The Epstein Saga: My Current Thoughts

I haven’t written about the Epstein saga since July, but I’ve been following it. Trump’s decision to follow in Biden’s footsteps and bury the investigation was deeply disappointing. I can no longer pretend to myself that Trump was different because he was not part of the swamp.

I’ve been hoping for him and his cabinet to do something that would restore my hope for him, but I haven’t found anything that can do that yet.

Here is an update on what I’ve been reading about the story and what I think it means. 

* The DOJ’s Announcement: In recent weeks, the Department of Justice finally claimed that Epstein’s full “client list” does not exist, nor is it being prepared for release. This outright denial conflicts with years of promises and assertions from officials who initially said they had “thousands of pages” of evidence.

* Broken Promises: Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly stated in 2021 that she had a file with evidence of “more than 250 victims” and promised “everything will come out.” Yet in the latest leaks, she and the DOJ admitted they have no such full files. (Source: Bondi’s statements in media interviews, official transcripts)

* The Fabrication of Evidence: The evidence released by the DOJ last year was heavily edited, with Wired reporting that the so-called “raw footage” was a patched-together assemblage of multiple clips with metadata suggesting tampering or editing.

* The Public’s Growing Suspicion: Investigative journalists and critics, including whistleblowers, journalists, and even some former allies of Trump, are voicing increasing doubt. Leading voices have questioned why the most high-profile case of the 21st century remains unresolved and why the government is deliberately opaque. (Sources: articles from the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal)

* Supporters’ Disillusionment: Trump supporters who once believed in his promise of transparency are now openly questioning why the files haven’t been released – many seeing it as a clear indication of a cover-up. (Sources: social media posts)

* Media and Opposition Response: The mainstream media, many Democrats, and anti-establishment commentators are increasingly critical of the DOJ’s refusal to release full documents, framing it as part of a broader system of elites protecting themselves. (Sources: articles from CNN, MSNBC)

Why This Story Should Stay Alive

My concern with the Epstein saga is much less about Epstein as pedophile. It’s not about the list of powerful people who would be humiliated if the list were revealed. It’s not even about the young women who were sexually groomed and victimized by Epstein and his supporting network. (It takes a ton of naivete to believe this was a two-person operation.) My interest in this case, and particularly Epstein’s death and all the covering up, from both sides of the aisle, including first the Biden administration and now the Trump administration – not to mention 95% of the media and our government representatives – is who or what was behind this international, multibillion-dollar scheme whose only logical purpose could have been global blackmail.

Epstein Saga Timeline 
 
1980s–2000: Jeffrey Epstein’s Rise to Prominence
Key Dates
* 1980: Epstein becomes a limited partner at Bear Stearns.
* 1988: Epstein creates his own money-management firm, targeting clients worth $1 billion or more.
* 1992–97: Trump hosts parties attended by Epstein and flies on Epstein’s private jet multiple times.
 
2000–04: From “Terrific Guy” to “Persona non Grata” – with a Birthday Card in Between
Key Dates
* 2000: Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, invites 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre to become Epstein’s masseuse.
* 2002: Trump says, in a magazine piece on the financier, that Epstein likes women “on the younger side.”
* 2003: Epstein celebrates his 50th birthday. Trump is reported to be one of more than 50 celebrities who contributed to a bawdy album of birthday wishes.
* 2004: Trump and Epstein’s friendship ends.
 
2005–09: Controversial Conviction
Key Dates
* March 2005: Palm Beach police investigate report that Epstein was inappropriate with a 14-year-old.
* July 2006: Grand jury indicts Epstein on soliciting prostitution charge.
* May 2007: Federal prosecutor drafts indictment with 60 criminal charges against Epstein.
* July 2007: Epstein’s attorneys negotiate deal to end federal investigation.
* June 30, 2008: Epstein pleads guilty to state charges and is sentenced to 18 months.
* July 22, 2009: Epstein is freed after 13 months in prison.
 
2011–17: The Giuffre Case
Key Dates
* 2011: Giuffre sells two interviews and a photo of her with Prince Andrew to a British newspaper.
* 2015: Giuffre sues Maxwell for defamation. Suit is settled.
 
2018–19: Investigation, Arrest, and Epstein’s Death
Key dates
* Nov. 2018: The Miami Herald publishes yearlong investigation of Epstein.
* July 6, 2019: Epstein is arrested on federal charges.
* Aug. 10, 2019: Epstein is found dead in jail cell.
 
2020–24: Calls to Release the Files
Key Dates
* Dec. 29, 2021: Maxwell is convicted of sex trafficking.
* Jan. 3, 2024: Court releases more than 900 pages of documents that were part of the Giuffre-Maxwell suit.
* June 2024: Trump says on Fox News that he would release the Epstein files.
 
2025: From “Declassified” Binders to “No Credible Evidence”
Key Dates
* Feb. 21, 2025: Attorney General Bondi says Epstein client list is “on my desk.”
* Feb. 27, 2025: MAGA supporters receive Epstein files binders from Bondi.
* May 2025: Bondi informs Trump that his name appears in the unreleased Epstein files. Trump has denied this.
* July 7, 2025: Justice Department releases memo saying that no other documents will be made public.
* Sept. 8, 2025: Epstein estate releases the birthday book, which includes a drawing and birthday wishes that appear to be signed by Trump.

Yet Another 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist? 

In the Sept. 8 issue, I included a short video about 9/11, pointing out the difficulty of believing that the three buildings – the North Tower, the South Tower, and Building 7 – were taken down by the planes that flew into them.

I just learned that Sen. Ron Johnson has taken up the cause. His version is more moderate than the one I showed you. His problem is with Building 7. He said, “It sure looks like controlled demolition to me.”

Johnson told James Corbett that asking legitimate questions results in instant backlash, which he said just raises his “suspicion level.”

“The Richard Gages of the world, the structural engineers, the firefighters who know the history of these steel buildings not coming down because of basic fires – you need something else,” he said.

How to Fix Our Broken Government: Five Simple Rules 

I loved this video clip. Here’s a guy with no stated credentials talking about how to fix what has been impossible for legislators and political pundits to fix for as long as I’ve been alive: the fundamentally corruptible nature of the US.

The Question I’m Asking Now 

I’m doubtful we’ll ever get a full and clear accounting of the Mega-Crime that was COVID-19. There are simply too many power players – corporations, lobbyists, medical associations, politicians, and the media – involved in producing and promoting this multibillion-dollar scam that will continue to do everything they can to challenge the facts as they surface or simply bury them in the small print of long, boring reports that no one will read.

We know that the virus itself was not just man-made but was produced by labs that were in the business of developing biological warfare. And it never would have existed in the first place – and killed as many as 8.5 million people worldwide – had the US not been actively involved in funding that research.

What we know we do not know is the actual number of deaths from COVID. Because from the very beginning, the way the WHO and many other national health agencies counted the deaths was erratic and completely absurd.

On the economic front, we know that the cost to governments, businesses, and individuals was in the trillions of dollars.

And finally, we know (or should have learned) that the power of our own limited-government US Constitution was not strong enough to persuade a huge percentage of our population to believe a narrative that made no sense when it was first spun at the end of 2019, and only got more absurd as the shutdowns continued.

So the question I’m asking now is: Did we, the people, learn anything from this? Or could it happen to us again next year?

One More Thing: This Just Came Out from the WSJ…

As I was putting this issue to bed, the WSJ published an opinion piece titled “RFK’s Misguided War on mRNA.” The Journal has been promoting every major talking point put out by Big Pharma since the man-made virus appeared six years ago. It’s no surprise that they continue today. I don’t have the time right now to give you a point-by-point refutation of their piece, but I’ll send one to you in the coming days.

Here’s What I Discovered: How DC (and other Blue Cities) Managed to “Lower” Violent Crime Rates in Recent Years

There is no doubt that DC has a crime problem that is not going down. Everyone living in DC knows that. But it’s also true that the crime rates, as reported, are going down. So what gives?

The answer is quite simple – but no one reporting on it seems to have the common sense to identify it.

DC’s crime rate has been going down for the last several years not because there have been fewer muggings, robberies, and assaults, but because the DC government, its mayor and many of the most powerful people in the hierarchy of Justice, have stopped prosecuting crimes.

Cashless bail, a massive downgrading of felonies to misdemeanors (which are often disproved or, if proven, result in no jail time), and the refusal of many new DAs to prosecute crimes committed by “people of color” – that’s why crime rates are dropping.

Consider these facts:

* Of the 5,558 total arrests for carrying a pistol without a license, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia – essentially the local DA – refused to file a charge in 1,933 (34.2%) of those cases.

* Worse, another 1,213 (32.7%) of the original 5,558 arrests were closed without a conviction.

* In Washington, DC, between 2018 and 2022, only 1.7% of people arrested for carrying a pistol without a license were sentenced to prison.

* Only 2,218 cases (39.9%) of the 5,558 arrests resulted in a conviction for any criminal offense, although 279 cases (7.5%) are still pending. Of those 2,218 convictions, 654 (29.5%) were for misdemeanors and 1,564 (70.5%) for felonies. Out of the 1,564 felony convictions, 85 defendants have yet to be sentenced. Out of the 1,479 cases in which a sentence has been imposed, only 819 contained a conviction for carrying a pistol without a license (CPWL) or its equivalent – although, in fairness, some of the defendants in the remaining 660 cases were convicted of more severe offenses.

* Of those 819 CPWL felony convictions, 57.7% got sentenced to probation and 30.5% got a “split sentence,” meaning they got sentenced within the local sentencing guidelines that included a jail sentence of six months or less.

Historic Signals of Stock Market Crashes 

The past is prologue – but only if you can distinguish between correlative events and causal ones. Here’s a good introductory explanation of what the causal events have been for stock market crashes in the past 200 years. Compare the events the narrator in this video has identified with events happening today, and then let me know what you think. Are we in for another meltdown? Or can Trump trigger the economy into a saving surge of growth?

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Is It a Pandemic?

I’m sure you heard about the 27-year-old man who drove from Nevada to NYC last week, entered what he thought was the headquarters of the NFL, and killed four people and critically injured a fifth before offing himself. “Luckily,” he left a note of explanation: He believed he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, which causes symptoms including memory loss, confusion, and aggression.

The disease is common in football, with 99% of donated NFL player brains indicating CTE.

The thing I don’t understand about the CTE story is why it is always about football players. If it’s caused by repeated small brain concussions, where are all the stories about old boxers getting CTE? If you count the head blows they suffer in training, they must endure far more head trauma than football players do.

Can Zohran Mamdani Make NYC as Great as Gavin Newsom Made San Francisco? 

For most of my life, the image of a “failed American city” was Detroit, whose population dropped from 1.85 million in 1950 to about 630,000 today. I became familiar with Detroit during the mid-1970s, when I was studying for my MA at the University of Michigan.

I visited the city several times and was saddened to see what was once a wealthy industrial city and the hub of the American automotive industry in the process of rapid decline, with large sections of the cityscape converted to public housing and blocks of the downtown commercial district already in a state of abandonment and disrepair. It has deteriorated since then.

Efforts to revive Detroit through various federal handouts and city projects have failed. It’s now an economic disaster zone. I find it difficult to imagine it ever recovering.

And Now… There’s a New Failing City on the Map

Between 2019 and 2021, San Francisco lost 6.3% of its population, a greater rate of decline than any two-year period in Detroit’s history and unprecedented in any major US city.

Detroit’s fall was primarily driven by the relocation of the US auto industry to southern, right-to-work states, where auto producers, including foreign firms who build autos here, were able to avoid the union conflict that was endemic in Detroit.

San Francisco’s decline is not driven by macro-economic events out of its control, but by absurdly bad local economic policies supported by the same voters that are supporting Mamdani now.

During the same period, San Francisco lost 6.3% of its population, representing nearly $7 billion of household income, even after accounting for people who moved into the city.

Taxpayers who filed 2019 tax returns from San Francisco and 2021 returns from a new location reported an average annual adjusted gross income (AGI) of nearly $196,000. But because the income distribution is such that the median income is greater than its simple arithmetic average, the median income of taxpayers who left San Francisco would probably have been around $250,000.

And as those dollars left, so did the economic activity that those individuals directly and indirectly created.

Where’ve the Big Companies & Wealthy Taxpayers Gone? 

They are moving to destinations that do not have San Francisco’s drug and crime issues, its poorly performing public schools, its homelessness, its extremely high cost of doing business, and other problems that people have been tolerating only because San Francisco was once one of the world’s great cities. As someone who loved San Francisco, it pains me to say it no longer is. And I suspect that those who departed the city, whose exits left it with 60,000 fewer taxpayers, feel the same way.

Washoe County, Nevada, site of Lake Tahoe, a popular ski resort, attracted hundreds of San Franciscans who have an average AGI of well over $300,000. So did Palm Beach, Florida (where there is no state income tax).

The broader Bay Area, home to Silicon Valley, lost over 2% of its tax filers. The San Francisco metro area lost a total of nearly $14 billion in household income between 2019 and 2021 – and those leaving were wealthy enough that the city’s median income dropped by 4.6%.

Teton County, Wyoming, home to Jackson Hole and other well-known ski resorts, has been the chosen destination of the wealthiest San Francisco ex-pats, representing an average annual household income of nearly $600,000 and a total income loss for San Francisco of $37 million over that same two-year period.

These people did not leave San Francisco because of high housing prices.

According to Zillow, the median home price in Jackson Hole, one of the few locations in the United States where home prices are still rising, is $1.5 million, which is $200,000 higher than San Francisco’s median home price, which continues to fall.

So How Bad Is San Francisco Now? 

Some city blocks are still safe and beautiful. As in every declining city, the primary tourist areas and wealthiest neighborhoods are well policed and still providing street-savvy citizens and unsuspecting visitors with protected areas to enjoy. But the safe zones are getting smaller as big companies, their rich founders, and their highly paid executives choose to live their lives somewhere else.

Other city blocks have been taken over by drug gangs selling fentanyl in open-air superstores. (Think of an opioid version of Costco, without the membership card.).

San Francisco’s downtown has suffered the most, as many tech companies have decided to reduce or eliminate their office space footprint in the area. The office vacancy rate in the city is 27%, up from just 4% in 2019.

One San Francisco tech entrepreneur took photos of the downtown on weekday mornings, times when the area historically has been crowded. Look at these photos and you will think that they were taken on a Sunday or a holiday, not during a normal workday.

The city estimates that downtown foot traffic has declined about 64% compared to 2019. Empty office buildings could cost San Francisco $200 million per year in lost property taxes. And as tenants have sublet their office space, nearly 50% of that space will be up for renewal in about two years, raising the potential for even more losses.

Can San Francisco Be Saved? 

As what happened in Detroit, San Francisco leadership is waking up late to the realization that the city is imploding.

Mayor London Breed has suggested converting part of downtown’s tech and finance presence to biology-based industries – which would likely require a substantial (and expensive) renovation of existing office space.

A San Francisco business group commissioned a 143-page plan to revitalize the downtown. Some of what is recommended is predictable and has all the right buzzwords and phrases, including creating a “Pedestrian Paradise,” envisioning “Downtown as a Stage” with public performances and events, and “Rediscover[ing] Public Open Spaces.”

But none of this will ever become a reality without a more sensible Board of Supervisors and a crime, homelessness, and drug abuse do-over. Interestingly, the plan is silent on these issues.

A search of its 143 pages for the words “homeless,” “homelessness,” “crime,” “drugs,” and “opioids” came up empty. The plan does, however, include the words “safety” and “cleanliness” several times.

Perhaps these euphemisms are as far as a business group could wander into city politics without upsetting the precarious apple cart of the city’s Board of Supervisors, who were not involved in commissioning the study and who don’t seem to understand the gravity of the city’s current state.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin said that it was important for the mayor and other city officials to get past trying to return downtown San Francisco to the economic powerhouse it had been in 2019, noting that he believed the loss in economic activity wasn’t “profound.”

Detroit died a slow, insidious death, one that unfolded over 70 years. San Francisco is experiencing something much more striking, rapid, and prominent. Will San Francisco’s politics change in response to its residents’ leaving – a situation that has created a $7 billion net income loss for the city?

I would like to think that the answer to this question is “yes.” But on the other hand, the city is at the mercy of a Board of Supervisors that is largely responsible for what it has become. A board that ended up quashing the opportunity for the city to have a vacant building turned into a new Whole Foods market – a business that neighborhood residents had hoped to attract, a business that had agreed to the Board’s demand to build affordable housing in order to receive its approval.

That opportunity is now gone. And as of last year, nearly five years after Whole Foods was denied approval, the building for the proposed market remained empty, in disrepair, and subject to frequent break-ins, most likely associated with drug use and prostitution. So, on second thought, the answer to the question posed above is “no.” At least not until San Franciscans decide to vote differently.

How Much Time Do You Spend on Email Each Day? 
 
A Japanese mentee emailed me last week, apologizing for being late on a promised response and explaining that she had been swamped with other work, including “20 emails a day.”

My first thought was, “Only 20?”

That got me thinking about my own never-ending battle to rule over my email inbox rather than have my email inbox rule over me.

Here’s how it breaks down…

I get an average of 150 emails a day.

About 20 of them are reports from my main client, a digital information publisher based in Baltimore. I don’t spend a lot of time reading them, but if I notice an anomaly – significantly higher or lower sales than usual – I dig in.

Another 50 are free subscriptions to various online newsletters and other digital information services. I subscribe to them because their subject matter falls within my scope of interest and because they are, in my opinion, well written. I spend at least a half-hour every day scanning, selecting, and filing the essays and articles I think I might use for my blog or my personal journal.

I get about 20 pieces of advertising or promotional email every day, too – mostly offers from the above-mentioned free subscriptions. I never take the bait because I get so much useful and interesting information for free. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have “upgraded” three or four of my 50 free subscriptions because they are so good that I felt the need to pay them something.

Another 30 emails are group-sent business memos, all of which I read and about half of which I reply to, either briefly or at length.

And finally, I get 20 to 30 emails each day sent to me by individuals – colleagues or friends and relatives.

Those from colleagues I answer immediately. The emails from friends and relatives I often make the mistake of putting aside until I feel I can give them the time they deserve, which means I’m usually obliged to begin each one with, “Sorry I didn’t reply sooner, but…”

What this boils down to is about 25 outbound emails a day, which, at one-sixth of my inbound volume, seems about right.

If you are still reading this, you may be wondering why you are still reading it. My answer is that I don’t know, except you probably have the same strain of OCD that I have, and you should (we should) spend less time each day reading and responding to email. (And much less time tracking everything we do.)

Is Britain the Most Anti-Free-Speech Country in the World? 

I used to think of Britain as a bastion of liberty. The home of John Locke and George Orwell. The land that gave us the Magna Carta and the stoic principle of “stiff upper lip.” But if you’ve been paying attention lately, you might be asking the same question I am: Has Britain quietly become the most anti-free-speech country in the democratic world?

A recent case makes the point. Hamit Coskun, a Turkish-born atheist and political refugee, burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London in February. He did so in protest against the Erdoğan regime and the rise of Islamist authoritarianism in his home country. The act was symbolic, nonviolent, and explicitly political.

For that, he was assaulted in broad daylight by passersby – and then arrested. He was prosecuted by the Crown for a “religiously aggravated public order offense” and convicted by a judge who said Coskun was motivated by “a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers.”

This is how things now work in Britain: If someone attacks you during a protest, your attacker can be used as evidence against you. Coskun’s supposed crime was not his action but the reaction it provoked. In other words, if your speech upsets someone enough to become violent, you may be prosecuted – not them. What better way to encourage the heckler’s veto?

Coskun’s real offense was to criticize a religion now functionally immune from critique. The judge didn’t believe he was protesting Islamism or Erdoğan’s political use of religion because, get this, he didn’t shout “Erdoğan” enough while being kicked and chased. So now, apparently, if you’re physically assaulted in Britain during a protest, you must also offer clear political narration – on the spot – or the courts may infer your true intent.

This isn’t an isolated incident. In recent months, British citizens have been arrested for silently praying near abortion clinics. Not shouting. Not protesting. Not harassing. Just praying – sometimes on their own private property. Why? Because they were within “buffer zones” around the clinics. The authorities call this a form of “intimidation.”

Even Orwell couldn’t have imagined that thinking the wrong thoughts in the wrong place might become a crime act in the land of Churchill.

Meanwhile, British police are spending increasing amounts of time monitoring social media for offensive speech. Comedians have been investigated. Teenagers have been arrested for reposting memes. Online “hate incidents” are logged in official records even when they don’t meet any criminal standard – just in case they’re useful later.

Let’s be clear: Britain isn’t North Korea. You won’t be disappeared for writing a rude tweet. But the country now leads the Western world in soft authoritarianism – prosecuting protest, punishing dissent, and criminalizing disapproval of favored ideologies. And because it does this under the velvet banner of “inclusivity” and “public order,” many citizens accept it.

Coskun fled Turkey because he believed Britain was freer. He now says he’s not so sure. “If criticism of doctrine is redefined as hatred of believers,” he writes, “then space for lawful criticism of that religion – or any religion – collapses.”

He’s right. And the more we allow this inversion of logic to fester, the more Britain begins to resemble the very regimes people like Coskun fled.

So, I ask again: Is Britain the most anti-free-speech country in the democratic world? On paper, no. In practice, it’s getting hard to argue otherwise.