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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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He got off the hook in 2008 and pled not guilty here.

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.

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 collected blackmail on allies" would be "for the same reason they do all their other spying operations on their allies."

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).

“he really charmed his way into getting a job at Bear Sterns”

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?