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He got off the hook in 2008 and pled not guilty here. I don't see why he wouldn't at least fight the charges. It's not like he committed suicide out of embarrassment since he was already a convicted and registered sex offender.
IMO Trump's public attempt to sweep Epstein under the rug provides evidence for why Israel would collect Kompromat even on strategic allies. The Israelis are already among the top 3, if not higher, countries in the world that target the United States most aggressively for spying operations. So the "why would they collect blackmail on allies" would be "for the same reason they do all their other spying operations on their allies."
There's also the possibility that the operation was tied to a non-Mossad Israeli intelligence operation that pertained to internal divisions in Israeli politics. Ultimately there's too much handwaving - "he really charmed his way into getting a job at Bear Sterns, and he was joking when he told people he belonged to Intelligence." Of course it was also claimed Epstein was from intelligence in his 2008 legal troubles which is what got him off those chargers. Apparently Epstein was able to set up a meeting between some JP Morgan execs and Netenyahu? That sounds like deeper connections than you described:
He got off once. He'd used up all his favours. It was likely the truth was going to come out about how he'd been lying all along, and the entire house of cards had collapsed.
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Assuming Epstein didn't kill himself, why does it have to be Mossad or another intelligence agency that did it? All kinds of powerful people used his jet and were possibly involved in paedophilia through him, there are hundreds of people with motive and means. One of his more high profile connections was the 4th in line for the British crown, is it hard to imagine such people wouldn't be able to arrange a death?
The real reason is that blaming the Jews is always popular, but Mossad in this case makes it easy by being an intelligence agency with plausible motive, means, opportunity, and most of all enough competence that it wouldn't leak.
Having someone killed in prison and leaving the motives undiscoverable is child's play. 80 IQ hood gangs do it all the time. This seems more than within the competency of the Clinton's or Royal Family's fixer.
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JP Morgan has facilities in Israel and is one of the most important banks in the world. The idea that they needed a mossed connection to have some of their executives meet with the prime minister of Israel is just kind of silly. Jaime himself could have easily facilitated the connection. If it was with some lower level executive then you really shouldn't invoke the JPM name because lower level execs are just normal people with limited influence. I've met a number of executives of this level and if they were interested in this type of connection it'd just be mundane "can we cut the red tape on the construction of this thing we are underwriting the loan on" type of stuff, not insidious geopolitical shenanigans.
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Not at all, in fact it’s explained if you read my piece. Staley and Dimon were not particularly well connected in Israel. Epstein was close to Lauder and Wexner and could easily have asked either of them to raise the request with Netanyahu, for whom in any case it wouldn’t have been unusual to meet with senior figures at the most important Wall Street bank. That is most of what Epstein did in his later years, namely send emails to people in his Rolodex whom he had met in his decade of relentless socializing pestering them to do minor things that he could trade in for other things.
It’s possible, and there is nowhere I disagree that Epstein may have played politics for Barak during the slow emergence of the modern Israeli security state in the early 2000s. But again, that was after he acquired fame and fortune and long after the sex stuff started, during which time he would have been a nobody to anyone in Israel.
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He was still convicted in the early 2000s, though, he just got a sweetheart deal. This time there were more witnesses and more credible witnesses, more victims and more medium to high quality testimony from his own former employees. In addition, he was already a convicted criminal, which would affect sentencing and make a second sweetheart deal less likely in any case (regardless of offense or offender). The Florida cases were localized, the New York case had a much greater emphasis on interstate and international movement which meant a much longer sentence in a real prison was inevitable if convicted. As the Ghislaine sentence (and there was much less direct evidence of a lot of her involvement shows), Epstein wasn’t making it out in his lifetime and there is every chance he knew it. It wasn’t embarrassment, it was someone realizing he wasn’t going to get to do any of the things (or people) he wanted ever again.
Spying on the Mormons at the CIA and the hippies at State is very different to blackmailing Alan Dershowitz into becoming a more fervent Zionist. Israeli intelligence in the US is largely about acquiring intelligence Mossad can’t get directly about Israel’s enemies because the US has sources and deals with Qatar, Lebanon, Bahrain, with Iran via Russia and sometimes directly, intercepts intelligence from other countries that might deal with anti-Israel groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah, has some channels with the IRGC. For example, there was a big Israeli effort to get more information about conversations between the Assadist Syrian and Russian governments, and it’s possible that the US might be able to intercept more than Israel, and it has access to shared Five Eyes intelligence that Israel doesn’t. That makes strategic sense and is much cheaper than running a blackmail op on rich Zionist Wall Street tycoons who already attend the friends of the IDF annual fundraiser for free (or indeed, for a significant donation).
As I explained, in the Wall Street of the 1970s it really wouldnt have been unusual for a really smart Brooklyn kid to drop out of a math degree at NYU and still end up in finance on the trading floor. At that time, many new traders were working class and didn’t necessarily have college degrees. Everyone who met Epstein said he was insanely charismatic.
@2rafa @SecureSignals @Goodguy It was a joint Mossad/CIA project. That’s why he was able to get the the earlier charges dropped on the basis of being intelligence. The way he got rich was by being a CIA money launderer. Trump can’t reveal the list because the American people would react badly if they found out that electoral politics is basically fake and they’ve been living in a dictatorship of the CIA for the past 60 years.
If electoral politics is fake and we're living in a dictatorship of the CIA, how'd Trump get elected?
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