"OCCULT!" - Epstein Investigator UNLOADS on Craziest Elite Global Network | Henry Abbott • 406

All right, Henry, I need you to take a trip down memory lane with me right now. I need you to picture this.

Okay. I'm in my parents' house. It's towards the end of 2021. I've been doing this for a year and a half, seven days a week, looking into the Epstein case like crazy. And I find out that this guy whose blog on ESPN that I read growing up as a kid, great blog by the way, had done this investigation into Apollo Global and the connections to Jeffrey Epstein because I believe there were two or three NBA teams at the time that had ownership structure that was tied to Apollo.

And I go and I look at this and basically you had you had like an intro before all the links to the different chapters because you had just finished pretty much all of them at that time or maybe there were still two more to come but there were like 19 or 20 on there and your intro was like, "Yo, so look, I was just going to do a quick like two-parter on this and got crazy, fam. So, here it is." And I'm looking at this and there's like 10 likes on it and I'm like, "All right. I mean, was were people looking at this or did they just write it off because the basketball guy wrote it?" I'm like, "All right, I'm going to give this a look."

And I would literally like read a chapter like this on my phone like in the one room and it would take me like an hour and then I'd like get up and I'm just like, "Oh god, oh god." I'm like walking around like, "No, no." I'm like, this guy went back to like the Treaty of Versailles.

We did do that. Yeah. And where on what happened? Please walk me through this. It's so great to finally have you here. I have shouted this out for years and people need to know about your work 'cause you're getting back in the game with it now. But what what happened?

All right. So, I was writing about the NBA for years and I I just have an oddity that I do not like to be lied to. We can psychoanalyze me about that if you want, but like I just it's just it's not it doesn't sit well with me. And so I always was a little tripped up in the like the NBA was kind of a front door for me to see like billionaires and how they behave because essentially the associate the the the league offices work at the behest of 30 billionaires. So there were just kind of a bunch of stories I was involved in. I ran a big team that was like investigative and stuff and and we kept running into this like kind of just so I got a little annoyed at like what are these billionaires doing, you know?

And so then at the time we were relaunching Truhoop post ESPN, I did a big investigation into the oligarch Mel Prokhorov who owned the Brooklyn Nets. Yes. And that was hairy. That was crazy. Um, I went to one of the things I did was go to this like secret meeting invite-only called Putin Con, which was like 200 feet below the surface of Manhattan and like when everyone there was like the like the FSB has already hacked all of our phones and like, you know, and but these people talking about how Putin works, right? System and like I learned so much at Putin Con and in that whole investigation and like one of the things became like to like what Putin generally does, right? And his oligarchs is like they have a public game of like patriotism and rahrh but privately they are taking, I forget the number, but it's like 5 to 10 billion dollars a month for 20 plus years just out of Russia and then they want to park it somewhere where it can't be seized if Putin loses power.

Don't worry about it. Yeah. So they were parking it basically with blue chip American companies. They're buying like City Bank stock and stuff, right? But through a network that's hard to follow, right? And so and for reasons that are complicated, you really can't move that amount of money out of Russia into this without the mob participating.

The Russian mob. Yeah. So you get in this like if you have a business that's going at all well in Russia, you're going to hear from your local mobster. You're gonna cut them in and you're gonna cut the intelligence agencies in and like together they have this beautiful thing going and like but so that's fine but their money ends up at places like Apollo Global, right? And so like like our financial system, the global financial system used to be 1% offshore money and now it's 10% of all money is offshore money.

That almost seems low, but yeah, it's crazy. It's a crazy number. But if you're raising money, if you're like you're raising a fund, right? Like you can't ignore this money, right? This is where the big easy money is. This is where law firms get their money. Like this is important money. And then, you know, as I'm kind of going through this like Putin learning process, I was like, "Huh, it seems like that whole story, this once you get this offshore money and big amounts, it kind of overlaps a lot with arms trade and with the drug trade and with BCCI and with like all the stuff you've been talking about."

Once you get to that, you're like, "Oh my god, like this is this system kind of is our system."

Yes. And so then I was like, "All right, well," and then Epstein story started popping up more and more interesting ways and I was just like, "All right, I got to like I got to figure this out, right? I got to figure out how this ties to the NBA."

Yeah. I actually saw I was looking at a date stamp right before you came here. The initial like first story you did on it before you went and did your series was two days after he was arrested. So you were on it.

Yeah. Right away. I remember the day that he, I mean, I I said to a friend of mine and by the way, at that time, everyone in my life was like, "What are you doing? Like, like what? You write about basketball? Like, what are you doing?" And, um, and also just like, I mean, a bunch of people were like, "Are you going to get killed?" And I'm like, "I don't, I don't think so. I think I would be like seventh on the list at the highest, you know, maybe much lower."

Um, so, uh, but I was like, you know, if this is like if the world is messed up as I think it might be, then Epstein's just going to die in custody, right? I said that to a friend. And then like I was waiting, my daughter was in a theatrical thing um Riverside Church in in Harlem, um, and uh, and I was double parked outside the church waiting to pick her up and um, and then my friend calls me. He's like, "They've killed him in prison." And I'm like, "What? You know, like I kind of just said that, you know what I mean? Like I didn't really believe that, you know, but I said that and then I was like, "Oh, that that day I was definitely like like we need to understand what the is going on here." Like we do, we just do as humans. Like we just need to, we got to get a handle on this.

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Can I actually go back a step to what you were saying at the beginning there, though, before we even get to Epstein? 'Cause we're going to run through your investigation. We'll probably have to have Henry back 'cause we ain't fitting this into three hours. But you know, when you talk about the leaps, correct leaps, I might add, and that it's been proven that you made when you started looking at Prokhorov when he owned the Nets and getting around some of these other groups that you didn't even know existed to where you said money's going offshore. It's being laundered through the mob, intelligence agencies, and then goes to like legitimate places like Apollo Global and stuff like that. But you then tied it directly to these people are doing arms deals and some of the things that, you know, people could get their their heads going like, "Oh my god, is this like the..."

We sound like the crazy ones. We do. But it's it's now been exposed in the emails that there's things I would have previously thought were a little crazy that it's like, "Well, this this isn't so crazy." But the guy Prokhorov, that was so because he was like a flash in the pan. It's funny you bring him up now. You have, I believe, a Chinese billionaire who owns the Nets. So he sold to him a few years ago. But I remember this dude like coming up and he's like, "I met with Carmelo. I looked in his eyes and said, 'Come play for the Nets.'" And then he went to the Knicks. But like he was this flashbang like hand grenade into the NBA and then he was gone. Was there something behind the scenes there to where he got pushed out? Did that have anything to do with some of these groups you were looking at?

There's so much behind the scenes with every oligarch, I think, really. Um.

Yeah. I mean, there's so much. I I there was one thing that really blew my mind about how he exited the NBA, which was, there was an executive from associated with him who was traveling China like looking to drum up, I heard, a deal to sell the Nets.

Mhm. And why do you care? Like why do you why do you care where the owners from, right? But the deal is like China's the country that Russia's scared of. So like all the everyone in Putin's sphere is worried about having all their assets just taken by Putin, right? Like he'll just he can he can un-oligarch you anytime he wants, right? But the idea is like basically you you cut a deal with someone who's holding it in China, then he can't touch it. It's safe there, right? Putin has no sway in this giant militarized country that he has like a 2,000-mile border with. Right? So the idea is like have someone who's ultimately protected by the Chinese government purchase it so that your purchase is secure.

And then do you bank it in China?

I don't really understand what happens after that, but so I saw that reporting and then I talked to everybody I knew involved and I was like, "Wait, did they like seek out a Chinese buyer?" And I was like, "No, no, I don't know why you'd say that." I'm like, "Are you sure? 'Cause he found a Chinese buyer, you know?" Like, but I don't. That was interesting to me. I never really got to the bottom of it, but there's so much like there's a guy um Prokhorov before all of this um Prokhorov's like oligarch buddy who kind of like navigated the early the early days of oligarchy were like very dangerous, right? And and he was in the most dangerous businesses, right? Aluminum and nickel and stuff and and he had a a Harvard-educated kind of Russian-American partner um who maybe got a little big for his britches and started cutting some big aggressive deals. And the idea was you're supposed to kind of get permission from like the higher-ups before you go making these big deals, but he was kind of a Western mindset businessman and he started cutting these big deals and then just found his body in his vacation house. Like, dude was murdered. Yeah. And um.

That's a problem for Adam Silver.

Well, that was before. And then let's not forget Prokhorov first made news um not for anything to do with the NBA, but he was in international headlines because he was accused by French authorities of trafficking a whole plane full of women that he was like bringing to the Alps to have sex with all of his friends. And then, you know, Prokhorov was like, "That's absurd. We're just partying together." Or like, you know, but like he, you know, they and they somehow got an apology or whatever, but like, but, you know.

Oh my god, are they all just sex traffickers, dude? Like, what? Like, how hard is it? You're a billionaire, you got to traffic? Like, that's what I mean, it just seems like cowardly, you know, that so many of them are doing this stuff.

I my take so um do you know who Katherine Belton is?

It doesn't ring a bell.

We should get her on this show. Katherine Belton is an absolute genius wizard hero. Like she wrote this book called Putin's People that's like she sat face to face with the oligarchs and like grilled them and she like knows her stuff and she didn't back down. Then they sued her in London because one part of her book they said was wrong and her publisher had her back and they had a big thing and they had they changed like the most minor wording. But I'm like, "Okay, you guys, the oligarchs met and tried to figure out how to shut up Catherine and their biggest weak point in her book was like this page, right?" Meanwhile, other page of the book says Putin was involved in the cocaine trade. Like they left that one alone.

Yeah. Like that that is okay. The CIA deal.

Yeah. Yeah. But her like in the end of her book, there's a little part about like oligarchy has changed and like how the new oligarchs work. And her her thing is basically just compromat on everyone.

Like you don't get to be senior if you don't if you're not on video doing something terrible.

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So to me, this is probably why I don't even think like this sex trafficking, I think is part of it. It's just like, look, if you want to you're trying to raise money for your business, like great, come party with me in the Alps and if we end up with you on video, we might give you a loan, right? But if we don't get you on video, we can't have you.

Give you a loan.

We can't we can't have you on your we're not interested in you in our portfolio if we don't have total control of you, right? We have to be able to end your career. Like those are the conditions.

That is the most ass-backwards thing ever. It's like be a horrible person and you win.

Don't do it. You lose.

So John K. was in this chair or was he in that chair? This chair. And he was like, "Oh, I can't believe that they didn't notice this." I'm like, "No, I think you have to do that. It's not that like this wasn't a screw-up." You know what I mean? Like this is how you get in the club. It's a criminal organization. And you don't get in by being like, "Oh, I'm good at business." You know, like you get in by getting on video. And that's the other thing I you know, these intelligence organizations, one thing that seems to be pretty clear is they are extremely good at psychological profiling and I mean that for like their own people as well. And knowing John for a long time and knowing his stories and talking with him so much on air, off air, you know, he he got high up over there.

Yeah. But it is so clear to me that they would have pegged him as, "Hey, he's he's a serious dude and he can accomplish serious missions, but there we cannot bring his way 'cause he'll never stand for it." That's why I've always I was always surprised that they tried to bring the enhanced interrogation to him. And of course, he famously said off...

Right away, but like that's the lightest of what we're talking about here. Some of the other stuff I genuinely think he never saw because they wouldn't have brought a guy in like that. But the reality is all these intelligence organizations around the world, they have what are the definition of dark alliances. It's very, very strange.

It's not okay. Like, I mean, well, I look, I'm not going to say I know how to run an intelligence organization. I'm just saying that like the stuff that we don't know isn't stuff that you'd be like, "Oh yeah, that checks out." You know, like it's stuff you'd be like, "Holy..." I mean, these stories, like this is definitely the part of the story I know the least about, but these like kind of increasingly convincing reports about like satanic rituals and ritual murders and stuff like...

Like what?

I know. It's the darkest. It's like if you put it in a movie, they like it's not believable.

Exactly. It's too dark.

Yeah. There's stuff that I have had since the January 30th drop and really going through those emails, there's some stuff that is still not proven, but the fact that now it's a possibility.

Yeah. Yeah. Number one, I have to say that's a possibility. And number two, you got to apologize to some people who were like, "Yo, real." And I'd be like, "Do we have evidence?" Well, now we got evidence.

Yeah. You know, if there wasn't some before that I missed. And it's just I don't know like what do you think it is that gets a fellow human being who most of these people are obviously wealthy, had access to education, you know, obviously like intelligent individuals that way. Not that that has anything to do with good or evil, but you would think there's some level of like, "Well, this seems crazy." Like, what do you think it is that gets someone to push themselves over that cliff to do not even necessarily the worst, like that, but some of this stuff, be it the sex trafficking or, you know, just total manipulation of and and abuse of minors and stuff.

There's a lot. I think a lot goes into it. One, I a long time ago, a whole another life basically, I taught sex ed. I taught like a, don't even get me, I had to read a bunch of stuff on this, right? Like one of the things is that like pedophilia, apparently there are not a tremendous number of people who have like fantasies about sex with a child. Instead, what happens is a lot of people find adults troublesome.

Right. Like you're in an equal power relationship and you have to kind of negotiate. It's a little bit of a dance, like, "Do we get to have sex or not?" Or "Do we get to do what I want to do or you want to do?" But the people who end up with children are that power-hungry, right? They're the ones who can't stand guff, right? And this is exactly how the stories are, right? Like the anecdotes and the reports are like, "You know, I said, 'Give me a [ __ ]' and you didn't, and so I'm going to slap you, right?" Like, um, so to me, I think a lot of it is like these are blatantly power-hungry people, right? They just can't fathom any any sort of slowing down on the road from here to what they want, right? Whether that's sex or a certain meal or to be on this vacation or whatever, right? They're just like, "Private jets everywhere. We're just going, no delays." And so I think that's a big part of it. But then also like a a huge, huge factor in who's a pedophile is people who were victimized as children.

And so in some of these cases, I think it's just there's like these, this is where it's kind of the European part of the story, I think, where there's like, I do think there are these like, you know, um, did where did I see somebody rolled through just like all the pedophiles who were around the royal family. It's just the ones that we know about. It's a lot.

It's a lot.

So what's going on there? Like, I think what's going on there is that it's absolutely the furthest thing from a meritocracy. Your greatest fear in the world is that you would just like open the doors and everyone compete for the job, right? So you have to have, you know, somebody won the right to run the monarchy a gazillion years ago and they're trying to pass that down through generations that have no business. Like they're just not worthy.

Right. So, like, how do you keep that thing, that power structure together? And I think they've been using pedophilia as like a repeated generational tool and it works because if you abuse this one, then that one becomes an abuser. It's like it's so sick. But I think that and some of these people, I think are coming from that, right? There's just so many stories of effed up childhoods among these people.

And then I guess there's, I mean, we know the CIA's done a lot of research and I'm sure every intel on, you know, how to get people to do what you want. And this is one of the tools that that they know about, right? So...

Presumably that's another driver.

Yeah. No, I I I think everything you say there is is not crazy, unfortunately. And I I I think there's something to it. And, you know, we have to now open our minds to some of these possibilities within power structures. And it's not to say therefore everyone who's associated with this, this or that is therefore guilty. But the air of suspicion around how things work needs to be very, very strong moving forward from society because now we we've seen some sort of lens into it. But the the other part with with with the oligarchs that you were talking about with how they would get the money offshore, I'm just knowing the investigation you ended up doing with Epstein that we're going to talk about in a few minutes. Obviously, you were able to tie a lot of this together and my my guy Alessio Alaman who DeF was telling you about earlier who did the documentaries like, you know, I turned him on to your work like 3, 4 years ago and that's what he was blown away with. He's like, "Henry just was able to tie these different institutions and where the money's flown and all that." So obviously you got a baseline of that from work these other stories. Can you give me, you know, without, I guess, like confidential details or whatever, can you give me some examples of like how that would happen when you describe the money would be moved from the oligarchs through the Russian mob through intelligence agencies through like Apollo? Can you just give like an example of that so we have a baseline?

Yeah. Um, well, what a really well-documented version of this is like Panama in the heyday of like cocaine, right? So, they would literally collect money. They had a system of like, you know, they they'd sell cocaine all over North America and there would be like a married couple that lives in a house with a fence and like and then, you know, all the people would drop off their money at that house and they'd accrue it in the garage and then they purchased, I forget the name of it, but like one of these like freight companies, um, they purchased a a the drug dealers owned one of America's big freight companies and they would like load up all this money. They take it to some airline that I think they also invested in. Like it was like Eastern Airlines is one of them and and then fly it all to Panama. And then when the money lands at Panama, there's like a a branch of practically every major global bank right there near the airport. So the Panamanian army protects the monies. It goes right to like whichever bank you prefer. And then it's like boom, now it's in City Bank, right? Now it's in like whatever major institution, right? And and then later we learned that the CIA like, you know, they were meeting with the people involved all the time. Right. So.

I had someone sitting in the chair who did that.

Yeah. See, there you go. There you go. Um, so there's that version of it. Okay. And then in Russia, it's a little different where, you know, basically you're um, you're an oligarch and you've been given the right to purchase like in Prokhorov's case, a giant, I think it's like the biggest nickel company in the world, Norilsk Nickel, for a fraction of what it's worth.

Mhm. Then you take it over, you start running it, and you just start throwing off all these profits. And then I don't know what his banking habit was. I mean, he ran a bank before, so he had probably had pretty good bank ties, but you could go to Deutsche Bank, certainly. You could walk into the Moscow office and say, "Hey, man, I've got like quite a lot of money that I'd rather have in another country. There are all these rules preventing this, but you could do they got in trouble for this thing called mirror trades where um, basically you'd go in, let's say you you go into the Deutsche, I think I have this right. You go to the Deutsche Bank office and say, "I own, you know, 500,000 shares of this Russian company um that trades on uh this stock exchange and I'm..." All these facts are probably wrong. Trades on a stock exchange somewhere else in Europe. And say, so say, so say, so say, so say, so say, so say, so say, you'd like sell them um in Moscow. Meanwhile, in in another city, uh, another person from the same bank would purchase an equivalent amount of stock at the same price. And so like because the bank trusts each other, like you really have just moved a whole crap ton of money out of Russia. And like people went to prison for this. Like this was like a known thing that these global banks were facilitating.

There's a million others. Actually, this book, uh, Money Land by Oliver Bullough is like...

Money. I haven't heard of that.

Oh, it's good, man. It's good. Basically, you move the money into Moneyland. It's not in a country anymore. It just goes to Moneyland.

Yeah. There it is.

Yeah, that's a really good. Shout out Oliver Bullough. You said...

I think it's Bullough, I think you say. He lives...

Money. That's a great guy. The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World. And he wrote this in 2019. And something tells me this is going to be like a harbinger of what was to come in a way.

Wow. He was a big, like, there's several others, but like he was one of the people who was like, really like made me kind of understand better. Like, I I dare anyone to read that book and say that he's like a crazy person making stuff up. He's like very sober and evidence. That's what I liked about you too, because when I was reading this, you, it was funny, like you'd be writing this amazing thing, but then you'd be having a conversation with the reader like, "I know this sounds crazy, but please look at this source here, look at this source here, look at this..." And then I'd back and and I'd go, "Look at..." I'm like, "Goddamn, no, he ain't [ __ ] kidding, bro. He's backed up like four layers. Damn."

Well, thank you for being a careful reader. I feel like most, a lot of people are just like, "I don't know. I don't know, man. That sounds crazy." Like, you know, I just, it does. It sounds crazy. Like, and mostly I I'm an anti-conspiracy theorist. Like, I am like, I most of my career I'm just like, people would call with like, "You're not going to believe..." I'm like, "Guess what? I don't think so." Like, I just don't buy it. Right. And this is the only story I've ever encountered where it's like, "No, the crazy version is the true version." Like, what?

Yeah. All all of us classically trained conspiracy theorists, as my friend Mark Gagnon says.

Yeah. Start as full anti-conspiracy theorists and then something happens and we're like, "Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Where's that going? Holy [ __ ]"

Yeah. But you actually, my my friend David Satter, I had him in for episodes 92 and 133. He is he became the chief, the bureau chief for the Financial Times in the Soviet Union in 1976.

He did. Yeah.

Okay. So, you're familiar.

Oh, with the the apartment bombings.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh. Oh, yeah. That's an eye-opener.

Yeah. So he, that talk about an eye-opener, but he actually, there was a connection to you with him because when I had him in, I was reading one of his books afterwards and he casually mentions this one day war that happened. It was, I I keep forgetting. I've told this on camera like three, four times. I keep forgetting to go re-look this up to make sure I get it all right. But it's it happened in like Dagestan or something like that in, I want to say 1999 when Putin was consolidating power and basically some version of the Russian army or something flew in for an hour, shot a few things, dropped a few bombs and then flew out and they were going to come back. But there was this negotiation that was... Yeah, I think Deep saw it right here. The August-September 1999 invasion of Dagestan by Chechen-based militants led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab triggered the Second Chechen War. So that might not be the same one because this one, like they were able to pull it back, whereas the Chechen wars lasted a while, but it was Dagestan. And essentially the way that this one was cooled down was once they pulled out, there was some sort of meeting that was negotiated with Russian leadership and then the other factions as well where they went to, I believe it was Nice, France. Okay. And he very casually put...

To attend a meeting of the minds at Adnan Kasi's house. And I was like, it was like the Leo meme. I'M LIKE, "WAIT A MINUTE. WAIT, THAT'S THE GUY. THAT'S THE GUY." And I found out about him from your report. So.

Let's get into it now. Let's let's do it. 'Cause like you were revolutionizing some of these people that now everyone talks about that they weren't back in the day. So, you, as we said, start this with, "I'm going to find a connection between Epstein and Apollo," and then it goes kaboom. So what, just take me to day one after you mentioned where you were when Epstein died and you really started going after this, but like when did you realize, "Oh my god, this is way more than I was looking at?"

I mean, definitely an early concern of mine was this guy, uh, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. And I'm still blown away. Like, I feel like his name should be in everybody's coverage of the Epstein story all the time.

Agreed. And I can't even, um, probably remember off the top of my head all of the ties here, but let's just to the best of our ability, um, 100% this guy is a CIA guy.

Mhm. And we know that he became, um, later in his career, he was appointed as the number three, like the executive director of the CIA and oversaw like the rendition program. And, um, and then he was the person who like gave all the deals to Blackwater and then Blackwater put him on the board. Then he was got in trouble with Congress 'cause like the inspector general who investigated to see if it was crooked was his brother. His Buzzy's brother's nickname is Cookie. And like they put Cookie on the stand to like testify that his brother had nothing to do with Blackwater. And then they figured out during the course of the meeting his brother had been at Blackwater's annual meeting as a board member. Anyway,

You know, Eric Prince has sat in that chair.

Oh my god. Yeah. He's one of the...

He didn't he didn't know any of this stuff, but...

He's one of the scariest out there. He. Well, don't get me started. Um, so, um, but this guy Buzzy, who is definitely in the CIA, um, and later was on the Apollo board before all that was the banker who took Microsoft public.

M. Like, he's literally the man who like made Bill Gates rich, who made Steve Ballmer rich, who made Paul Allen rich, and a bunch of other companies too over went other IPOs through his company. So, and there's another banker who was like, "Hey, during that period, he tried to recruit me to the CIA."

So, I'm like, "Okay." So, I I have to believe the most likely thing is that this guy's been in the CIA since college. There's some evidence of that. Um, he kind of had some Nixon ties and stuff early, but so that means Microsoft went public via CIA. And it also means that when Apollo Global, um, when Leon Black was paying Epstein, Apollo Global had a CIA person on the board, right? Um, and later they had Jay Clayton, who, um, had been a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, which is kind of like notoriously the CIA's law firm.

That's the Dulles's old law firm.

Exactly. Right. Yep.

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So to me, I'm like, well, this is like kind of a big like there's no way to just tell myself that there's nothing going on here when like this guy is in the middle of it all. So then I tried to like figure out like, well, in the middle of what?

Yeah, that's we're still doing that, you know, still not totally didn't nail that.

You never get it fully untangled.

No. You never get it fully untangled. But so you were you were essentially again starting with the ownership and then almost I'm trying to picture you doing this. You're like, "Okay, let's draw Apollo Global here in the middle. Epstein right here in the middle with them. We'll leave Epstein right there." And you're like, "Okay, who are the people on their board? Buzzy Krongard. Who's he?" And then you're going like this.

And creating all these new decision trees of like, "Oh, he's connected to this guy and that guy."

How do you then How do you put that all together and bring that back to Epstein? Well, so pretty quickly I'm trying to remember this time too. Um, it got to Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert was like a...

Please explain this to me.

Okay, so everybody at Apollo, like Apollo was born out of the explosion of Drexel and Lambert. So it's like it's not, you don't have to take my word for it that this is a continuation of that. Um, so Michael Milken was a trader at a big, you know, Drexel Burnham Lambert is a big New York City-based, uh, investment bank, I guess. And, um, but some for some reason he convinced them that he should move his operation to Beverly Hills.

Weird. Um, and then they brought in like a bunch of billionaires who had felt rejected by the other banks, right? So they had like questionable money. Some of them kind of blatantly had mob ties. Some of them were, you know, um.

Uh, we should talk about Ivan Boesky. Let's not forget that. Ivan Boesky is very important.

Um, we'll pull up his Wikipedia.

Uh, well, let's do that right now. Ivan Boesky is a great example. Ivan Boesky talked to Michael Milken every day. They would get up. Michael Milken got up early and they talked every day.

Um, yeah. It's also kind of crazy, by the way, like you say the Beverly Hills thing is nuts. Like why would you do that? It's also not to say there aren't some big asset management firms like I believe PIMCO and some other ones that are based out of the West Coast, but you got to remember market opens here in the US at 9:30 Eastern. So these guys, you know, you're three hours behind out there and you're in an industry that's like you're supposed to be getting ready for the market at 7:00 AM. They're getting ready at 4:00 AM. You know, it's it doesn't make sense.

But there are the headquarters of giant arms companies and there are lots of beautiful women.

Oh, wow. And they had they would have these parties at...

Boesky took a header last year.

They did. Yeah. Right.

So, okay, this guy, this is every single Rocky Turnover has like more interesting things, but okay. So, Ivan Boesky was about as close as anyone got to Michael Milken and he was a funnel. He had a bunch of money from before which was very, it was very eyebrow-raising how he got rich. But he was from, I don't think it would be a stretch to say possibly a mob family in the Midwest. His dad owned like strip clubs.

Right. Then he went to college and he, um, I don't think I think it's, this is interesting. I think it's been removed from Wikipedia, but after college he went to Iran because he had a great Iranian friend um from from high school. I think from high school and he lived.

This is in the '60s.

Yeah, I think so. Um, he lived in Iran for a while. And then he came back and then, um, he got a a pretty nice job in New York for the Rothschilds.

Yeah, L.F. Rothschild. There it is.

I don't think he ever graduated from college, but the Rothschilds were like, "Oh, he seems like a great guy."

Listen, they're really good at spotting talent that was overlooked.

So then he has all this money um that from all these crazy investments he makes. Oh, did you see this, by the way, Henry? Like, you're spot on. Although he lacked an undergraduate degree, he was admitted to Detroit College of Law, now Michigan State University College of Law, and graduated from law. How do you...

Yeah. You don't get a law.

Maybe you do and I'm like [ __ ] up right now, but I'm not aware of anybody else doing that. Yeah. And I understand he also, maybe it says here, but he would get he gave a bunch of money to Harvard later. And so they kind of like like, they knew how to pick them. He had the ability to say something that Harvard that sounded like maybe he went to Harvard. Like he didn't go to any of those schools.

Yeah.

Um, but so then he like, well, so he has all this Iranian connections, Iranian and a ton of unexplained money. Okay, then I've not looked into this, but Whitney Webb, who I think, I think as far as I can tell, she's a genius. Like maybe I haven't gone, I haven't, it's hard to verify almost anything she says, but I think she's dead on, but she's like, "Oh, well, the CIA was moving all this money through Iran, especially after Iran-Contra." There's also a bunch of like...

That's later.

Reports of like Ari Ben-Menahem like was saying that basically like the Israelis made all this money and they had to bring it through Iran. So like, anyway, a whole bunch of money came from Iran from this guy into Michael Milken's big pot of investor money.

Um, interesting. Um, so then, uh, but then they started this thing. Leon Black was a young employee there. He was kind of seen as a nerd do-well, nerd do-well. Well, he like partied, you know, they'd yell at him, he'd come in late. Um, the prostitutes in the office and stuff. And, um, but his dad had friends who were all investors in Drexel and Lambert. Dad Eli Black had purchased United Fruit, which was like famously the CIA company, and then jumped or was pushed from the, I think the 44th floor of what was then called the Pan Am building. What is it now? It's called?

I think he did jump. I think he had really [ __ ] up. That's when I actually think he he committed. I mean, maybe he was pushed. Maybe you can't rule it out.

I don't know. He's not. Well, he didn't. It didn't turn out well.

It did not turn out well.

MetLife building.

The MetLife building. Well, now it's MetLife, but it was the Pan Am building at the time. Yeah.

Um, Deep's like, "I walk there every day."

Well, look up, you know.

So, Black, I didn't know that though. Leon Black was a nerd well considered like a little bit of a [ __ ].

Yeah, he was a little bit of a [ __ ]. And somehow like that guy, I think his name is Jesse Kornbluth, the journalist who's written a lot. Jesse Kornbluth wrote this thing that I think everyone should think about more, which...

Is that according to him, Epstein targeted Leon Black, like back then, and was like courting Leon Black. There was something about Leon Black that was especially attractive to Epstein back then. I think, I guess this would be the 80s. Yeah, I got to guess.

Um, so then Milin was, he was like the junk bonds guy. He was, well, that's what they say he's junk guy, but like to people on Wall Street, that wasn't really his defining thing. His defining thing was that they pulled together these like rogue billionaires. Or and and then Leon Black invented this thing called the highly confident letter. So basically, they would, they would write a letter like Panama and say, "Hey, you know, we have enough money to take over like, you know," they would purchase whoever. Corporate raider stuff. Yeah, corporate raider stuff. And Panama be like, "I don't think you have that much money." So they would get, rather than some laborious process of like putting all the money into an account, they would, Leon Black invented like, "Well, we just, we have a bunch of billionaires and we might be able to get it from any one of them," and so we're just going to write a letter that we're highly confident we can get the money. And it worked. So then they started writing these highly confident letters and like taking over a whole bunch of big businesses, right?

It's like robbing a bank with a note. It's like robbing a bank with a note. And then once you get control, I think this is an important part of the story. It's one thing to be an investor. Let's say you're, you got some, you know, let's say you are Israeli intelligence and you really do have some money that you're worried someone's going to take from you. So you're going to give it to somebody, maybe Amboski, and he's going to give it to Michael Milin, and then he's going to invest it in something that has a CEO. And like, you might feel like you don't have a lot of control over that money at that point, right?

But two ways that can get way better for you. One is if you get control of the end company because you didn't just buy 20% of it, but you bought 51% of it. Now you're in a lot stronger position. But two is if all those people, um, along the way are on video doing terrible things, right? Like that's another way to make sure that no one's going to steal your money in the end, right? You're just like, "Hey guys, are we all good here? Are we all, no one's going to, you know?"

Um, so I think something like that. I, you know, I'm not sure I described it chain of custody perfect, but I think like roughly those elements seem to be together. And then once you have that group of people with a lot of money and all on video doing terrible things, um, well, now we don't just have to, limit ourselves to buying like publicly traded American stock, right? Like that same crew is ready to go. Like you can get into any industry in the world and you're kind of advantaged in that you're like kind of locked together in this way.

I might be overthinking this, but in the process of basically like shuffling the money around, are they also creating effectively like shell companies to do this? Oh, yeah, tons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

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And I'll tell you, okay, this is Lar, you know, so like, well, why wouldn't you have drug money in this mix, right? Right. It's one of the biggest industries in the world, and drug dealers very much would like to get their money in. And like, and that was another, that's another big moment for me was like the Church Committee. John Kerry, when he was like a young, newly elected official, ran this committee that.

Wait, John Kerry was on the Church Committee? I think I'm totally lying. I think that. That's all right. The Church Committee was before, I think so. So John Kerry ran a committee that looked into the cocaine trade in the early '80s.

And they like. Investigating himself. Um, but he had this guy, Milian Rodriguez, who was an accountant for the mob, who got busted. And Milian Rodriguez like sat in that chair. You can read all the testimonials online and they just like, he's like, "Here's how it works." Um, you know, and and, you know, we, we like, we have per, we have invested in like every blue chip thing you can imagine. It's like, you know, the most mom and pop, apple pie, American stuff like we own, right? And he's like, "You guys think you busted somebody and like, you know, you got a guy whose Spanish is his first language and you think you got cleaned up now?" He's like, "Let me tell the people coming after me." Like, they all went to Harvard and they're like, you know, super buttoned up and like this money is not stopping, right? So, I think he kind of, that's what happened, right? He's like,

"Well, at least they're putting it back into the American economy. I can appreciate that." There you go. That's the win.

Jesus Christ. What was the guy's name? The accountant? Milian Rodriguez. Milian Rodriguez. So, yeah, you mentioned it though. The Church Committee was in the '70s. So, I guess what you're talking about is like the early '80s or something with with Kerry, but it's it's similar. It's interesting though with the Church Committee. Frank Church, I want to say his first name was Frank. He put that together and then he was primary.

Yeah, that's how that goes. Yeah. Nobody likes that guy. Very, very fascinating, right? Nobody likes that guy. Did you find something deep with this dude? Yeah, it was Frank Church. I'm trying to find Milian. It's like it's like M I L I A N. Um, and maybe John Kerry. I think you can find it on True Hoop probably.

But you said he was an accountant for the mob. Yeah. So they obviously had him and he like flipped as a witness kind of. He like, I think that he was like getting into his plane. He liked to fly around. Lived in South Florida and he was getting in his plane and they like arrested him and there was like pounds of cocaine in the plane. So then.

So they did like talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. I haven't heard of that one. That's interesting. We'll see if we can find it. That's a little bit of a. I want to make it hard for DeF, you know. Oh, what? I want to make it hard for DeF. I want to work. He's, if it's out there, he'll find it. Okay, good. Good.

The first podcast, you got it already. [ __ ] unreal. The first podcast we went to do where DeF was taking over the seat. We had Mike Benz in here who's like a document dump kind of guy. And before we start, Ben's go like like looks at me and and I'm explaining what I explained to you where I'm like, "DeF can pull up anything you need on the screen." He's like, "Okay, great." And then and then he literally goes like this and he goes turns to D. He's like, "Oh my god, I just want to apologize before we start. Um, when I was on Joe Rogan last month, you know, they were like, 'Dude, you asked for too many links, so just if it's too much, whatever.'" And Deep's like, "We're we're good. We got it." And I'm like, "We're so [ __ ] This is his first podcast. Every [ __ ] I was like half the time I'm like looking over here and then the podcast finish up and Mike Benz went over and shook his hand first.

He's like, "That was amazing. That's got to be a good day for you. God damn." But all right, we got it. So this is from. Yeah. July 22nd, 1987. Drug trafficker testifies before Senate committee on what was that title, Die? Sorry. Go. On CIA, Nicaragua and Contra involvement in in drug trade. Oh, so Henry, this might have been maybe I'm [ __ ] up the timeline, but this might have been when they did the official special prosecutor related to Contra. Remember that? Cuz some of that over overlapped with when Reagan had left office. I just don't know how long it went. There was like a podcast.

Hangover. Yeah. Yeah. There was a podcast done by. What? Oh my god. What's it Serial or something like that? Like one of those where they do the series. I listened to a few years ago and they were explaining this whole thing. But yeah, in late June, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee went into a secret two-day session to take testimony from Cuban-American Raone Milan Rodriguez. He is currently serving a 35-year sentence in a federal prison, reportedly in North Carolina. And it goes through who's interviewed. Milan Rodriguez said he was one of the supervisors of money laundering for the OOA Escobar Cocaine Cartel in Colombia, handling up to $200 million a month. On camera, he stated that he had been asked to launder through a Miami company cocaine money destined for the Contras. Wow. Wow. Later, Milan Rodriguez told the Senate committee that the contact was Felix Rodriguez. Why does he always come up? He's he comes up on every podcast. Rodriguez, Bay a Bay of Pigs veteran, had long been associated with CIA counterinsurgency projects. Most recently, he was assigned to the Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador to supervise air supply drops to the Contras. Wow. So, they're just it's all tied together.

I mean, yeah. It's crazy. So, Drexel Burnham Lambert, you hinted at this earlier. It blew up. Blew up on Black Monday effectively and then like thereafter because now that had to do with the junk bonds, right? Yeah, it was Giuliani. Um. Giuliani uh went after Michael Milin and I don't remember exactly even what they got him on, but the part that interested me was there's a thing I haven't really written about. It's too confusing, but um, so they owned, you know, Drexel owned tons of bonds and tons of different things and a lot of it really was garbage, but some of it was super valuable. And so, um, you know, they were forced to liquidate all this stuff and Milin goes to prison and everyone's out of a job. Um, and then uh this French bank Credit Lyonnais, which super associated with Robert Maxwell, probably it seems to be one of the places that like this, you know, this big ball of offshore untrackable money was like an early beachhead of it was Credit Lyonnais. Um, according to the video that used to be on the Apollo Global website, it's Leon Black saying like, "I just got a call out of the blue from these guys in France. They wanted to give us $4 billion." And so I flew over there and said, "No, you have to give me $8 billion." Like, and that's.

I want that call. Yeah. I want that call. But that's how Apollo was founded. And then what they don't put on the video in the Apollo website is that in the aftermath, they basically snapped up a lot of the assets that um Milin used to own because Leon Black knew kind of which ones were the good ones, right? So he bought him low, but it but then they got there was like a massive investigation of whatever happened there and like and he was maybe going to get in real trouble and I can find it. I have some notes on it somewhere, but like but the people who were the investigators of that and this is back at the founding of Apollo were like like they're livid still, right? Like they were like like they got they found bad evidence of bad stuff happening. They did not get to seek justice from.

Are you getting at like some sort of insider trading type stuff or worse? I don't even know. It was more just like there's all these arcane rules around like, you know, what you have to disclose in the investment community and all my eyes like gloss over at that part. That's where the part I'm like, "I'm a basketball writer. I don't know what you guys are talking about, but boy, these people sure are mad." That's awesome. Yeah. I wonder what it could be because bonds get weird because it's, you know, there's all different types of them, but a lot of times you're buying like local bonds for counties and cities and stuff, or you're buying federal bonds for governments. And I don't, I don't know. I was never as I worked on Wall Street for four years and I I knew about insider trader cases and things like that that were happening with equities, but I never bonds was such a weird world because it's so boring to your point that most people are just like, "What are we doing here?" And that I can imagine there's all kinds of shady [ __ ].

I honestly think this is where this is the worst. This is my memory from years ago on a topic about which I'm a complete buffoon, but I sort of have a feeling it might have been something like as they liquidated um Drexel, they said that these things were worth nothing and then they went and bought him up because Leon knew they weren't worth nothing. I think it might have been something like that, right?

Almost like he had a source. Yeah. Yeah. Someone that knew something. I I do wonder about that because Milin's still a billionaire today. He did like three or four years in prison, you know, gives worldwide speaking tours and everything. So, it worked out for him. But I do wonder about the whole sacrificial lamb aspect to where it's like, ooh, we got a lot of things that we can work with here, but there's too much attention on this. So, this is the guy everyone knows. Let's give him up.

You get too hot and you're no longer useful. Yeah. Almost like they did Epstein, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. But then there it's like, okay, so who are the who are the breadcrumbs behind that? So you correctly point out the Credit Lyonnais. Leon? Is that how you say it? I think the S is sound at the end of the French word. Yeah. Very, um, I don't have a good ear for French, but Credit Lyonnais. Correct me in the comments. They call him up out of the blue and say, "We'll give you $4 billion or something like that." And you mentioned that they were connected to Max, Robert Maxwell, Gilen's father. So he had been doing his banking there for his companies for years.

So it's very confusing what he was doing. But I think it that started to make sense for me when um I read, I want to say Craig. Have you read any Craig? Craig is a baller. Like he's a no joke journalist. He's written about a lot of stuff that's in and around this story. But I think it was Craig Younger who had a story about Robert Maxwell helping Russian, like the KGB basically was like, "The Soviet Union is going to break up and we don't like we might lose the nation, but we don't want to lose the KGB. So we're going to offshore all this money, put it aside, keep it safe, and then Russia can do whatever it does and then we'll bring the money back." And Robert Maxwell apparently created like 600 companies to like hold all this money outside of Russia, outside of the Soviet Union, right? And so I think about that. Um, and now during the same period when Credit Lyonnais was lending out all this money in a crazy way to Apollo, they were also lending it to other companies. Adidas was one. Um, but the biggest creditor was was Robert Maxwell and another one was Steve [ __ ] Bannon. Steve Bannon got Credit Lyonnais money and moved his investment operation to Beverly Hills during the same period. And.

Imagine that. I know. And then, you know, finally the investigator, it took a while, but the investigators were like, "You know, we got to look into this Credit Lyonnais thing." And then the beautiful giant old like revered building in the middle of Paris that was the headquarters of Credit Lyonnais just burned to the ground right before the investigators were going to knock on the door and say, "We're never going to know what happened to Credit Lyonnais."

Was there a good investigation into that burning? I don't think there was. There were people did go to prison, like not for the burning, but for running Credit Lyonnais in a fraudulent way. Like people, the the executives did get in trouble, but $20 billion never found, it just went missing. Whoa. Yeah. Fire ravages French bank headquarters May 5th, 1996. Remember. Audio is coming soon. There's '96 there. Fire swept through the headquarters of France's beleaguered Credit. It was already beleaguered too. Funny. Credit Lyonnais' bank sat Sunday, injuring at least 23 people, most of them firefighters. The blaze began in a computer room at around 8:30. Hard drives do burn very effectively. I've heard that. At 8:30 a.m. and about 300 firefighters had it under control 9 hours later.

Wow. And so did this end the bank? Were they done after that? I think so. We should double check that. But yeah, let's check that. I I should have Credit Lyonnais history because they still had, even with the fire, I imagine they still had assets, so someone had to buy them up. Like they bought up um, like Barclays bought up. Bear Stearns, was that it? No, JP Morgan. Bear Stearns. JP Morgan brought up Bear Stearns. Barclays bought up Lehman Brothers. They left. Just like you said. Yep. Credit Lyonnais did not technically go out of business, but was acquired and absorbed by Credit Agricole following severe financial distress in the early '90s. The bank was rebranded as LCL in 2005, which continues to operate a subsidiary of Credit Agricole Group. This is another way that things get lost to history and rewritten. It's so simple, but just name changes. Totally. You know, like people don't think about where stuff comes from. Like you can follow the Rockefellers back and realize like, "Oh, JP Morgan Chase, it's got JP Morgan in there, but it doesn't have Rockefeller in there." You know what I mean? But they, David Rockefeller was like a guy who made them a powerhouse when it was. I forget what it was called, but it was called something else in the '40s, '50s and '60s and '70s.

So when Buzzy RCA guy was running a bank that the one that took Microsoft public, it was called Alex Brown. Weird name. It was like Alexace Brown. I don't know why it's that way, but that's how it is. And um, and then things got real confusing and kind of involved Russia, but then they sold it to Banker's Trust. Um, and then Banker's Trust immediately became like a giant scandal that is not well told, but that involved Russia for sure. And then Banker's Trust quickly became Deutsche Bank. Um, which created this um acronym DBA, which is Deutsche um, what is it? DB. Uh, that doesn't make sense. Um, but it made a little acronym of like the new, this is the new part of Deutsche Bank that used to be Banker's Trust. And um, if you search that in the Epstein files, like that's where Epstein banked. Like that's that's that's like that's on files of Epstein banking transactions, um, right now. Like this is where they banked. So part of me is like, I I don't know. What does that mean? I don't know. Does that mean. The money we know about, right? Yeah. Yeah. But definitely like those bankers were the ones that he had emailed with a lot and that's where he got power of attorney over Leon Black's accounts, right? Is in like this little.

Wait, he got power of attorney over those? I don't remember that. So he had, you know, kind of blanket power of attorney for Leslie Wexner. Yes. Only from this most recent file dump do we learn that there's like emails from these Deutsche Bank bankers and they're basically saying like, "You know, the paperwork is in, like, you know," so that Jeffrey Epstein now has authority to trade on behalf of Leon Black through Deutsche Bank. I I think you're spot on with what you said earlier. It's the comprom, look for the compromat on the compromat, and they just create a line. And Jeffrey Epstein's like, "He looks like a diddler. All right, got him. That toupee ain't passing in 1979. I do want to play with Leon Black's toupee. Like toss it around. But that's uh.

I just learned a scandalous thing today that seems like something I should have known before. But apparently the redactions are not so great and some of these horrible pictures, which I frankly haven't looked up very much. But but apparently Leon Black's penis is in is unredacted. I didn't want to know that. The facts, man. I don't want to see that. He is accused, and I have to say accused of some heinous things. I mean, stuff that like just awful, awful things, man. He's the proof that the digital system is not working. Yes. Right? Like the fact that he hasn't been touched. I mean, he paid like $61.5 million to the Virgin Islands for something. For something. You know, they investigated a bunch, hauled him in, and settled. Um, but yeah, I mean, he's got all the, he checks every box of badness, right? Yeah. Um, funding Epstein's operation, credibly accused. By multiple accusers. How about paying him $170 million over five years for estate planning? Now Leon Black today is worth $13.3 billion. He's worth a lot of money. There is no one on earth, maybe with the exception of Saudi oil guys, Vladimir Putin, and Elon Musk, who should ever be paying someone $170 million for estate planning. No, there's no one on earth. I don't care how rich you are, right? Like, what the [ __ ] is that? Have we ever traced what that really is?

Um, Oh, this one. Would you pull up, De? You want to pull your mic in? Deep's just [ __ ] rolling over here. Yeah, he's doing a whole investigation. I wanted to look up those uh Deutsche Bank emails to see if I could find them, but instead I found this. This is a list of companies that they're requesting to close on July 8th, 2019. And you got some Epstein shells in there. Wait a second. Who's requesting it? Kimberly Hart. Kimberly Hart to Steuart Oldfield. Stuart Oldfield is a Deutsche Bank banker. Okay, there you go. You're on it. So CCed Andrew Gallivan, Don Forbes, Daphne Kales, who may be their Deutsche Bank, I don't know. And then so Darren Indyk was his attorney, I believe. And then. This is urgent need to close accounts ASAP. Please pro. And that's a day after he's arrested, right? Can we check that? He was arrested, I want to say, like July 7th. I hope I'm not making that up. What day would you July 6th, 2019? So, two days after. This is a fast. So, this is this is probably like Deutsche Bank PR coming along with like, "You guys get this [ __ ] off the balance sheet." What are the JSC Interiors? That's what I would name a shell company. LSJ LLC. Wait. L SJ LLC. Wait. L SJ E J E Jeffrey Epstein. LS. Short for Leslie. Seems like it's got to be someone with S last name, right? Well, or it could be like LS like Leslie. I don't know. I'm just speculating, people. I'm with you. Mort Inc. Neptune LLC. NES LLC. There it is. Zoro Management. Zoro Management LLC. Referring to Zoro Ranch. Wow. That's that's a hot find there. Virgin Islands. Virgin Islands Foundation.

Okay, I was just asking about someone about Black though. Have we ever figured out what the [ __ ] that $170 million is for? For real? Well, okay. So, I think we I think just the most rational, sober version of events here is that Epstein was running a compromat operation on behalf of a bigger group, right? It wasn't just for him. Yeah. To me, this was him like, "Of course, this is this is for them, right?" Like it seems like, you know, it's it's not even in dispute that this was to fund his operation. It did fund his operation, right? So, I don't know who ultimately controls that process, but it seems to me pretty clear that some some very bad people who are in business with Leon Black and he's a guy who ends up holding the bag sometimes, right? Um, Steve Hoffenberg, before he died, was an important source for me and.

Oh, you talked with him about. Like a [ __ ] ton. Yeah. So he was the Tower's financial thing with Jeff. Can you explain that for people who aren't familiar? Apparently it was the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time and you know, they were bad people. I mean, they, Steve Hoffenberg, no choir boy, but they were running this giant Ponzi scheme and he met Epstein uh through Douglas Lease, I believe. British arms dealer. The British arms dealer. And Lee is basically like, "This guy's a financial wizard with no moral compass." And Hoffenberg's like, "Great, I could use a guy like that." And and Hoffenberg had this weird like honor among thieves thing where he just wouldn't rat him out. But from Hoffenberg's point of view, like Epstein did something that Hoffenberg didn't understand in real time, and Hoffenberg did, I think 18, 20 years, something like that. And and got out a little ticked, right? He was a little like like, you know, his view is that their scam enriched Epstein tremendously and like, you know, got him on started on his way. And Hoffenberg did it all the time, right? I think Hoffenberg was a mark. I think that's another one of those like when I've, I don't know that, but when I've looked at that case, it's like he was such a mark. And he bought the New York Post right before he went away too.

This the game plan. Okay, let me tell you this. A crazy, no one in the world except you, Julian, and you, DeF, you care about this, but like, there's a letter in the Epstein files which is Hoffenberg in like, you know, I think it might have been 2019, writing a letter to like some authority somewhere basically saying like, "Hey, if you guys remove Jeffrey Epstein from this business operation, we have a guy ready to take his job." And that guy's name is Don Engel. Like, Don Engel is the man who supplied the women at the parties at Drexel Burnham Lambert. What? All right. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. When was that sent? Let's Let's get. Look it up. It was. Is this in jail? Like, this is. I think you should find it like E N G- Eel is the guy's last name. E N G L. So, when did he, when was that letter written? I I roughly. I think it was 2019ish. Something like that. And I was like, Oh, so it was a throwback. TBT. Yeah. I remember. I remember those parties somewhere. Bill Coon's like, "Oh, they were great." Yeah. I don't think Engel at that age would have been the guy you'd want running that party. All right, he'll keep. Oh, we got something. No, I'm trying to find. That's the spelling you want. Yeah. N gel. Um, there's 2019 right here. But. Oh, let's look at that. If we want to buy something, Dave, what's going on in can? We can dream, right? Or look up Puffenberg. I guess it's probably the easier thing to look up. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably what I did. That's how you spell it, right? Yeah. Steve Hoffenberg. So, he was still coordinating with Epstein in 2015. No, not with Epste. He was. Why is he on emails with with Leslie Grath? Can we hit that Leslie Grath one? January 22nd, 2015. Steve Hoffenberg left me a two-minute message. Go [ __ ] yourself, Jeff. He is going on and on about how he can help you. Has feds lined up, your banks lined up, Brad Edwards lined up. Brad Edwards being the victim's attorney. He says, "I should be careful as well. I save the message if you." Wow, what a find. That's a wild email. Hoffenberg is an interesting guy, man. He he he really got super excited about what I was doing and he was like really want because he was like he's like, "It's a fin like it's the biggest financial crime of all time and everyone's talking about sex." He's like, "But it's just a it's a mistake, right?" And so he was trying to help me, but he was very. But like every third call he was like, "You know what I need you to do is like go raise like $4 million and we'll split it." And then we'll like make a documentary. And I'm like, "Dude, I'm not like." Well, he's dead now, to quote quote Bill Gates. Well, he's dead. That's not happening. So I don't work out. Yeah. That's great. All right. I I I want to come back to Hoffenberg with you, but the way he put that, that's so interesting because I don't know like I'm I've been trying to make sense of this like everyone else. And what it seems to me is that sex trafficking was the doorway to compromising money altogether, which was then the door, and this goes back to what you were saying at the beginning with the oligarchs, which was then the doorway to like, I don't know, secret societies, if you will, arms dealing. Yeah. That's kind of the funnel up. And then you have the guys like Kosigible and Doug Lee. I can't speak to like the sex trafficking, but Kosigible was involved with all the above. Mhm. Jeffrey Epstein was clearly involved with all the above. And so, you know, they use a mark like Hoffenberg to get there to get to the money. And this is something I was thinking about the other day. I don't know if you ever came across this in any of your work, Henry. But. Bernie Madoff had an office on the Lipstick Building on 53rd. Like 53rd and 5th, something like that. Don't quote me on that. Third. Yeah. Between second and third, something like that. So there's no connections between Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein. I've never been able to find one yet. They ran in the same elite New York City circles for the better part of at least two decades. Mhm. That's very interesting to me that you can't find anything connecting the two of them. Oh, it was managed. Is that what you're saying? I'm not saying that they worked together. I'm saying that there could have been some sort of like. They both have a job to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's there's there's I'm also interested in these like just super audacious criminals, right? Like um, you mentioned Eric Prince, right? Eric Prince went to the Senate Intelligence Committee and basically just told them to [ __ ] off. Like I mean, he was like scoffing that he would have to answer their questions. You know why? Go. I would like to know why. Because they um I'll take his side on this. They they committed a crime and they didn't pay for it. They outed him as a knock. Okay. So the head of CIA, Leon Petta, went to the same Senate Intelligence Committee, I believe it was the same Senate Intelligence Committee, and outed him as a knock. And if I'm remembering the story correctly, then they went public with it. It was reported that way. A knock is a nonofficial cover. It's like the deepest form of a CIA spy. And you know that put contracts on his head. He already had some, but that that made things extremely difficult for him. And that was his uh. I actually understand that one. That was his [ __ ] you moment. And that was also in the same era where they [ __ ] over the Blackwater 4 with that whole case, which was, if you actually look into that case and what that was, I'm not saying those guys were like the best trained guys ever. Yeah. But it was such total [ __ ] And that's why that's why they were eventually pardoned. And they should have never been in prison. So, he had both of those things happen at that time. And obviously, like Eric's been around, there's no doubt, he's been around a lot of interesting things for sure, involved with intelligence and all that. So, I can't speak to all those things, but on those two issues, he's very much like, "Fuck you." And he was in special forces with Buzzy's son. Was he really? Together? Yeah. Um, that's where that I'm going to have to ask him about that next time. So, okay, but maybe he's not a good example, but like, let's say that the Senate Intelligence Committee was unfair to me, right? I would still have to be a little bit differential to them, lest they punish me further, right? To me, Eric Prince took this tone that was like, "What are you going to do about it?" Right? And and maybe it's because he's mad, but also I think it's because he's he felt safe doing that, right? Which to me, a little bit like these, you know, Hoffenberg buying the New York Post, like you are full-on Ponzi schemer and you're getting like millions from like people's insurance funds or whatever that you're never going to get back, but you're just like holding press conferences, right? Like there's like a it's kind of brazen, right? And and that like I'm starting to think that that's a little bit of a tell that you're like. What does this word mean? Like connected. Connected. Yes. Exactly. Right. Like like if you feel good being like like, "Yeah, I [ __ ] [ __ ] you all this stuff like I'm also, yeah, let's get my makeup right, you know, let's get this perfect." Like that's a weird, that's a very strange position to take. It's a next-level criminality of like, do it on TV. Oh, I agree. You know what I mean? The word you use is right, brazenness of it. Yeah. Those people interest me. That's like, it's like, why, like, where do you get off doing that? You know?

Did Hoffenberg, he first contacted you versus you contacting him? I don't remember, but I maybe I emailed him. I think I might have emailed him. I found an email address somewhere, I think is what it was. And then he read by the first time I talked to him, he was like, a mile a minute with just like, he was a huge fan of what I was doing. He really was. And like he really wanted, I think he felt just so ripped off by Epstein. And I would do, he kept, he was always like, "This is the, you know, this is the biggest crime of all time and it's a it's Epstein and his large group." Like he would never, he always said Epstein and his large group. And at one point I um was looking at these SEC filings of like the Apollo, the three Apollo founders have had accounts that when they were principals of Apollo, their personal accounts have to be disclosed publicly. Right? So this is Black, Harris, and who's the. Rowan, who runs Apollo now, Mark Rowan. Um, and it's BR Holdings. Epstein is in the files emailing Leon Black saying, "This is by far your biggest asset. Uh, what was the BR agreement?" So, the agreement has many parts, but like one of the accounts you could see in SEC filings really clearly was in the Caribbean. I forget which country. Um, and it's $10 billion. To sitting in an account. And I mentioned this. I had a lot of questions for Steve Hoffenberg. Some of which were about like crime, and some of which were just about like Wall Street, you know, because I just like didn't know how these things work, but he knows a lot about it. But uh, but he was, he basically he was like, "Yeah, that's the that's the bag, you know." He's like, "This is not, they didn't start this, right? This has been this has been going on. This is a this is a decades-old crime." And just like that's where the money is now, you know? But like didn't start with them. Most people think mushrooms are either psychedelic or functional, but there's actually a third category. The mushroom I'm talking about is called Amanita Muscaria. The red one with the white spots you've seen in art and folklore like Alice in Wonderland forever. It's not psilocybin. It's not a traditional psychedelic. For me, it's way more grounding. At lower doses, it puts you in this calm, focused, almost flow state headspace. Some people even refer to it as nature's wine, which isn't a perfect analogy, but it's pretty close. Sometimes when I'm really wired from a long day, I'll take a blue lotus extract capsule and I sleep so well. It is relaxing, sedating in a way without you feeling like you're drunk or anything like that. And the reason I even felt comfortable trying this is because of my friends at Amanara. If you've looked into Amanita at all, you know this space is full of sketchy gas station mushroom products, synthetic knockoffs, fake lab reports, and more. It's messy. Amanara is the opposite of that. They've served over 50,000 customers and their sourcing is clean, lab tested, and transparent. No synthetic analogues, no mystery blends, no weird research chemicals. They also have the largest selection of Amanita products that I've seen at the best prices compared to what's out there. Also, their shipping is fast. Their support team actually responds and their site is packed with educational guides and real dosing info so you're not guessing. So, if you'd like to check out Amanara's products for yourself, you can go to www.ur.com/go/julie. tora.com/go/julian. That link is in my description below. And use code JD22 for 22% off your first order. Once again, that's www.antara.com/go/julen. Link in my description below. Use code JD22 at checkout for 22% off your order.

Now, I there's one thing I keep forgetting to bring up, but I feel like this should be brought up. It's a little bit of a tangent point, but it's related to what you're saying. You mentioned those three founders. Yeah. Of Apollo. So, Black, Rowan, and Harris. Obviously, Harris has owned my Sixers for the last [ __ ] 15 years, which is 14 and a half years too many. So, please sell the team. But, uh, he is in these files, which is a bad look. And he knows Jeffrey Epstein and he's meeting with him and met with him at his at his Manhattan townhouse and all that. The thing about Harris I do have to give him, and maybe there's more of this story and I won't have to give him anything, but he co-founded the company and he was, Leon Black was the CEO. He was always viewed as the heir apparent, like he would take over as CEO when Leon stepped aside. And obviously, he became a billionaire in this process, Josh Harris. And it was his lifelong dream to run that company that he helped build and found. And after the Epstein stuff started coming out in 2019, internally at Apollo, he took a stand and told Leon Black, "You got to [ __ ] step down. This is bullshit." And as a result, was pushed out of the company which he aspired and dreamed to always lead. And you don't hear that. I I will give him that. You don't hear that from a lot of people and that are anywhere around this guy around this case actually taking some sort of moral stand where there's some line in the sand where they're like, "This is [ __ ] and losing something in the process." Not, you know, he's got $8 billion to cry into, but still, like, you know, is there more to that? Am I missing something there, or is that effectively what you heard happened?

So I don't like, did he use the Epstein news to bump off the king so he could be the king? Possibly. Or did he use it because he was upset about it? Right? Like I don't know. But my problem here is like, when they swear you in, they say, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth?" Right? And this is where like, we're failing on all fronts. Like right now, when people are getting grilled about this, whether in the media or in front of the congressional committee or whatever, uh, the game is, "Can I catch you?" And so you have to deflect and deflect. Like, "No, no, no, like like we're never going to get those, we're never going to paint this picture through these little dumb sparring matches the last five minutes. We need people. I need Josh Harris to me, Josh Harris is a dirt bag unless he could just tell me what happened. Make it make sense." And there are there are two things in the files that I think he needs to really explain. One is there was a multi-hour breakfast with Bill Gates at Jeffrey Epstein's house after which Jeffrey Epstein emailed, "Did you have fun?" Like. I don't like that. I don't like that either. Like explain that. Right. Um, and there are there's an email with Jeffrey Epstein emailing uh Leon Black's assistant, Melanie Spanella, saying, "You know, I've been in touch with these like this lawyer and this banker to arrange, I forget the amount, but something like $2.4 million payment from Josh Harris to you." Whoa. Can we pull that out? $2.4 million. It's some amount like that. Uh, it's more than a million. Um, if you look up email only Spanella, you're going to get a lot of sh. Yeah, there you go. So, an email from Epstein. You want to just hit the search and then we'll scroll that way. There's I saw that. That was the breakfast one. Oh, because they. Because it's not really. Yeah. Shout out to the guys who built this though. It's It's unbelievable what they pulled off. Oh, I'm not I'm not complaining. But when when roughly what what year was that? Uh, hold on. I'm going to It's on truth. Let me find it really fast. It's long after his conviction, obviously. Uh, let's see what we got here. See, there I am giving credit to someone. Someone I also don't want to give credit to. Terrible owner. You found it, Die. Can you just look up 2.4? It's uh 2014, June 10th, 2014. Okay, there it is. All right, so this is from your True Hoop substack, which by the way, we're going to have Henry's blog linked down below. Everyone go join. It's great. You're going to get all this information and basically. Walk around like like young Julian. Yeah, basically the original 21 chapter report and that is what it is is effectively like a 400-page book. It's incredible. It's quite a lot. All right, so Melanie Spanella, Tuesday, June 10th, 2014. I remember where I was that day. That's crazy. You dove. Do you have one of those memories? Yeah. I've asked Rich Joslin to follow up with Brad Oaken on Josh Harris' payment to you for $2.4 million. Oh, that's bad. Now, do you think that is it maybe I'm cuz I don't know much about what you mentioned, but the BR thing, was he hired as an advisor for that? Cuz that's Black, Harris, and Rowan together for their personal fund. It looks like uh he definitely had this like involved relationship with Leon Black and Epstein did. And honestly, to Epstein's credit, like while I think that the tax advisor explanation makes no sense at that price. But like, from the files, I'm also impressed that like Epstein did a lot of tax work for Leon Black, like he really did. And maybe it was worth a lot. Um, doesn't mean that no one else could have done that for a fraction of the price, but and then it definitely looks like Epstein tried to get the other two partners in on the similar. He tried to get billionaires to sign over their stuff to him, right? He definitely did that. And to Josh's credit, it looks like Epstein really pushed hard and Harris, like I mean, I think rebuffed him mostly, but there's still some emails that are a little, I mean, they went they went through a lot of emailing about things that might have been investments. It's hard to tell. So anyway, I but I think it's.

This text is outside of the any sense of like the the rest of the chain. Like >> maybe it's an Epstein move to just have like like >> this is going to sound speculative as hell because it is. But like let's say Leon Black needed to pay her $2.4 million. Like that's a bad bank record to have. You know what I mean?

>> Wait, let's say Leon Black what? I missed the part of that.

>> But let's say for some reason Leon Black needed to up his assistant salary significantly. >> I don't know why. Um like you can't, you know, you can't have an Apollo Global check or Leon, you know what I mean? Like maybe it's maybe Epstein's the kind of guy who facilitate like, hey, just have it come from Josh, you know?

>> And Harris is a he's a good mark, too, cuz he's got a face that could stop a clock. So you can Sorry, he just does. But like >> Well, one guy told me that like I don't know. I don't know who to believe on this, but one guy who knows everyone involved was like, "The reason that Josh didn't get delete Apollo is because the clients of Apollo were like, we don't like him. >> We don't want to hang out with him. He's unpleasant. Mark's a pleasant guy. >> He's very har and that that's just it. He's so distant too. That's why like in Philly they kind of hated him right away. Like he just he didn't have any basic understanding of like what it's about I mean you've covered the NBA a long time so you know how like Philadelphia fans are. It is like we live for that [ __ ] We live for our teams and everything. And when you're the guy who still lives up in New York, the Ivy Leager coming down and running it like a business purely and he would land his helicopter in the middle of like some kid soccer field to make it to a game and they'd have to like clear the game. >> It's just the like optically not not the best, you know. But that doesn't surprise me because he's very standoffishes. He's awkward. >> He's awkward. >> He's very awkward. Have you talked with him?

>> Not really. I mean, I've been to like so I think when he was a new owner, he came to the NBA draft lottery and which is like a big >> Mhm. >> swirl of people. It's just off Time Square. And um we talked briefly um and I' and I know a bunch of people who know him and I don't know I I find him to be uh just all of these people actually just transactional as hell.

>> Yes. >> And absolutely is.

>> That used to seem like it kind of came with territory, but now I'm like, "Oh, that is that's that's a problematic personality trait that leads you open to all kinds of corruption." >> Yep. >> Right. Like it just does. like this is the Back to the Future version where Biff wins and like it's like all casinos and like people getting tossed out in the street like that's what a transactional culture looks like, right? So I don't think it's bad to have transactional >> people and we all make transactional right >> but at the same time like when you think that everything that isn't transactional isn't real, you're an [ __ ] right? That's sociopathy of a kind, right? And >> and so I always got that vibe from him. I just and um and actually this is going to sound really crazy but if the point of what you and I are talking about today is you know kind of bad people have too much power in the world. Uh one of the things that I think has the biggest impact I learned about from listening to Josh Harris getting interviewed by Steve Forbes. I'm I've told this story a few times. Nobody thinks it's a big deal except for me but to me it was like what the [ __ ] I've always wondered why we don't why the real reason we don't have healthare here, right? Of like our healthare system is just such a >> horrible. >> It's just it's just ridiculous setup. Like even if you're just like competent, you wouldn't like it. Like let alone I'm not going to make my liberal like cry for me speech right now. But like it's just a bad system. I know at one time like we actually pay as much per user as places that do have nationalized healthcare, but we just pay it through like the ER, right? Like like what is what a stupid system? Why is it like this? It's It's hard to see who benefits from this setup. But then Steve Forbes had Josh Harris on and he's like on what some show the Steve Forbes hosts or something and uh and Steve Forbes is like well Joshua you know there's many kinds of investments and you know investment types and why would we need what you do like why wouldn't we just why couldn't you just go to a bank or go to a Wall Street firm and have them invest your money? And Josh Harris's answer was that the health care costs escalate too quickly for like the teachers pension fund to keep up. So like they got to ensure all the teachers of California for infinity amount of years and when the costs go up 4% a year, they can invest traditionally. When the costs go up 11% a year, like they have to bring their money to Apollo.

>> Numbers, numbers, numbers.

>> And so I'm like, "Oh my god." And meanwhile, I've I had noticed at one point I went through just like public filings of where like Leon Black donates and the answer is every politician, like all of Congress, everyone. Right. And I'm like, this is so much.

>> He's a nice guy.

>> He's a nice guy. Very generous. Um

>> I was like, "Oh, that's like they don't that's their worst nightmare." Yeah. >> That we would have decent healthcare, right? It ruins private equity specifically would be ruined by that.

>> Yeah. You're cooking right now.

>> Yeah. No, because it relates to exactly what you're saying with a guy like Josh Harris. I completely agree. He's a transactional >> Yeah. >> individual. And there's something that happens in people who I guess are just motivated by having a bigger number today than they did yesterday. And that's all they care about where people before you even get to some of the [ __ ] horrible crimes that some of these people then end up doing, assume they don't for a second. I'm saying just people that are purely transactional, they start to view people as not people. And that's another thing like Michael Rubin when he was on the ownership team with the Sixers, he o, you know, he at least was like a public guy and whatever. And there's a lot of people who don't like Michael Rubin cuz they think he's like kind of weird or whatever, but like he knew how to talk to the people and he always had to clean up. He was like the 10% owner of the Sixers. He always had to clean up Josh Harris's messes. Beginning of the pandemic, he was like the first owner to like cut all the staff.

>> Yeah.

>> Of the Sixers. And then Michael Rubin and Joel Embiid came in and they're like, "All right, yeah, we we'll let the the employees of the [ __ ] company pay the other employees because the owner's not doing it." It's just it's kind of [ __ ] man. It's really [ __ ]

>> It's extraordinary. I mean, like, it's I I mean, it's it's a kind of mental disease, right? Like, I don't hate you for having mental, but I don't think you should be in charge.

>> Yes. >> You know, I don't think politicians should answer to you.

>> Yeah. Dave Chappelle had a great bit on one of his Saturday Night Live standups like when he was doing the the opener. Maybe it was a couple years ago, two, three years ago, something like that. But he was talking about the phenomenon of like why Trump rose up. And I'll get it wrong. He delivered it so perfectly. But he was like, you know, regardless of what you think his actual motivations are or whether he's just completely full of [ __ ] or whatever, when he was coming up, he was the billionaire in the suit who was in the room that you're not allowed into with all these people and was the only one to walk out the front door and look you in the eyes and say, "Yo, I've been in that room the whole time. You're not allowed in, but there's some crazy [ __ ] in there, bro." And everyone was like, "This [ __ ] at least he's talking like it doesn't seem kind of true, >> right?" Yeah, like it's not that these people, they just don't when they get transactional, they don't understand basic humanity. And if you guys wanted to manipulate people, all you got to do is walk out and pretend to care. Pretend to talk to them. And these guys don't even do that, you know.

>> Have you heard of this phrase hubris syndrome?

>> Hub, like the word hubris, like for bride. No.

>> So, um, what's the name? Okay, there's a book called The Hour Between Dog and Wolf. Oh, actually, this is You're going to like this. I know about this book.

>> Okay, so >> Hour Between Dog and Wolf.

>> Yeah, this is really Yeah, John Coats. That's the guy.

>> Um >> well, I learn I maybe he doesn't want me to say who, but I learned about this from a Sixers front office employee, but anyway.

>> Uh Scott O'Neal.

>> No.

>> Um but uh so this guy >> Oh, I know who.

>> I know I know who. I won't say. Go ahead. So this guy worked on Wall Street and he during the dotcom boom and he noticed that that like super smart trader on Monday would make like a bazillion dollars on some trade and by Friday the guy's like drunk at work, you know, he smells like a prostitute and he's making stupid trades and he's like why? Like this guy stopped being smart, right? Like what happened to him just because he made a bunch of money on Monday? And so he's he went back to England and he did I think he has like a PhD or beyond now and he started this whole institute studying like this particular syndrome where basically if you're in leadership or in power for 10 years I'm paraphrasing his work you should read the real book he wrote on it then your mirror neurons stop working like you lose empathy.

>> Whoa. And so like you know when we all watch a movie and see somebody like cut their hand, your hand hurts a little, right? Like not if you've been in Trump's position for 10 years, right? You're just like whatever, man. I told people you're going to get hurt, you know, like like >> and I feel like I'm seeing that right and left in NBA, right? And in this Epstein story, right?

>> Yeah. No, no, that's Wow. That's what he called it. The hour between dog and wolf. That's sick.

>> God, what a title. There's a follow-up book. So, this book is the before version and then you went and did a bunch of research and wrote another book that I forget the name of, but um

>> did did his name rhyme with Schmmincky?

>> I mean, that's a really good guess. And Sam Hanky and I are friends, but in fact, I did not learn about this book from

>> I want to get Sam Hanky on the podcast.

>> He's a That's my guess. He's a reticent little guy.

>> I know he is, but he's a genius.

>> Yeah, he is a genius.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah, he's a very smart guy.

>> Okay. Hour the hour between dog and wolf. I'm going to read that.

>> It's a great book.

>> That makes a ton of sense because it's you're human nature gets used to things no matter what it is. Negative >> supposedly positive and everywhere in between, but like you get used to >> I've seen it, you know? It's it's like complacency in a way. It's the same psychology. So, it makes sense because you get it far enough removed in your ivory tower or whatever, that then everything below you is just grass. And there's a weird, you know, there's something that's going on with these like, you know, I I went to a snobby British boarding school for a short amount, a very short, like less than a semester.

>> Weren't you said you were born in Britain?

>> Yes. Born in England. Um,

>> moved here though as an here. And then my parents got divorced and then my dad became like really excited that we should that coming to America was a mistake and we should move back. And so we're like there were kind of like efforts, you know, like like there were like efforts to move back. they didn't really take um but for a while and I was in this ritzy boarding school and and you just have this feeling of like oh like

>> like there's a portion of this hub hubris syndrome that's part of like England's rigid class structure a little bit of a let them meet cake kind of thing where it's like well we can't fix everything for everybody right

>> yeah and there's a little bit of like it's ingrained and like why would you want that it's like I think you want that because you you You need everyone to feel okay with the fact that like it's going to suck for a bunch of people.

>> Yes. >> Right. And but we do have these carriages and we do have these like beautiful shiny, you know, people on horseback and everything. It's all wonderful. Don't don't get confused. But like yeah, Jeffrey Epson's invited to the Buckingham Palace a bunch of times.

>> Like >> he was landing he was landing on active military bases as well. They're finding that out. That's not good.

>> Like cleared to land on active British military bases like the >> private jet.

>> Wow. >> That's not good.

>> Like what?

>> You guys, >> who do you know?

>> You guys, >> who do you know?

>> We're going to need some better explanations than we've had so far. This is where to me like I just take this. It's like, okay, just take one landing, right? One landing of a Jeffrey Epstein jet. And it's like I think it would be really useful for a journalist to like just go talk to everybody.

>> Yes. >> Like like just make a make a huge thing out of a small thing, but really do the homework.

>> Don't give it away. Go do it.

>> But there's a [ __ ] 10,000 of them. Like like I I just I'm some journalist. There's there's a there's an airfield in what it's going to be like Surrey or something, right? Like like just go do it. just go talk to everybody who was working that day that probably were still around like and just figure out

>> go right here. You know what I mean? Like

>> Yeah. We haven't really had that level yet. We haven't had time for those stories to come out. But I think those are like there's there are we have evidence of I don't know a million crimes. It's like just tell me one.

>> Yeah. >> Get the get it narrated. None of them are narrated really now other than like the victims.

>> Yes. >> Like we're putting them in this weird spot of like well I don't know, right? Like if it's true, it's like no, let's figure it out. Let's stitch the whole quilt together, you know, like like what happened on this day at this place.

>> It's like a This is like a dystopian uh I'll just invent a stupid term right now, like black fairy tale. So like the opposite of a fairy tale where there's this whole Sims world and you could just like put a blindfold on and hold your finger and land right here and open it up and then be like, "All right." Uh, so I landed on 1997 Suri airport. Jeffrey Epstein lands. Let's go there. And you can write a book about it.

>> You write a book about the next day.

>> Absolutely. Absolutely.

>> And this guy was operating probably since the late 70s in a way at Bear Sterns at least.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Have you been Have you heard at all like there's a there's a like a DJ guy like a local radio guy in New Mexico who's been investigating Epstein since like forever?

>> No. Let's shout this guy.

>> Yeah. No, I don't know his name unfortunately. But um I

>> get it.

>> Um

>> New Mexico like radio DJ. He said

>> Yeah. Yeah. You'll You'll see it. Um, he's he's given a bunch of interviews and stuff, but he basically just he has he's like they're like, "Why did you why were you doing this?" And he's like, "Cuz I don't have a call screener." Like

>> Yeah.

>> I don't have a call screener.

>> Yeah. So So people would call his show and they'd be like, "Yo, some crazy stuff's happening at this ranch." And And imagine being that guy. Like you're holding this insane secret and you're like, "Man, what do I I'mma call the radio DJ. That's it. Hey, Steve from Long Island, friend of the show." Like, Jesus Christ.

>> But he's pretty locked in to like like he would be the perfect person to write one of these books.

>> He looks like he investigates Epstein. Wait, let's scroll down deep. He got it. But he's got like pretty deep like he he basically was like I know everybody who worked there

>> at Zoro.

>> Yeah. He's like I know which ones were allowed in the house, which ones were allowed in the barn. I know like what their shifts were. Like he knows like all the stuff. I'm like okay well this is a good starting point for the narrative the fun to cons not fun to consume but like the the welltold version as opposed to just like this latigious kind of like just dropping a bunch of facts and documents, right? People aren't going to get it that way. Zoro is the one I'm starting to deep dive on behind the scenes a little bit.

>> I think Seer X on Twitter got me into this. He's doing some great work. I hope I'm saying that right. I've been talking with him. He's going to come on the show. Guy's doing amazing stuff. But he's digging on a lot of stuff. I think initially when I saw one of his threads, I want to say I was like, "All right, it's time." But that do you see who owns that now?

>> It's like some friend Epstein's, right?

>> Don Huff. Well, indirectly,

>> okay,

>> Don Hafen or something,

>> okay,

>> who's this is New Mexico. He bought it, by the way. Who the [ __ ] wants to buy something like this after it's all exposed? Like, that's just crazy. So, it's this like very Bible thumping kind of guy, and I say it that way cuz it's like, why are you buying this? Who's running for maybe solicitor general or something in Texas right now, backed by Steve Bannon. So I to the extent that this is a big thing, right? Like people keep seem to doing things that don't seem to be in their best interests. So like I think Leslie Wexner really wanted to give power of attorney to somebody over all of his money,

>> right? I don't think Leon Black wanted to give power of attorney someone over his money, right?

>> like um or all of these properties. I mean or like two town houses in Manhattan transact for like $10 each or whatever they did and like like both like like this is somebody telling someone to do something, right? This is not like why wouldn't you sell it at market rates

>> and one of them standing next to the president right now.

>> I know it just like there's no like it just doesn't make any sense like to me like like we don't know who the boss is, right? I I don't think we know who the boss is or boss is like that sounded crazy when I said that like that. But but but to me I'm like like I don't know man. Leon Black was someone told him to give all his money to Jeffrey Epstein.

>> Yeah. Right. Feels like that to me. your early point about the compromat thing being the right of passage makes a lot of sense cuz Wexner like you see they've always asked Wexner about if he had a gay relationship with Jeffrey Epstein which actually for all the sick [ __ ] Jeffrey Epstein did like this is the one like him using compromat of like a gay relationship with another guy is the one I would actually think he didn't do because every piece of evidence we've ever looked at it was always girls or young women, right? So, he had a type and it wasn't guys. What I do wonder though is if part of the compromat of Wexner was that he was gay or something and then maybe was also doing some really bad stuff that's beyond like being gay and maybe abusing boys and stuff like that and maybe that's how they got in because there's a thread I've talked about it a few times before and someone more talented than me and who knows more about this stuff and following the money should really pull on it. But what I can't get out of my head is Tarapel Mary did a great podcast. I'm sorry for people who've heard me say this before, but I got to repeat this for Henry. He he did a great podcast or she did a great podcast back in 2020. Two of them. One was like the Maxwells and one was Epstein.

>> And with Epstein, she went around with that one. She went around with Virginia Robert Schuay. And it's like a documentary. She did eight episodes where she's recording like an edited documentary. What they would do is they would go to the usually gated communities of people connected to Epstein who Virginia had known from her time around him and try to talk to them. So they went to Adam Perry Lang, the famous chef who knew Virginia and he was like, "Oh, I remember you." and said, "You can't come meet with me."

>> But when they went to Wana Allesie's mansion, I guess in in his community, he let them in. Wana Allessie was the house manager for Epstein, immigrant, >> had to sign a crazy NDA, all this stuff. And to his credit, he allowed Tara to put the recorder out and record all of them talking. And he said a lot of interesting things in there, but among them was he talked about how in 1992 he's like Epstein had money in the 80s and I worked with him and he lived on the Upper East Side and everything, but 1992 [ __ ] went crazy, right? He started flying in private jets everywhere. I think he started looking at buying his own jet at the time. He wasn't I'd said this earlier, but he wasn't in the mansion yet. I know that now, but I I have to run back to that podcast and see exactly what Wlessie said, but basically he said he went from wo to wo, like out of nowhere. And it's very fascinating to me because Robert Maxwell was pushed off that boat in November 1991.

>> His body was immediately taken to Israel to the Mount of Olives, the most sacred place you could be buried. Funeral attended by heads of state. We can all do the math there. and buried with honors, but leaves behind a $400 million plus pension scam at his company and was supposedly worth nothing. Robert Maxwell is a very bad guy. Never made sense to me that he was worth nothing, especially when his sons were then put on trial for that and found not guilty.

>> Mhm. >> When are Scions ever found not guilty? When they built the [ __ ] public or a bunch of regular Joe's from what they did. And so Epstein getting all that money at the same time and also cozying up to Wexner at the same time who is a money bag man when you look at a lot of the evidence surrounding like the case very that's an that has never squared up to me and but I can't speculative but it's it's interesting because like you said

>> for him to be granting all that power including power of attorney giving him that place for 10 bucks.

>> Yeah. something.

>> Yeah, >> something a right.

>> And I think if I'm right that before that EP before he lived in that townhouse, Epstein lived in a building owned by Iran. I'm pretty sure, check me out on this. Either he had an office or he lived in a place.

>> Epstein. All right, let's look this up. Just stepped out for a second. Epstein building owned by Iran like

>> and that would have been postrevolution Iran.

>> Yeah, I think I think Do you see that? Do they think I'm up?

>> All right, let's see. The State Department once rented a townhouse seized from Iran. So, they seized it from Iran to Jeffrey Epstein, then sued him for subletting it.

>> Classic. He makes a profit on it. That's classic.

>> A weird and forgotten case from the '9s shows how connected Epstein was to power. So, his Upper East Side mansion has become, this is from BuzzFeed News, has become notorious for its reportedly macabra interior decor, immense size and monetary value, and as the site of some of his lurid alleged crimes. But Epste, the financeier, who has been charged with sex trafficking and accused of sexually abusing young girls, used to live in a different Upper East Side mansion only a few blocks away. It's mansion. It's a mansion that's embroiled him in a dispute involving a lawyer for French Connection heroin ring suspects. the State Department and transitively the government of Iran. The now forgotten case laid out in newspaper clips from the time and extensive court documents offers a glimpse into the strange facet of Epstein's life at the time. Beginning in February 1992, Epste rented a former Iranian government building that had been taken over by the State Department during the Iranian Revolution at 34 East 69th Street. So that's literally like two blocks away in one of Manhattan's most expensive neighborhoods at a rate of $15,000 a month. But things went sour when by the way $15,000 a month in February 1992. It's a lot of money. It's clocking and he got it in February '92. What I just said with Juan Allessie, it's clocking. Mhm.

>> So, but things went sour when the government sued Epstein in the Southern District of New York, alleging that he had at one point failed to pay the rent on time and had violated the lease by moving out in early 1996 and subletting the place the place without the State Department's submission. His subtenant was Ivan Fiser, a New York City criminal defense lawyer who had famously defending defended members of the French Connection and the Pizza Connection Italian Sicilian mob drug rings. The government also sued Fiser. Jesus Christ, man. And then I, you know, I mentioned Ivan Bowki earlier, but I'm like he we should look this up, but I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that after so he there's a thing called So the CIA installed the Shavaron.

>> Yes. >> Not even controversial.

>> Not even contro. That was Kermit Roosevelt, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Teddy Roosevelt's nephew or something.

>> Yeah. Something like that. and with MI6 and then because most of deck had been elected and was going to nationalize the oil.

>> Yep. Can't have that.

>> Yeah. And so now it's like I think of BP mostly whatever after that. So So the Shaw was like not a good ruler, right? And he's from the Palevi family. Then there's the Palevi Foundation owned a skyscraper in Manhattan which I think later was seized to and like distributed to um victims of terrorism. But I'm pretty sure that in between uh Ivan Boowki had an office in there which is like what the [ __ ] So look I don't

>> it would make sense. Um, when you told me that's what you just read out loud, that kind of stuff makes me think like, well, the unseen part almost has to be intelligence. Do you know what I mean? Like like I just who else could pull this kind of thing off where like you're kind of keeping this guy in these houses and you're and they're you know he definitely got a sweetheart deal on the next townhouse up but like

>> got sweetheart deal on this one too.

>> And the guy you know um you know when he was at Bear Sterns Bill Casey was there.

>> Um I forgot about that. Tell people who Bill Casey was. So, Bill Casey ended up running the CIA, but he

>> another one who could stop a clock.

>> Yeah. But he Bill Casey I it I'll just tell you that in if you read all the books I've read and all the freaking research like his name just comes up 10 million times associated with like some of the shadyiest stuff you've ever heard of the CIA being accused of.

>> Um a lot of Noriega meetings, you know, this kind of stuff. Um so and you know and Iron

>> Contra

>> um so yeah

>> he was like the architect of that if I remember correctly.

>> Yeah. And then um while Epstein somewhere in these years Epste has an office maybe in that building that he shares with Stanley Potinger.

>> Who was he again? Stanley Boner was like a a major figure in around Contra who um later became like a popular novelist and I think his son is in the Trump administration right now. But um Stanley Pottinger um many people believe was like working on behalf of the CIA in Iran Contra.

>> Feels like all you got to do is be connected to Jeffrey Epstein and you get a job in the government. every government, Democratic and Republican. It's just

>> Leon Blackson has a job.

>> And that's what I'm saying.

>> Yeah.

>> So to, you know, just on the surface, sons are, you're not guilty of what your father did. I love Woody Harlson. He's a great actor. You know what I mean? Like his dad was a serial killer.

>> That said, >> that was a crazy podcast.

>> Yeah.

>> I forget what was it called?

>> The the Was that another serial one?

>> I don't think so. I think it was independent one, but anyway,

>> nut story. But, you know, that said, when you're running a White House, especially, there's no place where optics matter more.

>> Yeah.

>> And to hire this [ __ ] guy, his son, into the White House after all this [ __ ] was out. What are you doing?

>> What are you doing?

>> I I've always felt like Trump was kind of like an errand boy for bigger forces, you know? And to me, it's like, well, this they just told him to do it,

>> you know? That's why they told him to do it.

>> Yeah. You know what? He's there's something that really sticks out with me. When he did that podcast with Joe Rogan shortly before the election, one of the things Joe asked him about was all the turnover of people from his first administration. And I forget ex I'm going to paraphrase. people can go check it out and see what he said. But in a very untrumplike way, he actually admitted, you know, maybe Joe asked him like some mistakes that maybe that was how he asked, "Are there some mistakes from your first administration that you wouldn't want to do again?" And Trump was like, he said, "Some of the people I hired and some of the people I brought around," and he brought up John Bolton. He's like, "That guy never saw someone he didn't want to bomb. You know, look at us now." Right? And and you actually got John Bolton arguing against the Iran war. That's how ass backwards we are. But like there's something to it that maybe those people are people. It's what you're saying. They were like placed around him and he just agreed to it and now maybe he's doing it again despite the fact that he seemed to have at least some self-awareness. He was doing that last time. But it is I agree Henry. hard for me to not see that same pattern because it's like how many of these guys are you going to put around you that it just is easy for us on a [ __ ] podcast to pull up and be like well look who he's connected to

>> you know there's no way it's the best and brightest you know what I mean these are not the like the people who I mean just look at Christine or whatever like she's just

>> oh [ __ ]

>> like she's terrible

>> [ __ ]

>> but unthreatening right like she's not going to like no one's going to say we should make her president to replace her you know what I mean like like it's safe for him

>> he's like she won't 25th me.

>> Yeah. No chance. No chance.

>> Oh my god. That's good. Jesus Christ. Real quick, Henry, can I just run to the bathroom?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's always a good idea.

>> We'll be right back.

>> All right. So, we actually just while we were taking a bathroom break, there's something a little fresh off the press. I just sent it to you, D. We got it.

>> Mhm.

>> So, you're going to like this new Can you go back? No, that's actually good. Sorry, D. So new Jared Kushner and family and Epstein were close according to latest Epstein files. Who's this from? Def Merlin.

>> This is from

>> Mer just X out for a sec.

>> Oh, sorry.

>> So I can give the Twitter account Merlin's Capital. Merlin Capital. Okay. So there's an email August 24th, 2017 to Michael Wolf, the author where Wol says, "Great. I'm in DC on Wednesday with Kushner. How about Thursday? And and after Jeffrey Epstein said he was in Wednesday to Friday. And then go to the next one. Def April 9th, 2015 to uh subject Josh Kushner redacted rights to Jeffrey Epstein. Were you the one that introduced him and Steven? His girlfriend Carly Clauss just did a coding thing for girls. We are about to do something similar at the bank. So this is someone at a bank. That's interesting. We can reach out officially, but always nicer to have a personal touch when possible. I wonder if this is Jess Staley who wrote this. I'm totally speculating, but and then go to the next one right here. There you go. Motherload Friday, May 17th, 2019 from Chris Delorio to redacted subject Apollo/Epstein/Cushner connection.

>> Okay. Have you this Chris guy Chris Deloro, are you familiar with his name?

>> No. So, in the Epstein files, if you if you search the stuff that I search,

>> Chris Deloreio is a disgruntled he's like an engineer who got ripped off with some startup or something. And since then, he's been emailing the SEC like like he he has these just see that big blacked out wall at the bottom of that email. That's because he's writing to like the entire SEC like one by one and he's just like basically like is is sketching out massive money laundering fraud of all kinds and he's narrating it like I he's one of these people I'm like I don't know if he knows what he's talking about or not. I have no reason to believe he doesn't but like you know it's just right

>> if you read these Chris Laurio emails they're all just like 10,000 crimes are alleged. It's like h probably I don't know like sure we have to do a little homework but he's an angry plugged in guy and he's all tuned into the idea that like all these people are moneyaundering and committing various

>> is a weird one man cuz he's had so much power in both administrations. It's not like he's pulling the strings and stuff. There's some people want to believe that he's not but he's had significant power to negotiate deals especially in the Middle East. And it's like you hear him talk. He's not a dummy. I'll give him that. Like he's he's clearly a smart guy, but came into a lot of money and as a real estate guy hasn't been the most successful dude ever. I mean, they had the famous building, what was it, 666 in Manhattan or something like that. Can we look that up, thief? They bought for some outrageous sum and it was worth half that like a year later. Is that is that right? Yeah. 666 Fth Avenue. Interesting number on that one. Uh but now 660 Fth Avenue purchased in 2007 for a record 1.8 billion often troubled real estate dealings before a 2018 bailout. It was the most expensive building purchase in New York City history at the time of its acquisition by Kushner Companies. It's just weird like why? Like you're trying to negotiate no war with Iran allegedly and you're sending Steve Woodco and Jared Kushner.

>> Yeah. >> Like New York City real estate guys.

>> Yeah. No, it's when I was talking about transactions and deal guys, right? Like to me

>> the whole Trump administration are deal guys. Yeah.

>> Right. Which means like

>> um the opposite of a deal to me is a relationship. Like a real honest like you know like a marriage or a you know whatever. Um, so like we think of the government as like, oh well these are our representatives like for America and they're thinking about America's interests and it's like I've seen no evidence of a single scrap of that anywhere in any of the Trump administration. Like no, these are deal guys.

>> Yeah. >> And there's a story um really amazing book by Connie Brook called Predator's Ball, which is like the story of Milin and Drexel. It's like it's great.

>> Predator, you're bringing some great books up.

>> Oh, you got to read that book. Connie Brooke is like a legend. She's a New Yorker writer. She's a legend. She knows so much and she was in the room for a lot. Like it's incredible work. But um one of the themes of that book is that Michael Milin had his brother work with him and his brother kept another set of books which wasn't it wasn't like fake Drexel books. It was Milin books, right? It was like at the time that they're investing on behalf of Drexel, they're also investing on behalf of Milin,

>> right? And so the the his brother's books were very threatening and felt off to like the other Drexal employees because they're like, "Well, what are you guys doing? Like I know what we're doing, but what are you doing?" And this was the like and I feel like that's a hallmark. This second set of books to me is a hallmark of, you know, it's never good. Um, and that's where, you know, like Josh Kushner is mentioned there. So like he's the one who's married to Carly Clauss and part owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.

>> Um, >> is he really? I didn't know that.

>> And so it seems to me like uh family is particularly good to have this like second accounting, right? But basically, you know, Jared Kushner in the first administration, there was a New York Times article was flying to like all meet with all these people on behalf of Trump in like the Middle East. Yep.

>> But Josh Kushner went >> around the same time and did deals. I was like, well, that's the second set of books happening there, right? It's like like Jared wants Saudi Arabia to do X, Y, and Z on behalf of the taxpayers of America, but then Josh is like, you know, it wouldn't hurt if you invested in this thing, that thing, right? And so Josh has been frequently successful in raising money. And so I, you know, the fact that like to me a deal person would be, God love them, you know, people got to buy things, but like the last person you would send to go and represent you and me in Tran or whatever, right? Like of course not. They're gonna do deals because that's what deal people do.

>> Yes. >> Um it's like the scorpion and the frog or whatever, right? Like they're gonna the the beneficiary of the deal is going to be this guy, right? It's like well we need someone who's trying to benefit hundreds of millions of Americans, right? It's like we don't we don't have that.

>> I think what you're pointing out on a bigger scale is something that I just think is is the way it is now. And that is in most cases every accusation is a projection. You know, when you look at these two parties, the Democrats and Republicans, they each have their different weak points of like things that they do wrong or things that it's like objectively like what the [ __ ] was that? But the style with which they do it, the swampy kind of style is the same.

>> And that's what's really like removing the politics and everything from it. That's what's been really disappointing about Trump, particularly in his second term. It's like this is the outsider. this is the guy that's supposed to come in and drain some stuff. And I'm seeing the same [ __ ] that plagued the Biden administration happening in some different vortex >> with Trump. And I think the way you're characterizing it of like it's just make a deal. And there's some of that stuff that of course that occurred in the first administration as well as you're pointing out like

>> you know more for me but not for thee. That's just that's the way this class of people thinks. And what's even scarier, Henry, is that one of the things that's becoming clear from these emails that I think I I I've cited it a million times now. I'm going to keep citing it, but I think Tucker Carlson put it perfectly. He's like, there's this supra government kind of thing.

>> He's like, there's your elected leaders, some of your leaders of industry, and the people that you think have power, but there's actually two classes above them.

>> The top class is the people who really run the world. The class in between there is really rich fixer people who work for those people and tell the people that you think run the world what the [ __ ] to do. And Jeffrey Epstein's in that middle class. You could think of like the Rothschilds >> in the top class or whatever. But that's kind when you see people running around the world and making deals behind the politics. You got to think they're from those top two classes right there.

>> Yeah. And I think I I you know I think that's right. But I also think don't give them too much credit. Like to the extent that I've had any exposure, like they're they're not super wizards. They're not super villains. They're not movie. Like they're douchebags. Like they're they're getting away with it because they're appointed and chosen representatives like cuz we fall for it. So that's why I think like what you're doing is kind of this this is the front line of this battle for America or whatever right here, right now. Because look

>> at us, Steve.

>> Yeah. It's you guys. Um go

>> because to me like the question is like when whoever takes the microphone to explain like well we looked into it and it turns out like Steve Woff's in the clear like do you buy it is the question right? Like for most of history, like this cabal's brand of BS has worked cuz you have like, you know, a white guy who went to a good college and wears a red tie and a blue suit and speaks in a certain tone and has certain bar certifications, whatever. And that person says like, well, you know, it's it all checks out and then enough Americans are like, well, they looked into it, right? But now it's like, you know, the head of BCCI flew on Jimmy Carter's plane. No, no, sorry. Jimmy Carter flew on his plane all over. And I'm like, [ __ ]

>> not okay. And I don't want Jimmy Cart. I mean, I don't I don't want anyone to tell me that it was all in the clear. It's like, no, I want, you know, evidence or I don't believe anybody,

>> right? And who was banking BCCI at that time and what were they doing? Can

>> you explain the whole BCCI thing? Let's let's do it. I've been holding it off all day. Let's go. Well, so BCCI was um there was a guy named Abetti, Abbei, I'm not sure I'm saying it right, who was I think kind of a genius who figured out that basically there wasn't an Arab bank, but there were all these like Arab governments that might invest with an Arab bank. And so they went around to all of these governments, hey, you you should you can bank with the Jews if you want, but like why wouldn't you bank with us? And so they had a really great time just raising money across Africa and the Middle East. Um at the same time though

>> Pakistani Abetti.

>> Yeah. He's from Pakistan. Yeah.

>> Um and you know it depends who you believe on this exact point but it kind of looks like this guy Abetti went to the royal family of Abu Dhabi which was before there was such a country as the

The United Arab Emirates. They were the ununited Arab Emirates, right? And Abu Dhabi was one of them. And this Al Nihan family, like, ran Abu Dhabi. And he was like, you know, like, if you guys got together, you could be kind of a moving force in the banking world because they had oil, right? Instead of being all like, you know, these, how many are there? Seven emirates, I think. Um, and being all warlike with each other. Just get together and you can be kind of a big force. And so it looks like BCCI formed the UAE.

And then, uh, and but meanwhile, we learn later, BCCI has like squads of people that murder. They have, um, there's like, all the opium is grown in Afghanistan and then it's exported into the tribal areas of Pakistan and then it was processed in all these different processing facilities that had a bunch of deep CIA ties. And then they make a bunch of money, but you can't get your money out of Pakistan. Well, and like BCCI was like, "We got you." Um, a lot of the biggest ship, there was like a huge shipping company that was like BCI's biggest client, like just shipping stuff all over the world. And, uh, so it became this kind of catchall of, it's definitely a bank. Uh, it was maybe also just like a hub of transnational crime, certainly involving drug money. Um, and then the CIA bank there because the story was because they needed ways to like, you know, move money quietly offshore.

"Yes, they need, they do need that."

Okay, get this, though. This is where there are so many parts of this that are batshit crazy. But one part of it is, so then they hired, secretly they hired one of the most reputable lawyers in D.C. I think his name, I, I don't want to guess his name, but it's easily findable. I've published it. Um, and he kind of ran interference because they were banned from the U.S. banking system, but they wanted to buy U.S. banks to get their assets from this dirty.

"Why were they banned?"

Great question. I don't know. Like, banking regulars in the U.S. were like, "We're not doing this BCCI thing for some reason." I mean, they were controversial. They were on the cover of Time magazine, was like, "The World's Dirtiest Bank" and stuff, you know, it wasn't like a total secret. And maybe financing terrorism. I think terrorism money came through BCCI.

"We don't like that."

Yeah.

"So, but this guy, like, basically made it so they sneakily bought the Bank of Georgia and I think another bank in the U.S."

"Using shell companies."

"Yeah. Amazing shell companies with, like, this, you know, highly regarded American lawyer as, like, installing the figurehead run." Okay, so all this is happening. Okay, here's where it gets really crazy. As this is happening, uh, in Beverly Hills, the high-ranking employees of Drexel call Michael Milin Shep. That's his nickname.

"Shep."

"Shep. Shep. Sh, which is short for Shepherd."

"Yeah."

"Which is the villain, the arch global villain who leads a team of murderers in this, um, novel called The Matter Circle. And like, it's a, it's a Lelum thriller about like, you know, this, this global cabal that uses young women as sexual playthings to entrap people and then like controls the world by taking over boards and murdering people who don't go along. Right."

"You're not beating the allegations right now."

So they, so they call him Shep. And then in that book, they're like, like, there's, you know, there's a lot of spies and running around and good guys and bad guys, but in that book and sexual slaves and all this stuff, but in that book, they're like, um, like, "Well, how do you move the money?" It's like, "Oh, like through a bank, through an Arab bank." They have their headquarters in Atlanta, which is actually where, at that time, when this book came out, nobody knew that BCCI, the Arab bank, secretly controlled this bank in Atlanta. When I read that Atlanta line, I was like, "What the [ __ ]?" Yeah. And there's definitely BCCI had, um, significant overlap with DxO and Lambert, like, okay, their money intermingled in a bunch of ways. Um, they got in some trouble for it, but I think we probably only saw a tiny percentage of it.

"I want to get to that quick question, though. You mentioned they were involved in laundering, basically taking the money and possibly partnering with the CIA to do it, that was coming through the illegal heroin train in Afghanistan."

"Yes."

"You know, John Kuryaku tried to blow the whistle on that."

"Oh, yes."

"That would have been very helpful if he had."

"Yeah. And then they arrested him right after on a case they had closed. He was working for John Kerry, who he said is like the worst guy ever."

"And he was the investigator for the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee."

"And he went to Afghanistan and he's like, 'The [ __ ]?'"

"We're supplying 93% of the world's heroin."

"And they're like, 'Yeah, don't look at that.'"

"Yeah."

"And then he got a charge. And then that, then, you know, at the one of those committees, it might have been the Church Committee, like they were basically like Southern Air Transport, like, you know, what's this? They basically, you know, it's in the meeting, like CIA planes, cocaine into the U.S. and, um, and they were like, 'Well, would you do?' They asked some CIA guy, like, you know, like, 'Would you do it again?' And he's like, 'Well, like, you know, not this way,' or like, 'What do you mean?' Like, like, 'We would definitely just be like way more covert.'"

"Cover it up."

They literally moved that company to Leslie Wexner's local airport in New Albany. Um, and there's recently reporting that.

"Well, that's [ __ ] obvious."

"Yeah."

"Like they're trying to cover it up more and they move it to his airport."

"I mean, no one knew Westeros's name then, right? It was just like, no, we're just using these planes that, you know, to transport the limited apparel. That's what they said. And they did, even after that, they, there's a report they did find cocaine on those planes. But yeah, I'm, I'm not a mobster. I don't know a lot about the mob, but I'm thinking if you."

"So, it's no argument the CIA has been in the drug trade."

"Yeah, big time."

"Remember the headline? The CIA investigated itself with regard to the drug trade and found no wrongdoing."

"Perfect. Good job, guys."

"So, but do you know how unusual it is to, like, a) be in the drug trade at a high level, which is basically just an infinite supply of money, right? And then just quietly get out of it."

"Yeah."

"That doesn't make, nobody does that."

"No way."

"But they're basically 0% chance of getting caught because they are the CIA."

"Anyway, this is like a dumb thing for me to talk about."

"No, it's not. Because unfortunately, it underscores the overall point here. These different agencies around the world, including our own here, right at home, are willing to get involved with the dirtiest businesses. Not willing. They voluntarily and excitedly get involved with the dirtiest businesses to mankind if they view it as, you know, something that can help their needs. I mentioned it earlier, but just for context for you, one of the guys I had sitting in your seat is a former knock from CIA who the only reason he's not still operating is because a foreign intelligence service got a leak in CIA and then leaked five names on the dark web."

"That's not nice."

"And he was one. Yeah. So he had to be pulled from the field and everything, but."

"He, he eventually ended up in the cartels as one of their chief money launderers around the world. That was his cover. And part of what he did, he told the story sitting in that chair was he worked a guy who was a top 10 guy at a top 10 bank at a bar, developed a relationship with him and eventually got him to launder money for the cartels. And the idea is you use a dark criminal underworld organization like that, which has inevitable connections."

"Mhm."

"To slide in as a spy, not to stop them, but to work with them so that you get access to their connections and get intelligence from that that you deem as a better trade-off for the bad things that they do. And for me, I'm like, 'Okay, so poisoning our streets and killing people every day with fentanyl, being complete savages and killing people 'cause you disagree in a [ __ ] card game or whatever it might be, dropping heads off.'"

"The other stuff is worth it for that. It just doesn't, for as a normal human being, it doesn't clock for me."

"And you know, like, I, cocaine used to be imported into the U.S. by like a kilo at a time on flights."

"Right. Yeah."

"And then over the '80s, the CIA got involved and it became like, you know, boatloads, plane loads, you know, and not just a guy with a carry-on suitcase, right?"

"And, um, family court, like, um, like the number of instances of like families getting blown apart and going to court to like, like went up sixfold, I think, I might over the '80s while the total value of all of the money in Wall Street doubled. So like, to me, like our financial services industry is like, I'm not saying that doubling was all cocaine money."

"Right."

"I see what you're saying."

"It's a lot."

"Yeah, it's a lot."

"Right. And so to me, like."

"If you know, I, I had lunch with a friend who's a great guy who knows a lot about investing or whatever. And I was like, 'What's the bank that is good at like, not taking drug money?' And he couldn't even, like, I couldn't even, like, process the question well. He's like, 'Well, you know, you can get a lot of trouble if like, you know, like, 'Know Your Customer' rules.' I'm like, 'No, but like, assuming they're reasonably good at like, moving it one or two steps before it would come to you. Now it's, it's just an investment from like a family trust or South Dakota, whatever.' Like."

"And, and he's like, 'Oh, that's totally allowed.' I'm like, 'Work with me on this.' You know, like, like, is there a bank that's like savvy?' And he was basically like, 'Look, the only filter is like, what will actually, what will you, the lawyers actually get you in trouble for?'"

"Yeah."

"Right. And like, that's not a filter at all."

"Spot on. It's exactly what it's like."

"It's exactly. That's why it's so hard. I mean, I [ __ ] hated working in a bank 'cause there were rules, dumb rules on everything. Not good rules like that."

"But like, that's all it was. It was never, 'You can't do this because it's wrong.' Yeah."

"It was, 'You can't do this 'cause our legal team says you can't.'"

"So if you could find a way to circumvent that that the legal team was like, 'Well, that checks out for me.' They wouldn't care what it was."

"There's a forest trees problem there."

"Exactly."

"Yeah. And so John Kyako has been to Afghanistan and seen."

"Yep."

"Large-scale drug trade. That's 93% you said."

"So, okay. So that's what we could do the math on the profits of that. Like, where's that money? So people at the CIA who."

"Who don't, um, you know, who John Karaka was like, they hid it from him, right? So there's like a, a small cabal within the CIA."

"Environmentalist. Yeah."

"And they're, they have all this money. They got to put it somewhere and they had to put it somewhere they trust it, right? Like, is that what we're looking at with this Epstein scandal, right? Like, is that the money? Like, is, is, is this CIA drug money that we're talking about? I don't know. But I'm saying."

"Some of it. Some of it has to be."

"It's got to be somewhere."

"Some of it has to be. I feel like he's almost above that, though. I feel like, like that's like, ah, let, let [ __ ] you know, Apollo take care of that or something because he was a fixer who served a lot of places and it's very clear he served, when you look at the evidence, he served MSAD dominantly. That was that was the place he was most loyal to and obviously crazy relationship with Hubar and many other people, but he worked with CIA and there's the evidence shows it goes back to like Iran Contra. And I feel like, I feel like where you're on to something is that he would be a guy who would know where all that money was going."

"Well, they're going to want to keep it in the compromat network."

"Yeah."

"Right. Like, you can't, there's somebody whose money it really is and that person's name won't be on an account, right?"

"So the person whose name is on the account."

"Has to be on video."

"Yep."

"If my theory is correct here, right? So to me, that's where it seems super useful. Right. I don't know. Like, we see him emailing a million bankers."

"Yeah."

"Right. Like, he can direct money around all kinds of places, right?"

"Um."

"I have a feeling that."

"Well, it would be very weird for the CIA not to use him for that. You know what I mean? If they know this guy."

"And he, he's good at that."

"Deal with the devil."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was asking Andy Bamante, who is definitely still in CIA, but your resident kind of on-camera CIA guy about this."

"Very handy to have. Yeah."

"Yeah. And he was like, 'What? How?' He put it in a really good way. He's like."

"'The two most, the, how did he say it? He said, 'The first most shocking day at CIA is the day you figure out who really runs the world when they tell you that.'"

"That's handy to know."

"'And the second most shocking day is is learning how you operate within that system because you ain't going to change it.'"

"Yeah."

"He says it better than that, but it's a cynical way of putting it, but."

"I don't suppose he told you who runs the world."

"Well, I'll give him this because it's kind of strange to see him changing a little bit with this story coming out now. I was, I was like, but he's always been the guy who, and this is, you know, he's got people online that really enjoy him and then people who [ __ ] hate him. And the people who hate him, it's because, well, number one, they think he still works for CIA and I would agree with them. But number two, he's never seen a conspiracy that he couldn't poo-poo and like Occam's Razor it away. And it's like, 'All right, Andy, come on. Like, who you doing PR for here?'"

"But he, when I talked with, I was talking with him about that a couple weekends ago, and the context of the conversation was like the Rockefellers."

"Yeah."

"And I was like, 'Interesting.' He would have never ever like kind of commented on that kind of thing a year ago. Yeah. Yeah."

"But he is now."

"So maybe it's like, 'Well, they know we're giving up the game.' I don't know. I don't know. But I found that very fascinating for sure."

"It makes, it checks out on a lot of levels. Yeah. Now, your investigation, this is what really got me, like, when I was first going through it, is how far back you ended up jumping because again, you're looking at this at the time, like 2019, 2020 NBA, and then you're writing chapters on like, so the Treaty of Versailles, like, how was that just strictly going down the Dulles rabbit hole? I'm trying to remember how that happened. I, I think so. There was a Sears Roebuck founders, like the Rosen, like there. Anyway, there's a, yeah, I was trying to look at the earliest days of the CIA and like the OSS is kind of unavoidable in the story 'cause, you know, Donald Bar hired Jeffrey Epstein and he was in the OSS. And like, what were they doing? And then it turns out like the OSS is crazy."

"Yeah."

"Um."

"What makes it so crazy to you?"

"Well, I think the first leader of it was this guy, like, I think his name was Wild Bill Donovan, right? And he spent the war in London having like orgies and stuff. Like, I mean, look it up, like, don't take my word for it, but, uh, and then, you know, then the, the Bank of International Settlement, right? This is some crazy stuff. So basically, the Dulles brothers are the Sullivan and Cromwell attorneys who work for the richest Americans of all time, including, I think, I might be saying the Rockefellers, but check me on that. Um, so what are they really doing? Like, I don't know, but they get themselves into the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles. So we're like figuring out how much Germany has to pay France, basically, for doing a bad job in World War I, right? And then I don't, you know, and then these, Germany's like, Hitler's top banker has all these meetings with American executives about like the importance of having multinational corporations. I don't even really understand this. And this is the early late '20s, early '30s."

"This is all actually that starts in like, like 1905 and stuff. They're like, and so, and, you know, that time Germany has the world's leading dye companies, like, like to dye clothes."

"And somehow in cahoots with their American meetings, um, they convinced them to become basically pharma companies. And they're multinational pharma companies. And they're the pharma companies we have today. Like, these are those same companies. But, and they make the gas that kills the Jews. And the, yeah."

"But they're multinational."

"Which means that that the whole time Hitler is doing this, like they can."

"Just shuffle money around and it's not Nazi money anymore, right? They can have like, like, uh, you know, this is where Swiss banking was invented, right?"

"Really? All right. Can you explain this a little more?"

"Yeah. So, uh, Swiss banking wasn't really a thing. Uh, but it just, um, IG Farben is the big company that made Zyklon B and, you know, it's one of the biggest drug companies at the time. And I think that."

"We, I, I've published on this. We should go and look at the original story, but like, um, I think I might be saying that."

"Uh, this guy Schacht was like, um, Hitler's lead banker. And you can see him meeting with all these American banking executives. Basically, they figured out a way to make IG Farben have headquarters in multiple countries so that when they make a lot of money from German taxpayers purchasing Zyklon B, they can then report it as income in Switzerland and put it in a bank. And, and these banks have special rules where no one can tell whose money that is, right? And then at the same time, uh, the U.S. becomes like a key force managing the Bank of International Settlement, settlement headquartered in, um, in Switzerland, overseen by a Dulles brother. And like, and basically, they're Hitler's bank. They'll literally like, we'll take your, like, you have crates and crates of gold teeth pried from the mouths of people in concentration camps, like, you know, deposited here."

"Also, where was Alan Dulles during the whole war?"

"Burn, Switzerland."

"Yeah. So that's what he was doing there. So he was there, like, he was America's liaison to the Bank of International Settlement. There's a great book about the, I think it's called."

"Devil's Chessboard."

"Uh."

"Is that the one you're thinking of?"

"No."

"Um."

"Thief. It was chapters 13 and 14 of of Henry's full. Yep, there it is."

"There you go."

"Hitler's American Business Friends."

"Yeah, there you go. Is that 13?"

"Um."

"And so they were offering American corporations, um, monopolies, right? So they're like, they're like, 'Hitler's going to conquer all of Europe and then Texaco can be the unique supplier of of petroleum to all of Europe.'"

"And they're talking with the people who essentially would become the founders of the OSS in doing this."

"Yeah. So the founders of OSS are like, you know, well soon to be on the wrong side of this, you know, um, yeah. So that's how I got treat, um, the Treaty of Versailles too, is is one of the most ignored parts of history to me because they, they rigged the game to create a vacuum in Germany. It's like, it's on, it's not like they knew at the time who Adolf Hitler was in 1919, because he hadn't made a name yet. But they created an opening throughout the '20s in Germany by [ __ ] Germany into the [ __ ] fifth century that there was going to be the opportunity for some sort of extreme voice to rise, right?"

"And create some sort of revolutionary power."

"Yeah. And the Sullivan Cromwell guys are the, are the dudes who basically told Woodson or Woodrow Wilson what to do."

"Yeah."

"That's nuts."

"It's pretty sadistic."

"It's very sadistic."

"Yeah."

"They're. And but that's the thing, like you're talking about who they were, who their clients were, and who they were allied with. We're talking about the Masters of the Universe, the Rockefellers and stuff like that. So it makes you think, you know, are the Dulles brothers that same class, that fixer class?"

"Yeah."

"As like Epstein?"

"Yeah. So in The Devil's Chessboard, like they, you know, basically like JFK is like, 'I'm kicking you guys out,' and then he just got shot."

"Yeah. No, the [ __ ] you're not."

"Yeah."

"Imagine like getting kicked out by the president and then you still run the world's most powerful intelligence agency from your Georgetown apartment 'cause you can."

"Yeah. And LBJ's like, 'All right, I'll keep you.'"

"'You can come back now. In fact, you can sit on that commission, too.'"

"'What do you guys need exactly?'"

"Yeah. You can investigate yourself and and find nothing."

"So, you end up at that. And then you were also the one who wrote about how I cite this a bunch on the podcast about how when things started turning and America was becoming enemies with Hitler, like the government, these guys were like, 'Ah, come on, really?' And then eventually Pearl Harbor happened, Germany declares war, and they're like, 'All right, we'll go to, we'll go to war with the Nazis.'"

"Well, this is inconvenience. Call him up like, 'Sorry, Adolf, listen, it's nothing personal, but like, they didn't even want, they were like, not even for stopping him, they're just like, 'This would have been good for us.' Oh, we were on RA. I feel like, you know, and like the, the financial class in New York was like on rails. It's just like, yeah, we're doing a Hitler deal, right? Like, like we're in on this. Like this is a win. They've been investing for years, you know? Um, Texaco was shipping like the, the gas in Hitler's tanks was Texaco gas and they evaded blockades from the British government to like deliver it 'cause they wanted the monopoly in Europe. So they would come and they had meetings like at the Plaza Hotel. I forget the name of the guy who was like Hitler's representative in New York, but they just like had meetings with these business leaders. They were like, 'Here's what we're going to do for you. Here's what we're going to do for you.'"

"And can we, can we find that from chapter 13? Deis? That that was the best chapter title. Nazis at the Waldorf Astoria."

"Or Waldorf Astoria."

"What was the name of the guy?"

"Uh, yeah, if you keep going."

"You think?"

"Yeah, let's try that. Plaza Hotel. The Waldorf Astoria Hotel."

"Oh, yeah. I keep going down."

"That's where Leon Hold on. Leon Black's dad, Eli, convinced shareholders to approve the takeover of one of the most intelligence-connected firms of all time, United Fruit. You know what you didn't mention here? It's also where Lucky Luciano had a residence."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah."

"It's where Glenn Maxwell has been photographed grinning in formal wear. And it's where David Stern hosted the first NBA draft lottery ever. David Stern made an appearance in the Files."

"No, it's not him."

"It's not him."

"Yeah, it's a different guy with the same name. I know I sound like I'm like Andrew Mustamonte here, but like, but yeah, it's literally, um, there's a guy who's like an assistant to some of the royals. He's an American banker, I think, who like worked for Sarah Ferguson."

"Oh, that's so. Yeah."

"Sorry, David. Rest in peace to the commissioner. He caught a drive-by for a while there."

"Yeah."

"All right. And then after celebrate Hitler, is it Wester?"

"Yeah, I think that's right."

"But after the war, Wester himself told the story of visiting the U.S. at the behest of Hitler's foreign minister and meeting industrialists like Henry Ford."

"Yeah."

"Wow. And I think there's a picture there of, um, let's see, 1929, J.P. Morgan executives traveled to Paris to meet with the president of the German Reichskreditbank, Helmar Schacht, to negotiate an economic plan to stabilize Germany's economy after World War I. So that guy Schacht then became Hitler's like chief banker. And so he's like meeting in a photo here with J.P. Morgan."

"With J.P. Morgan."

"Yeah. These are like the big wigs of J.P. Morgan meeting with Hillary."

"Oh, with the company. I thought you were saying the actual guy, still though. Yeah."

"In 1929. That's a bad omen."

"Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let's crash the stock market and put Hitler in power. That's the other thing. We almost avoided him."

"Al, if the stock market didn't crash, he wouldn't have got in."

"Why is that?"

"Because Germany, as bad as it was in the early '20s, then he went away to prison. And they weren't balling or anything, but like the economy recovered just enough that people were like, 'All right, you know, we can live.' And then the stock market crash affected the whole globe, crashed everything again. He had come out of prison."

"And then."

"Wow."

"Vacuum."

"I didn't know that."

"I wonder if they were cooking it up right there."

"Yeah, maybe."

"All right, so we're going to get this guy, Joe Kennedy. He's going to buy and speculate on all these stocks."

"Totally."

"Do all these people just like sit in rooms and [ __ ] each other?"

"I know what it's, we got to just like, somebody has to tell us the story, right?"

"So, I was saying this to a guy, a guy I know."

"Knows a lot of these people."

"Mhm."

"And he's freaked out, right? He's not okay with it. He's learning things now that are blowing his mind, like people that he's met and, you know, worked for or whatever. And he's like, you know, 'What is happening in the world?' Basically, he's pushing me, but he's like, 'You have to explain this to me.' I'm like, 'I have to explain it to you.' You know what I mean? Like, you've been in the room, you know, like, but."

"But."

"I said to him, I was like, 'Look, there have to be a bunch of people who like participate in this in some way, know a lot, but did nothing with little girls or whatever, and they, they have to want to like clear their name.' And this guy was immediately, he's like, 'No.'"

"He's like, 'Not right now. It won't happen.'"

"He's like, 'Because right now everybody assumes that if anybody gets in trouble, they're going to get pardoned by Donald Trump.'"

"He's like, 'So until, if but if one person goes down, then there's a bazillion people who will talk because they have to believe that they're going to go to prison if they don't.'"

"They think they're going to get pardoned by Donald Trump."

"According to this guy."

"So I'm like, 'So this is, I'm thinking, all right, someone's got to go down. You're first, Leon.' That's my, that's my thought here. It's just like, he's the most obvious worst guy. I cannot, there's no possible explanation for. So I think we got to be a little focused here. I think we got to like, it's already in the SDN way files, the whole case against him. Like, we just need people in power to make the choice. Like, it has to cost them to not prosecute Leon. Has to cost people in power right now. Which actually is a segue to thing I'm dying to tell you about."

"Please."

"Which is I just published this thing on Saturday. Okay."

"Oh, yeah. He's Henry's back in the game now."

"I'm back in the game. He entered back in. He, like, this is how I described it. I was, I was actually, I was talking with Mark Gagnon about this and I'm like, Henry basically walked in, hit like a [ __ ] 550-foot walk-off shot and walked out of Yankee Stadium, never looked at it again. No one cared. No one appreciated it. And now he's like, 'Yo, I'm back. I'm here.'"

"I'm back."

"And I don't know, like, I will not be the one to like narrate the bigger picture. It's dizzying to me. But there's like, I feel like I've got a clear view of like some things, right? And like, I'm going to take responsibility for those things. And one of the things that's just been like driving me batch crazy is Jay Clayton runs the Southern District of New York right now."

"Yeah."

"Okay. So, let's just talk about Jay Clayton for a second. Um, so he graduated from college, went to law school, and then he worked at Sullivan and Cromwell."

"Mhm."

"Which may have come up 12 or 15 times today. Then at home, his, his, let's see, his private clients there were, um, a who's who of Epstein friends, uh, Reed Hoffman."

"No."

"Um, Barclay's when it was run by Jess Staley."

"Goldman Sachs was his big client."

"Uh, Harvey Weinstein's company."

"Oh, that's nice."

"Uh, Deutsche Bank. um, UBS, which actually has some, uh, Ghislaine Maxwell ties, um, and also this guy Paul Tudor Jones, who's maybe come up, uh, you know, I'm not sure."

"Big hedge fund guy."

"Big hedge fund guy. So he worked for all those people, made a lot of money. And then, uh, Trump appointed him to run the SEC in the first administration. At this time now, uh, there's like very credible information that the SEC did not adequately police Apollo during that period."

"Yeah, there it is. From your work."

"Um."

"Okay. So then he's running the SEC. And then there was a very strange news story where Bill Barr met with Jeffrey Burman, who is, who did run the SDNY in the first administration, is the person who arrested Epstein."

"Mhm."

"Bill Barr meets with them in the Pierre Hotel and says, 'We're going to go in a different direction. Um, we don't want you to run the SDNY anymore.' And, um, and he's like, 'Look, you don't have the authority to fire me. I'm staying.' And so then Bill Barr releases a press release saying that he's resigned, and he holds a press conference and says, 'I have not.' And they have this like standoff. And what they want to do is bring in Jay Clayton. This is public that they're going to bring in Jay Clayton to replace Jeffrey Berman. Jeffrey Berman went on Fresh Air and told Terry Gross that they wanted to do this. I'm quoting now, 'to disrupt and delay the investigations we were pursuing.'"

"What, when, this is 2019?"

"Uh."

"Or 2018?"

"Uh, 2020."

"2020."

"So this, wow, last year."

"Um."

"Yeah. Here, this is from your piece right here."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

"Yeah. June 19th. This is Berman talking that June 19th, 2020. He called me."

"To a meeting at."

"It's kind of weird that the AG's calling you to a meeting at his suite in the Pierre Hotel in New York. That's a little weird to me."

"And he's from the CIA, too."

"Yeah. Yeah. And as soon as the meeting began, he told me that he wanted to make a change. He wanted me to resign and take the position at Main Justice and he wanted to put in Jay Clayton. Clayton. Why was Jay Clayton considered a Trump ally? Burman says, 'Well, Jay Clayton was currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the important thing, and I knew what Barr's agenda was, it wasn't to have someone nominated and confirmed by the Senate. That, remember, this is five months before the election. Barr's agenda was to get somebody in immediately as acting U.S. attorney pending whatever nomination was going to happen, but to get someone in immediately in the Southern District, someone from the outside, someone who he trusted, which would disrupt and delay the investigations we were pursuing, which included, as we mentioned, the Steve Bannon 'We Build the Wall' investigation, as well as the Ukraine investigation that we were pursuing out of the indictments of Lev Parnes and Igor Fruman.' I wonder if he's also holding in, I don't know this. I'm speculating. I wonder if he's holding in the Epstein thing, too."

"So then, um, Clayton doesn't get this job. Uh, they end up appointing Berman's assistant to do it for a little while, kind of a compromise, and Berman steps away. And then, first, uh, then Clayton resigns from the SEC and goes back into private practice where he works at Sullivan & Cromwell again. While he's also the chairman of the board of Apollo Global. He makes $500,000 a year, um, as this like outside appointee to the."

"Chairman."

"To, well, initially he's like, got some like outside director title, but then he becomes the chairman of Apollo Global."

"It's a serious position."

"And, uh, and then he goes right from that appointment into running. He's never been a prosecutor of any kind. And when Trump's first takes office the second time, one of his first appointments is Jay Clayton is gonna run the Southern District of New York. And now we know that they have in their files just a fat trove of Leon Black stuff that nothing's happening with that. And so to me, like this is where it comes back to what you guys do and us and the people listening to this and watching this is, you know, are we cool with that? So far, we've been cool with that. They're not marching in the streets about Jay [ __ ] Clayton, you know?"

"But like, I, I'm not cool with it."

"Right. Like, I'm not, if he were to say that there's nothing in the files worth prosecuting, like, I do not believe it 100%."

"Because I've read the [ __ ] files."

"100%."

"You know?"

"So what's he doing there? How could this possibly be the choice? It's an insight. It's just right. It's just when it's, I almost appreciate it. Don't take this the wrong way, people, but like, I almost appreciate it when they actually take the effort to cover it up. Do better."

"Because when they just throw it right in your face to where you're leaving your report writing about, you know, [ __ ] LeBron James' latest negotiations with the front office of the Lakers to see something obvious like this and be like, 'People, why aren't we looking at this?' Like, that's crazy. Or I'm sitting here and I can look through emails and be like, 'Why aren't we?' People out there can go on to Twitter and say, 'Look at this email. Why aren't we?' But it's just, it's offensive. It's offensive to basic intelligence. And you make the point about the protest. I've been saying that, too. I'm not a protest guy, right? You wouldn't catch me dead at this stuff. But like, First Amendment matters, and I support people's right to do it. You know, I watch cities burn because one guy died."

"Yeah."

"We're talking about satanic child trafficking rituals here and you see nothing. And I, I talked about that on a recent episode. We put out the clip and and many people commented 100% correctly. They said, 'Yeah, because it's not in the government's interest and they don't fund it with their dark money.'"

"Yeah. Well, it also, look, I, I spent a lot of time examining digital traffic at ESPN, right? Just we're trying, like, what's a hit story? We're trying to make his stories, right? Just kind of see what works. And like, the fact is like."

"You know, the George Floyd, George Floyd's death has."

"Powerful narrative force, right? It's just like."

"Of course."

"And it's not really one guy, right? Like, a million people have seen or felt something similar, right? So like, it's, it checks out in the emotional stores of tons of people who see it, right? Like, there are lots of people who have been knelt on."

"There's a, well, what you're saying is there's a video of it, too. So people could viscerally be like, there's a movie scene, right? There's a powerful movie. Like, this thing we're talking about, like, you and I have spent years looking into it and we're still not even [ __ ] sure what it even is, right?"

"Right. And so like, it just doesn't have, like, before you can put your life on the line to go stand in front of like the, whatever, like the Tiananmen Square tank or whatever, like you have to really be clear about what it is."

"That's what I'm saying though."

"I would have said that, I probably still would have seen that argument pre-January 30th for the most part. But now, even though they're redacted, the pictures and videos we have, you see him holding the Jeffrey Epstein holding little girls who in some cases look like they're eight years old."

"It's like, now we have that. Now you got, you got those moments. And it's the most powerful people doing it. And it's like, they're big club. And it just sits, so every part of it sits so [ __ ] wrong with me, man."

"No, me too. And I'm like, okay. What's the, the number of people that I'm like, pretty certain should be like behind bars is."

"A lot."

"A lot. It's a big number, but they're not behind bars. So they're doing stuff. Um, I just got a picture. A friend of mine was at a Knicks game the other day and Leon Black was there."

"And I'm like, I'm like, 'Okay.'"

"So, so he gets to like."

"He's showing his face."

"Swamp around in public and do. And I'm like, 'All right, man. At the very least, I'm gonna tell you like, like I don't care what you say about anything. I think you're lying on everything. And like, and I don't know how much of that affects him in the rest of his life, but I think it's unpleasant to go around and have people just be like, whatever, man. Like, blah, blah, blah.'"

"Um, I do think it's important not to, there's a Wizard of Oz component to this too, where like, I think that it seems like for sure Leon Black is like deeply, deeply connected to some very, very proud people in ways that are hard to explain. And I've everybody from victims writing in their journals to like my friend who works on Wall Street are like, you know, 'No, he's like untouchable because of like stuff I don't understand, right? He's in some kingpin position in some way.'"

"Understand."

"So, in a way, it's like, man, mess with, mess with that bull, you're going to get the horns, right? That's probably true. But the other hand, I'm like, I don't [ __ ] buy it. I'm also just like, he's the little, he's a little guy. He's actually a big guy, but like, you know."

"Pulling some strings behind the curtain, trying to make it look like the Great and Powerful Oz, right? And like, I think it's important just to be like, I think when this is all done and we understand it a lot better, like we're going to be like, 'Those [ __ ] losers.' I don't think they're going to be like these great mastermind criminals. I think they're going to be like, 'Nice try, guys. Like, it worked for a long time.'"

"I, yeah. I hope you're right. But they need to be ostracized."

"You know? And don't do anything stupid to people. We, even though we don't trust the justice system 'cause they're [ __ ] up. Like, that is what it is. But ostracized from like, no, you can't just, who the [ __ ] you know? We, we see people heckle athletes at every [ __ ] game. Heckle that guy."

"Yeah."

"Heckle the [ __ ]. That's, yeah, that's legal. You can do that. You know what I mean?"

"And it's just so, that air of superiority that this Epstein class has, there's no better example of it than Howard Lutnick. There's, and I hate that guy. I really have a despondent nature of my soul that just [ __ ] and part of it is because I defended him in the past on calls over the years with my friend Danny Jones 'cause he would come up with other stuff and I had known Howard Lutnick's story on Wall Street like he was a guy that like saved Cantor Fitzgerald. His brother died in the tower. He lost 650 of his people in one day and somehow kept it all together and it was like a good story. And I think something about having just defended him on in that respect, you know, when other people raised questions about him over the years and then to see him so blatantly lie in people's face. I mean, the way that he concocted that story."

"This is sick."

"In that interview. And I said, 'I will never spend any time around that. Disgusting.' Just it was so dramatic and perfect. And he knew damn well."

"He was in all these emails with him. He knew damn well he'd been on that island. And then once it all came out, he still had the balls not only to not resign, but he had the balls to go in front of Congress and say, 'Yeah, I lied. What are you going to do about it?'"

"Yeah."

"And he's still advising the president today. That's Leon Black to me. It's the same class of people. That arrogance. [ __ ] you, dude."

"Yeah."

"I hate it. And I, I just, you know, and I, I try not to hate anybody, you know? I, I try to live and let live. So, it's just like my anger talking right now, but just the contempt."

"He's earned it. He's earned it."

"The contempt I have for someone."

"And he's holding it back. You like his sons run like World Liberty Financial, ever, which is the greatest way Trump's been enriched since he's been in office. And like, so that's why he's untouchable, right? I would guess, right? He's like, he's holding it back, right? He's holding."

"Um, yeah. Yeah. And I, to me, like we have not well understood all the nooks and crannies of this, but I think we've gone far enough down the road to know that like Howard Lutnick is going to get to sample life without credibility because of his wealth and his, you know."

"Zip code and dress or whatever. Like he got to just be like one of the guys and life was pretty good for Howard Lutnick, right? Not anymore. I think now it's like he's not going to be shunned from much in his daily life, but he's not going to, he can't hold a press conference and sway anyone on any topic ever again."

"And, um, or, or there's another one is, I, I've been messing with Claude as everybody has, you know, and, um."

"I put in the, the current and past membership of the Council of Foreign Relations."

"Oh."

"And I was just like, 'Hey, can you find Claude? Like, can you summarize like what Epstein ties we have here?' And Claude's like, 'Oh, buddy, we don't have time.' You know? Like, it's like, this is really a lot, you know? And I'm like, 'Okay, so that's it used to work.'"

"Yeah."

"Like that organization is an emblem of many others, but like, it used to be a good enough system to do whatever the hell they're doing, right? But, um, I was interested. I think John Kyako told you that like his friend."

"Got senior enough that she would go to those meetings. Like, it's all just arms trading, right?"

"So I'm like, okay. Okay. So, like, we, they, we thought that maybe it was something Ivy League-ish or, you know, something we beyond us, but no, it's like, they're."

Just selling missiles, right? That's what they're doing, I guess. Um, yeah. So, and then, then, and then, I mean, according to Claude, a huge percent of those people knew Jeffrey Epstein. I'm like, that's that's interesting.

Yeah. I don't think that they're not a credible organization to me anymore.

Yeah. There, there have been some people. You got to make some decisions fast when you're doing this. Like, "Oh, well, we have this guest in or that guest in." And sometimes, like, you'll see some weird connections and you'll be like, "All right, [ __ ] it. We'll do it." But there have been some people that were closely associated with that that I was interested in the subject matter that they were going to bring, but I didn't do it.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Because I've done some past podcasts, I'm like, I shouldn't have done that. You know what I mean? Now, it's hard when you're dealing with people in like DC that are anywhere near lobbying, which is just the dirtiest business ever. If you actually run into someone who's being vouched for is like, "No, no, I really like this guy." Or whatever, you can, you're still always going to find money and connections. It's like, "Oh, that's defined by Soros." Like [ __ ] like that. And you got to try to make a call. My best way to look at it is like, we put it on camera and people out there can listen to them for three hours. It's hard to hide for three hours. You know what I mean?

But there's going to be a point where like you hit a brick wall on it. It comes out. It comes out if someone's really surreptitiously doing things. I really believe that. I think I think people at home are not stupid about that at all. I think I think they pick up on that. Well, I followed that for years like in comment sections. But sometimes like the guys with Council of Foreign Relations, I'm like, I I can't do it. You know, what are you going to be advocating? Who are you going to sell me? It like it just feels like they always need a war.

Yeah.

And those are the guys at the middle of it.

I think we need to shift. Like it it makes me sad. I'm a dad and you know my I have one kid in college and one kid recently graduated and they have smart friends, and it makes me kind of sad that like, you know, these wonderful hardworking young people like come over and you, you know, you're just like you're rooting for them, right? But in by and large, if they want to make the most possible money out of college, they have to go do something for these guys.

Yeah.

There's almost no one else to work for that can pay you top top dollar. You're somehow in this tree of like people who know Leon Black and run big stuff, right? I mean, it used to be even like, you know, when I was at NYU from '91-'95, there were so many just local businesses in Manhattan run by like mom and pop or whatever, right? And now, like just the coffee shop downstairs in any building, like they have to cut a deal with the private equity guy who owns the building because they can't afford the rent. So they're kind of like this like boutique show coffee shop. They're not real real entrepreneurs, right? And it's just sad. It's like it's like this strange mall where ultimate decisions are all made by Leon Black or someone like him, right?

And I'm like, in that environment, like you certainly aren't going to go start a coffee shop.

No.

You know, like it's rigged.

You got to you got to do like you have to petition to the lords to do almost anything in the business world. And that is not in the interest of the free market or America, right? Like we definitely want to have a different market where the best coffee shop entrepreneur has the most money from coffee.

Right.

Right. We don't have anything like that right now. And and and so when you're talking about these people, like there probably are really smart people who started with love in their hearts who just got sorry, got ground down a little bit over time into doing these like, "Well, we don't touch that one," and "We're going to avoid this," and "Just don't ask me any questions about that." And next thing you know, you're emailing Jeffrey Epstein about how to raise money for your fund or whatever, which a lot of good people did, right? The good scientists and stuff like that.

Death by a thousand cuts in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think you're right about that. And that's the thing. It's like if you were around this guy, there's always going to be the question.

Yeah.

It's always going to be the question like, how much is it? And then the volume of it. You have to question that at some point. Years, three years ago, I had a guy in that seat, Lawrence Grouse, who's in the emails 7,500 times. He didn't do very well. You know what I mean?

No.

And like, it is hard for me to believe you are innocent if you are corresponding with that individual that much.

He's the one who was at Arizona State was. Yeah.

Yep. And he was trying to get Epstein on Joe Rogan back in 2017, you know, cuz he had just gone on the show. But like, guy who was respected in the physics world, done some very interesting work. We got along with him well when he was here, but like, you can't ignore that, you know? And it's like, how many does that mean? Because I I I know who like introduced me to him to be like, "Bring him on the show." I think that guy's fine. He's nowhere in the files, right? But how far does it stretch? Is it just you took a picture with him a few times, or did you have 7,500 emails? You know, there's it's levels to it. But if you were even around it, there's always going to be that thing where it's like,

Yeah.

How well, how well did you know him? You know?

It's kind of. And this is where I'm like, whole truth.

Right.

Like, I don't really care if Lawrence can like explain away his particular thing. I'm like, "No, no. Like, that's not the problem we have." I don't care, frankly, if it was you or another person like you. Like, what I want to know is everything, you know, like, what was happening? What was the story? Like, what made you feel weird? What, I mean, who was there? What else did they say? And like, this is where nobody's doing that. Literally no one is narrating the lived experience other than like, like Michael Wolf is a tricky figure in this.

The author. Like I pay for his Substack and I listen to a fair amount of his podcast just because at least of the people who were in the room with Jeffrey Epstein, he's one of the only ones who like tells stories.

Yes.

I don't know if I trust his storytelling totally. He's a little more implicated than I'm comfortable with, but, um, but at least he's trying to tell a story.

Yeah.

Like, what was Steve Bannon doing there? He's a he's a guy who will like riff on that.

You know?

That's what. And that's another thing, cuz we should get into Bannon now, too.

Mhm.

But the Michael Wolf, Steve Bannon dynamic is so bizarre because Michael Wolf does that famous book in 2017 where he had this unprecedented access to the Trump administration, which I'm like, why would they have given him that? They knew he didn't like them. And Steve Bannon gave him all the access, and he made Steve Bannon look like a jackass. But they're talking like buddies long after that. Here, it's very strange. Like, have you pulled on that thread at all? Like, what the bigger picture is there?

I was, I mean, I don't know. But to me, like, so then Steve Bannon gets arrested like on Guo Wengui's yacht, and that guy's like a, Jeffrey Epstein, basically, right? He's a guy like literally was setting up people in sexual like.

Oh, I don't know much about that. Yes, that guy, if you like, there's published that's on Truth Social somewhere, but like, there's, you know, he ran a bunch of hotels and had hidden cameras and like had pull with the party because he had people on video doing.

And then they kicked him out. Right.

Kicked him out. Well, it's hard to know. Was he.

Or.

Right. Right. Like, or is he like the guy who can run money offshore now 'cause he cleaned up the party or.

Whatever. Say he's wanted. I got you.

Yeah. I don't know. But, um, so so Bannon's re what Bannon's really doing is way more sorted than being this right-wing nut job in Trump's ear, right? He's.

He's making a currency with that guy. They were trying to make some digital money. They're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Um, and what he really wants to do is clear the decks for no crypto regulation, which is a way for the worst people in the world to move giants amount of money like without oversight. So to me, like, maybe this Michael Wolf thing is that he looked like kind of a simpleton, right? He looked like a guy who was easy to understand and definitely not like a high-level right.

Epstein accomplice. You, you were the first guy to paint the picture of like Steve's full timeline, though, which is crazy because then I would find I would get totally unrelated tidbits in other conversations with other people over the next two, three years where they would mention something about Bannon and a place he was in some year and I was like, "What the [ __ ]?" And to me, I, and I've said this privately to people for years, and I've talked about it publicly now, too. I, I since reading your stuff, I don't see a scenario where he's not a spy.

Yeah. I don't. I mean, you know more people in that world than I do, but like, if you just look at like the things he's interested in, like Cambridge Analytica is like a mind control company that they were investing in in 1992, effectively.

Yeah.

And and you know, he's right there with Milin in those years, and yeah, then now he's got this extensive Epstein relationship. Like, it just doesn't check out. It just doesn't make sense that this would be a career. And now, like, and what's with this like tons of partying as House in DC? Like, make it make sense.

Yeah. There's an article you can't find anymore. Maybe people out there will be able to find it, but I want to say it was from like Bloomberg Business Week. They did a big spread on him after he was named chairman of the campaign late summer 2016. You know, people are now learning who this Steve Bannon figure is. And the author talked about a, I can't remember if the article was from before and they were just like re-releasing it to talk about who he was or if they were writing it now. But the author talked about how Steve gave him full access to him, you know, a few years before, and he went to the townhouse with him and they just had this wild conversation. Like, for example, Steve Bannon said one of his favorite people that he respects the most on TV was Rachel Maddow. The guy was like, "What the [ __ ]?"

Mhm.

Like, she believes everything the opposite. He's like, "Yeah, but she's brilliant and here's how she builds her cases and stuff." Interesting. So there he's he's showing him some pictures on like the mantle like straight out of a movie scene. And the author said, "What what are your politics? Like, what do you believe?"

Yeah.

And Steve Bannon said, and I'm almost directly quoting here, but I can't find this article. He said, "I'm a Leninist."

And the guy said, "Leninist like Vladimir Lenin from the Soviet Union." He goes, "Exactly." And he's like, "He's a communist. You, you hate communists." He goes, "No, no, I'm not a communist. I'm a Leninist." He's like, "Yeah, what? Explain to me the difference." And he goes, "I want to burn it all down."

And it's so emblematic of the actions, the bluster that he takes politically. And then you see how he's talking behind the scenes. And not only does it appear he's not burning it down, it it it appears he's actually, you know, setting up where all the fire extinguishers need to be for these people.

Yeah. Very, very odd.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, and in 2017, he got on the National Security Council for a while.

Mhm.

Like, for him personally, maybe it's like a fun thrill or something, but like, it doesn't make any, you know, he's a political adviser.

Right.

And it didn't last long, but I'm like, okay, if you're a political adviser, then this is not terribly meaningful. But if you're a spy, it's the.

Oh, look at that. Look at the guy got it.

Um.

You've got it, bro.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Um.

What was this from, D? Oh, you got it on archive.is, Daily Beast. Yeah. Um.

That's it. But if you're a spy, right, then being on the Security Council is like 10 times more valuable, right? You can, you learn stuff that you give to somebody else, right? I'm not saying I know who that would be, but like.

It seems like was he emailing Epstein about that? I wonder. I haven't seen that. Like, who's like, "No, no, make, tell Trump to put you on Security Council," right? Like, who was that? Who was in Bannon's ear about that? I'd like to know that. The question I've always asked since reading your stuff and then doing more work on it and like trying to figure it out is, who? And I've, like, Danny Jones and I have talked back and forth about this for years. Who was he a spy for?

Yeah.

And where I'm at right now at this point is no one. Like, as far as intelligence agencies go. I'm sure he had, he was like an access agent in a way, like a Robert Maxwell kind of character with no real dominant allegiance. I would guess, just guessing.

But like the people that maybe he really was doing it for was that secret class, you know, the Rockefellers of the world, the Rothschilds of the world, insert it here. And somehow he got in that position. He's like the man in there checking in to make sure this Trump guy doesn't burn down our [ __ ] system right here. You, you keep his ass in line. I wonder if that's what it is because he finds his way up next to all these people over all the years. I mean, you're talking about the guy who financed [ __ ] Seinfeld.

I know.

Like, come on.

What the hell?

Like, what? You know, you see that and that he gets royalties on that to this day.

Yeah.

He's like a [ __ ] billionaire.

Yeah.

It checks out.

It's Well, also, you know, if you were Steve Bannon and you see Jeffrey Epstein and how things are going for him, I could see you might be like, "That looks pretty good."

Mhm.

You know, like, I could get some of that. Like, so how do you do that, right? I, I think he did a pretty good job of getting a master class, right?

Um.

Getting in, you know, whoever Epstein worked for or whatever Epstein knew and the leverage that he got. Epstein got to just.

I think Bannon's life is a lot harder than Epstein's, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

He gets to parade around on private jets with 17 pairs of readers everywhere he goes. Like, I don't know how Bannon's living, man, but it looks harder.

Yeah. You can see the wear and tear on his face, man.

He looks like he's going through it every time he talks. Just like, " [ __ ] man."

Look, are you, are you okay?

Listen, just give me my Jack and Coke and let's get through this.

Totally.

Yeah.

That's like the best picture of him, too.

Yeah, it gets worse from there.

He's weathered.

He is weathered for sure.

But what, you know, did you come across when you were originally investigating this? Obviously, we got a lot more look through into some of the really, really satanic kind of stuff in these latest emails, but did you come across anything that pointed in that type of direction back in 2020, 2021 where it's like, "Oh, maybe they're like sacrificing kids?" Yeah. Have you, do you have you followed Kirby Sommers at all? Do you know what I'm talking about?

That does sound familiar. So, she was, um, she's all over Twitter and stuff. Um, she's a victim of like, she was like kept as a sex slave by, she says, you know, and I see no reason not to believe her, um, a guy named Ira Rickless. Um, so.

I have seen this.

So, Michael Milken, like invented private equity in the US and, um, he bought Fair, which is like this famous house in Hollywood that later was Dr. for Jerry Buss's house. Um, and he married Pia Zadora, I want to say Michael Milken did. And, uh, I tried to connect with Kirby Sommers and like, you know, and like she says a lot of things that are that are along these lines and I'm inclined to believe her, but I never know like how she knows it.

And so, you know, we just, I have to try to be journalistic and vet this, right? And so.

It's a difficult thing.

It's very, very difficult to do. Um, but she's written a bunch of books. Um, and so, you know, the notion that all this like, like in the version, she is not alone in telling this version, right? There are a bunch of people who are like, "No, it's thousands of people, and it's murderous, and it's satanic, and it's, you know, Hollywood galore, and, you know, people are groomed from young ages," and all this kind of version of events. I, you know, I just didn't know what to do with it, right? Like, I, I'm worried for the people involved and I just didn't have a way to get to like, step two of like, you know, can we confirm this fact and like, what this time and place? And so for me, I'm like, I'm open to it. I'm, I'm open to it. It seems.

Pretty convincing.

Um, I'm also surprised that there aren't more, like, if you didn't have some big method of controlling everybody, like there would be whistleblowers, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Like.

Yeah.

You know, and every now and again, like some Hollywood starlet or young star will come and be like, "You guys don't understand." You know, like, "Everybody was molested when we were all on the kids show together." And most of the rest of the group was like, "I don't know what he's talking about." And I'm like, "Who is lying here?"

Right. Honestly, a thing that really freaked me out. This really freaked me out was Harvey Weinstein um kind of sidelined the careers of some promising young actresses who wouldn't sleep with him, right?

Um, maybe do you remember their names? I forget right now, but you know, their names that we know.

Mhm.

And so they had been in some movies and TV shows and had some level of success and then encountered this roadblock of they wouldn't become sexual playthings of Harvey. And he's like, "Oh, you're kind of done." And then essentially the rest of Hollywood, their friends, some of them presumably, right, just said nothing.

That's what's crazy.

Freaked me out. That freaked me out. I'm like, why?

You know how eager Hollywood people are to talk about good causes and fighting a good fight and all this stuff. And like, well, your friend has had her career ended because she won't sleep with this rich guy. And like, everybody's silent.

What the [ __ ]?

Yeah. Well, I mean, an example I like, I'm I'm a fan of Brad Pitt. Love his movies, you know, and I don't know what happens behind closed doors, but Brad Pitt apparently famously when he was dating Gwyneth Paltrow, who ran into problems with Harvey Weinstein, said like threatened threatened to beat the [ __ ] out of or like kill Harvey Weinstein if he went anywhere near her or whatever. But then it's like that was in the mid-90s, 12, 13 years later, stars in one of my favorite movies of all time, Inglourious Basterds, by the Weinstein Company.

Oh, wow.

And it's like, I mean, selfishly, I'm glad he did. It was [ __ ] great movie. But.

Yeah.

You know, we didn't know at the time the darkness of like Harvey Weinstein behind the scenes, but you wonder what that is, that cognitive dissonance or whatever.

Yeah.

You know, and even like, not necessarily on camera or whatever, if I met, if I ever met Brad Pitt and was just talking with him privately, I, I would, I'd want to ask him about that.

Yeah. What's the deal?

What's the calculation there?

Yeah. Was it just, were you like, you know what, as long as he's not on set, I'll just [ __ ] do this and then overlooking things you knew in the past and do you feel bad about that? Or were was it more like, well, I guess this is just the way things work and you're accepting it, which either one has problems to it, to be clear.

Or, I mean, this is crazy, but like, or is there not an option that's better?

You know, like that one made news, but maybe the other producers involved and the other options you'd like a career out of. Like maybe they're, it's not good either.

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, and there, there's people where you see stuff that they came up with through Hollywood and you're like.

Yeah.

Something. There's one I'm thinking of right now that is just so textbook where it's like, "Oh my god, he was around that guy who later went to prison for diddling and all these." But I don't like to speculate on that publicly because it's a personal thing, even if they're a star, obviously. You know, I think probably I've been guilty of that in the past, speculating on some stuff. But, you know, there's there's some sort of darkness there that people don't talk about at dinner parties.

Yeah.

They talk about at the after party when they're forced to.

Yeah, for sure.

But it's [ __ ] up. I had a, I had a weird day of, I think about this all the time. Um, sitting around, regular day at NYU in the '90s, and we're talking about something, you know, just kind of like gross men touching women, right? And like, basically everyone in the room is like, "Oh, yeah. Happens and mostly they're like, 'Oh, like we got to put a [ __ ] stop to this, right?'" But there was one woman who was like, "No, it's just part of life. You just got to deal with that." And I was like, "This is surprising to me." Like, this is like, I mean, I'm not going to say that's like a wrong position, but I think like that person's probably a steadier bet to be a Hollywood star than.

Yes.

Everyone else in the room.

Yes. Because they're willing. The psychological profile. These people are excellent at that.

Unfortunately, yeah.

The predators know when they got one.

And I think so this is honestly, you asked how I got into this, like, part of it is a little bit of this dynamic, which is like the, I think the number one criteria for having a sustained NBA career is to not be a whistleblower, right? Like, you can't be like, you know.

Alvin Gentry is a very proud man and I really respect him and think he's a cool guy, but he was Donald Sterling's head coach for a long time.

Like, I'm telling you, just from like friends who work in the NBA, it's like.

You don't. Of course you don't.

Can you tell people who Donald Sterling was?

Oh, sorry. Donald Sterling owned the Clippers and you know, was kicked out of the league for.

Lifetime ban.

Lifetime ban for being like blatantly racist on the. It's like he's telling, he's married.

Mhm.

But he has like a, a girlfriend on the side and he's telling her, uh, on the audio, not to come to games with black people.

Mhm.

And, you know, it's a little worse than that, but, you know, but I will tell you that Donald Sterling was surrounded by women he paid to hang around with him and to entertain. And he threw parties that a whole bunch of the NBA world, you know, players, media, people who media who were on TV, and about every like went to these parties and then, and in many cases, they would like hand you a woman as you arrived and, uh, um, and, you know, everybody knew all about this for years, and he got in huge trouble. He is like a real estate magnet, but he wouldn't let, uh, non-white people live in his properties, including like his wife being on tape saying, "We're not going to have these people living here," blah, blah, blah. They got in trouble with like, he was just a bad, it was he was famously a bad guy and everybody knew it. They didn't kick him out forever. And the whole time you had like a GM and a coach and all these people who just like, just not along. And, you know, he's the overt case that now has been exposed. But I'm telling you, there's like, there's not a, maybe there's not a billionaire who's like, doesn't have this criteria, like, don't rock the boat, right? If you want to work in the NBA, you, the first criteria is protect the billionaire, right? So what worries me isn't the NBA. I don't think it matters very much. Well, I mean, it does because I, because we love it, right? But, um, but what worries me is I think the same dynamic is true in lots of businesses, right? Wall Street, Hollywood.

You know, I don't know how the arms business works, but if you just take the business I just described, it's a giant chunk of the US economy.

Yes.

Where like we're just like everyone's in this protection racket.

Yeah. You get to a point where you like cross the Rubicon and it's like, ah, he's untouchable. He has escape velocity.

Yeah.

You know, I, I agree. Yeah. There, there were a couple times before where, and this is what gets me, you know, I'm going to keep this [ __ ] to myself because it's, it's un, to me, it's unproven or whatever. It's anecdotal, but I remember a couple times in New York City sitting next to people I didn't [ __ ] know who were openly talking about texts out loud with me and other people there who could listen to what they were saying with extremely powerful people. This happened twice that I can off the top of my head.

Saying things that if it ever got out to public, those people would never [ __ ] be seen.

Yeah. And I'm like, that, that's why I've always thought about it because I'm like, this [ __ ] sitting here in this place in New York is just saying this to people to hear, but nothing's going to happen to that person. And it's, I do think you got to stand up a little bit. Like, maybe let's admit everyone's not going to be a hero here, but like, the number of heroes is too small, you know? Like, if you have an inkling to join like, you and like, just like start being like, "Yo, what's up with this?" Like, I, I think it is.

Very powerful for the tide to turn a little bit, right? So right now it's like, "Oh, like 12 guys online are really mad at Leon Black." It's like, well, if it's a thousand, like that's a whole different thing.

Especially when you can really get evidence.

Yeah. When you can really, that's that's a big part of it too, because like I said, like, like the two I'm thinking of.

[ __ ] [ __ ] could have been a cokehead blowing smoke and it might not be real.

Right.

Didn't sound that way to me.

But like with this Leon Black, we can point to it, we can be like, "Yo, look at this. Look at this. Look at this claim. Look at him with this person in this year. Look at Henry's report about the money that was being funneled to him in 1988. Look who's connected to that." It's like, it's it's right there. The public can [ __ ] put this together. It's crazy to me.

Well, that's where I'm like, this last file dump, I don't understand what happened. Like, at the same time that they held back half the files, breaking the law, and redacted a bunch of things to redact, they also just shared way too much to keep it covered up, right? Like, I know, I, we should all be mad about what's redacted, but also like, thank you.

Yeah.

Like, this is an unbelievable, like, I don't, what do you think happened inside the Department of Justice where they were like, "That's a go. That's a go." Like, they shared an unbelievable roadmap to Epstein's activities that is completely damning to.

It's a great question.

Dozens of people. Like, was it insubordination? Like, I, I just don't understand what's happening here. Like, we just, I feel like we got way too much. We're never going back now.

Campaign promises followed by public outcry when they tried to walk it back, followed by already public information that was known from investigations into this case and how weird it was, followed by an expectation that like everything else, people would get over it. And they seem to have miscalculated on at least some of that, hopefully. Followed by it could be a red herring for what they're not releasing to try to tell us like, "Look at all we're giving you, but by the way, don't pay attention to the fact that all the files between 1999 and 2001 aren't released." And whoops, we released that email about the shadow commission of 9/11. You weren't supposed to see that, but nothing there.

What is that?

Bro? I mean, that, that had I, that scared us when we read that email to John.

I don't even really understand it.

John Kuryaka was having a full-blown, I know John. Like, he was having an existential moment in front of me when he read that email. He literally was like, I've never seen the guy speechless in my life.

Yeah.

I mean, guys got stories for days. He was speechless when, because you could tell, even the things that he thought he knew about that day, there's a lot of stuff that it's like people are like, "What the [ __ ] was going on there?" But like, even the stuff that he thought he knew, you could see in real time him going, "Oh, maybe that's not even real." And why aren't we getting those? So I, I don't know, Henry, but it's a good point. Like, they have given us a lot. And I, I'll give the administration that they're the first. All these Democrat and Republican administrations before them have completely covered it up. This is the first one that's like trying. I do have to say that, but, you know, now you got to release it all.

They have to.

They have to.

It's. And what's in there?

What's in there?

Like, what's in there? I mean, yeah, it's If this is the good stuff, like what the [ __ ] is the bad stuff?

I'm laughing, but only like.

It's crazy. No, I know. I know why you're laughing. It's nuts.

Um, and I'll tell you another thing that happens. Okay, so journalism might not be the right tool to crack this. Um, here's what I'm saying. So the way journalism works is I have to, oh, it's not, it's only me like from my point of view, I have to, you know, get the evidence and then publish it, right? And so if I'm trying to figure out like, what was Leon Black doing, like, it's very, very hard, you know, to get the evidence. And but so, so this guy Jeff Asher, who's a friend of mine, and he publishes on like crime stats, he used to be an analyst at the CIA. And in in the middle of this operation I was doing in the pandemic, he was like, "Oh, you should read this book on like, it's like the handbook on intelligence analysis."

Did you know him previously?

No, I don't remember exactly how we met. He's a great guy though. Great guy. Um.

Just came into your life.

When the, when the true hoop guy started to.

Yeah.

Sway away from the hoops.

No, but he's an, I'm telling you, he's an analyst. Like, he's definitely from like the dorky end of of the CIA. But in any case, he recommended a really good book, which you guys should read, called The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis by J. Richard Huer. And.

And it's like, it's basically if you're an analyst.

Your job is to take like all this human intel and you're going to advise the president and say like, "We think this guy will be the next leader of Iran," and here's why. You have to like, and you have to be like, like all of the methods you have to use within your own head to be accurate about that are probabilistic and sober, and you have to not not be emotional, right? You have to defeat your own emotional thinking. And so that seems to me much more useful than what journalists do, which is like the Watergate model of like, ah, like we've, we, we got Deep Throat, and now we, we have all the evidence and we busted the bad guys. It's like, we don't, we're not going to have that opportunity. Maybe we will going forward now after this file dump, but we haven't had that opportunity. I certainly didn't have it before this file dump, right? So, I'm just gonna like, so instead I have to think probabilistically, like, what's going on here? Which is actually how I did my job as an editor. I used to oversee a team of reporters and I would basically say like, "I think there's gold if you dig here."

I can't map it for you, but I'm, I see a lot of signals and we never missed, like, there was gold every time. And like, this is where I feel like, okay, so 9/11 is one of these ones that like, I don't know what the [ __ ] going on with 9/11, but I know that it does not stop coming up.

That's right.

It just like, why is, we're talking about a money launderer, sex trafficker. Why do we keep talking about 9/11? Like, I am not here to tell you that I believe the towers were intentionally brought down by some conspiracy. But I know that like the people who work in this space can't shut up about the fact that our story is not the straightforward story. Like, it's, there's just, there's more to it. And the same douchebags who are involved in this Epstein story are heavily involved in this nine. Like, why would Ghislaine Maxwell,

Right.

Be invited to the shadow? Why would there be a shadow commission? And why would she be on it? Right. That's right.

What the hell? We're not close to understanding that.

And why is a journalist asking her to be on it? By the way, journalist Ed Epstein. But that, you know.

Did you know people who died in the tower 'cause you're from the area?

Scary day. That was a scary day. Um, we thought we, we thought a friend of ours, he was like supposed to be there and all day the phones weren't working, you know? So the like whole day I was like freaked out, but turns out he wasn't there. Like.

Where were you that day?

I was in New Jersey. Yeah.

But yeah, that was that was crazy. That was a scary day. Yeah. So when you're from this part of the world, I'm from South Jersey, but like.

We knew a couple people that died in the tower and everything and, you know, that again, that's like this part of the world here.

There's things that I used to just be like, "No, no, no, it's this, this, or that about it." That, you know, even before the story came out over the past year or two, especially, I've had to be like, "You know what, Julian, remove," because that's one of the first days I can really remember like very well. I was like seven, eight years old.

And I just remember everything about that day. And I think there's an emotional imprint that happens there. And then kind of imprints your opinion, if you will. And I've had, I've had to step back and be like, you know, I used to think this, this, and this, at least were there was always fishy [ __ ] but I'm like, I used to think those things were definitely true. I don't know that anymore. I'm not saying I know what the truth is, 'cause I don't think anyone does fully, but it's amazing that you can see things with your own two eyes. Something as drastic as that. And it's like, well, that's.

Yeah.

That's not all that was there.

Well, you know, I've lived in Ecuador. I lived in India. And like, you know, those places had corruption in the sense of like, you got pulled over and you don't have a leg license, like you can probably give the guy five bucks, right? You know.

I like those countries and.

Like, but like we don't, like we're very proud in America that like, you know, like the food is all safe in the grocery store because the food inspectors aren't taking bribes, presumably, right? Like, or or way less than Ecuador and India, let me tell you that, right? Like, uh, Russia can't build big things. They can't build planes and stuff anymore because they, it takes a lot of trust to have a factory that big and they can't muster the trust because everybody's on the take, right? Like, we build big things here because, you know, like the, like those skyscrapers, you have like, you know, like the HVAC people trust the steel people, who trust the concrete people, and like, it, you know, I'm not saying there isn't corruption in there, but like, we by and large, if you get pulled over, try to give the cop five bucks, it might work, but I think it's not going to work, right? Like, um, we're proud of that. Like, regular Americans, I think are pretty much not corrupt and pretty proud of that. But at the, the, the story that I didn't know until I was too old is that at the top is where we keep our corruption.

Yes.

Which is a really weird place to keep it.

But like, that's where like those people, you know, like these lawyers who take money from BCCI or whatever.

Um.

You know, there's infinite supply of them. Like, they are the system.

Rules for thee, not for me.

Yeah.

I'm above it.

That's our corruption. Like, in India, I don't, I lived there in 1993. I'm sure it's very different now, but like, it was.

Low-level stuff.

Yeah.

You know, like, and we would say kind of like, "Oh, this backward place." It's like, "No, no, no." Like, our corruption is just way bigger.

Yep. Just 'cause you can't see it don't mean it's not there. It's a great point.

Well, Henry, I could talk with you all day about this, man. We've been going for like three hours and 15 minutes or something. Your work, as I have said for years, is [ __ ] amazing. So people, please go subscribe down below to the Substack True Hoop. Again, also great NBA coverage. We didn't talk about as much of that.

My business partner is like literally the personal coach for a crap ton of the best NBA players. They call him every day. He preps them every day. And like he knows stuff like would blow your mind. Like this is one category of what we do. Like there's a very important other category.

Yeah. I might need to have him on too. I'm a huge NBA fan. So.

Oh, you should. His brain all day.

But listen, man, great work. I'm glad to see you back in the game now. And I got a lot more questions, so we may have to do this again.

I'm not far.

Yeah.

Yeah. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. What's up, guys? Thanks so much for watching the video. If you have not subscribed, please hit that subscribe button before you leave, as well as leaving a like on the video. It's a huge, huge help. You can join my Patreon via the link in the description, and you can also join my clipping community via the Discord link down below. See you for the next episode.