Transcription
The Rothschild family is one of the most speculated about, talked about families in the world. And for good reason. They are unbelievably wealthy. They have been unbelievably wealthy for centuries. And members of the family have been at the center of many important world events. Perhaps most famously, most notably, members of the Rothschild family were very prominent early Zionists who were incredibly influential in the creation of the state of Israel.
So this of course is catnip for social media, who will speculate wildly and endlessly about the Rothschild's potential continued influence and power brokering in global affairs. And of course, the recent revelation that the Rothschilds and Epstein were close has only served as fuel to further rile up many on social media. Epstein told Peter Thiel, "I represent the Rothschilds."
Now, on the flip side, many media outlets have actually underreported on the relationship between Epstein and the Rothschilds. This recent Telegraph article, for example, which takes pains to stress the fact that Ariane de Rothschild, who is currently the head of the Edmond de Rothschild bank, she has previously understated the depth of her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. True, but the article fails to mention that on top of underrepresenting the level of her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Ariane de Rothschild also, and her bank, paid out $25 million to Jeffrey Epstein in 2015. And also that many members of the Rothschild family have been at the center of some of the most important and influential relationships in Jeffrey Epstein's life and career.
Given the respective power of both Epstein and the Rothschilds, I think this is an interesting history and relationship to probe. And I'm doing that with everybody who's in the Epstein file, anyways. So, this is just the next on my list. And let's talk first about who the Rothschilds are, very briefly. They are a German banking family whose roots go back many centuries. And they ultimately ended up setting up very prominent banks in five major European capitals.
Now, many of those branches, those banks, those family lineages essentially died off. It wasn't just because of all the inbreeding they did, like many of their fellow brethren in the elite circles back in the 17th and 1800s. It's also because of wars and other things. Anyway, it left the two most prominent branches of the Rothschild family as the British branch and the French branch.
Now, the French branch ultimately would go on to start the Edmond de Rothschild Group, which was headed up by Benjamin de Rothschild until 2015, when he stepped down due to a horrible drug addiction. And the power was passed over to his wife, Ariane de Rothschild, who is arguably the most important player in our story here today. However, she is not where the story starts. She is not where the relationship between Epstein and the Rothschilds begins.
That would take us back to the 1980s, when Epstein started doing work for Les Wexner. Les Wexner is arguably the most influential person in Epstein's life. He is Epstein's largest benefactor, the person who changed the trajectory of his career more than anyone else. Because it is from Wexner that Epstein managed to extract $200 million in payments, arguably some maybe some stolen funds, who knows? As well as a whole plethora of real estate assets.
And Wexner has claimed that his relationship with Epstein started when he received a recommendation, a reference for Epstein from Elie de Rothschild, who was in his 60s or 70s at that point, and claimed that Epstein had done work for his family. This would be the early to mid-80s. Epstein had been a banker at Bear Stearns, left, been involved in a Ponzi scheme that ultimately blew up. I don't know the exact timeline here, but what work he had done for the Rothschild family at that point is entirely unknown and entirely unclear.
And then there's Edmond de Rothschild. What's fascinating about Edmond de Rothschild, father of Benjamin de Rothschild, father-in-law to Ariane de Rothschild, is that I can find virtually no reporting, no accounting of a relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Edmond de Rothschild. It's frankly made more complicated by the fact that Edmond de Rothschild is also the name of the bank, the group that is now run by Ariane de Rothschild. So, it makes the SEO, it makes Googling about that relationship a little bit trickier. Regardless, I can find nothing about it.
And yet, early on, when when Epstein was first grooming, when he was first collecting Ariane de Rothschild in 2013, he emails her to tell her very clearly that he doesn't want anything from her. He's just looking to be her friend. He has no financial interest in her. Of course, he'll ultimately end up extracting $25 million from her. He's very good at what he does. Uh, but he wants nothing from her. He is simply doing this. He wants to be her friend because he owes a debt to Edmond. Almost certainly Edmond de Rothschild.
Interesting. What is a debt so large you will spend years for free advising somebody about how to structure their bank, how to do deals, how to navigate legal challenges with other branches of the family, etc.? Now, it could also be the case that Epstein was simply saying this as a manipulation tactic. This is what's so tricky about trying to parse through all this information, right? It may have been that he wanted to preemptively ward off any suspicion Ariane de Rothschild might have had about Epstein's motives in their relationship, and he was able to ward that off by saying, you know, I owe a debt to your father-in-law. Who knows?
The next Rothschild that matters here is Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Now, Lynn and Jeffrey seem to have a very close relationship in the 1990s, which she has, of course, like everyone, fully tried to distance herself from at this point. But consider these facts. Ghislaine Maxwell, take her word however you want to. She said in her interview with Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general of the United States, she said last year, there were other people that Epstein would assist. I know that he helped Lynn Forester, who became Lynn de Rothschild. She'll deny it, and she has, but she, she can't. I have no idea what he did for her. I know he helped her financially. Her husband was the controller of New York. So, but I don't know. Again, I'm not inside his business.
So Lynn de Rothschild has, of course, denied this and denied that he gave her any sort of financial help. But Ghislaine is not the only one citing the fact that they had a very close relationship. Alan Dershowitz, the incredibly controversial Harvard Law professor who ultimately defended and represented Jeffrey Epstein during his 2008 plea deal, sweetheart plea deal, in which the real specifics and the depth of the sex trafficking that he and Ghislaine had been involved in was completely swept under the rug. That was orchestrated in no small part by Alan Dershowitz, his lawyer at the time, very again, successful, controversial lawyer at Harvard Law. Dershowitz says that he met Epstein in the '90s through his friend Lady Rothschild, the former Lynn Forester.
Moreover, the New York Times reports that Epstein's first known connection to Microsoft dates to 1996, when there was a gala thrown there, and Lynn Forester, Lynn de Rothschild, brought Mr. Epstein as a guest. And now, the Microsoft-Epstein relationship is such a pivotal and important one for Epstein through the years. Of course, you have the Bill Gates connection there. But it wasn't just Gates. Steve Ballmer, who ran Microsoft Windows, became a close confidant and pawn as part of Epstein's world. I mean, Microsoft, more than almost any other company, was one in which Epstein was able to very thoroughly penetrate it. And the origin of that relationship is tied back to Lynn Forester, ultimately Lynn de Rothschild.
So if you're keeping track at home, we now have Rothschilds who had some role in introducing him to Les Wexner, his largest benefactor. Alan Dershowitz, his attorney. Microsoft, his largest corporate connection, I would argue. And that's all before you get to the fact that Epstein himself claims that the large, he owes a large debt to Edmond de Rothschild. The relationship about which, that relationship we know almost nothing.
And this brings us to Ariane de Rothschild, the relationship about which we know the most, because it began in the email age, unlike the other relationships. And Epstein and Ariane met in 2013. They were introduced by a Norwegian diplomat and a man named Olivier Colom, who was an advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy of France. And immediately in the emails, you can see Epstein's opportunity. Epstein senses potential because he puts in a lot of work, again, for which he is not being paid, in cultivating that relationship and making Ariane feel good and feel valued.
At one point, shortly after they first met, a couple of months within meeting, Olivier emails Epstein and says, "What [clears throat] did you do to Ariane?" To which Epstein responded, "Listened. Listened." Olivier said, "She loved it, and you put your finger on the things that matter to her." If this is not a perfect distillation of what Epstein did brilliantly well, I don't know what is. First of all, listened. I mean, how goddamn basic, but it is amazing how few people can do that well. And then what did he do? He was able to really figure out what she cared about, what she wanted to hear, what mattered to her, where her pain points are. And he started to to help to solve them, or give her the impression that he was helping to solve them.
Because this is a really important point that gets lost, but it's, Epstein gave these people actual advice. This notion that like, how did he make this money? It's all nothing but shady. It's not true. It's not true. He was giving a lot of advice. And you understand once he had his foothold in this elite world, then he would pick his targets. You can see it. You can see it in the emails. And he would care about them and tend to them.
Within the first month of meeting Ariane de Rothschild, she mentions her neck hurts in an email. Couple days later, he emails her, "How's the neck?" He's checking on the micro little things, seeming like he cares, seeming like a friend. And then he's also sending her thoughts on how to restructure the bank. He's telling her he's, he's put a lot of thought into a strategy she could use. Let's get on the phone. Most of the emails are about coordinating phone calls.
They get very personal. Her husband is a drug addict running the bank until she takes it over. She's stressed about her husband. She shares that stuff with Epstein. He creates an environment in which she feels safe. He says, "I'm listening. There's nothing you can say to shock me." Like, he's saying things that you know feel comforting to this woman who is used to people wanting something from her when they help her. And he positions himself as somebody who's not looking for that. He's not looking for that until he is, until he is looking for something.
In 2014, 2015, the DOJ, the American Department of Justice, starts sniffing around Edmond de Rothschild Bank, a number of foreign banks, Swiss banks in particular, and going after them for their role in helping wealthy Americans hide assets in Swiss banks, thereby evading taxes, avoiding taxes, and money laundering. And when Edmond de Rothschild becomes one of the banks in the DOJ's crosshairs, Ariane de Rothschild immediately turns to Jeffrey Epstein, who in turn introduces her to Katherine Rumler.
Now, I want to say a word about the people that Epstein introduces to Rothschild. Because while, as I say, he is doing legitimate work for these people. Ariane de Rothschild, many of his other contacts, that's very clear. It is also true that sex is at the center of his most prominent relationships. It's not with Ariane, it's not with the women, but with the men. Within the first three months of meeting Ariane de Rothschild, he offers to introduce her to 10 different people, or nine, nine or 10 different people. Of these nine or 10 people that he offers to introduce her, seven are men who he has entrapped for their sexuality in some way or another. This ranges from men who I think were actually involved in his sex trafficking to simply men who were philandering, who were cheating on their wives and Epstein helped cover them up, cover it up, or or Epstein knew about it. Seven of them though fall in that category. And all seven of those men are men he also had business relationships with, or or legitimate [snorts] relationships with. So there's a nuance here. But sex is still at the center of it. And those are the men he felt most comfortable offering up, the people he clearly felt close enough to to say, "Hey, I can make this happen on a dime."
Jumping back to 2014, 2015, however, Epstein introduces D. Rothschild to Katherine Rumler. And the timeline here becomes very important. Katherine Rumler was the White House Chief Counsel. She was the lawyer to Barack Obama. She stepped down from that position on June 2nd in June of 2014. Epstein introduces her to Ariane de Rothschild in September of 2014, and a deal with the DOJ and Edmond de Rothschild, Ariane de Rothschild's bank, is made and announced in December of 2015, about a year later, which ultimately profits Epstein $25 million and Kathy Rumler in the millions, under $10 million. She split $10 million, I don't know exactly how, with another lawyer.
Now, there are so many issues here. Let's start with Kathy. We'll do Kathy and then Epstein. There's a statute in the U.S. Criminal Code. It imposes a two-year restriction on former very senior executive branch personnel making communications to or appearances before certain covered officials. This is the point of it. It's a statute that is in place to prevent corruption, right? Prevent very senior members of the executive branch leaving the executive branch and then being able to do a bunch of shady things or or help foreign nationals or help bad people or help whatever fight the government with the knowledge they've gained being deep insiders in the government. That's the spirit of the problem here.
Now, Kathy Rumler's name is on the ultimate agreement. The agreement that is signed by the DOJ and Edmond de Rothschild Bank on the DOJ side is Caroline Krass, who was the Assistant Attorney General. She would qualify as a scheduled executive and one of the kinds of people that a senior, a very senior member of the executive branch is supposed to not be able to coordinate to or make communications to for two years after leaving the executive branch. But our laws, this law isn't just run on vibes, on the spirit of the thing. It has specific definitions for the terms laid out in this statute, including a definition for "very senior." And one of the qualifications, one of the ways that you can be defined as very senior is if you make more than $181,500 a year, if that, if your pay bracket is there or above.
Kathy Rumler, when she left the White House as Chief White House Counsel, she was making $172,000.200 a year. That is roughly $9,000 under the threshold to be considered a very senior person within the White House. Now, what's crazy about this is she was one of the highest-paid personnel in the executive branch, and she is the seniormost lawyer to the president. If that is not very senior, it almost, the conspiracy hat I want to put on is that the salaries were set specifically with the intention of evading this kind of rule to allow these people to leave office and immediately go into the private sector and do whatever work they want and make their $10 million representing a foreign bank and a foreign national against the DOJ in getting less of a slap on the wrist for the fact that you're allowing wealthy Americans to not pay their taxes, all while you're doing it alongside a convicted sex offender. It almost feels like that's why the salaries were set where they were. Um, but I don't know that. [laughter] I don't know that. But what I do know is that the spirit of this thing absolutely feels like it's been violated. And it was done alongside Jeffrey Epstein.
And this becomes the second thread that's very worth pulling on in this whole thing. Because while I've said this before, I'll say it again. The 2008 plea deal that Jeffrey Epstein got was so shady, and there were so many lies embedded within it. And so I do not blame every individual who continued to correspond with Epstein after that 2008 deal for continuing to correspond with him, because I believed he very convincingly lied to many people about what the reality of that situation was, and the legal record did not show the full reality of that situation at that time. So I don't blame entirely Ariane de Rothschild for continuing to have a social, even advisory relationship with Epstein, who she believed was creating a lot of value for her. But I do feel weirder about her allowing the bank, her bank, to pay this convicted sex offender $25 million, especially when you look at how and why this pay was structured.
So, Epstein emails, I believe Rumler, though we don't have that 100% confirmed, in July of 2015, and he says, "I went through with Ariane fee issues, complicated, no free cash. What do you think of the following? Ariane pays Southern Trust, Mico, that's Epstein's company, based on financial settlement with DOJ. So essentially, if the, if the settlement ends up being between $150 and $200 million, she'll pay $5 million. If the settlement ends up being between $150 million, it'll be $10 million. Under $100 million, $25 million. There we go. Do, do you see any legal issues?" he asks. So the most amount of money he can be paid is $25 million, which is ultimately what he makes. And that's if the settlement with the DOJ ends up being under $100 million.
Now, the settlement with the DOJ, which happened in December of 2015, was $45 million, well under that $100 million threshold. And what's interesting is that just recently, within the last month, as all of this stuff was breaking, a story came out in Le Monde, the major French newspaper, about the ties and the relationship in general between Ariane and Epstein. And they interviewed a senior member of the Edmond de Rothschild Group, the bank, who was there at the time. And they said that the, the US authorities wanted $80 million, and then thanks to Katherine Rumler, this person says, the bill was cut in half. After that, Epstein became much more prominent in the group. Everything seemed more or less subject to his strategic thinking.
So, it's really this, this dynamic really bolstered Epstein in all of their eyes, because they saw him as being the puppet master who managed to orchestrate this, what do you know, once again, a sweetheart deal for somebody in Epstein's orbit with the DOJ. But what's fascinating about that is that first, the US authorities wanted $80 million. That's already below the $100 million threshold at which Epstein receives his largest payout of $25 million. So Epstein has structured this whole, like, trunched deal, but it appears as if it's all smoke and mirrors because he's almost guaranteed his big payout regardless. And we see the inflows. We can see the flows of money between Epstein's company and others because of a court proceeding that made a lot of this public. We can see the $25 million flowing into his coffers.
So ultimately, Epstein got exactly what I imagine he wanted out of a relationship with somebody like Ariane. He was able to extract financially, literally, but he was also able to bask in the social glow that she brought him. I want to read you one final email here that is [snorts] telling. This is between Jeffrey Epstein and Ehud Barak, who is the former prime minister of Israel and the former minister of defense in Israel. And about three, four months after Epstein and Rothschild first meet and and become friends, uh, Epstein is emailing with Barak Ehud Barak and he says, "My thoughts were confirmed when it was said to me, if Ehud wants to make serious money, he will have to build a relationship with me. Take time so that we can truly understand one another. I just listened."
So this is Epstein telling Ehud Barak that somebody said to him, to Epstein, that if Ehud, if Barak wants to make serious money, he has to go through her. Now Ehud responds, he said, "Who said it?" Epstein responds, "Rothschild." Barak says, "I'm ready, but I need your advice. Reh, how ladies is your forte." Epstein says, "Time, attention, stable, recurring, predictable." Which, as an aside, is actually fantastic advice for how to deal with women. Just, just saying, that's actually, that's excellent. Women like time, attention, stable, recurring, and predictable. Uh, but that's darkly unfortunate that Epstein understood that. And Barak says, "I'm ready. Let's plan it. I will need some guidance along the way." And I've thought about other things, blah, blah. Okay.
Now, you want to talk about fodder for the conspiracy theorists. The idea that a Rothschild told Epstein to tell a former prime minister of Israel that if he wants to make serious money, he has to go through her. Uh, I can get 20,000 likes on the tweet if I position that correctly. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to just do the shock value version of what this is. I would like to be more thoughtful and diligent at that. And the truth is, we don't know the context in which this was said. You know, maybe she was specifically trying to do some business in with European banks. Like, who knows what the context there was.
What it illustrates to me, without a doubt, is the system, the rules of the game, is the rules of power. The way that if you are not within the system, you have a ceiling. And for what it's worth, years after this email was sent, Barak was heavily invested in and on the board of an Israeli, wasn't quite a surveillance company, but it was like on the order of a surveillance company, and they were looking for investment from Ariane de Rothschild, which Epstein was helping to facilitate.
So, look, one of the things I'm trying to do is rank every person in the Epstein files, scale of 1 to 10, how guilty do I think they are? And the truth is, Ariane de Rothschild, when it comes to the, the worst of Epstein's crimes, the sex trafficking crimes, she gets a four. I don't think she knew anything about it. She has four daughters. It's not the version of himself that Epstein was presenting to her. But she was unwittingly complicit in the sense that the relationships she developed on the back of Epstein were all men who, in some way or another, were some of the most complicit members of Epstein's scheme. Now, I can't fault Ariane for that. She doesn't know what she doesn't know. And that, of course, is the, the unbelievably frustrating part of this entire thing, is we're, we're gauging this based on the information we have, when the information we really need would be acquired through an investigation, which we're not heading.