“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years… Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”
That was President Donald Trump on July 16 on Truth Social all but closing the book on deceased multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of child sex abuse and trafficking before he died while in federal custody in 2019, following the conclusion of a Justice Department investigation concluding Epstein kept no “client list”, no blackmail of prominent clients and that it was Epstein who killed himself while in custody.
According to the joint Justice Department and FBI July 6 memorandum, the agencies conducted a thorough review of all the documents in the Epstein file: “The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims. Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing.”
The review, however, did not find any additional conspirators for his sexual abuse and trafficking crimes: “Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing. Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography.”
Nor was there any list of sex trafficking clients or blackmail: “This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
But there were over 1,000 victims: “Consistent with prior disclosures, this review confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.”
And it all goes against the standard conventional conspiratorial wisdom, which reads like a bad spy thriller, wherein Epstein was alleged to keep videotapes of his clients performing sexual acts with minors and prostitutes as a form of blackmail on behalf of intelligence agencies to achieve foreign policy concessions.
That’s the expectation — and the mob won’t settle for anything less.
But the original source for there being a “client list” appears to have been Epstein himself, but not for sex trafficking but originally as a financial manager, cultivating an image beginning in the 1980s that he would only work with financial clients who made more than a million dollars a year and later that he would only work with billionaires.
In July 1980, Cosmopolitan named Epstein “Bachelor of the Month” with a description that said Epstein was a “financial strategist” who “talks only to people who make over a million a year”.
In 2002, New York Magazine did a profile piece on Epstein, with one investor stating Epstein “maintain[ed] some sort of money-management firm”. The article itself stated Epstein had as much as $15 billion under management and might include the first mention in print of the infamous “client list”: “Epstein is said to run $15 billion for wealthy clients, yet … his client list is a closely held secret.”
Since then, Epstein was charged before killing himself and Ghislaine Maxwell was charged and convicted of sexual abuse and child sex trafficking to Epstein.
And then the original source for Epstein being some sort of intelligence operative appears to have been Epstein himself, too. A January 2001 London Evening Standard story about Maxwell referenced Epstein as bragging about his supposed intelligence ties: “He has a license to carry a concealed weapon, once claimed to have worked for the CIA although he now denies it – and owns properties all over America.”
The intelligence allegations would later resurface after Epstein’s 2019 arrest when a reporter asked then Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta at a July 2019 press conference, who as U.S. Attorney negotiated a plea deal with Epstein in 2008 for soliciting a minor, who denied the allegations calling them “rabbit holes”: “so there has there has been reporting to that effect and … let me say there’s been reporting to a lot of effects in this case not just now but over the years and … again I would … hesitate to take this reporting as fact. This was a case that was brought by our office it was brought based on the facts and … I can’t address it directly because of our … guidelines but I can tell you that that a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.”
Later a 2020 Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility report stated Acosta “exercised poor judgment” in the plea deal with Epstein and also addressed the intelligence allegations, with Acosta telling investigators “the answer is no”: “Acosta told OPR that he did not have any information about Epstein cooperating in a financial investigation or relating to media reports that Epstein had been an ‘intelligence asset.’ … When OPR asked Acosta about his apparent equivocation during his 2019 press conference, in answering a media question about whether he had knowledge of Epstein being an ‘intelligence asset,’ Acosta stated to OPR that ‘the answer is no.’ Acosta was made aware that OPR could use a classified setting to discuss intelligence information.”
This is a very thin basis for the conspiracy theory, let alone a full-fledged Justice Department investigation into an international conspiracy to impact U.S. foreign policy. The yarn that’s been spun and evolved is a massive blackmail operation against U.S. elected and world leaders including Congress and the President to fund forever wars or something. They’re never really specific beyond vague anti-Semitic tropes like “support Israel”.
It’s an ever-moving target for accusers, often anonymous social media accounts or podcasters who are admittedly speculating, without evidence, over the inner workings of the conspiracy. But going back through the timeline, which elected officials and world leaders specifically were alleged to have been blackmailed? And for what?
Good luck finding any specific allegations. Only releasing the videos of the victims will reveal that, after all (Note: this sarcasm). That will not happen, given the court-ordered seal to protect the victims and has become a never-ending excuse for accusers to imagine and choose their own reality.
If this all reminds readers of the of the 2016 dossier fabricated against President Donald Trump by the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and former British spy Christopher Steele, which falsely alleged there was videotape of Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. It further alleged a plot by Russia and the Trump campaign to hack the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta emails and publish them on Wikileaks, and that Trump was acting as an agent for Russia in the latter’s conflict with Ukraine. The videotape was supposed to be blackmail to guarantee Trump’s cooperation.
At least in Russiagate there was the dossier that Democrats and the Justice Department could wave around. It was all bullshit but at least they had that. One could investigate whether for example Michael Cohen had ever traveled to Prague and when he had never been there then he very well couldn’t have been there talking to Russian intelligence officers about the Wikileaks plot.
Whereas, with the Epstein client list and blackmail allegations, there is not a single source per se to encapsulate all of the allegations.
Still, what the mob is asking for could be just as bad as Russiagate: Take Epstein’s financial clients spanning decades, publish them and publicly investigate if a part of the sex trafficking crimes, even if they weren’t, allege they were blackmailed as a part of an operation to achieve policy concessions on behalf of foreign powers, even if they weren’t, and then find out later if they are innocent or not.
In short, first publicly accuse anyone Epstein ever had financial dealings with of the worst possible wrong doing, and then find if it’s true later.
Does it sound dumb when they say it?
In any event, given all of the documentary evidence already in the Justice Department’s hands, debunking the conspiracy claims should be relatively easy. Just source the allegations.
For example, who was the very first person to allege there was a client list being used by foreign powers for blackmail? Those are just conspiracy theories that can be sourced online without ever invoking the victims. They either got the goods or were lying without having any first-hand information, evidence or even an eye witness of the international blackmail scheme.
When the allegations were finally sourced in Russiagate by the Justice Department it all unraveled at the end of the day when there were no credible witnesses. If the accusers will only be satisfied with a public airing of these allegations, then give them what they want: Publicly debunk every prominent erroneous claim supposedly being made on behalf of the victims that would have been an unlawful and/or improper predicate for a federal investigation.
The Justice Department Office of Inspector General or similar office could probably handle it, with redactions if necessary, as the FBI was following up on potential leads throughout the investigation of almost two decades.
Based on the Justice Department-FBI memo, all of this has already been discounted in some form. So, document the discounting, again, with redactions as necessary to protect the innocent. But do for them what was done for the Steele dossier. Put this to bed.
None of that requires releasing the sealed documents, just sourcing the wildest, most public, most believed speculative claims ever made about this. If the goal is resolution, then the conspiracy theories are what has been left unresolved. The criminal investigation is obviously over. What’s left is public relations.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
