Jeffrey Epstein's financial network is often overlooked in the released Epstein files
He was not only a trafficker and abuser of girls and women, but at the epicenter of the ruling billionaire class, which is global, a class that controls not only our economies and politics, but also our systems of information and education
The investigative journalist Meen Tasik has examined the files to knit together the intimate connections between Epstein and our global financial elite
Joining me to discuss this Epstein class is Meen Task, the investigative editor at the American Prospect
So, Meen, there's two articles I want to discuss with you uh which focus on how Epstein got his money
Uh the first was in the nation
and it's called Larry, we knew you too well
The second is in the prospect newspapers did not kill themselves
But let's start with your article in the nation because it goes back to the breakup of the Soviet Union, the seizure of state assets that created the Russian oligarchic uh you know cabal that uh Putin comes out of
uh and and Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, and uh Jeffrey Epstein, they're all involved
So, I'll let you go from there. >> Sure
Yeah
So, in 1990, and it's funny, it always comes back to 1991
This is the year that uh you know, Jeffrey gets um Les Wexner to sign over a power of attorney
Um this is the year that um >> Can I just interrupt you
Do you have a theory as to why Wexler did that? >> Well, it was >> this is the head of Victoria's Secret and >> it was roughly >> huge huge amounts of money from Wexter is trans are transferred and property and everything else
It was roughly the same month, maybe even the same week, that a um a secret Colombia Columbus Columbus Police Department memo was uh started to circulate about um Wexner's organized crime connections and his um connection to the really violent assassination style hit on his accountant who had been scheduled to testify, you know, in exchange for um leniency on a um some pretty bad tax evasion charges
Apparently, he hadn't filed his tax returns for seven years
And so this guy who is sort of known as something of a mob accountant was going to testify um you know going to talk to the FBI
He shows up dead
Um it's it's it's really ugly
I forget the the sort of details, but the Columbus Police Department started mapping all of um Wexner's relationships and those of his landlord, his biggest um uh retailer landlord that the Tabman families and also um a guy who used to own the San Francisco 49ers um but then was had to sell it because it was pushed out by the NFL
Very mobster uh uh type
I'm I'm forgetting his name, but Joe something Italian, I think
And uh and um and his accountant was Shapiro
So it was he was under and and I'm sure that um Wexner being who he was had a lot of connections in the Columbus Police Department
It is said that he um was uh a molesting young boys um uh who were um you know scouted through a a modeling agency in the 80s
That is something that has been a persistent rumor
I read about it in a book
Um so I have um so so something was closing in
there was some folks closing in on Wexner and I sense just because of the timing because the timeline um that that might have been one of the reasons that he signed it over to um to Jeffrey to keep it from the fence, right
Uh you know, that that makes sense
That that's makes a lot of sense to me
But a lot of other things were happening in 1991
The collapse of the Soviet Union um being a a big one
and um Robert Maxwell, the um textbook publisher, newspaper publisher, uh MSAD, Lifetime MSAD asset, um you know, big uh jolly fellow um is is uh buys the New York Daily News, which has just come out of a a really really uh horrible strike
um the its owners, the Chicago Tribune, um had uh you know, spent a lot of money
It spent something like $250 million trying to break the union
And they pretty much, you know, they they almost uh uh broke it
But then Maxwell swoops in and says, "I will buy the New York Daily News um if you give me $60 million to do it." And the Tribune said, "Well, $60 million is cheaper than the $150 million that we think that it will cost to uh actually pay out all of the union contracts that we're going to owe." Um, so sure, it's yours
Everybody is elated at the New York Daily News
And then a few months later, um, you know, eight months later, seven months later, Maxwell falls off his yacht and dies
although not necessarily in that order or almost certainly not in that order
And it turns out uh very quickly after that that um Maxwell's uh Maxwell Communications his his um communications empire uh has you know is missing $1.4 billion in cash that it was supposed to have
Where is this money
Um it is a big mystery
uh you know the the bank accounts of the family are uh frozen internationally and uh Kevin Maxwell is uh put you know sort of put under house arrest to to a certain extent
I mean, he is he's his um he's the the I think the eldest son, but he was the son who was really um taking the reigns at the um at the business
And um you know, Galain at this time is in New York complaining to everybody that she's completely broke, that she has not a son to her name
And um you know, how do they emerge from this situation
because Galain has been spotted by none other than a mirror reporter actually um you know telling the all of the servants on the yacht to shred everything they find and you know throw documents overboard that kind of thing
So she um you know she's under a cloud of suspicion
She decides um she's been living in New York
She decides to live in New York and um there's a document in the Epstein files that I found that actually, you know, sheds a lot of light on what happened
Um but simultaneously to you know to all this of course the Soviet Union is collapsing and uh Larry Summers uh not sure if he is um is friends with uh Epstein yet
Not sure when Larry Summers becomes you know best friends with uh Jeffrey Epstein like it seems he was um you know right before his his death
But um Larry Summers is um the president of the World Bank and he sends um a protetéé of his named Andre Schlifer, a Harvard economist who um you know is very young and he was born in Russia but he came over and he you know graduated college at 16 something along those lines and you know he's an upand cominging um hot [ __ ] in the economics world
Uh Larry puts him in charge of this project to privatize Russia, essentially oversee the private privatization of 225,000 state-owned enterprises um under you know this kind of team of of you know Chicago type boys, but they're Harvard boys um inside Yeltson's administration
And um this all ends in, you know, the they these guys get um unbelievably rich
Um and and no one sort of really pays attention while while Russia, you know, completely collapses
The economy collapses
The ruble loses all of its value
Um you know, a lot of the uh the IMF loans that um that Russia is supposed to be getting in order to stabilize its currency are going missing
the wire transfer suddenly like you know a billion dollars will be transferred from the IMF to Russia and they won't be able to find where it went you know this is really really uh shady stuff happening and in 1997 after you know sort of a a whistleblower comes forward um somebody who gets sort of screwed out of the action um USAD which has been funding this whole uh uh operation uh suspends all of its funding to the project kind of kicks these guys out of Russia And it turns in and and they start investigating what actually happened
And as it turns out um the uh you know they had made a lot of money um investing in these privatized Russian assets
Um a lot of that money that money was actually supposed to go and be distributed among the Russian population um as as vouchers
Um and that program is a you know universal laughing stock
Um people are are you know selling their their vouchers for a loaf of bread while um uh Andre Schlifer's wife who's a hedge fund manager working for Tommy Styer um gets extremely wealthy and so does their co-investor um a guy named Lenllovnik who helps them out later by backdating a bunch of uh uh you know documents
um Len Blovnik now um you know also a good friend of all the epste now worth $30 billion um at one point the richest man in the UK so kind of put a pin in that guy
So this this episode and a lot of what happened in Russia a lot of the really um you know horrific plunder that happened in the '9s that you know set the stage for Putin to emerge as their savior
Um >> um let me just stop you there because I want to just look at the details
So they're buying up state industries at at for ridiculously low prices
Uh which creates this oligarchic class
How did Schlifer in these figures how did they what was their involvement
So we know how the the oligarchs were buying state factories for nothing uh and and creating you know uh in terms of assets immense wealth for themselves
How did these uh these Harvard e economists and others in aid how were they actually also making money? >> Well, I think that Len Blovatnik um was a big key to this
Um so, Blovatnik is a um sort of shadowy figure
He like there's never any mention of him in any, you know, newspaper
I couldn't find anything um until 1997
Christa Freedelland um former finance minister of Canada, maybe current, I don't know, or um but uh she writes this glowing profile about how this um exemplar of the American dream um has, you know, gotten unspeakably wealthy in Russia
And isn't that lovely
Um before that, it's not clear what he was doing
Um he shows up as the CEO of some Jersey Citybased outfit
um and in in 1990, but it's it's very he was supposedly involved in leverage buyouts of a distribution company
Um he had gotten a Harvard MBA
Um but it's not clear
He is just is his record before 1997 when he turns, you know, he turns up as one of the first oligarchs
Um is and he also sues people who call him an oligarch
um I'm not sure um if I don't think that he's actually been successful at any of those lawsuits, but just alleged old clark um is uh you know his his track record from before that is is sort of unknown
Um and this is the case for a lot of these folks
Um I'm not the best at at figuring out you know being able to read um you know Russian newspapers um on the the internet
I've I've been scouring for a lot of these guys
But you know, one pattern that emerges when you start to study this stuff is that um for the for the most part um these are guys who got out of the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s um generally through Israel
Um but there's also um Armenians who got out during this time and um maybe some Austrians, some Hungarians
Um but um but it's primarily um you know uh Jewish uh uh Soviets who um you know were refusnix who who were uh you know anti- uh communist and um sort of went to to New York or showed up in in Texas by way of um Israel and then uh came back um as soon as the the as soon as the the government started to collapse
Um, and so, you know, I I'm not exactly sure
You know, some of these guys had were supposedly driving taxis all of these years
Um, Blovatnik was getting uh an MBA
Um, but but you know, there are also a lot of connections that a lot of these um folks have and and Blovatnik I have no idea
But in in the case of some of these guys like a guy who will come up Greg Luchansky um they have you know documented organized crime ties and um and so they're kind kind of part of this sort of Russian um Zionist mafia and I think that's the reason that you know Russia gate was able or that you know that that people like Rachel Madd are able to say oh well this you know the Epstein files really implicates uh Epste is a Russian intelligence officer
Well, yeah
There uh you know, Russia plays um very prominently in all of these stories
Um and the and mostly because there was so much money to be made there in the 90s while everybody >> let me let me just throw in which some people don't know Sai Hersh exposed this >> Jonathan Pard who was the uh CIA agent who was arrested for espionage uh for providing information to Israel and now uh was freed and lives in Israel
Um he had exposed to Israel the entire network of uh American intelligence in Russia and Israel traded that information for the release of Soviet Jews
Well, that um you know a lot of these this is in what like 1980 the the mid 80s. >> I um >> I Yes
Um I think that um so a a lot of the the folks that I have focused on are um are people who came before that in the in the 1970s
that is something that I've actually read in a lot of places um is a thread that they share but surely you know those who were there in the 80s are even much more useful and that's when a lot of the you know the because obviously in 1991 wasn't the beginning of this there was a lot of um uh theft happening and just you know wholesale kind of mafia takeovers of a lot of these um a lot of these enterprises um and that was what they had to contend with, right
Like there were um there were these these guys, they call them um roofs um who were sort of who who ran the extortion rings around state-owned enterprises
So you had to pay off these guys and their whole operations in order to privatize any of these um entities
So this is a you know very um uh exotic uh operation happening um you know relying on a lot of people who kind of know um uh bad guys um throughout the former USSR and um and going as as as quickly as possible and doing it all um as quickly as possible under the kind of rubric of free market you know shock treatment um Milton Friedman and um and Larry Summers um you know I don't know how intimate ly involved he was in Schlifer's actual um self-enrichment, but he sure as heck um did what he could to cover it up
He told the deans to to Yeah. >> Where is Schlifer now? >> Schlifer still at Harvard
He's he's still a Harvard professor
his wife was um after uh en enriching um them the the first time with investments in Gazprom and and various oil uh aluminum smelters um owned by um Blovatnik
Um she shows up again with uh Paul Singer in the um the default of Argentina of the one of the holdout bond holders
So would have made you know thousand% returns on that
So Schler is still okay
Larry Summers, however, um because he he leaves the Clinton administration, he leaves the World Bank, becomes a Treasury Secretary, probably some jobs uh in between that I'm um missing
Then he um gets the presidency of Harvard um in uh 2001
Um immediately commences uh pissing people off
Like you said, he wants to shut down the classics department, which >> Well, yes, I I was involved in all that
He he he didn't believe in in uh >> humanities >> the humanities
He shut down the Sanskrit department
He made war on the humanities and he was just u uh you know uh Philistine
Um but let let's let's get to Epstein and Summers and Schlifer
So what I saw in the files, and this was just the the nation wanted me to write um a sort of elegy to Larry Summers on the event of his uh you know second um resignation from Harvard uh a week before a week before last
Um and um I found in the Epstein files this fascinating exchange or series of exchanges between um Epstein and his um very close friend Peter Mandlesson um who is uh now under um indictment I think in in the UK for um you know >> was the former former U Labor party leader and former US or UK ambassador to the US >> and really sort of the behind the scenes architect of of Tony Blair's new labor um you know Clinton onian uh neoliberal program
So Mandelon and uh Epstein are talking about various DoddFrank reforms and their counterparts in the UK um dealing with you know uh clamping down on the financial sectors abuses and Baker bonuses and the like
And they're talking a lot about this stuff
And this is a period when Jeffrey Epstein is not uh emailing Larry Summers himself that much
Understandably, Larry Summers is running the National Economic Council
He uh probably shouldn't be um emailing um Jeffrey too much at this time, although they're having meetings
Um but Mandles and um Epstein um keep emailing back and forth about how they can constrain some of these reforms
are trying to get rid of, you know, the the banker bonus tax in the UK
They really hate the Vulkar rule, which is part of the sort of, you know, uh, rehash of of GlassSteagall
And, um, while they're discussing this, Mandlesson's like, "Okay, I'm going to go to Davos
What should I say to Larry
You know, does he know that we are friends?" And, uh, Epstein says, "You must bring up Andre Schlifer." uh you know in back when you know Larry was at Harvard he had this terrible time with Andre Schlifer with the scandal and um you got to bring that name up that's how he'll know how to trust you and Mandlesson is like okay you know but but it's it's you know he's kind of like not getting it and he's like no no no you must bring up Andrea Schlaer that's how he'll know you know he can open up and Then months later, they're, you know, he's about to see Larry again, and um he says to Mandlesson, um, "Listen, you got to bring up Schlifer
Remember, don't forget to bring up Schlifer." And Mandlesson's like, "Yeah, remember we talked about this
I brought him up at Davos and he was very embarrassed
I don't know if I'll be able to see him alone." So, but but one thing that that Epstein says is, you know, I helped him through that
I saw him through that
I was behind him a thousand% through this Schlifer scandal
He doesn't discuss the the specifics at all
What this is, but the way that he keeps telling Mandlesson to bring it up to to Summers, despite it being completely irrelevant to any of the substance that they're talking about, um really has this like very clear blackmail light um you know, sort of sheen to it
And um you know I have no idea how you'd have to speculate as to how um Epstein would have been assistance to Summers back when he was going through this um Schlifer scandal because it was a you know it was a huge investigation
Um it cost Harvard at least uh $10 million in in legal expenses
Um probably actually a lot more than that
Um it um you know it was an episode where the the university is literally accused of defrauding the US government which is um pretty unreal um in in a case like that
Luckily it was Harvard you know was a was a think tank a corporate think tank that wasn't actually Harvard University
But when you are um actually found guilty of defrauding the US government you're not actually allowed to take any more money from the US government
Now, everybody has ways of getting around this
I've never seen the US government actually blacklist anybody who's accused of defrauding it because of course that's, you know, who who pays for for your campaign commercials
But um it's it's very it's a very unusual um case especially back then in 2000 that that the um that the that a university especially of Harvard would be um charged with um defrauding uh the government
So this was um a real sorted chapter
where Larry managed to sort of keep it out of the headlines, but there was a 22,000word institutional investor piece about the whole thing, and it goes into great detail
It's it's it's quite crazy about how um just utterly out of control this crew was
And um and this story comes out at the very beginning of um of 2006
Um, somebody anonymously mails the story in Manila envelopes to, you know, all of these people on the faculty senate
Um, it makes the rounds
All of these ameritus professors are, you know, up in arms and they're like, "This is, you know, this has gotten so out of control." A lot of these professors are like accounting professors and math professors, you know, not not the humanities, uh, you know, softies that that Summers doesn't take seriously
and he announces his resignation within weeks of this happening in in February basically like I said 20 years ago um last week
So it um it was a big deal and um and yet I am told that whenever if anyone would ever bring it up again with Larry, you know, he would shoot it down
So now when we talk about Larry being president of Harvard and why he resigned um everybody brings up women are are are you know can't do math um which is you know some something that he had said like over a year earlier um and then his um his constant belittling of Cornell West um supposedly for recording a rap album um you know probably for having uh you know standing for everything that uh that Larry Summers um uh is is is not but >> also the Harvard Corporation because >> oh yes and the um >> the Harvard Corporation lost almost a third of its endowment >> of the endowment right and that was >> because of bad investments which uh that's another issue let's let's go back to Epstein uh so with this looting uh by uh you know an American type mafia or you know in in alliance with the Russian oligarchs
Where was Epstein and does it appear that some of Epstein's money and wealth came through that process or not? >> So we shall because I have not um I have not yet examined um the relationship with EP between Epstein and Vlovnik who's a really um you know kind of fascinating but also very shadowy character
But um this unbelievable document that I came across in the files um really starts to shed a lot of light on how central, you know, how how central the collapse of the Soviet Union was to the Epstein class and to his network and to a lot of, you know, potentially a lot of his um sort of, you know, mysterious um money And in so in 1991 um like I was saying um Robert Maxwell newspaper baron publishing um you know magnet um uh falls off his yacht um and dies um and and you know there are a lot of different reports but there you know there's there's autopsies that there's there's medical examiners that say no he was hit by a blow to the head
you know, obviously he um he was uh uh hit
Um but you know, within weeks of his death, it is discovered that there is a 1.6 uh 1.4 billion dollars missing from the um Maxwell Communications, his um publishing empire
And uh most of it is missing from the pensions of Daily Mirror Workers
And um everything is frozen for the Maxwell family
So the um the the you know his sort of heir um a guy named Kevin Maxwell Galain's um much older brother
She's the baby of the family
Um he is immediately under a cloud of suspicion but so is she because she's spotted um you know when they go to get the body to to um fly it to Israel because of course he must be buried in Israel
Um even though they're not uh acknowledging that he was a lifetime MSAD asset
Um he um she is seen um by a Daily Mirror reporter who she has brought along um ordering all of the servants to get rid of, shred everything that they find, find all of the documents on the yacht, find anything, you know, and and get rid of it
And uh so isn't that interesting
They are all under this cloud of suspicion and um very broke and she's, you know, complaining to everybody in her elite circles in New York
Oh my god, I don't have any money
I'm completely, you know, I'm a complete popper or terrible
And um at this point, this is when, and this is some something that Kevin does, she gets hooked up with Epstein
And apparently Epstein did not know, according to this um this this gentleman who's being interviewed by a completely clueless assistant US attorney um in 2020
Um this is a guy named James Hat
He was a telecom executive, but really he was working for the intelligence service
Um, and so he was sort of posing as a telecom executive
He was posted most of the time to the Soviet Union, largely Latvia, to try and privatize telecoms
Um, and he encounters all of these folks and he comes forward in 2020 to the FBI and says, "Listen, I have all this information
I used to hang out with these people all the time
I can tell you what they were doing, how it all fits together
These are the things the connective tissue how are they fitting together
And he says that um number one he says that um basically that Kevin under the advice of his father Kevin had appointed Jeffrey Epstein to sort of take care of the family's money while um you know in event of an emergency right and so they never found the money that was missing from the Daily Mirror
What they did have was, you know, um, you know, hundreds of shell companies, most based in Likensstein, um, that they were sort of, you know, cycling through
There were bankruptcy examinations, um, but nothing ever, you know, maybe half the money was found, but a lot of it just sort of went missing
And what this guy says is that they had sort of put the money under the um you know into the the uh the coffers of this mobster in Vienna, a Vienna bas based mobster named Gregory Luchansky
Um Luchansky was um born in Georgia
Um spent a lot of his time in Latvia
There was a ton of money laundering going on in Latvia at the time, a very critical port for um illicit oil sales
Um, so a lot of money is funneling through Latvia and this guy Luchansky is sort of like the the the boss, the main mob boss of Latvia
He becomes very good friends with this um this telecom executive because he's trying to privatize telecoms in Latia
So he has to pay him off
He refers to him as something called a roof, which is like the the network of of kind of the extortion ring that surrounded any of the um the the Russian um stateowned enterprises
you'd have to pay these guys off in order to successfully privatize it
And um so Luchansky is this kind of mobster
He's based in Vienna, spends a lot of time in Latvia
And um Epstein is getting money, you know, is laundering money for him and bringing back some of it to Galain Maxwell
Um and Epstein is getting a lot of his money to kind of keep the the Maxwell family afloat
Apparently, according to this document, he's getting it out of the New York Daily News, which is, of course, the newspaper that Maxwell um owned, had just purchased when he died
He had just purchased it um in, you know, early uh 1991 um after this uh horrible strike
And in bankruptcy court, the newspaper is sold to Mort Zuckerbin, who is um a, you know, Montrealb born um sort of, you know, man about town um a recent uh ex-boyfriend at that point of Gloria Steinum
Um and um and he owns US News and World Report and at that point the um the Atlantic Monthly
He buys the New York um uh Daily News after months and months in which Conrad Black um is supposed to be buying it
You know, everything is set
Conrad Black, the ink is almost dry, but he's having trouble with the unions
And that's another interesting wrinkle here because the union and I talked to some um you know reporters from the New York Daily News
The union that is kind of holding everything up and and and that decides whether or not um you know somebody's going to get to buy the Daily News is the newspaper deliverers union which is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of organized crime
Um it's you know under investigation
It's um president um just got out of prison on you know 124 counts of racketeering
Um he's gonna about to go back to prison when this whole deal is going down because he tests positive for cocaine
Um they literally threatened when Maxwell was buying the newspaper this union these unions representatives literally threatened to um to kill him right then and there
And apparently you know that seals the deal for him
But um but somehow um you know Mort Zuckerman takes this uh newspaper out of the hands of of Conrad Black, another interesting fellow at the last minute even though they don't have any of the details sorted out
And for some reason, apparently, according to this this uh gentleman, and I'd have to go through the bankruptcy filings to see whether there were, you know, whether there were avenues that they established for this um legally, uh they were extracting large sums of money and, you know, it just says so much money was coming out of the Daily News and um and giving it, you know, distributing it to Galain and the rest of the um you know, nine I think
Um >> but through Epstein through Epstein >> Epstein was the one who was doing that
Now Epstein was also extremely good friends with Mort Zuckerman
Um they had >> there's there aren't there email exchanges where he's like sending them sending Zuckermanman women. >> Yes
Yes
He um so in you know he he Zuckerman is an interesting fellow but yeah he's he No
Now, uh, granted, he says, "Is 32 is 31 too young?" um, to the then 72-year-old, um, Mort Zuckerman
So, Mort Zuckermanman again, and this is another thing that gets really, um, that gets really sort of not recognized within the Epstein network
He set plenty of of rich guys up with, you know, over 18 women, with wives, with mistresses
Leon Black's mistress
Um, you know, she was of, you know, fully of age
Um, and that was an almost I think that um him and and I'm you know he must he has to have set up Lesa Wexner with his wife Abigail who was a um I think that her father um like was the CEO of L all at the time
Um but she um you know because he is very close with with a lot of these women
He was extremely close with Sunni Preven
He was extremely close with Wendy Murdoch
Um Wendy >> Valerie Chsky >> and Yes
And and so this >> and I want you to talk about that, but there's also the biographer of the former Prince Andrew before after 60,000 copies of his book came out, he had to remove it claims or argues that uh Epstein provided uh Melania to Trump
Funny that you should mention that because um the guy who did I mean the the there is a guy named um uh uh uh Paulo Zampoli is the gentleman who supposedly introduced uh Melania to Trump
They're still very good friends
He was there the other day when Melania was presiding over the Security Council
Um Paulo is um is in the Trump administration
He is the he he works for the State Department as something like a senior adviser over special world projects or or something along those lines
Um he's uh he's in this network during the time he he runs a modeling agency
Um, and I've spoken to a lot of po folks close to Zamboli about whether he did actually introduce Trump to Melania or whether it was Epstein
Um, there are, you know, it's it's it's really hard to know
Zoli is not necessarily he's not as um he's nowhere near as sort of formidable as Epstein
Um, but um, in terms of being um, savoriness, um, I would say that he is uh, no more savory
he's um but um but Melania has sued um and won um in in in a lot of cases, but she has sued pretty much anyone who has um wondered about the official story of her and Trump
Um there is a Slovenian journalist who um wrote a long investigation into this that basically said no it was poly um but uh she was she was a high-class call girl um you know she was modeling in all of these um these clubs in Milan that were are known brothel and that's how she met Trump and that is why you know this is and and she has um she has sued uh anyone who has um republished that um he put out another book
But one thing that um that the Slovenians will always say is that she supposedly met Trump in 1998, but it was in 1996 that in Slovenia they started hearing about this upand cominging model who was um supposed to be dating Donald Trump
She was not a successful model at all
Um, one thing that is um really uh amazing is how um casting directors because the Slovenians have have really uh gone over a lot of the territories, you know, she's they'll say, "Oh, she's such a she's so beautiful and she has such great skin and hair and she she takes such good care of herself, but she has like zero charisma and she's just like a terrible model." Um, so she didn't have a lot of work
Um, but somehow she got a three-year H-1B visa in 1996
um and supposedly met Trump um two years later
And um I think that what a lot of the um the sort of uh Melania truthers believe was that she met uh Trump much earlier that that she got the visa as a result of Trump wanting her to have a visa and um and that you know they can't you know they have to sweep this under the rug because at the time Trump was still married and not even um separated from Mara Maples um and you know God knows whatever else
Uh yes um Jeffrey Epstein was at the epicenter of that this whole network
He was friends
Zampoli is very close with Jeanluke Brunell
They were all kind of um they all all of them these models Zoli's models tended to live in this building that was owned by um Jeffrey Epstein's brother
Um so all of these enterprises were interconnected
Let let me let me ask because it's an interesting point that you make in your article in the prospect about Epstein's relationship with the much younger wives of people like Chsky Woody Allen
You you raised that point
Explain. >> Um I think that you know he's he's extremely close to Sunni Preven
Um >> this is Woody Allen's wife and former stepdaughter
He so one of the things that it seems like because one of the reasons that I thought I started thinking about this was that Mort Zuckerman um has pretty advanced dementia has for a very long time
Um he was diagnosed it looks like around 2013 and um after his diagnosis he goes to Epstein and basically says you know what what should I do
um you know he doesn't have he has two daughters one of whom um the first with his um with an ex-wife a woman that he married for like four years um and um the second with no one knows um possibly it's egg donor surrogate combination um but she has no known uh mother um so unusual uh situation there um he doesn't seem um inclined to like sort of leave them with um his fortune
He has these nephews who he does
Um but he's kind of going to Epstein with like, you know, what do I do with all this money that I have
And it's, you know, two 2.8 billion at this point
Um and Epste's like, well, send it over to me
I'm going to figure it out and you know how you avoid taxes or whatever
And um so he sends over um all of this financial information and and Epstein is just like and you know number one he says you know this is all a complete mess
You got to send it you know you got to give it to me
I can straighten this out for you but all of your trusts need to be rewritten
Not exactly sure why
Um but the the the folks at JP Morgan to whom he you know um uh referred Zuckerman are apparently um you know falling down on the job
And um and then he keeps saying, "Well, what if you just get married
If you just get married, we don't have to deal with any of this problem
You know, just get married and then we don't have to deal with, you know, um step up basis or whatever, you know, these the the uh estate tax issues
Um you know, this would just be so much easier if you got married." And what what made me think, you know, what that made me think was that Epstein really um you know, he was sort of a magnet for these sort of, you know, a much older man with money and and younger wife um combinations
Um he, you know, was very like he was a little cooler than the geysers, you know
I mean, I think that like, you know, a little younger than, uh, than Woody and a little bit more kind of of the world
Um, he and Sunni were just extremely close
But I think that um that you know and this is one of the things about you know this Wexner relationship that I started to think after uh reading so many of the exchanges between him and Mort Zuckerman is that for these guys you get the sense that their wealth like isn't it it it it is it isn't even theirs like there is some element that they are owned by these you know cuz cuz Zuckermanman at one point he's like you know he's like, "Okay, where do I have to give my money away to
Who do you have to give your money away to?" And and and Epstein's like, "I don't know
You know, what do you want?" Like, you know, Jewish Alzheimer's and and you know, Zuckermanman just says, "Well, Jewish Alzheimer's." So, that's that's one of the expectations is that, you know, there's a going to be an enormous amount of money flowing back to the various Zionist organizations
Um, and Zuckermanman was at the very top of that um of of that collection
and he he ran something called the council of presidents of Jewish organizations for a while um which is a a title they call king of the Jews um in supposedly in the according to the forward I think um and there is also this like there's just this sense that you get that like these that at the very top these oligarchs um you know again you can't take it with you and um so they get very sort of um you know paranoid um when they when they start to get older about um what's going to become of their money and um and and you know how sort of to protect themselves and Epstein is the guy who kind of soothes their um their sort of sense of of um you know existential uh dilemmas about that
but then also encourages them to just, hey, leave it to your wife because the wife is going to be even more, you know, Zuckerman is very resistant to to a lot of Epstein's uh suggestions
Um, and it's he's he seems extremely stingy
Like he doesn't, you know, Epstein's like, "Why don't you know, like why don't you just agree to pay for Cam for your, you know, for for your kids' cousins
Like that doesn't, you know, what's what's the big deal?" and and he's kind of like um and but um but there is this sense I think that Epstein has is like you know as soon as this sort of um transfers over to um the the lady um then you know the the money is even even more sort of um uh controllable by you know me and my networks and I can you know I have even more clout in terms of deciding whe to target it you know what what universities cities, what you know, um, galleries that we're going to, um, you know, sort of annex
Um, so I think that, you know, this this is something that, um, you know, sort of needs to be explored
A thing that I do worry about with Chsky is is just like his papers
Um, uh, I, you know, that was something that I've I've thought about while reading the, you know, Valeria Chsky stuff
Clearly, you know, um uh Chsky was, like you've observed, um sort of um drawn to Epstein's um financial acumen about, you know, how to kind of deal with his his um estate
But in in in his case, um especially given that we know that he was such a um a a prolific um answerer of emails and you know correspondents, I fear um what happens to all of his papers when he dies
Who's going to get first crack at them
Um you know, is is is you know, MSAD going to be there
um because I've I've I've heard about that that stuff happening um in the past
And so I you know I I think that there's probably good reasons that he had for wanting to cultivate Chsky
But the reason that they get drawn to him I think is because he is very good he's very good at um at ingratiating himself to women
Mhm. >> Um, >> let let me ask about the the the focus has obviously been on the uh pedophilia rings and the sexual abuse of girls and women, but I think you argue that they've missed this other important aspect in the Epstein files, which is this financial cabal that Epstein was at the center of. >> Yeah
I mean, so one thing that um that was really striking about again going back to that um British intelligence officer who um you know telecom guy was that this this gentleman that he mentions Gregory Luchsky was like an obsession of the CIA
William Sapphire wrote a column about him in 1995
Um in the '9s this guy was there was a lot of fear about what was going to happen to Russia
Is it you know I remember um the fear of Geronowski um you know what all of this chaos um that we had done so much to unleash and to worsen um was was going to wreak
And so the big thing on Luchansky was that, you know, he was suspected um and he showed up at um a bunch of DNC
He he he gets a meeting with uh Clinton that supposedly Galain uh you know, organizes
Um and Galain goes to work as his um as his pimp essentially
Um >> you don't mean Chsky, you mean Epstein. >> No, no, no
I mean as this guy Luchansky's um pimp
She >> Oh, Luchansky
Yeah
she was working for Luchansky
But in the um in the real hawkish stories about this guy and he was one of a large parade of very shady foreign um donors to the DNC and to Clinton during the mid '9s like he was he belonged to that sort of parade, the Charlie Tree, you know those guys
Uh but um but they were saying that he was suspected of trafficking you know nuclear materials to Iran and you know that was you know if only I guess but um but you know this is one of the the things that um we that was just so striking to read was and and to understand because the the other that's the other thing is that he was um a business partner of Mark Rich who was famously um you know pardoned by Clinton on his last day in office
Um and um Mark Rich was another one of these guys who um you know he he sold Iranian oil
He didn't care um who he was taking money from
He was completely un ideological
A Zionist, right
But like um he you know he he did lots of deals with Iran and that was one of the reasons that he um actually was originally indicted
Um and and and you know that's the other thing is is that like these none of these guys are it is all about you know getting getting rich um and uh you know punishing your enemies and at the end of the day um they don't have loyalty to uh any country right that that's not like they they don't have loyalty to anyone um and that's the other thing that's so depressing about reading some of Epstein's emails is that like he is um he's such a bad guy
Um he's he's but he is he's more human than a lot of the the folks that he was dealing with
certainly Zuckerman um you know >> and and and that's like it's hard to kind of wrap your mind around that where he's he's more um or he maybe has more of like a um a patina of humanity because like you know at the he was a like I said a really bad guy but he could play a human being and um you know it I feel like that is sort of what has happened and Mort Zucker German
Um, these guys um were and Ahoud Barack, it's important to, you know, put that into context, right
Like Ahoud Barack is is BB's, you know, longtime rival
Um, supposedly he was, you know, he was as woke as it as it got in the '9s in Israel
Um, certainly he was also, you know, a racist um Jewish supremacist, but also an Ashkanazi supremacist
He looked down on the Misrai and Ashkanaz and Spartic Jews
But um you know he there's a point at which he um he says to Epstein you know we have to you know we don't have to import you know these uh like sort of um low rent Jews anymore like the the Misrai Jews from from Yemen and and um and Morocco and and and Egypt
you know, we can um we can really, you know, have our choice of of Jews and we should try to um you know, get um uh better stock to immigrate, right
Um because they're crazy eugenicists
But at the same time, that was a calculation because the um you know, as you know, um Likood uh Netanyahu's party, their base is um Misrai and Sephardic Jews and Soviet Jews
Um it is not and and these are people who suffered a lot of discrimination and bigotry um at the like incredible like scandalous um feats, you know, b their babies being stolen um at the you know in the hospital and and and auctioned off to to Ashkanazi parents in the in the 50s that like literally happened
Um and it's one of the um motives for the guy who uh killed Rabin
Um but uh but you know these are these are folks who had some you know sympathy for the Arabs um back in the 50s
Um you know that was snuffed out and they became the hardest core um ludnik um you know kahanist Jewish supremacist um uh people in in in Israel that faction and um that's what we're living with now
And now, you know, the the old labor Zionists, the Ashkanazis, um the woke Ashkanazis like have, you know, they're they're all, you know, moving to Berlin, um and not allowed to vote anymore
And um and and so you see kind of how um as bad as things were when when Epstein was writing all of these emails, um they've definitely gotten worse. >> Um >> it's a it's a window into into the ruling class
I mean that's what it is and it's not just that they they treat everyone as objects including girls and women but I think that what you have investigated and written on it also just shows how the the criminality the uh in you know and and of course it's a network where they all watch out for each other as you pointed out on the way to getting fabulously rich. >> Yeah
And um you know another thing that's like sort of a meta story that I came across because initially I started looking at this because of the New York Daily News
I was interested um that newspaper um which was the highest circulating newspaper in America um in the 70s um had a circulation close to like 1.5 million in the 80s um you know it was always a friend of Israel um but it was a um a you know working class
who's kind of the the epitome of the populist newspaper
Um they're down to 20 reporters
Um four on the national desk and you know 16 on state and uh local
Um I don't know how you run a newspaper with that kind of crew, a daily newspaper
Um, but they have um they're owned by Alden uh Global Capital, the uh the Duke Lacrosse Bro I think
Um uh you know, newspaper uh plunderer um that's kind of gotten all of the newspapers, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, uh you know, Times, you name it
And um but when they were sold, when Zuckerman finally sold the paper, and that was the other thing is that Epstein wanted Zuckerman to get the paper off his hands in 2013
Um it was sitting on on Zuckerman's books at a value of like $550 million
He ends up selling it for $1 to the sort of precursor of Alden called Trunk
Um, and these guys are like they, you know, it immediately, you know, that that like gives this contract to this guy for like $10 million
He's like flying around in private jets
I mean, it's completely um disgusting
Um but you know you realize that you know because the a lot of the in the context of Jeff Bezos um you know just sort of having the the Washington Post staff and um Epstein at one point he um writes to Peter Teal, hey man, you know, like I'll I'll upfront half of your expenses on that Gawker lawsuit
I hate them too
um for these guys at one point um owning a newspaper was um a path to influence and they sort of subsidized these things and they took money out of these things and the journalists never really paid attention to the depressing uh finances of their operations because um it's a source of existential dread
I mean being in this industry you know for my whole life um it's been in you know crippling recession and um and nobody sort of pays attention but they're um you know when they sold it he they sold it not just the newspaper but this um 25 acre uh uh plot of land in New Jersey where they had a um printing press and um it's it's you know waterfront land um you know overlooking the Hudson um and they and you know it was a 50% interest in that that land but they they sold this thing for for a dollar and um you know who knows you know where like what other side deals were involved in in that transaction
Um probably quite a few
Um, but it is sort of this like this there's, you know, there's so much that we don't know
There's so much that you're not allowed that that you don't have to disclose as an oligarch these days, we're um sort of at the the mercy of these people
And um yeah and and and if if we unturn you know over if the the more journalists are not um uh really uh uh you know they're they're very much loathed um real journalism is is um loathed by these guys and that's why there's not you know it occurred to me that the New York Daily News would have been the ideal newspaper to sort of be sifting through the Epstein um files because you know so many of these characters are are, you know, in New York
They're sort of uh New York personalities
Um, and you know, the New York Times, um, can't, you know, they they've they've tried to cover this scandal, but they keep running against up against
I mean, one of my favorite things was um a story that they ran about, you know, how uh Epstein was just a con man and there's all this talk about how he was an intelligence, but he was just a conman
And it doesn't, you know, it's like no, like you don't get to to do like Ponzi scheme after Ponzi scheme and get away with it if you don't have some connections, you know
And where are those connections, right
That those things go together
Ponzi schemes, money laundering, intelligence, they're all you see these that you know that uh triumvirate over and over again, right
And um and they, you know, there's one point where they say that he gets this, you know, he he has this um connection to the White House and it's what's her face, but it's a Rothschild and they they just leave out the Rothschild part of her name, right
You know, there's so much that the the the New York Times just won't touch
Um and and it's and and the the FBI didn't want to investigate
I mean the you know the the the other story is how the files show complete disinterest on the part of the um US attorney and on the part of our um you know federal investigators in understanding what was going on
Um and uh and so you know it's it's um it's not it's a bleak story but um it's it's also um in light of the absolute insanity of this particular moment
Um >> well, it's the depravity, the greed, the hedenism, >> the lack of empathy, the callousness, the cruelty that has defined all oligarchic classes throughout history
And I think that your work has been important because it it's it that pedophilia that ex that human trafficking that exploitation of girls and women is just one piece of that vast puzzle
uh and uh and and and we need to highlight that uh you know the we need that complete picture which I think that you your work has been very important in terms of providing um thanks Meen and I want to thank uh Sophia and Diego Victor Thomas and Max who produced the show
You can find me at chrisedges.substack.com.