisemitism got obscured for most people, but the roots are still there. Trump tweeted this image of Hillary Clinton in 2016, after all[0].
But I think that it's important not to mistake online discourse for societal norms. All of that is intentionally engineered by social media platforms and political interests to maximize the effect of radicalism and extremism, and Twitter explicitly for right-wing ends. I think in the real world, most people don't fall in for that sort of thing.
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/02/donald-trump...
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> (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth
I haven’t seen any indication of “people that didn’t previously believe in cannibal elites now believe in cannibal elites after reading the emails” being a phenomenon that actually exists.
I’ve yet to interact with anyone that has seriously said “I didn’t believe they ate babies on Tuesday but it is Thursday and now I believe they were eating babies.” but people are posting like that’s a thing that happens frequently now. It’s almost like the tinfoil hat theory I’ve seen the most isn’t “pedophile cannibals” but rather “reading the emails will make you go crazy and start believing in cannibal pedophiles” like they are an actual real-life Lovecraftian hazard, which is a much more outlandish idea than… kooks and hucksters continuing to be kooks and hucksters.
If it helps explain where my comment was coming from, my friend I advised to take a break from the files was neck deep in every single new speculation because he himself was a survivor of CSA. He sent me a lot of stuff and was on the "believing in cannibal pedophiles" track for sure, and by the videos I was sent, lots of other people are on that track too.
It was especially bad for his mental health, all of these new speculative theories.
I don’t doubt that. I’ve read a lot of the emails, had to tap out myself, and seen a lot of people tap out as well. What I haven’t seen is some sort of contagion where the cannibalism stuff is all of a sudden being embraced by a new group of people. It’s pretty much just been people that have had the Clinton’s adrenochrome theories and blood libel etc. in the stuff they that they read for a while that are talking about it.
I’ll put it this way: if somebody believes that it is more likely that people were eating babies than the fact that it’s actually somewhat common to refrigerate beef jerky, it’s because they’ve already been primed to think that way; there are several leaps in belief that have to take place before that becomes an even acceptable notion to consider let alone something to earnestly take as gospel.
I’ve seen 20x more people have to stop after reading about Leon Black than the cannibalism/“he’s still alive” stuff (because there aren’t actually that many people that believe in cannibal elites, they’re just very vocal). Heck, I’ve seen quite a few more people have to step back after reading about Epstein funding the bitcoin devs than after reading the more kook stuff. If there’s any sort of general “hazard” in the emails it’s not the things that aren’t true, it’s the things that are.
https://www.justice.gov/epstein
Search "jerky"
I have read the jerky emails, and watched a long discussion of them between a bunch of folks, and I still don’t know a single person that went from not believing in cannibals to believing in cannibals.
The range of responses I ultimately saw was “this proves my existing belief that they were eating babies” to “wow that guy’s colon must’ve been a disaster”. The “I already believed they were eating babies” crowd lost a lot of steam and went quiet as soon as someone pointed out that there are several reasons why people refrigerate jerky (high-fat jerky, lack of nitrites in the recipe, humid conditions, etc.)
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> What a fucking joke. This site is a joke. This discourse is a joke. The entire pretense of these bullshit conversations are a joke.
Don't take it out on me. I am outraged. I can't be outraged every minute of every day, and certainly not at the very-unlikely-to-be-true worst theories from the files. I am so sorry my post did not live up to your expectations.
You're right about something:
> you know, than remarking on the fact that once again, nothing will happen.
Any kind of pretense that justice ever got served to Epstein and his co-conspirators is a joke. We all know it. The system is a joke - a joke that's on us.
Sorry, I regretted this pretty much after I wrote it. I'm upset, didn't need to be at you. I'm having a bit of a hard time compartmentalizing? all of this, despite my default cynic attitude.
Time for an extended break from things.
Kudos for recovering this nicely.
I've seen a number of HN threads lately where commenters regain their balance like this and respond in a thoroughly decent way.
A new pattern? I wish! but it's probably just the clustering illusion... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37303788)
what about a new top nav category next to show? decency
It's a nice thought but I wouldn't want to embarrass people.
p.s. Hi! has been a while...
Thanks for your reply.
> Time for an extended break from things.
It's all a lot.
You were right the first time, the holier-than-thou sanctimony is a bit much, especially as it relates to these developments.
Nearly half the potentially responsive files still withheld (per reports of ~6M pages collected but only ~3.5M released, plus heavy redactions and privilege claims), and HN top commentary is about not rushing to judgement and conspiracy theories... maybe it's because the government is literally running an active cover up on a child abuse scandal that involves the billionaires, the elites, and threatens to take down entire governments.
We should be taking it out on ourselves though.
We're sitting around waiting for Luke Skywalker or Wonder Woman; someone else to improve the world.
It's not just you but it is you too.
There’s also a lot of self censorship happening in the mass media.
and a lot of actual censorship
jimmy kimmel didn't self censor himself off the air
For example the Israel connection, for obvious reasons but you get censored/flagged here too if you mention that part ofc
https://www.dropsitenews.com/s/epstein-and-israel
Institutional journalism has done everything in its power to kill this story for 7 years. You don't need a fast turnaround time when the fourth estate is also busy protecting the wealthy. Note how we have all the goods on Matt Gaetz and everyone just conveniently forgot about him because daddy knows who to buy off. DOJ has all the time to pursue rinky dink charges against Letitia James for what would be at best a losing civil case by her lender but we can't go after a known sex trafficker with good connections.
Journalists have been on it from a long time ago. It's a Florida journalist who managed to 'get' Epstein.
The issue is that the line between 'opinionist' and 'reporter' journalists is blurred, while the difference between an investigative journalist and reporter journalist grow. I think it's due to a bigger personification of reporters (they are now filmed doing stuff, involving themselves instead of listening and taking notes/pictures in the background). The profession is split in two. And for sure, on part of the split seems to have sided with opinionist (mostly in televised media. Somehow written journalism is still good)
All that stuff about rule of law and exceptionalism was just freedom theater.
The degree to which this is true is I think still underestimated, and comments like these need more upvotes.
You don’t need to appeal to shadowy cabals to explain why media professionals have been desperate for this stuff to not be true (and why, every day these days, you can still read examples of them absolutely writhing as they are obliged by public outrage to continue to report on it).
All you really need is to remember that a) they have mortgages to pay, too, so why rock the boat, and b) the people who end up writing for the WSJ and the people who end up in Jeffrey’s rolodex are by and large the same class of people. They went to the same colleges, they consume similar culture and media, they play the same games of keep up with the joneses, they read the Economist on their days off and fret over Gen Z slang and wonder whether the Chase card or the Amex will get them enough airline miles to fly to London for free with their spouse etc etc. They recognize themselves in the “Epstein class” — not in their crimes, but in their manners. So why would they be party to showing the world that class is so profoundly rotten? It’d give the lie to their whole lifestyle.
(And yes, to anticipate a critique here, of course there’s a difference between a producer at NBC and a billionaire! Not denying that. But they are cut from the exact same cultural and social cloth. The best proof of this is in the Epstein files themselves: not in the creepy or criminal bits, but in the mundane stuff. How he talks, what’s on his mind, the advice he gives, etc. It’s all American upper middle class humdrum stuff.)
You'd think this would be the story of the century, and that every news outlet would be running it 24/7 and falling all over each other to scoop new information. Child sex trafficking to wealthy and/or well known celebrities and government officials, including the actual president of the US! What news agency in the world wouldn't be salivating for something like this?
Yet, here we are, no media wants to report on it, and they all wish that we all just forget about it and go back to buying khakis.
That's an interesting point in general. On this particular topic I would go so far as to say that the citizen journalists are far more than what professional journalists are producing. I would guess that this is more a function of the idiosyncrasies of this particular data source. Most journalists are experts in tracking down hearsay and getting specific people to talk. The house Epstein email releases are just a massive pile of open data where someone with a more data-centric background can walk in and apply their skills.
Massive piles of documents, released erratically and possessing apparently random and sloppy redactions with inconsistent formatting rules are a common tactic in some corporate cases as well, since they intend to wear down opposing counsel through exploitation of reptile theory.
AFAICT it's not well considered by DoJ that this works roughly in proportion to the technical aptitude of opposing counsel. The public has excellent technical aptitude when motivated and none otherwise and this is clearly a situation of motivation.
Hmm, maybe, but who’s really in control here?
1) The slow and steady institutional journalists who are reporting on the government
2) The fast and loose citizen journalists who are reporting on the government
3) The government who is saturating the attention of both of them while they look for something that exists in the 98% portion of unreleased documentation about government wrongdoing
I mean who’s the idiot? Maybe it’s the government interns who need to read 100% to release 2%.
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And which will frequently be completely wrong, but they will believe it absolutely because it fits with their political biases.
… as well as the shooter’s posting history and maybe a link to the livestream?
Respectfully, you also said that "we now know" that taking the COVID19 vaccine could have killed you earlier today, which is completely false. I don't think you are getting your news from reliable sources, and I see this comment as further evidence of that. I'm sure there's lots of information on 4chan about the identity of mass shooters, and that some of it is accurate, but most of it is probably wild speculation, outright trolling, and mistaken identity. Like when Reddit pinned the Boston Marathon bombings on a series of innocent people who were standing on a rooftop or missing because they had killed themselves.
Then again, you also openly expressed an antisemitic conspiracy theory (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959252) along with a lot of racist Great Replacement stuff (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922014), so maybe unreliable news sources are the least of it. Seems like you're probably a literal White Nationalist.
To be honest, my working heuristic for over a decade now has been to assume that if someone openly admits to reading 4chan without any hesitation, caveats, or embarrassment, they can quite likely be lumped in with a general basket of deplorables.
Is it totally fair? No. Is it reasonably high probability? IMO, yes. Is there likely information value on 4chan that could be difficult to find elsewhere? Probably. Is it worth my time and aggravation to sort through it? No.
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There’s actually more, though the Justice Department is deleting them in real time. The Justice Department used the same filenames for pdfs and the source media so hours of surveillance video from Epstein’s last days in custody was available as well as videos from all his devices including censored child porn with some of the other pedophiles unredacted. https://old.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1qx81dj/type_this_...
dropsitenews has been doing much better reporting than most outlets.
> dropsitenews has been doing much better reporting than most outlets.
Never heard of them, started browsing the site just now. Very impressed so far.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/
The most shocking reveal to me is that from 2002-2011 Prince Andrew worked a special trade envoy role for the UK, and was passing non-public trade info immediately to Epstein. Epstein, in turn, immediately leveraged it with JP Morgan, and they made fn billions.
Not just one treasonous man, not just a few rich perverts, the whole thing is a supranational criminal syndicate looting everything they aren’t raping.
The circle of dirt does extend very wide and the scoundrels really are worried prosecution of the guilty will collapse everything.
how can someone even send so many emails
I have a lot of sympathy for this man:
https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/bio/e/jeffery-epstein
I almost got drowned while drinking. Next time a warning will be appreciated.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/29/geoffrey-epstein-is...
The outlier where name recognition on the ballot is not an advantage?
Not a single mention of Trump. Really fucking impressive journalism.
Can’t upset the dear leader! Yeah, it was a notable absence and definitely intentional.
This article is not about who was mentioned in the files or emails, but who was sending and receiving emails. Even then, it limits itself to only the top email senders and receipients. Trump might be mentioned often in the emails, but if he is not among the top couple of hundred senders/receivers of emails, then he’s not going to be mentioned in this article.
You'd think the guy that appears >1M times in the files would at least have its existence acknowledged in any article about who was in Epstein's sphere.
...and he is mentioned in those articles. Regularly. This analysis is about the people Epstein emailed most, however, so Trump doesn't make the cut.
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Kept his distance? His name appears in the files, and this is not an exaggeration, over one million times.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/10/trump-epstein-files-jamie-r...
Trump is mentioned about a million times, according to the (less redacted) docs searched by a congressman.
Much of that is probably the news articles and gossip Epstein was known to circulate as the walls were closing in. Still, their friendship goes back decades and they were neighbors both in NYC and Florida.
Honestly I’ve been sick to my stomach these past few days. I wasn’t even looking for the files and saw some in my feed on Reddit.
Basically take the most sad and disturbing Eastern European horror and put it in email form.
I had to stop my Seinfeld rewatch because I saw one email were he just happened to be boating by and stopped by the island for lemonade.
The richest people and political elite were openly trading prices on children, leaving rave reviews on child services and how great that torture film was that was sent
Its sick
> were
Happening before JE, happening now.
Jimmy Savile, same thing.
> I had to stop my Seinfeld rewatch
I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't buy the "separate the artist from the artwork" line.
I can't say I've ever watched Seinfeld, but there are plenty of other artists whose work I just won't consume anymore because they've done things I find despicable (and that I know of).
Why would I want to see or hear them or even think about them while trying to enjoy something?
Your distress may be related to your low standard of alarm. There's no evidence that Seinfeld replied let alone accepted.
Go look at the photos and tell me that everyone is overreacting. If anything people are under reacting.
After the 3-4th blacked out little girl showing her genitals so they can be sold, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if someone is connected to the island they need to be thoroughly investigated. That’s not a stretch.
Replies like yours are what’s sick downplaying the most prolific industrial child rape in modern America and only one person is sitting in prison. And none of the customers.
I haven't seen those photos. Are they so bad that they justify smearing someone who was only mentioned in a huge trove and regardless of context? Will I go into a righteous omnidirectional rage if I see them too?
I didn’t smear anyone. I said I stopped my rewatch.
After investigating Jerry further, yeah dating a 17 year old high schooler and picking her up after school is equal distressing.
So thank you for your astute analysis and defense of a person who drove to a high school to have a physical relationship 21 years younger but I’ll hold off on watching Seinfeld for now. If that’s not too controversial.
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It’s a factual statement that email exists. If it is true or not is another thing.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say someone with a history of pedophilia (yes a grown 38 yo man 17yo highschooler is pedophile) being mentioned a the island should at least step back and investigate it.
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In my European country, the age of consent it 15 (or 13?), but it is also in the law that if the adult have a hierarchical/coercive power on the minor (parent, teacher, public servant, host/landlord, boss, probably other), the consent is automatically removed and this is pedophilia. It is the same in Spain, and I'd bet in Portugal.
The age of consent being this low is to avoid prosecuting 15-20 yo having sex with each other. Not for gross old men to coerce minors into having sex with them.
Why does minority/majority matter? Minors are considered inferior to majors. They can't vote, and can't decide most of their life by themselves (loans, bank account...). We consider it 'normal' for them to get yield at/beaten by their parents (and once upon a time, teachers). The _minimum_ society can do to make up for them is protecting them as much as it can. And that means protecting them from predators like Epstein or even Seinfeld.
> The age of consent being this low is to avoid prosecuting 15-20 yo having sex with each other. Not for gross old men to coerce minors into having sex with them.
I don't buy this argument. That is addressed by age gap laws which some countries have or in the U.S. where there age of consent is different if one of the parties is over 18 and 21.
You can't honestly be claiming that these type of relationships don't occur in these countries. The fact is that in homogeneous populations there seems to be way more tolerance for these kind of age gaps.
I'm not. I'm claiming that if, as a teacher, employer, parent, or anybody the justice system recognize have power over a minor, you have a relationship with him or her, the consent is waived, even if they gave you explicit consent. That's all.
So as long as any victims is a minor, even if the victim is 17 and gave explicit consent, if the predator have provable power over her, the consent is waived and it is a pedophilic sexual assault
Exchanging a home for sexual favours to a minor in France is considered pedophilia, you can find articles about a recent case.
Sorry I am repeating myself but I want to be sure you understood my main point and engage with it rather than with a straw man.
Thanks for the clarification.
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You've broken the site guidelines extremely badly by attacking another commenter in this way, and your other flamewar posts in this thread are not good either. This is not the kind of discussion we want here, so please stop.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Nice spin on what I said. Never "defended" Epstein or claimed what he did was legal, rape, sex trafficking...
Nor did I defend "old farts fucking teenagers".
What I did do was point out that this behavior seems to be viewed differently when the participant is a Jewish man than when he is French or Anglo.
> By the way, if you're trying to truly combat antisemitism, it would be wise of you to avoid mentioning that you are jewish and defend old farts fucking teenagers in the same comment.
Between this and your comments that you believe Epstein was eating children, it's hard for me to take your advice as being in good faith.
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There are multiple different conversations which you are referencing there which is making it difficult to respond to your points.
On Epstein, I do think the Catholic Church scandal was of a similar magnitude, considering the number of priests and victims involved. The main point I was trying to convey is that the coverage of Epstein is greater than anything I have seen and there is a danger of it being used to promote anti-semitism. Just search the topic on X to see thousands of examples.
Regarding my comments on the age of consent, I am sensitive to words used to describe someone like Seinfeld. Pedophilia and specifically acting on it is one of the worst crimes anyone can commit. Branding someone a pedophile is a very serious accusation. That is a common trope used to describe Jewish men.
Jerry may be a lecher or a scumbag or a pervert, but I have difficulty using that word in his case, and I think in that context the mores in different countries is important. Maybe I am being paranoid and seeing anti-semitism where it isn't.
Thanks for the discussion.
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Thank you, White Knight!
How low we have become to do nothing about it? No arrests no convictions?
What do you mean?
I understand the reporting is like "LOOK AT ALL THESE CRIMES" but the files themselves are stuff like "Tee hee I know some girls for you".
How do you get from that to an arrest or conviction? If you unredacted that person, identified them and called them would they tell you that the girls were all 18 or older? Or would they incriminate themselves? Do you know it hasn't already been followed up on?
I honestly dont understand what people are expecting here.
Just some examples. If you watch the hearings from two days ago, you'll see that DOJ refuses to interview or speak to the victims to gather more info, and ignored a report from DJT's limo driver that he spoke with a (now deceased) victim that was murdered (head blown off, cops said it couldn't be suicide). That report asserts that DJT and JEE raped her, but they never even spoke to him or followed up.
There is a clear pattern of inaction, going back several administrations.
> How do you get from that to an arrest or conviction?
You do an investigation
> Do you know it hasn't already been followed up on?
Yes because that would be a part of these files. It’s not disputed that at minimum any leads, including victim testimonies, were not followed up.
>It’s not disputed that at minimum any leads, including victim testimonies, were not followed up.
I would love a source that discusses this.
There's an great photo of Pam Bondi avoiding looking at all the Epstein victims when they raise their hands to indicate that they have not been contacted by the Justice Department to follow up their complaints, it is only a day or two old.
Watch the Pam Bondi video this week where she is getting grilled about the Epstein files, and her rebuttal is that we should thank Trump for the Dow Jones being over 50,000. Watch the interaction with the Epstein survivors in the room.
So is the issue that, the files were released and we now have 100000 people to lock up.
Or is the issue that, now we have some transparency, we can see the FBI is misallocating resources?
Because I keep hearing the former, but if the issue is that theres a bunch of crimes that have been reported that werent investigated, thats more of a process issue.
In the files there are scanned documents from the FBI reporting direct testimony from the victims of rape, violence, murder from prominent politicians, bankers, et cetera.
Start with... investigating that?
Ask them: why this person should be going around telling people you raped her? Have you ever met?
You know, like law enforcement does when there is the suspect of a crime.
> I honestly dont understand what people are expecting here.
An investigation...?
>>but the files themselves are stuff like "Tee hee I know some girls for you".
Really? Like the multiple "thank you for the pizza" e-mails which the sender was censored, or the whole obsession they have around "jerky" and how to cook jerky, "walk the jerky", or when it was mentioned that Epstein would eat less jerky because he was having some intestinal issues? Even mentioning these things, it still is such a small portion of all the sick shit that is on the files, pictures with literal children, a video of Epstein using a magnifying glass to burn a woman, and you're literally calling it a nothingburger?
Pam Bondi said if the DOJ went after everyone the whole system would collapse is why.
Actually, no she didn't, but a lot of people are saying she did.
Which is a weird thing to make up given that there’s already so many horrible bytes to choose from that aren’t fabricated.
Snopes confirms this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bondi-epstein-files-system...
But everyone knows Snopes is leftist propaganda, so it's probably false. /s
It is amazing that this has to be confirmed on a website...
Wouldn't there be a clip of her saying it?
No one has even bothered to spend the 25 cents on an AI generated one as far as I've seen.
> It is amazing that this has to be confirmed on a website...
I think it has a lot of memetic power because it’s plausible given the other things she’s said, like trying to deflect to economic “success” by pointing out the DOW ~is~ was over 50,000.
It also doesn’t need to be an attributed quote in order to reflect the countering sentiment: “Yes, prosecute those in the Epstein files no matter the geopolitical and economic cost.”
It also has a certain whiney, servile tone to it that makes it just annoying enough to trigger the leftist “ick” instinct.
Idk, I hope the 50,000 dol- meme picks up and people stop spreading this fabricated quote.
Paywall
If that's the case, the system deserves to.
She is more worried about her own exposure. She can picture the ship sinking but doesn't want to drown with the other rats she helped protect.
She’s won so far, already got away with this twice as Florida AG, didn’t try to go after Epstein when he lived there and after Trump donated 25000 to her, she stopped the prosecution of his TrumpU fraud in Florida. GOP owns Justice Department for three more years and Dems were pretty toothless in previous administration.
Don't be naive, do you really think Pam Bondi has a choice in the release of these files?
She is just a figurehead, her or her family's life is almost certainly under threat
Spot on. Unclear why this is being down voted. Underneath everything related to this "administration" is the implied threat of violence.
Because it's based on no evidence, and framed to imply a government official openly breaking the law is somehow the victim here (The files are already meant to be released by law, many of the redactions are illegal).
If Bondi doesn't want to execute the duties of the office she can resign.
> If Bondi doesn't want to execute the duties of the office she can resign.
This is an incredibly naive view of a world in which people get blackmailed and murdered all the time at the whims of extremely powerful people.
It is very strange that you can't imagine a situation where someone is forced to play a role.
She's the head of the Department of Justice: and you are arguing that it's okay to not do her job because the criminals might threaten her.
I'm not arguing anything is okay, that is you in your political anger shoving words into my mouth. I am simply saying that it is easy to understand.
And again, you're being incredibly naive - there's no chance you'd be doing anything different in her position unless you are totally fine with sacrificing yourself, your parents, wife, children etc.
It seems that you think "criminal threats" from elites are something that only happen in TV shows, not real life. I'm not sure why this is your perspective because the Panama Papers murders were real, whistleblowers are killed all the time, etc.
> Pam Bondi said if the DOJ went after everyone the whole system would collapse is why.
This is a criminally colluding Pam Bondi saying this. I guarantee that every single person on the Epstein list is replaceable many times over. There is not a single person on that list that is indispensable in any role they play in society. Full stop. Don't fall for it.
It's just the way the system is built. Even Pam Bondi is replaceable (and should be replaced) by many, many actual qualified people.
she, like every other member of the administration is a DEI hire
> the whole system
If there were democrats on that list, they’d already be in jail.
THERE ARE! BILL CLINTON! NOAM CHOMSKY (if they'd acted faster they could have nabbed him before he died!)
Democrats WANT to see the pedos in our party getting justice! We have no loyalty to our party. We are the party of purity testing and infighting.
Anthony Weiner went down quickly. Cuomo went down quickly. Even folks who didn't deserve it like Al Franken go down quickly!
> We have no loyalty to our party. We are the party of purity testing and infighting.
Or as the rest of the world calls it, “not being a criminal organization”.
> NOAM CHOMSKY (if they'd acted faster they could have nabbed him before he died!)
He's still alive.
Mandela effect. He died in 2023. Look at him now, the guy is a walking skeleton.
Save the Borgias !
So she admitted that the whole system is corrupt?
that was a shock to us all
Pam Bondi is trying to play the clock until the hot potato falls in someone else's hands.
> But most often the emails our LLM flagged were with young women or little-known accomplices. This pattern may be because it failed to spot incriminating messages sent to prominent contacts or because redactions are protecting people.
Yeah, no shit.
Does anyone really think they chose Gmail because they're incompetant or specifically to cause this scene?