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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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The FBI says Epstein wasn't trafficking women for powerful men.

It's tempting to say "cover up", and this saga has united all camps on the lurid "pedo cabal" narrative. We were told back in November that journalists weren't allowed to ask questions to the alleged survivors, and it seems at least one of the survivors' testimony at Maxwell's trial was questionable:

Members of the jury, I have a limiting instruction. I anticipate that you’ll hear testimony from the next witness about physical contact that she says she had with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell in New Mexico. I instruct you that the alleged physical contact she says occurred with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell in New Mexico was not, quote, illegal sexual activity, end quote, as the government has charged in the indictment. I’ll give you more instructions on the legal term, quote, illegal sexual activity, end quote, at the end of the case. However, to the extent you conclude that her testimony is relevant to the issues before you, you may consider it, but you may not consider this testimony as any kind of reflection on Mr. Epstein’s nor Ms. Maxwell’s character or propensity to commit any of the crimes charged in the document.

She (Annie Farmer) acknowledged that when she applied to receive millions of dollars from the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program — drawn from the Epstein estate — she wrote on the application that she experienced “sexual abuse” in the form of “hand-holding.” For this, she ended up receiving $1.5 million, not counting whatever she might have received from the subsequent settlement funds, such as JP Morgan.

https://x.com/mattforney/status/2021297917424734429#m

I don't like to quote Forney, but this is another "survivor" there's reason to be skeptical about.

The “other victim” Brown references is Sarah Ransome. Who is Sarah Ransome? She’s a person who says she came to New York City from London, by way of South Africa, when she was 22 years old. So already, right off the bat, nothing Ransome says — even if we were to take it all at face value — would corroborate anything remotely related to any pedophilic sex-trafficking enterprise. Nonetheless, here are some noteworthy facts about Ransome. She said that when she first arrived in NYC, in 2006, she generated income by working with an “agency,” through which she would be “paid to spend dinner with a gentleman.” For such dinners, she said, she would receive $1,500. On certain occasions, she engaged in sexual relations with these “gentlemen” on her “own accord” — because, she said, sometimes they “happened to be really good looking.” So that’s what this adult, Sarah Ransome, was doing at the time she later claimed she was brutally enslaved in a heinous sex-trafficking ring.

When she became acquainted with Epstein, Ransome said, he began to pay for all her living expenses, including accommodations (an elegant apartment on the Upper East Side), transportation, food, and medical visits. She started traveling with Epstein on his private jet to his private island, with the understanding that she was to be available to provide him with massages upon request. During one of these massage sessions, she said, Epstein asked her to undress and lie down on the massage table, which she did. Epstein then started to perform a massage on Ransome, she said, and it turned sexual. Ransome was asked if she told Epstein to stop. “No, I didn’t,” she said. She confirmed that she had an orgasm during the encounter.

I grant that “Convicted sex offender did not, in fact, abuse this specific accuser” isn't a headline that's likely to win any awards for tact, but I'm still vexed that we are expected to grant “survivor testimony” near unqeustioned social immunity even when the factual record (sometimes to a legal standard) has already established that no such abuse occurred in the instance alleged.

Interestingly, the latest files revealed that Epstein had recommended his own lawyer to Robert Kraft to beat charges (against Kraft) of trafficking women from China. Instead, all charges against Kraft and 24 other men were dropped, and it was four of those women (aged 41 to 60) whom he allegedly trafficked who were arrested, charged and convicted.

Irregardless of any new developments in this case, the public and all political camps have latched on to this "pedo cabal" narrative to let it unravel. Epstein appears to have been a sexual predator who, in at least one period of his life, did engage in conduct meeting trafficking definitions involving minors (to himself). But there's nothing to substantiate a baroque, centrally managed blackmail syndicate spanning half the planet. Wealthy and powerful people likely did participate in morally compromising environments, but there is little evidence that a structured, coordinated conspiracy of the sort popular imagination has constructed ever existed.

EDIT: I'm heading to work, will read the replies later, but I gotta drop this piece by Michael Tracey, as it's pretty damning regarding Virginia Roberts Giuffre's credibility. Here are the article highlights:

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York found the marquee Epstein “survivor,” Virginia Roberts Giuffre, also known as VRG, to be so lacking in credibility that they were impelled to compose a lengthy December 19, 2019 memo detailing the many preposterous flaws with her many fantastical tales.

— They said they were “unable to corroborate” the central claim of VRG’s purported victimization, which had also given rise to the very essence of Epstein mythology as we now know it: that she was “lent out” for sexual services to prominent men, such as Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz.

— They noted that VRG’s accounts of her own sexual abuse were “internally inconsistent,” and not just over long periods of time, but within a single interview they conducted with her on September 9, 2019.

— They noted that VRG admitted to repeatedly lying about basic facts, destroying evidence, and telling falsehoods to the media.

— They noted that VRG schemed with a tabloid trash journalist, Sharon Churcher of the Daily Mail, to generate “big headlines” by accusing lots of prominent people of heinous child-sex crimes, in hopes that this would entice prospective publishers to buy their forthcoming “memoir” for big bucks.

— They noted that VRG claimed the FBI told her they were aware of “40 other Epstein victims,” but the FBI never told her any such thing.

— They noted that VRG had falsely claimed the FBI told her “Epstein had cameras watching her at all times,” and repeated this tantalizing claim to the media, but the FBI never told her any such thing. And indeed, they were “not aware of any such cameras.”

— They noted that VRG became “particularly combative” when asked for specific details of her claims, at one point cursing at the Assistant US Attorneys when they requested more information about the specific instances in which Ghislaine Maxwell had purportedly “directed her to have sex with another person.” An infuriated VRG eventually proclaimed: “She’s the one who brought me to be trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein in the fucking first place!” Which, conspicuously, did not answer the prosecutors’ question. Oh what I wouldn’t give for the video footage of VRG frothing at a stone-faced Maurene Comey.

— They noted that VRG “began using drugs so heavily that Epstein said he did not want her around anymore.” VRG has long acknowledged consuming large quantities of memory-impairing drugs during her tenure as a supposed sex slave, but I’m not aware of the drug-taking habit ever being cited as the proximate cause of her departure from Epstein. (But I could be misremembering; I’ve consumed such a lunatic amount of this material, I might as well be on some mind-melting substance.) Either way, VRG’s excess drug consumption is not supposed to be mentioned in polite company, because we’re not to “shame” her, even though VRG’s self-told memories of sexual misfortune many years after the fact are what unfortunately form the basis of the currently-existing Epstein mythology.

— They noted that VRG made a “continuous stream” of “sensationalized” claims in her public media appearances.

— They noted that VRG falsely claimed the FBI had told her there was a “credible” death threat against her, and repeated this in public several times, including in front of the Manhattan federal courthouse after the infamous August 27, 2019 struggle-session hearing I’ve previously written about. The memo says the FBI actually told her the exact opposite: that there were no credible threats against her! WTF!

Tracey has been kind enough to attach a copy of the memo, for those interested.

Epstein appears to have been a sexual predator who, in at least one period of his life, did engage in conduct meeting trafficking definitions involving minors (to himself).

Well,we're getting somewhere. Last we had this conversation here, I almost had the impression he's just a poor boy that dindu nothing.

But there's nothing to substantiate a baroque, centrally managed blackmail syndicate spanning half the planet. Wealthy and powerful people likely did participate in morally compromising environments,

The problem with that argument is that barring Epstein et all acting like complete idiots, and exchanging emails like "Oi, can you send little Suzy over to Steve's place, he's really dtf some 12-year-olds" without even a figleaf of plausible deniability, there's no reason to expect substantiation. Or am I missing something, and there is some form of evidence you'd reasonably expect to appear in this scenario, that we are just not seeing?

See, that's a Hollywood tier cinematic standard. Of course there was never going to be an email that read like a cartoon villain memo. Sophisticated people operating in legally and socially catastrophic territory don’t usually incriminate themselves in plaintext. That’s not how white collar crime, corruption, or even ordinary conspiracies tend to surface.

If there was a genuine multi client trafficking and blackmail apparatus, particularly one implicating heads of state, billionaires, and intelligence services, we would expect to see more than ambiguous proximity and social overlap. We’d expect repeated third party victim accounts converging on the same powerful clients. We’d expect financial structures that clearly map to services rendered beyond “social hosting.” We’d expect leverage events, like documented attempts at coercion, extortion demands, hush money escalations that can be tied to specific encounters. We’d expect at least one cooperating witness able to describe the system mechanics in detail.

But what we do seem to have publicly is a wealthy predator who cultivated proximity to power, exploited minors in earlier periods, and later surrounded himself with morally dubious but not obviously coerced adult environments involving other high profile individuals.

Well,we're getting somewhere. Last we had this conversation here, I almost had the impression he's just a poor boy that dindu nothing.

Somehow I doubt there was a "last time" anyone implied that, but can we at least agree that we should first try sifting the ore from the slag before declaring we've struck gold?

Somehow I doubt there was a "last time" anyone implied that

Well, I'll happily admit I'm prone to reading into things when they rub me the wrong way. Still, that's the impression I was left with.

but can we at least agree that we should first try sifting the ore from the slag before declaring we've struck gold?

Yes, absolutely. I didn't mean to attack reasonable skepticism.

We’d expect repeated third party victim accounts converging on the same powerful clients.

Agreed.

We’d expect at least one cooperating witness able to describe the system mechanics in detail.

Agreed.

We’d expect financial structures that clearly map to services rendered beyond “social hosting.” We’d expect leverage events, like documented attempts at coercion, extortion demands, hush money escalations that can be tied to specific encounters.

I don't know about that.

You're assuming this is transactional, rather than a honeypot meant to accumulate influence and/or enable intelligence gathering. There wouldn't be any hush money demands, if the demand is for getting your people to "penetrate ze cabinets" as it were. I don't know how you expect to tie them to specific encounters either, if they take place face to face.

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