Jeffrey epstein

Release the Epstein Files — all of them

From the time I was first falsely accused of having sexual contact with someone I never heard of, I asked that every bit of evidence relating to Jeffrey Epstein be disclosed. Indeed, I wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal asking the FBI to open a criminal investigation of me so that I could prove beyond any doubt that the charges were made up. I agreed to waive any and all privileges if such an investigation were conducted. I continue to demand that every bit of evidence be disclosed, because I know with 100 percent certainty that the evidence, if completely produced without exceptions, exculpates me, for the simple reason that I did nothing wrong. But much of the evidence has been withheld — and for no good reason. Only the guilty are protected by the withholding of evidence.

Jeffrey Epstein

A Very Royal Scandal — a very controversial series?

Now that The Crown has finished (for the time being, at least), production companies are scrabbling about for replacements. Perhaps inevitably, the biggest royal story of the past few years — Prince Andrew’s disastrous 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis on the BBC’s Newsnight program — has now been made into two separate shows this year. The Netflix offering, Scoop, focused on Sam McAlister — and was, far from coincidentally, based on McAlister’s memoir. Now Amazon Prime has entered the fray with a three-part series that follows in the wake of the peerless A Very English Scandal and the lesser A Very British Scandal. Whatever next?

royal scandal

Biden’s Breakfast Club problem

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have lost the support of Charlemagne Tha God, host of the culturally influential hip-hip radio show The Breakfast Club. Charlamagne, who endorsed the Democratic ticket in 2020, told Politico that he has no plans to repeat his mistake in 2024.  “I’ve learned my lesson from doing that. Once they got in the White House, [Harris] … kind of disappeared,” Charlamagne said. “‘Damn, you told us to vote for [them].’ Do you know how many people say that to me all the time?” Why does it matter? The Breakfast Club boasts 8 million listeners a month and Charlamagne is a well-respected voice in the black community, particularly among young, progressive listeners. Charlamagne’s defection feels like a long time coming.

Senator Jim Justice? Don’t be so sure…

Immediately after longtime West Virginia senator Joe Manchin bowed to political reality and called it quits on his re-election, Republicans celebrated that it virtually guarantees their party an elusive win next year.  In fact, some were already proclaiming that the state’s First Pup, Babydog, and her owner, Governor Jim Justice, are cruising to victory next November.  But that’s not necessarily the case — it’s not next November that Justice should be concerned with, but rather next year’s GOP primary. Justice, who finally secured Donald Trump’s valuable endorsement, faces Congressman Alex Mooney and a field that may now swell given the GOP’s virtual certainty to pick up the seat.

Ghislaine Maxwell is a prison Karen 

You can take the girl out of high society but you can’t take the high society out of the girl — even if you throw her in a Tallahassee prison. According to a report in the Daily Mail, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has filed a whopping 400 complaints since arriving at the federal prison in July. "Max is the prison Karen. She can file a grievance over anything — she has over 400 of them," a source told the Mail. "She complains about the food, the bedding, when they cancel temple because of bad weather or are late setting up her legal calls." It was also reported that the prison's vegan menu was “insufficient” for Maxwell’s needs.

ghislaine maxwell

Bill Gates’s sinister job interviews

Interviews are often tough — but imagine instead of being asked about your hobbies or what you’ll bring to the team, you’re instead quizzed on whether you’ve ever had extramarital affairs, what kind of porn you watch or if you had naked pictures of yourself on your phone. Cockburn would be out of the running, that’s for sure.  These were the questions asked to women that interviewed to work at billionaire Bill Gates’s private office. The extensive screening process included being questioned by a security firm about their sexual past, previous drug use and other personal things in case they were vulnerable to blackmail. That old chestnut!

bill gates interviews

Why did Epstein kill himself? Negligent guards…

It’s fun to conspire about the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein — or, at least, Cockburn has whiled away several hours doing so. Was it ordered by the Queen? Bill Gates? The Clintons? Did Ghislaine Maxwell stick a pin straight through the heart of an Epstein-shaped voodoo doll? It’s almost a shame that we now know the fault lies with something as mundane as negligent prison guards.  The Justice Department’s watchdog announced Tuesday that a “combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures” by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and workers at its New York City jail allowed for the disgraced financier to take his own life in August 2019, finding no evidence of foul play.

jeffrey epstein

DeSantis should talk about Jeffrey Epstein

Ron DeSantis's choice to enter the presidential stakes with a Twitter Spaces conversation is unusual. Odder still is the news that he will do so in an interview conducted by Elon Musk, and a discussion moderated by David Sacks. There are so many questions here: the most obvious being, "why did you choose to roll out with a pair of wealthy tech investors from the PayPal Mafia, known as much for their accomplishments as for their eccentricities?" But here is also the question about the questions: what will DeSantis be asked? One question that might come up given the Very Online nature of this interview concerns one figure whose connections to the billionaire and political class have proven so embarrassing for those in power: Jeffrey Epstein.

trump jeffrey epstein

My many run-ins with Jeffrey Epstein

In Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1991 movie Barton Fink, a writer in pursuit of the big story accidentally winds up befriending a serial murderer who lives next door. That dark comedy’s ironic juxtaposition did not escape me in August 2019 when Jeffrey Epstein was found hanged in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and the mushrooming scandal involving him threatened to engulf three of the wealthiest men in America, two former presidents of the United States and the second son of the queen of England.

Jeffrey Epstein

Epstein revelations from beyond the grave

Four years after he died in jail, stories about Jeffrey Epstein continue to surface. Cockburn took in the Wall Street Journal’s deep-dive into the demonic sex offender’s emails, which reveal that Epstein was meeting with even more well-known and influential people than previously thought. From top government officials to leaders in the banking world, Epstein was never far from the corridors of power. The question is why these people would have any interest in meeting with someone like Epstein. CIA director Bill Burns and Epstein had multiple meetings around the time the then-deputy secretary of state was leaving government. Three meetings are recorded in the documents seen by the Journal, one at a law firm and two at Epstein’s Manhattan residence.

jeffrey epstein

Prince Andrew wants an American-penned memoir, too

Haven’t heard enough about how terrible life is with unimaginable wealth and privilege? Fear not, proles: Prince Andrew is reportedly in talks with American authors to write his memoir, because a world-class education can buy him some things, but words are hard.  The book is described by the Daily Mail’s sources as "Spare 2.0," after the controversial Prince Harry autobiography that came out in January. Cockburn wonders if the disgraced duke will spend as much time writing about his “todger” as his dear nephew did.  The Duke of York is hoping that the memoir will clear his name in light of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal — the last time he attempted that feat, it famously went well.

prince andrew memoir

Biden should deliver on Jimmy Carter’s promise to explain UFOs

Remember the UFO that one of our fighter jets shot down with a missile? Reports now indicate it was a $12 balloon from Hobby Lobby — while the missile was supposedly worth around $400,000. This seems to me like a summary of the current state of things. It’s Quixote running towards windmills. It’s the hypochondriac class trying to run the country. There’s been a strange epidemic of objects floating overhead. Some have been reported to be Chinese spy balloons, while some people believe they’re extraterrestrial. The sky isn’t the only place where these objects have been spotted; there was also that iron ball that rolled out of the ocean in Japan.

The view from Palm Beach of the Mar-a-Lago raid

“Everyone here is simply stunned and the universal cry is ‘We are now a third-world country!’” Juliette de Marcellus, a long-time Palm Beach resident who stayed in town this summer, emailed me. The day before, dozens of FBI agents and three Justice Department attorneys raided (or “searched,” as the servile legacy media put it) the home of our island community’s most famous resident, former President Donald J. Trump. Palm Beach slows down considerably in the summer, though the first two years of the pandemic saw many residents and visitors stick around rather than face crime and Covid in northern locales. This year, the Island’s annual season petered out around May 1, with restaurant reservations and parking spots suddenly opening up and traffic noticeably thinning out.

Don’t blame Victoria’s Secret

Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons is the latest in a spate of streaming service exposés that seek to deconstruct the image-obsessed culture of the 2000s and 2010s. Netflix’s documentary about Abercrombie & Fitch taught us that the retailer was racist, fatphobic and potentially brimming with predatory closeted homosexuals. Hulu’s three-part documentary series about Victoria’s Secret teaches us that the company was sexist, fatphobic and potentially linked to pedophilic sex trafficking. Both take issue with the billionaire Les Wexner, who these days is more famous for his association with Jeffrey Epstein than his role in defining mall culture. (His retail conglomerate was also behind The Limited, Lane Bryant, Bath & Body Works and several other retail staples.

Victoria's Secret

Elon Musk has a question about Jeffrey Epstein

Elon Musk recently posted a meme about Jeffrey Epstein and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Twitter, the brand he's soon (maybe?) hoping to buy. The meme says, “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?” While Cockburn has nothing but reverence for his governmental overlords, Musk's reference to the Jeffery Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell client list does stand out as a particularly juicy piece of news. The mainstream media has avoided the list like the Spanish Flu. Doesn’t the average person deserve to know which of their esteemed leaders has taken a trip to the infamous Little Saint James Island?

Elon Musk

Prince Andrew coughs up

Court documents filed on Tuesday morning by counsel for Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre revealed she had settled her high-profile human trafficking case against Prince Andrew. Although the documents omit both an admission of guilt by Andrew and a disclosure of the settlement sum, the Telegraph asserts that the beleaguered prince will pay Giuffre an estimated £12 million ($16 million) to resolve her case under New York’s Child Victims Act, and that the money will come from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The parties informed the court that they had reached a “settlement in principle” and anticipated filing a stipulation of dismissal of the case within the next month.

prince andrew

Prince Andrew must answer to America

The Duke of York is heading to a New York courthouse. US District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled today that Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew may proceed as a matter of law. Ms. Giuffre’s victory means the judge finds her claims legally cognizable. As the case moves into civil discovery, Ms. Giuffre must prove all the relevant facts she alleges to be true. Prince Andrew has denied all Ms. Giuffre’s claims. In a 2021 lawsuit filed in New York’s federal courts, Giuffre sued Andrew for committing battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

andrew

Time’s up, Prince Andrew

Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell stands convicted of numerous human trafficking crimes, but many of their alleged co-conspirators remain at large. Victims on both sides of the Atlantic claim they were preyed upon by the high and mighty but the predators remain unindicted and, as yet, unaccountable. Among the most high-profile of these alleged abusers is Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and ninth in line to the British throne. The Duke, the third child of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, faces a civil lawsuit by Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre), whom Epstein recruited as a sex slave when she was still a minor. Roberts claims that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to Andrew in March 2001. She then met and danced with Andrew at a London club.

Ghislaine is guilty — who’s next?

After five days of deliberation spanning the Christmas holiday, a federal jury in the Southern District of New York today found Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell guilty of five of six counts of human trafficking for her actions over ten years in multiple US states.

ghislaine maxwell guilty

I took Hillary Clinton’s Masterclass in ‘resilience’

At some point near the one-hour mark, wooziness strikes. It’s that voice, that shrill drone. You can only take so much before the mind constricts and the room spins into a hall of mirrors. You’ve got to get out, go for a walk, get some fresh air, because there’s still two more hours left of Hillary Clinton’s Masterclass, titled “The Power of Resilience,” and we’re still unsure if anyone has yet managed to hobble across the finish line. We love resilience — but as a quality, not a lifestyle. Hillary fits the latter.

masterclass resilience