Transcription
This major dump of three million new pages and documents. Maybe we start with what you think is the single biggest new bit of information we've gleaned from this dump of Epstein files. If I had to pick one would be there's a very telling audio file where Jeffrey Epstein says to where he's hooking him up with a job on the outside. Jeffrey Epstein asks him to make a list of people who owe you favors. They are preparing their exit by selling out their own country to serve outside financial interests.
>> What do we now know that's new about his ties to the CIA?
>> I don't know a single person who has foyed the CIA for any open and acknowledged agency links between the CIA and themselves. Jeffrey Epstein wanted to see if there were any acknowledged touch points with the CIA for he himself grew his public profile. When you see the the Peter Mandlesson affair, for example, you have him giving basically what appears to be national security secrets or insider trading. He's giving advanced notice.
>> You're saying that all the evidence you've gone through and and to come to your view of Epstein and this whole story, you sort of suggesting that your beliefs is on circumstantial evidence rather than hard proof.
>> When you see smoke billowing out of a house, at the end of the day, that is circumstantial evidence until you see the flame.
Before we get into this interview, I just wanted to say that we have noticed that more than half of our regular viewers are not subscribed. If you want to support the Winston Marshall Show, all you have to do is press subscribe. If you do that, we're going to have more phenomenal guests exploring the issues you want to hear about that the mainstream media won't touch. But without further ado, on with the interview. Mike Benz, welcome back to the show. People will know you of course because you've been on a few times but also you are one of the leading investigative journalists on all things around the censorship industrial complex and of course Jeffrey Epstein. Now, I myself have spent the last few days doing a Mike Benz going full whiteboard meme and doing everything Peter Mandlesson because of course in Britain the Epstein files seems to have done more damage to Kier Starmmer's reign and premiership than perhaps any of the other many scandals uh in the short two years or so that he's been in power. Before we get into what new revelations you might have involving Kama, particularly Morgan Mcweeny, his chief of staff, who's just been sacked or officially resigned, which ties into some of your work around the centering center for countering digital hate that we've talked about before. I actually wanted to zoom out and look at the Epstein files from your point of view and the broader implications of this latest dump. So, of course, this major dump of 3 million new pages and documents and videos and images, 2,000 videos, 180,000 images, is an absolute neverending pit of information which I found very difficult to make sense of. Before we get into it, maybe we start with what you think is the single biggest, the most salient new revelation, new bit of information that we've got that we've gleaned from this January 30th dump of Epstein files.
Well, I would say the most salient bit, if I had to pick one, would be the financial fixer role and the favor bank role that these files have revealed. There's a there's a very telling audio file where Jeffrey Epstein says to Ahoud Barack who at that point was the um Israeli defense minister who had previously served as prime minister before that the head of Israeli military intelligence where he's hooking him up with a job on the outside uh Hud Barack is about to leave office and uh he's and Jeffrey Epstein asks him to make a list of people who owe you favors people who have IUS to you. Uh they owe you a job, they owe you your life, they owe you something. And now that you're going from the government sector to the private sector, now is the time to cash those favors in. And you could get a $3 million board seat here. You can get venture capital for a uh for a fund here. uh you can get involved with these uh technology companies here. And the reason that I think that that in particular, that conversation, which ironically enough we only have because Jeffrey Epste was secretly recording the head of the Israeli military, is uh is that this relationship appears to be the one that Jeffrey Epste has with virtually every high level government figure from the US to uh Britain to France uh to even you know Saudi Arabia and the like which is that there's a revolving door favors. People are constantly doing favors for Jeffrey Epste and Epste is constantly calling in favors with his friends to um keep the favor bank even. And I think that this can help explain, for example, uh why it is that someone like Bill Burns, our CIA director in the United States, would visit Jeffrey Epstein three times in 2014 when he was on his way out as deputy secretary of state.
>> Is that a new revelation that they visited three times?
>> That came out uh before these files that came out last year.
>> Okay.
>> But um but what's interesting is he would go on to be CIA director and the CIA ties around Jeffrey Epstein are absolutely overwhelming. Uh kind of a whole cinematic universe unto itself. But when you see the the Peter Mandlesson affair for example, uh you have this uh you know you have him giving basically what appears to be uh insider trading on national security secrets or insider trading in a way when when he's giving advanced notice as it looks to be or at least there strong allegations that that may have been what happened. uh that allows Jeffrey Epstein with a fund and with lots of friends with funds to basically inside trade pre-market on the direction of the European bailout or other issues. And you can imagine a world where uh that is done to put a favor in the favor bank. And you saw the same thing happen with our own Justice Department effectively our the White House council in the US. Kathy Rumler was the head of it under Obama. And you see her constantly talking with Epstein uh and giving him little bits of uh secrets going on in in the White House. And then he goes on to hook her up, it appears, with a general counsel job for the Rothschild Bank. and uh and it appears that she may have even spearheaded a bank bank secrecy law that would benefit uh those very banks in Europe that uh that the bank was involved with while she was on the inside. So, it kind of begs the question of whether or not government officials in the US, in the UK are doing what's best for their countries or whether they're doing what's best for this outside fixer network to get their own personal rewards.
>> Right. Okay. So, this is Barack coming out ending his time as prime minister in Israel and he's already speaking to Epstein about next possible moves going through the Mandlesson files. It's exactly the same thing that's happened. Manderson was asking Epstein for advice about how to deal and this is also with JP Morgan about how to deal with business ties with China. And so you're saying that what we're privy to now, what we're seeing is how this group of elites are interacting with each other as they move between the public sector and the private sector at a very high level. Now there's lots of ickiness and disgustingness about uh the Epstein files which goes without saying, but you know a response to this might be well they're no longer working in the public sector. They've got to get a job somewhere. They've got to work somehow. They got to make money somehow. So what if they're speaking to someone about getting work or getting connected for for another job? And so if this is the most important things, maybe you want to elaborate about why this is so shocking to you.
Well, because what it what it shows is in in visceral detail what you feel in this city. I'm currently in Washington DC. I've lived here many times. Uh during the first administration, I ran a major office for the US State Department. And there is something that hangs over the office, which is whether or not the people who work there are setting US foreign policy or setting US policy on the basis of what's good for the country or what's good for themselves. And you may ask, well, how could it be good for yourself if you're making the same uh, you know, if you're making the same salary regardless of what decision you make? Well, the answer is because there are outside stakeholders in the hedge fund, private equity, alternative asset fund world, in the think tank world, uh, in the university and academic world. And as you see, Jeffrey Epstein is donating and organizing the donations of for tens of millions of dollars of universities for example. Uh it would be very easy to turn that into a sign a cure, a professorship. This is a very common uh revolving door. uh and and to hook people up with fund money uh to you know this this whole I worldwide network of financial opportunity if you are good to them and what it the implication of it is that you have this whole class of government officials who are not formally working with or should be working with a Jeffrey Epstein on the outside while they're there but they are preparing their exit by selling out their own country to serve outside financial interests.
>> Right. Okay. So, we're talking about crony capitalism at its very worst. This is the sort of things we imagine is going on at Davos. This is absolutely what's gone on with Mandlesson whilst the end of the Gordon Brown when he's deputy prime minister premiership in Britain. As you say, he is leaking information some of which he's now under police investigation for. So, we're basically looking at we're seeing this cronyism in in in real play. We're seeing it happening in in uh across these emails. But why is that I mean, disgusting as it is, why is that such a big revelation? Didn't we sort of already know it was going on?
Well, to see it in the crude detail that it's in, I I think is is instructive. You know, for example, when Epstein tells Ahoud Barack to compile a list of IUs, people who owe you, I owe you. The lens that I see through that is that when when Ahud Barack has 40 years of military service, statecraftraft service, intelligence service, that there is a lens all the way through of who you are serving. And it's often not the person's country. It's it's it's doing US policy, UK policy, French policy, Israeli policy. Uh so so as to acrue favors so that they can be cashed in. I I think there there are many things that we see. For example, I mentioned the Kathy Rumler. This is Obama's top lawyer at the time. Um when she's putting a favor in the favor bank while she's in government office. See, this is the thing. When you're in a private company in the US, we have at least if it's a public company, you have an obligation to maximize total shareholder value. You have a fiduciary duty. Uh in the US government, there's a there's a hard line. You are not supposed to be serving yourself. You are not supposed to be serving outside interests except to the extent that it uh advances your own countries. But if you're if there's a conflict of interest because something might not be good for your country, might not be good for the people you serve as a public servant, but it is good for outside interests and they're justifying some policy on the basis of how good it is for the population, but it's actually they know that the the real reason they're doing it, I mean, when you think about the Mandlesen affair, um this is perverting the entire market. You don't know if Jeffrey Epstein or his network turns around and insider trades on on that information way before the market does. Uh when you're talking about major highle state craft officials, you can effectively uh you know currencies rise and fall on the basis of speculation. If Jeffrey Epstein's network is informed that the that the US government or the British government is about to take some action in a foreign country, uh the the entire currency market can uh can go for a ride and everybody's own pensions are affected. I mean, let's not forget, by the way, that Jeffrey Epstein was had a continuous relationship with Bear Sterns for 31 years until its collapse. From from 1976 until 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was a Bear Sterns guy, even though he was only formally there for 4 years. He continued to pick up the phone and say Bear Sterns when uh when he was at home. And Bear Sterns was the uh hyperaggressive investment bank that kicked off the 2008 financial crisis when it itself got uh carried away with the mortgage back securities. But the fact is is these are high level highle speculative capital that flows into the market well before anything else does. um they pride themselves on effectively, you know, uh as far as it's legal insider trading by the people that they recruit, by the positions that they take >> and uh you know, so everybody is impacted by this.
>> Yeah. Well, I just add to the case of the Madison affair, it's also that he's been representing CCP organizations through his group Global Council. So it's not just he's representing himself to profit and and this sort of insider trading as you describe it, but he's also profiting a foreign state. Now we'll come back to Mandlesson. It sort of sounds like you might think that the Mandlesson affair is the biggest thing to one of the biggest things uh to come out of this seeing as you mentioned it a few times. But there's a few things I I'd like to talk about before we get to that. You mentioned in passing the CIA ties to Epstein and and how large they are. What do we now know that's new about his ties to the CIA?
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Well, here's an incredible one. in 1999 and then again in 2011. Jeffrey Epstein sent a foyer request. That's a that's the US Freedom of Information Act. Was passed in 1966 to allow any US citizen to query the US government for all files that they have about uh about anything that's that's public. And what Jeffrey Epstein did through his lawyer under what's called the privacy act here is he effectively anonymously foyed the CIA in 1999. We'll start there with for all docu for all open and acknowledged agency links between the CIA and himself. Now I will pause there to say that uh I've been on this earth for some time. I know many people who have also been on this earth for some time. I don't know a single person who has foyed the CIA for any open and acknowledged agency links between the CIA and themselves or myself. Uh it would seem like quite a silly thing to do for an ordinary civilian with no CIA touch points to ask the CIA. It is by its very nature a spy agency. It is required under the Freedom of Information Act to turn over declassified documents or non-classified material. But given that most of what CIA does is classified, you would not expect to get much out of such request asking docu asking documents and that is what came back. We have no open or acknowledged agency links. As for any classified links, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of such materials, which is called a glomar response. Now, you would only ask the CIA for that when when you go through a high-powered lawyer who's charging $1,500 an hour uh for, you know, as as his personal attorney. uh you you don't send that request unless you think there might be a there there and the and the issue is is this is 2 years before Jeffrey Epstein became a public figure in 1999 he was still an unknown quantity a private citizen he would not come into the public eye until 2001 2002 when he began flying uh Bill Clinton around Africa and the press began to wonder who is this mysterious billionaire uh giving a private jet ride to the most recent president of the United States right as he leaves office. So before he went public, he checked to see if any because you can foyer the CIA for any those kind of records on anybody and the CIA will generate that response if they have no if they have not uh acknowledged any agency links. If they have, for example, that might be that would be discoverable by other people. It looked like Jeffrey Epstein wanted to see if there were any uh acknowledged touch points with the CIA before he himself became uh a public figure and and grew his public profile.
>> Yes. I'm trying to think about what the other possibilities might be for such a thing. Possibly. Well, if you're perhaps a little bit deranged and and narcissistic, you might want to see if there's some sort of link between you and in CIA as a sort of exaggerated version of sort of googling yourself. Another version might be that he he wanted to see whether if he was maybe paranoid and wanted to know whether there was something about his his link to the CIA. But most likely is that he had some sort of relationship that he wanted to know how much of that was in the was accessible and in the public domain. Right. That that's what you're saying, right?
>> That that is what I'm suggesting. Now, I think that
>> and we're only speculating
>> his lawyer,
>> of course, but his lawyer would, you know, if if they, for example, were keeping tabs on him for counter intelligence purposes or something like that, that would not be discoverable in a foyer and his lawyer would know that and would advise him of that before going through this process and running up legal bills. But the fact is is Jeffrey Epstein's firm Bear Sterns was one of the three major clearing houses for the CIA's BCCI bank in the 1970s when Jeffrey Epstein got there. Uh they cleared about $13 billion worth of transactions it appears for BCCI Bank. That's the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Uh sometimes called the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International. It was the CIA's main way for laundering money to the Mujaheden uh and through what's called the Safari Club network. That was a US, British, French, Israeli, Saudi and at the time Iranian. This is pre979 revolution. This was a kind of offshore uh intelligence network created at a time when the CIA was very weak when handcuffs were put on it after the 1975 church committee hearings here in the US. But Jeffrey Epstein was working on deals that touched CIA banking activity from the late 1970s through the late 1980s. I would I would fully expect given uh given those touch points. I mean, I'll give you another example. He was flying uh back and forth in 1982. He's now 30 years old at this point uh to to meet with Doug Lease. Doug Lee is one of the most prolific and famous arms dealers in British history and he was one of the arms dealers involved in the Iran Contra affair that had joint CIA, MI6 and Israeli intelligence and Saudi middlemen um work through the BCCI bank. So he is traveling back and forth to the English countryside uh from his commercial bank, I'm sorry, his investment bank in New York City working on deals for a CIA bank that involved this British arms dealer as well as the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kosigible. Another a big mystery as well on the CIA front has been how it is that Jeffrey Epstein was able to get a fake passport that listed his residence as Saudi Arabia in 1982. The very year sir Douglas Lee and Adnan Kosigible the British the Saudi arms dealer were running guns uh in the Iran Contra affair. at that very that very year he was Jeffrey Epstein was living with Stanley Pottinger who was the basically CIA's lawyer during the Watergate breakins and and the Iron Contra affair itself. Stanley Pottinger himself was uh being spied on by the FBI for his uh illicit gun operation. And the only reason he wasn't indicted was because the tapes that the FBI had on him um mysteriously went blank. uh during the uh key se uh segments of it. There's considerable speculation that those tapes were t tampered with in order to protect that operation. But the fact is is that was a full 17 years before Jeffrey Epstein foyed uh uh the the central intelligence agency for links with himself. It's I think that Jeffrey Epstein knew that he and in fact I believe it was the Evening Standard who in 2001 published that Jeffrey Epstein used to say he worked for the CIA but now denies it. And I think that Jeffrey Epstein in his own uh reading of it knew full well that he was working with agency folks on these uh effectively money laundering and uh financial logistics operations. um was not necessarily formally a CIA employee, but that he was in that squishy middle ground and wanted to see if the CIA had considered that squishy middle ground to be formally part of the agency. So working with rather than for is what it seems.
>> And uh just to be clear, is this after he'd left Bear Sterns? So this is he's operating as an independent individual business dealer.
>> Yes. with an asterisk, which is that Jeffrey Epstein, another question has been, how has he never been indicted for any of his other crimes? Why did it take this massive scandal published by the Miami Herald in 2018? And Jeffrey Epstein was at Bear Sterns from 1976 until 1981 formally. He he got in trouble with the SEC in 1981 and left basically as soon as the SEC uh brought him in for questioning. uh he was working at at the time on a deal for Edgar Bronman who was highly involved in in the very Iranian foreign policy that the CIA, the UK and Saudi Arabia were facilitating through these banking transactions. But the fact is is when he left Bear Sterns, the New York Times published this about a month and a half ago. They got they got interviews with about three of his bosses from Beer Sterns and about a dozen of his colleagues there. And what they all said is that Jeffrey Epstein continued working with Bear Sterns, if not formally for them, by kicking them deal flow, by continuing to work in the network, by being a kind of offthe-book uh because what he was doing was too hot, off the books Bear Sterns uh sorcerer uh so that for example, you know, at he left Bear Sterns when he was about 30 years old. You don't know how to do a complex international crossber financial transaction at 30 years old. There's no way you can appreciate the uh the complexity of a dozen different international tax codes as well as how to structure complex offshore deals. Uh but he was kicking that to bear continuously for 31 years.
>> So would you mind I we actually I think talked about this before in a previous episode but briefly reminding me about the Iran Contra affair. We don't need to go into a lot of detail but for people who are new to this you you've mentioned it there. Would you mind briefly explaining it?
Yes. The Iran Contra affair was a massive scandal that enveloped the Ronald Reagan administration from from about 1982 to about 1988. And this was during the Iran Iraq war. The Iranian revolution had just kicked off in 1979 uh which toppled a government that was substantially installed by the CIA and MI6 uh in in the 1950s and a lot of people blamed the Iranian revolution where a favorable government turned into a very hostile one because of this Islamic revolution. Uh, at the time the CIA had vastly reduced its presence in the Middle East because of what the Jimmy Carter administration in the US, the the left-wing government did to effectively punish the CIA for the crimes that that came out during the Church and Pike Committee hearings in 1975, 1976. And and so because there was an international arms embargo on Iran, uh it was illegal to run guns to them. Uh however, we perceive there was a bigger fish to fry in the region which was Saddam Hussein and Iraq. And we did not want Iraq to be able to invade the very weak Iranian military at that time post postrevolution. And so we wanted a way to run guns to the Iranians to fend off the Iraqis without anybody knowing we were doing it because it was a massive violation of international law. At the same time in in the um in the Congress, there was a Democrat majority in the House of Representatives. They passed a ban on any US government funds going to a right-wing rebel faction in Nicaragua called the Contras. And so, uh, the CIA came up with this clever plan to use a Saudi middleman, Adnan Kosigible, who was Jeffrey Epstein's client at the time. So Jeffrey Epste's handling the money for this Saudi middleman between the US and Israel for uh Jeffrey for Adnan Kosigible Epstein's client to arrange the guns and for the Israeli government to receive them and smuggle them into Iran and then to take the skim of that of those proceeds to pay the Nicaraguan contras with. So it was basically two illegal actions at once. And when when these revelations came uh hit, multiple highle US officials were indicted. Um the blocking person at CIA at the time who tried to stop CIA disclosures to Congress about this that were required under law was none other than Bill Bar. Bill Bar would go on to be the attorney general first in the 1990s who would write the pardons for the BCCI officials. So, Bill Barr tries to get the CIA off the hook and Iron Contra. He then clears the CIA bank, the high level officials at the CIA bank of any wrongdoing in the 1990s. And then Bill Bars, the attorney general, the head of the US Justice Department when Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in jail.
>> is sorry
>> I was going to just complete the point by saying so what you have is the CIA Justice Department network that seems to follow Epstein's career clearing him uh at at every turn all the way up until the moment of his death.
>> Are there any new revelations in this latest file dump from January 30th immediately related to the Iran contra affair?
Well, it there's an there's an incredible email that he receives about a um he gets a it's it doesn't look to be classified, but it says secret confidential where Jeffrey Epstein is uh given intel about uh threats around Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and and uh Afghanistan and there's a need for outside sources of funds to assist uh this Pakistani effort. And this is I mean the BCCI bank was a CIA bank headquartered in Pakistan to run guns to Afghanistan through money from Saudi Arabia. And this is in the this is in the mid 2000s that uh you know I had to blink when I when I saw that and said are you know was there email in 1978? Uh this looks like this looks like he was he kept doing the same thing through the same network his whole life.
>> Hm. So, this I mean you've been talking about this this kind of gun smuggling for some for some time. Does the new dump it sounds like it sort of vindicates what you're saying, but it also might be the case that you you found the files that support what you're already looking for. Have you found any things which contradict how you had seen things before?
I wish um you know there are certain things that I think um are useful to rule certain things out um or at least to kind of help sharpen the lens on on certain on this but but it's also worth noting that even before I say this we've still only received half the files. one of the co-sponsors of the bill uh Roana here in the US. The other co-sponsor was Thomas Massie was on the Shawn Ryan show this week and said that the Justice Department as we speak is working on uh redacting the remaining 2 million files. We also know that this is an incomplete record, not just because of the redactions, but because multiple other Jeffrey Epstein properties such as the Zoro ranch and and several others were not even rated by the FBI. So, we don't have a full and complete picture even with these 3.5 files, 3.5 million files. But um you know what I'd say is if Jeffrey Epstein had uh was formerly for example a CIA agent or uh Israeli intelligence agent or British intelligence agent. I would I would expect there to be a little bit more in these 3.5 million that we've seen. There certainly were informal ties in my view. Uh, I think it's it's overwhelming at this point. I mean, there are points at which he, you know, tells Kathy Rumler, who had just gotten a CIA agency award secretly, by the way, that's not public. She told that to him, uh, it's an award given out uh, secretly. And then you have discretion about whether to tell the public to invite her spook friends to a meeting with Peter Teal. There's a there's a incredible email where he's arranging to basically have uh his fund friends raid the treasury of Libya. Uh, there's about there's about $80 billion in sovereign funds that Jeffrey Epstein and his uh finance friends wanted to get their hands on. And what he says is uh I've got some MI6 and MSAD guys that I can call to help with this. and having that level of access is obviously something that puts you uh immediately adjacent. But I I also don't see like a a a much wider circle of contacts um for in in you know for example you know some of the governments that I would expect I would expect to see some new names on that if if it was a formal relation but again it doesn't have to be a formal relationship to to be in some sense an even more important one than the formal one. uh you know I've gone over many times the example of Bruce Rapaort who the US and uh and Brits used uh for back channel intelligence deals in the 1980s. He was a Swiss uh fund manager with close ties to the Israeli government. And um he he was used as a back channel to secure a a a secret deal with the Israeli government that would allow the greenlighting of a US firm, Becktel, who itself has enormous CIA ties, uh to construct this pipeline in the Middle East, securing a an unwritten promise that the Israeli government would not uh sabotage the pipeline because it it may hurt their interests um because of issues around uh Jordan in in Iraq at the time, but effectively there was no CIA file for there was no 2011 personality file created by the CIA uh on him, which is uh required if they're formally an asset or if they formally work for the agency. And yet the agency was recommending that he be utilized uh to arrange this secret deal with in power government officials in a foreign country. And this appears to have been Epstein's relationship with US and Israeli intelligence in in high level uh officials both in in in the UK, France and across the Middle East.
Yeah. So this relationship is what's been interesting and there's one big new speculation or or talking point rather particularly in the UK. In fact, it even came up in the Commons. The leader of the Liberal Democrats brought it up is the idea that Epstein was actually a Russian agent. And this has been brought up because of his close ties to an an FSB linked individual, Sergy Belellakov. What do do you think there's anything there or should we understand it in the same way? Is it that Epstein was actually just trying to connect, you know, it's this elite connections with everyone including Putin or at least he was attempting to meet Putin to get deals done as this kind of as the sticky layer of of the kind of people in the private uh and the public sphere operating uh quietly in the background. H how what do you make of the Russia agent uh line of thinking?
>> This is beyond silly. It's it's outright preposterous. Uh the it's it's a deliberate mis misreading of what the files very very clearly show. Uh Epstein tries to get uh meetings with Putin is unable to uh is he now well let me explain I guess where this comes from to explain what they're doing to mislead folks around this. So uh the it it had been known before these files dropped. These accusations had started uh actually about 10 months ago uh when uh US Senator Ron Widen uh published about the uh bank bank details where it appeared that Jeffrey Epstein was uh setting up deals to evade sanctions on Russia between the uh effectively Israel's version of USAID uh after the 2014 Crimea affair. the government of Israel wanted to do business with the government of Russia and then uh because there were because the US had basically gotten countries to commit to sanctions after the 2014 Crimea affair, they needed to do this through a back channel so that it would not have formal Israeli uh government touch points and and this so this was not doing it for Russia uh in that sense. this. Now, there was money to be made by doing business with Russia, but this was a request from the Israeli government to set up a meeting with Russia. I thought this was very disingenuous. For example, when Sky News published uh the uh contents of an audio conversation, the very one I cited between uh Jeffrey Epstein and Aude Barack that cont that contained the Favor Bank exchange that was a three-hour conversation. Sky News took a clip from that and said that Jeffrey Epstein is arranging deals in Russia even when Russia's under sanctions. He he's clearly trying to get money for the Russian government. Uh and it said that the person on the other on the other side of the call that he was talking to was an anonymous unknown caller. Uh and it that that is so deceptive because the fact is is it was not just uh an unknown caller. It was the former prime minister of Israel, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, the defense minister of Israel at that time. Um and so you have this and they're I mean it's it's all over it. I mean they they they're trying to create a Russia gate creation here and leave out the critical context that might uh undermine that. Another example is Jeffrey Epstein uh appeared to be in in favor of the 2014 uh Maidon Square affair. It looked like he was actually meeting with someone and exchanging emails about trying to topple the government of Russia from the inside. Meeting with dissident who uh were trying to quote overthrow the Russian government and viewed the Euromaidon revolution as you
>> mean the pro-Russian the pro-Russian government rather than the Russian government
>> in Ukraine.
Well, I'm saying he was meeting with folks that that in the emails that he is copied on with only I think two other recipients or so on it. Um he's being described that the person that he's meeting with in the mid uh 2010s is someone that uh is trying to overthrow Putin's government and and that
>> in Ukraine. Not in not in Russia.
>> No, in Russia.
>> Oh, right. Oh, sorry. One of his Russ one of his Russian contacts. Uh, so he's meeting with people trying to overthrow the government of Putin. Um, he's he's serving as a back channel for foreign governments, other governments to make money off of Russia. But he's very clearly there's a conversation in the emails with him and Ariana Rothschild about the enormous financial opportunity opened up by the Euromaidon Square uh revolution that was in large part sponsored by US and British intelligence and state craft officials to massively undermine the Russian government's interests by toppling the Yanukovich government and installing Yats and Yuk and bringing Ukraine into the Euroatlantic axis. Why would Jeffrey Epstein be giddy at the prospect over that over making money from that transition if he was serving as some sort of Russian agent? I mean, one after another, everything he's doing is undermining Russia, except when it is trying to take advantage of uh basically Russian resources to get money for Western clients.
There's another, this is the classic accusation that he was MOSAD. I think what you've already described uh suggests that you don't think that's the case and you've kind of made it clear that you sort of see him as this kind of uh working with agencies uh across the world um rather than for them. But still continues the idea that is an Israeli agent partly because there's been what looks like AI images of Epstein in Israel put out deliberately to under sort of new rumors that he wasn't actually killed. I'd like to come back to his death actually. Um but there's also an email saying he hates Israel. I just wondered what we learned new about his relationship other than what you've described there about the possibility that he's actually an Israeli agent rather than an independent sort of gobetween between agencies.
>> Well, the the clears with this the the clearest ties with Israeli uh intelligence in my view go much more to the Aman side, the military intelligence than to the Mossad one. Uh the as I mentioned Jeffrey Epstein was handling Anan Kosogi's money in the mid1 1980s and Kosigible was the middleman between US and Israeli intelligence for a military operation who was the head of Israeli military intelligence at that time. It was Audac who would go on to be the prime minister that Mossad serves. Msad sits in the prime minister's office. They answer directly to the prime minister in the chain of command and then he would go on to be the defense minister, the head of their military and then Jeffrey Epstein would go on to do private deals with him uh in everywhere from Mongolia to Kotivoir to Russia to the US um you know and on and on. But the fact is is uh I think that Jeffrey Epstein swam in the quasi intelligence uh Israel affinity network since the 19 since the 1970s and you know it's it's in my view the Israeli intelligence angle is is you know whether it's with or for it's kind of a distinction without a difference.
>> Uh same same on the CIA side. what you have is a is a kind of cyan type relationship where it's not formally with Aman or Mossad, but it is an in an affinity network uh in a you know diaspora group and and I think that you know that that means it's likely that he's not a double agent so to speak. So I I suppose it is meaningful in that sense. I don't think that there's any way to read the tea leaves where he was solely and exclusively doing this uh you know for Israel his whole career. But I do think that um and I think it's the same thing with the CIA. Remember parties rotate power. Uh it looked like for example uh there there's a big power rivalry between Audac and Benjamin Netanyahu. And there's an email that says against all odds we have managed to secure a meeting with Netanyahu. This is in the I believe early 2010s or something to that effect. And then there is a redacted photo of them appearing to meet one time. But you compare that to uh you know 47 trips by Ahud Barak to Epstein's personal residence. Uh 60 business deals that they appear to have been partnered with or coordinating on. constant access while he's in government and out of government to uh a single meeting they didn't even think that they could get with no followup. You could very easily see Epstein rotating to other networks when the inpower government in Israel is hostile to his affinity network there
>> and same thing with the CIA. I I think that for example
>> you know uh Epstein's relationship with intelligence uh you know was heterogeneous throughout his career. It looked to be very prominent in the 1980s. There's it's unclear in the 1990s. He he went to the White House 17 times. He foyed the CIA in the 1990s about that. He got a State Department lease. He is the US State Department was his personal landlord. Uh it rented him a property, a $15,000 a month in in 1990s money. Uh one of the largest residences in New York City after it seized it from the government of Iran. And then Jeffrey Epstein only got in trouble not paying that lease at all when he sub leased it out to the criminal defense lawyer for both the pizza connection and French connection drug ring cases, both of which are alleged to have very significant CIA involvement. So you've got this this relationship that just goes decades. And in my view, what needs to be done in the US is we need to have the classified layer of this iceberg. It is impossible in my view for there not to be CIA files on this man. He himself even asked for them.
>> Which would be separate from the 3 million. This would be a whole other trench.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes. The the 3 million have only been for DOJ justice department originated documents which includes the FBI because they're the Justice Department's investigative arm. No state we know, for example, there are State Department files on Jeffrey Epstein because he the State Department was Jeffrey Epstein's landlord. The State Department brought a lawsuit against him after 5 years of this arrangement when Jeffrey Epstein had not even been paying. So, US taxpayers were paying effectively uh uh for Jeffrey Epste's rent or being uh and so there's going to be lots of inside chatter at the State Department running a background check on him. How are the tax how the American taxpayers how were they paying for his rent?
>> I'm sorry. They were eating it. That was money owed to the US taxpayers. And Jeffrey Epstein was not paying his lease, his $15,000 a month lease
>> to the State Department. This was a government-owned building seized from Iran.
>> And so it gets back to this Iran Contra soup that Epstein. But the fact is is we don't know if the reason it was given to Jeffrey Epstein was because Epstein had all of these contacts and when people come to the UN General Assembly or they come to New York, Jeffrey Epstein was running contacts for the agency and and the the CIA leaned on the State Department to rent it out to him or to delay enforcement uh or to not make it a you know criminal charge or any or any investigation into the shady defense lawyer that that he he leasted out. We don't know if there was a conflict between CIA and state around how to handle that Epstein hot potato. A a records disclosure bill that compelled disclosure of State Department and CIA documents would answer that question. So, and tied into this perhaps, you know, you you just described there that there's still more CIA documents. It seems to me that there will never be an end of conspiracy theories around Epstein because there will always be more that people think hasn't been released. So, at the moment, of course, we're waiting for another the other half of the of the the 6 million uh trench. Um, even if that's released, there's going to be so much redacted as we've seen in the the previous 3 million. People be like, well, release the unredacted versions. And it seems to me that whatever happens there will just remain this idea that there's something hidden about him. I I
Want >> Right. >> I don't mean to. I don't mean to interject, but, um, you know, if, if the insinuation is, oh, you know, the people will never be happy. Uh, I mean, this was crowbarred out of the US government. Uh, these, think of how helpful it would have been, Winston, to have these files in 2019 when, when there was the scandal of Jeffrey Epstein's suicide or non-suicide. We only learned in these files that it appears that an inmate or a jail worker, one of the two. The FBI thought it was an inmate walking up to Jeffrey Epstein's floor, uh, at about 10:00 at night, uh, the night he was killed. Or, we don't know, we don't have a time of death, uh, for Jeffrey. He was found dead at about 6:00 a.m. the next morning.
>> This is a new, this is a new revelation.
>> Right. Right. All of this, the American people are damn interested in this because this affects our damn politics. The fact is, is, uh, this gets the highest level of government power. The questions that it invokes get to very serious potential high-level government cover-ups, cover-ups, uh, around the intelligence agency, cover-ups around the, uh, compromise of the elected officials who represent the people's interests. Uh, and the fact is that it took a bill sponsored by Thomas Massie, um, which cost him potentially his career. He is being primaried because of this with millions of dollars in hit pieces to go after him. Now, nobody wanted to be on the other side of this bill, Winston. That, that the Epstein Disclosure Act passed 427 to 1 in the House and 99 to 0 in the Senate. Nobody wanted to be on the other side of this bill. But for 7 years, nobody had the gumption, nobody had the courage to bring that bill because they knew what it would cost them. When the American people see that, they go, "That ain't right. We want to know everything." The fact is, if a file exists, if a document exists, at this point, we have a right to know it. We have a right to see it. And anyone who says that we don't have a right to see it, uh, I think there's a, there's a very natural impulse to say, if you don't want us to have access to a government document that we paid for people to collect and put down in a file, then it's not a good look. Because if you, if you want to hide it, uh, you should be championing this too. If, if you want answers to this, if you want the conspiracy theories to end, then there should be no, no ongoing conspiracy about hiding documents from us.
>> Right. Well, I mean, I'm just making, I was just making the point though that even if they released everything unredacted, it would, they would still, it feels like an issue that will never be, uh, slaked, that there, people always want more because just looking into it, it just, this new trench opens up a 100,000 new storylines. Um, but, uh, but, but just to push you on, if I may, to stress test your, your convictions there on on publishing everything. Obviously, some victims would have their identities released if everything was published. Now, some of those victims, or those, uh, even at the Super Bowl, they made a video of some of the victims saying, you know, they want everything released. Um, but some of those victims might not want it, might be private information. So presumably, you would have some lines there, right?
>> Oh, yes, of course. Of course. I don't think anybody is calling for, you know, personally identifiable information about any of the victims to be there. But, but I'll, I'll add to that the funny note that this, that justification in my view is the pretext held up to redact information that has nothing to do with the victims whatsoever. I think the world was, many people were, I was not shocked when I heard this, but many people were collectively shocked when our Speaker of the House, the head of our House of Representatives, the lower chamber in our Congress, Mike Johnson, came out and said that, um, after the, after the Epstein bill passed, that it could be a, you know, disaster because these documents could undermine US national security and that we would have to make sure that the files are redacted so that, um, effective. Now, that's, that's a classification, that's a classification layer. Something undermines you. People go, "Wait a second. This is a guy who was convicted for a, you know, he was charged, shall we say, and, and, uh, with, uh, effectively running an international child sex trafficking ring, and you're telling us that there's information we can't see because it would undermine US national security?" The only way it can undermine US national security is if this person was connected to classified statecraft, intelligence, or military activity. Um, that if that's the case, that would explain why the, uh, CIA, uh, cover-up artist turned Attorney General, Bill Barr, may have been, uh, there were such strange circumstances around his death. Uh, I believe that this pretext that we can't see things around Epstein because of national security is a kind of self-report. Uh, by its very nature, the holding up that as a reason to redact documents is, um, is a scandal because it suggests that this person was so tightly tied to US national security that the information about him, uh, has to be classified. And that could explain why he went unprosecuted for, uh, during the SEC investigation in the 1980s, unprosecuted for his financial crimes at Tower Financial, unprosecuted for money laundering through the US Virgin Islands in the billion-dollar fraud case that was, uh, that was brought, unprosecuted effectively for his 2008, uh, child sex trafficking case with 53 damning counts watered down to a single charge of a year in effectively a resort prison where he got to, uh, work, uh, from home, uh, for the second half of that less than a year. The fact is, is we have a right to know and, and it's, and this should have been disclosed by this government a year ago. Uh, it has caused a massive scandal within the base of this government, who, there was nothing but unfettered love for coming into 2025. And I, and I think this administration has done a fantastic job. But the fact is, this has ignited a civil war. And you're right, there is going to be a kind of unending slake over this because this impacts this network is a way to understand well beyond Jeffrey Epstein, half of our elected class, the CIA director for the Biden administration, the, uh, you know, the head of effectively the law, uh, during the Obama administration, many high-level officials around this Trump administration, as well as as a dozen of our international allies. Uh, but if, if you want to be an informed voter and know who to vote for in the next time, isn't more information better? Sorry to push you on this, but just for the sake of argument, if it is the case that you've made that he is working with, if not for agencies, American intelligence agencies, then it might be the case that there are still operations because these operations are decades long, sometimes undercover operations that are open and active and certain redactions would jeopardize that. They might jeopardize American operations out in the field. And so it doesn't seem to me that it's completely ridiculous for Mike Johnson to make that suggestion. I mean, I, I, uh, I sort of see the logic, don't you? The issue is, is they won't tell us, confirm or deny whether or not the intelligence association is real or not, despite having effectively run on them. There was a major scandal during the first Trump administration where the pro, the, the prosecutor cut Epstein, the sweetheart deal, who swooped in and knocked 53 charges down to a single charge for soliciting, and, you know, effectively gave this, uh, you know, less than a year resort prison arrangement, and then gave a, a secret plea deal that was under seal for a decade. The only reason Epstein got rearrested again was because of a bombshell investigation by the Miami Herald to get the, to get the secret plea deal that cleared all co-conspirators, known and unknown. Meaning, even if they found somebody else who was a co-conspirator, they, they wouldn't charge that person. And the person who cut that deal was Alex Acosta, who was the SEC labor secretary for the Trump administration. He had to step down amidst this major scandal. And there was an allegation that was made that Acosta had made a statement to someone on the Trump transition team that Epstein, that the reason the sweetheart deal happened was because Epstein, he was told the prosecutor was told to back off because Epstein belonged to intelligence. Now, we don't know whether that's true or not. Um, uh, it appears that Acosta, uh, in the subsequent files that were just published shortly before, this, this dump, denied that he said that. But the fact is, is he stepped down just 3 days after that allegation was made public by Vicky Ward in the Daily Beast. And we have been getting the runaround from our own government about whether or not there was an association there, whether or not he was, like, for example, when I bring up the BCCI deals, at the end of the day, that is a, that is circumstantial evidence that is not direct confession. When I bring up the, the fact that he's foyed the CIA, it's circumstantial. When I bring up the fact that he was the middleman for Adnan Khashoggi, you could, you could argue, well, that's just a coincidence. You don't know what accounts Khashoggi, he was he was handling. It could have been that he was handling the Iran-Contra money, but Khashoggi may have had a casino deal in Macau that, you know, that Epstein was handling the money for. And it just so happened that it, it was the same client that was the CIA's middleman for its most sensitive covert operation of the 1980s. But he worked on a different angle of that. You can make that, uh, you can deny, deny, deny because the formal direct affiliation has not been confessed to by our government and the only way to know that is if that classified link is declassified. The fact is, is this administration did make a promise that it was going to be the most transparent administration in US history and specifically that it was going to do so with the very deep state, FBI, CIA, DOJ, US military, the very forces that conspired against Trump in the first administration when the military and Central Intelligence Agency ran an operation to get him impeached in 2019 when the Justice Department was weaponized and FBI were weaponized against him and almost the entirety of the network of supporters around him. This was kind of supposed to be a new deal that to the extent that there was corruption that came into this administration, we could learn to trust the CIA again, we could learn to trust our military again because they had come clean. Well, this is the beginning of the come clean process and, and we're not even close to done yet.
>> Yeah. Uh, sorry, if I understood this correctly, that you're saying that all the evidence you've gone through and to come to your view of Epstein in this whole story is actually resting on circumstantial evidence. Are you sort of suggesting that your beliefs is on circumstantial evidence rather than hard proof?
>> Yes. When you see, when you see smoke billowing out of a glass of, of a house, uh, through the windows, uh, through the roof, through the front door, under the threshold of the back door, and the thing is just billowing out with smoke in every direction. You can smell the smoke and you're suffocating in the smoke. Um, at the end of the day, until you open that door, you don't, uh, you know, maybe there's a magic trick where some magician is in the building conjuring a smoke machine with lifelike smoke effects. Um, but at the end of the day, that is circumstantial evidence until you see the flame. And the way to see the flame, uh, that way, because there's a difference between something being 99.99999% true and 100% true. If it's 100%, then you can get to the next layer of questions. And the fact is, is the coinus around this. The fact that a CIA name trace has still not been run, evidently. Our attorney general did promise that she would try to run down the CIA test. There's been no followup on that. And even this Justice Department bill, as I mentioned, cost the person who sponsored it, potentially his next, his career, his role in Congress. And the, the fact is, is records get declassified all the time. Just last year, the JFK files were almost fully, uh, declared. We've had on the JFK assassination than ever before, fully unredacted documents. Now, again, that was 60 years ago, not 70 years ago. But the fact is, is that gave a lot of goodwill towards our Director of National Intelligence. There was a lot of stuff in there that was deeply embarrassing to the agency. I would argue, uh, a lot of, a lot of stuff in there that you can see why it was classified because it shows some very dirty deeds, including the CIA contracting out hitmen to get people assassinated, uh, including, uh, the CIA leaning on the Justice Department to get criminals off the hook, to show this, the detailed nuance of CIA operations in a way that would allow other government agencies to, uh, look at, for example, that structure today and how it might manifest in their countries. I'm not even asking for that in the Epstein case. The fact is, is there has got to be some disclosure and they have not even, there's not even been a denial from the agency. Now, of course, they would say, well, we can't deny because then you're going to say next time you ask for something that you, you know, denied an FC, but you're not denying this one. So, so they have to do a glow-up. They can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence. Well, enough is enough at this point. This has become one of the major flash points on which people are voting in the midterm elections and the 2020 elections. Uh, there, it should, it should not take this much work. If you campaign on this, if you blame, if you say it's the other side, you know, who's responsible for this? Um, I, if, if you're not behind this, it, it's hard not to to ask the question, and I don't mean you personally, Winston. I mean, I think what the American people feel is that people is that, um, any attempt to try to, uh, obscure disclosures or or delay or reduce them is an attempt to be complicit in effectively the scandal that that's enveloping. And we've saw, we saw this unfortunately, there, there were several, you know, high-level members of, we saw folks in, in our government, um, who had been trying to minimize the, uh, the extent of the Epstein scandal, who, who themselves appear to have led double lives in terms of what they told the American people their relationship was and what's plainly evident from these files.
>> Yeah. I mean, you say you're not talking to me, but I will say that this latest tranche from of the Epstein files has been an unfathomably positive effect on the public information in Britain in the sense that it has revealed Mandelson's working whilst in government and after his cronyism afterwards that absolutely is in the public interest. So it is, it is so far been brilliant and the more of this stuff that can be exposed the better. I'm, I'm, I'm personally, of course, for it. I'm just stress testing your ideas, um, just to make sure I've understood everything because it's a difficult topic to understand. Um, it's also interesting to get the American perspective because over here in Britain, we're going through a whole mess. But you're saying that this in the states is now really a major issue for everyone. Uh, and it's, and you think it's going to have an impact on the midterms?
>> Uh, I hope it's a positive one, but I think that many people have felt unfortunately kind of disenchanted. Um, I think that that there has been a political capital loss, um, because of the feeling that, uh, many people have that the, there has not been 100%
>> You know, honesty on this. And I think that even if it doesn't make you vote for the other side, it can demobilize you. We can make you say, "Well, listen, I'm not going to vote, you know, for the Democrats, for example, if you're a Republican. Um, but, um, I'm not going to vote for someone who covers, so I'm going to, I'm going to sit at home this election." I wish that wasn't the case. I, I hope that it's not. Um, but the fact is, is that is something to be contended with. And if this, if these files came out one year ago, there would have been none of that. It would have, if they were not compelled by a, by Congress, uh, in a bipartisan, unvetoable bill. I mean, you know, you can veto up to a two-thirds majority and then becomes veto-proof. This was 427 to 1 and 99 to zero. So, there was nothing the administration could do to stop it once this, once this came out. And you know, it, it would have been a completely different thing if this was proactively done rather than forced out,
>> Right?
>> Um, you know, by someone willing to put their career on the line. But on the, on the subject of the redactions, I'd be remiss if I didn't say, you know, you, you mentioned the counterargument, well, redacting the victim's names and, and, and I said, well, you know, they're trying to conflate national security with with victims. And we had a little bit of a back and forth on that. I'll give you an example of something. There is, uh, there's an email where Jeffrey Epstein says, "I'm about to go into a skiff." Now, skiff is a special compartmentalized information facility. It is a US, it is a government-accredited facility to access classified materials. If Jeffrey Epstein was going into a skiff and it was an actual, real, bonafide skiff and he meant what he said, that would mean that Jeffrey Epstein has access to classified materials that he is, uh, effectively has got some sort of security clearance, whether in the US or through a foreign government, to be able to access top-secret, classified intelligence, military, or statecraft documents. Now, uh, Jeffrey Epstein has a makeshift skiff, a kind of fake skiff that has the sec, the signals, uh, security that a skiff does in his house, or at least that's what he says. He says, "I have a room in my house that is similar to a skiff," but he said in one of the emails, he says, "I'm about to go into a skiff." So, he doesn't refer to it as his or mine or the, um, he appears to be in a foreign country. He appears to be in France, although that's not confirmed. It's just from the context of where he was a few hours earlier. And right before, two hours before he, he says he's going into the skiff, he says, "Call this house blank landline." And the blank is redacted. Uh, that appears to be a name. Now, if we got the name of whose house he was at right before he goes into a skiff, that would be very useful to know whether or not he, that was a real, for example, if that was an ambassador that had embassy access or consulate access where he would be going into a real skiff, then that right there would tell you if Jeffrey Epstein was accessing classified government information while he was in this outside fixer role in this intelligence-adjacent role. Uh, I, if that, now, I highly doubt an underage female was the, uh, homeowner of a house with a landline. I don't know how many 14-year-old girls own a, own property.
>> I get your point. Yeah.
>> Yeah. No. Um, look, I, I, I think it's, I see what you're trying to say there. Now, look, there's still a couple of things I wanted to ask you about and I appreciate that you haven't got all the time in the world because you need to get back into those files, but, uh, you, we've mentioned in passing the death and I actually didn't fully understand your point about some sort of new figure in orange, which this orange-dressed person, but there's other couple of things that have come up that are doing the rounds. One, the Daily Mail have reported that there was an Epstein death record logged a day before the actual death. It's could just be that they made a mistake on the death log, but there's lots of images of like I said earlier about AI versions of what Epstein might look like coming out. And there's also this allegation, this idea that he logged onto a Fortnite game. Uh, I can't imagine Fortnite existed when he, I mean, I don't know how old the game Fortnite is, but I can't imagine it existed when he was still alive. Maybe, maybe it's an older game than I, uh, realize, but what do you make about all of that? What, what's new about what we understand about the death of Epstein from this new trench?
>> To me, the most interesting part is this orange figure. The FBI and the and the prison warden staff have both made a note of this orange figure going up that stairwell before he's found dead in the morning. You even think that speaking there, it quite be possible that he's still alive. I mean,
>> I wouldn't make a hard 100% one or the other. Uh, but it does not, the, it does not look good.
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