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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14217 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.

An FBI memo had the names of 1000 victims and the Epstein victim fund + BoA settled with many victims. As far as I know we don’t have a large sample size of victim testimonies publicly available, but Virginia Giuffre is one person who claimed to have been trafficked while underage to multiple men. I don’t think many women want to be publicly known as a trafficking victim.

It's his network that leads me to believe in a "centrally managed blackmail syndicate". Epstein starts to be funded carte blanche in 1991 by a man named Les Wexner. Who is he? He ran the two most important Jewish organizations in America, the Wexner Foundation (intended to create “elite commandos” and a “cadre of Jewish lay leaders”), and the Mega Group. The Mega Group was the centrally-managed decision-making body of America's Jewish philanthropic and influence organizations. When the World Jewish Congress, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the United Jewish Communities (then endowed in the billions annually), and other orgs were allocating their money and influence to benefit Israel and the Jews, the heads would meet in secret at the Mega Group. And the head of this group was Les Wexner.

So Wexner starts funding Epstein in 1991, the same year he starts to chair this secret meeting of Jewish billionaires which decides how to allocate most of Jewry's billions of dollars toward various causes (they are responsible for Birthright, rescuing / refunding Hillel, the emigration of Soviet Jews, etc). This should already raise alarm bells. Why is someone whose raisin d’etre is the Jewish people funding Jeffrey Epstein carte blanche, with power of attorney and gifted properties? He better have a really, really good reason. Surely he has a good reason?

No, he does not. He has the worst reason ever. He says the reason is that he’s a putz. He says Epstein took advantage of him. His own head of security at the limited, Jerry Merritt, told Vanity Fair that he warned Wexner about Epstein for years, yet Wexner handed off $400 million dollars anyway. “The person that the Rothschilds rely on to efficiently allocate their dollars was being robbed by a con artist” is a quite unlikely story. It is such a bad argument that Wexner apologists will argue instead that Wex was gay for Epstein, and this is why he gave him millions. This is a better argument, but still ridiculous. We know that Wexner had previously dated a woman who converted to Judaism and changed her last name to Cohen, and this was never publicized but a scoop from a journalist, so it wasn’t a “velvet marriage” arrangement. And a gay billionaire who owns apparel stores in the 80s and 90s does not have to rely on a 38yo Jeffrey Epstein to satisfy his lusts. There’s no evidence Epstein ever trafficked boys afaik, and Wexner is now married with three three kids. So what did Wexner get from Epstein's services? There was never an answer. All five of Epstein’s funders, all five Jewish, can’t really provide an answer as to why they funded Epstein. Two of them have accusations from victims, but the other three do not.

The emails we now have about the Epstein-Wexner dealings are very suspicious, and do hint to something else:

There’s a lot more evidence that is laborious to get into: Epstein being best friends with Israel’s former military intelligence head, having dozens of meetings with him; Epstein’s accomplice being the daughter of a long-rumored spy; Epstein negotiating on Israel’s behalf with Ehud Barak in two separate security dealings; Epstein ghostwriting Barak’s pro-Israel op-Ed’s and helping Dershowitz crush Mearsheimer’s “the Israel Lobby” book; John Schindler a former NSA Analyst concluding that the Mega group had involvement; John Kiriakou’s confidence that Epstein was aligned with Israel; NSA / CIA / FBI security briefs which considered Israel a leading threat in “influence” and espionage operations.

What’s interesting is that his Jewish associates trust him with money and projects after a conviction in which he — they want us to believe — stole 100 million from Wexner. Surely they all knew this, and Wexner had the influence to absolutely crush Epstein. This tells us that the money really wan’t stolen, but was utilized in some important way. So what was it?

I think you kind of answer your own questions here.

It seems like Wexner, who was bankrolling all of these other organizations. Or, at least, helping them to get bankrolled by donors. Chucked $400m of his own money to Epstein as his grey market lead. Moving money, having the shady conversations with important folks all over the world that you want to have stay out of the press etc.

I don't think it's that shocking? "Fixers" have existed at the outskirts of legitimate organizations forever. Sure, they don't often get $400m, but, whatever, maybe Wexner just didn't care or wanted enough slush on Epstein's books in case something big came around?

The more I learn about all of this, the more and more apparent it becomes that Epstein was a charming middle man who liked to party. He eventually crossed lines for which he was convicted and then, realizing the party was over, killed himself. That's a story that's been repeated a million times. I think the difference is in scale here, not in kind.

But there’s no evidence that Epstein did do any deals as a middle-man between Wexner and other players throughout the 90s. The others who gave their money to Epstein (eg Rothschild, Black, Zuckerman) are already inside the fold of Jewish philanthropy. He would tell people he represented wealthy clients, but he didn’t, only Wexner and then the others later on. As perhaps the single most important person in the world of Jewish philanthropy, already presiding over a consortium of billions (12) which later expanded to 50 megarich individuals (hence Mega), and able to keep that a perfect secret for six years, it doesn’t read like Wexner needed help with capital investment. He had more than enough.

What we know about Epstein is that he went around partying with girls and trying to get close with important and wealthy people. According to Eric Weinstein who had met him, he seemed like an idiot who kept trying to bring the conversation back to girls and sex. In his interview with Steve Bannon he mentions he bought Zorro Ranch because it was close to retired nuclear scientists. This reads like a guy collecting influence and kompromat on behalf of Wexner, if not on behalf of the whole Mega Ecosystem.

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