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Isaac Saul
Jeffrey Epstein has been one of the most requested topics for us here at Tangle to cover. And I've been thinking a lot about how to best cover this controversial, complicated, long, deep story for a very long time. And what I came up with was bringing on two journalists who have been looking at this story through very, very different lenses. So today we're bringing to you a two part podcast and YouTube special, our kind of mega episode on the Jeffrey Epstein story. And the two guests we're bringing on today are Michael Tracy and Tara Palmieri. Michael Tracy is an independent journalist. Tara Palmieri is an independent journalist. Both Michael Tracy and Tara Palmeri have been looking at the Epstein story for many, many years. And both of them have really distinct views on this issue, as you're about to see. If I could describe them, just briefly, I would say Michael Tracy is somebody who is very skeptical and worried about the way the Epstein story has percolated in pop culture. He believes there is a mass hysteria equivalent to something like the Salem witch trials that is kind of taking over everybody's brains and making it very hard for them to think about these accusations and this story in a rational way. And he's doing a lot of work in his journalism to try and push back on some of the mainstream narratives and the assumptions that a lot of people are making. Tara Palmeri, also an independent journalist, is somebody who has been doing her best to elevate the stories of the women who have accused Jeffrey Epstein of assault. She's been pushing back on what she describes as a manosphere narrative from people like Michael Tracy, who she thinks are trying to rewrite the Jeffrey Epstein story and trying to downplay the crimes and the nature of the crimes that he's both been accused of and been convicted of. So I brought them both onto the podcast, and I interviewed them separately. I did that for a few reasons. One, I didn't want to do a debate show. I didn't want to bring them on and have to intervene while they were arguing with each other, yell, yelling at each other. The two of them have appeared on shows before, like Piers Morgan. You can go watch that if you want. I didn't think it was particularly productive. I also interviewed them independently because I wanted to be able to just give them time to tell their version of events, to tell the stories that they've come across in their reporting, to focus the conversation in the way that they felt it was important to focus. To me, this felt like the best way to bring some balance to our reporting here at Tangle. Finally, I just want to say something about my particular interview style. When I'm doing interviews like this, on a story like this, on a topic like this in this particular context, I'm not coming trying to fight. You'll see moments in both the Michael Tracy interview and the Terror Paul Mary interview where things maybe get a little bit testy, or could get a little bit testy, or there's a moment where maybe there's an opportunity for it to become a confrontation, or for me to push back really hard, harder to dig in or to espouse my views. I try not to do that. I don't think that is my job in this particular context. There are plenty of journalism contexts where that is my job. If you listen to this podcast, you follow this YouTube channel, you read our newsletter, you hear my opinion every single day. That's not what this was about. I wanted to inform my audience by sharing the stories that these journalists have uncovered. And frankly, I'm not an expert on the Epstein files. It's something my audience has requested me to cover a bunch. And I've certainly spent a lot of time reading about this story and looking at some of the files myself. But I have not spent nearly the time these two journalists have on fleshing them out. So I'm excited to bring these interviews to you. Part one is Michael Tracy, who you're going to hear talk about the things he's worried about, the way the story is being reported and the hysteria he's worried about surrounding the story.
Michael Tracy
And.
Isaac Saul
And part two is Tara Palmeri, who's gonna talk about the way she worries that the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse are having their stories questioned and the emphasis she puts on the people who have been impacted by some of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. I think together they make a really, really compelling and interesting and fascinating look at the Epstein story itself. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Without further ado, here's Michael Tracy. Michael Tracy, welcome to the Tangle podcast. Thanks so much for joining us, man.
Michael Tracy
Happy to be here.
Isaac Saul
So we're going to get right into some of the Epstein stuff which you've been on this beat, I think, taking a pretty distinct lane in the current media ecosystem that we're all operating in. And I think to just give our audience a taste of the lens that you're viewing some of this stuff through. I want to start with a kind of two part question. And the first part is I'd like you to describe, in your view, what you think the kind of mainstream narrative about the Epstein files has been. And then in your own words, describe the lens that you look at the Epstein files story through and how you would describe the story to somebody who has never heard it before.
Michael Tracy
I would say the mainstream narrative. And it's hard to even know how to define the mainstream nowadays. So I'm sort of grouping together, let's say, the more traditionally mainstream media as well as online media or alternative or independent media, which is all kind of bunched together now into the same cacophony of a media ecosystem in which we all operate. So I would say if I could generalize across these different spheres of media, it's that fundamentally it's taken to be true and unassailable that Jeffrey Epstein was the most notorious pedophile in American history, or perhaps world history. And he likewise ran the most prolific child sex trafficking operation in recorded history since, I don't know when, the Jurassic era, the Big bang, you tell me. And therefore, given that presupposition, every piece of discrete information that ever comes out, and there's been an absolute avalanche of it, obviously, especially since these quote unquote, Epstein files have started to be produced since last December, every little data point or every fragment of potential evidence, or any even just insinuation of something is immediately viewed through that incredibly incendiary lens. So even pieces of evidence or materials that do come out that otherwise on their face would seem remarkably banal or not even worth remarking on at all, if they're imbued with this overtone of potentially contributing to this larger thesis that people have settled into and take to be gospel, then that means that you have this interpretive prism that automatically represents every new piece of information in the most inflammatory possible light. So that's where I object, because you have to go back basically to the root of it, which is that I'm sorry, and I keep telling people that I'm not thrilled to have to constantly be litigating this on the Internet in particular, but there's just no credible grounds to proclaim, as cavalierly as people do, that Jeffrey Epstein was in fact the most notorious pedophile in X number of years or decades, or even was a pedophile at all. Look, I know people are going to hear that and feel bewildered and shocked and probably also angry, but it's something I can easily substantiate. And also on the notion of trafficking, it's also an incredibly fuzzy, hazy concept that I've been calling almost infinitely elastic, that prosecutors have been wielding as a tool to go after defendants more and
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Michael Tracy
eagerly because they can fit any particular fact pattern they'd like under a sex trafficking statute, federal sex trafficking statutes, and then proclaim that this person is somehow guilty of sex trafficking. And when talking about a civil context, which is where the most of the legal maneuverings vis a vis Epstein have taken place, the burden of proof is much lower. And yet that forms a lot of the factual basis for why people think that he also must have been this world historic sex trafficker. So those core prongs of the premise underlying what people think must be true about Jeffrey Epstein to my mind, are both so wildly exaggerated, either incredibly wildly exaggerated or just outright fictitious. And then that leads to the proliferation of all kinds of other mythology where people just absorb, like this ambient folklore, that's my new coinage. You can borrow it if you want. This ambient folklore around Jeffrey Epstein, which maybe they picked up from social media, they picked up from watching one of these dopey Netflix documentary series, they picked up from watching just from seeing a headline somewhere, or maybe in a casual conversation with a friend or acquaintance. And because nobody ever to my knowledge, comes at this story from the direction that I do, which isn't just me kind of cynically devising a lane for myself as though I'm doing it for branding purposes. Although of course people want to accuse me of doing something along those lines. It was really just me saying, look, I think this story has taken on such an outsized degree of prominence and also has such negative repercussions in terms of the hysteria that it seems to be fomenting that it would behoove me and I think my readers and the wider public to the degree that I can have an impact to almost do like a forensic start from scratch approach on the Epstein story because there is such a huge volume of material, or there was even before this round of Epstein files, quote unquote productions. And the more threads that I pulled, the more the evetifists just seemed to unravel, which has now led me to conclude that this really is the the most just mind bending moral panic, mass hysteria that humanity has been beset with in perhaps generations. And it's like the Salem witch trials and the satanic panic daycare craze, but on steroids and then also tied in with the main anti Trump oppositional narrative of the second term and also internationalized. So it's like the number one political controversy that's currently ravaging everywhere from Norway to Great Britain to France to Poland and United Arab Emirates, et cetera. So that hopefully encapsulates to some extent the mainstream narrative and the way in which I've sought to do some degree of corrective tethered as best as possible to the facts and evidence, which I noticed people who are so angry at me constantly and so certain that I must be indubitably wrong, they don't seem to have nearly as much of a concern for tethering themselves to the available facts and evidence. Rather they participate in this media ecosystem whose currency is largely conjecture or radically confirmation biased motivational reasoning. And that does really well on the algorithms. And so that's just the mentality or the approach that they've thought is most advantageous for them. And it seems to be advantageous commercially, perhaps even politically, meaning some of these political entrepreneurs, let's say, who have latched onto the story journalistically. People have made a livelihood on this thing without anybody looking at the underlying facts and evidence in a properly critical manner. And also, yeah, I acknowledge that I have a bit of a different personality maybe, or a different temperament where the fact that just by engaging on this issue in the manner that I have is going to engender a absolute deluge of defamatory slime and impugnment of motive. And for some reason I'm like the one person on the Internet obliged to be constantly declaring every part of my income now. And I'm happy to do it because I literally have nothing to hide. I wish some of these Epstein billionaires were funding me because then I could maybe get a better apartment or something. But like so we have a recipe for that has allowed for the perpetuation of an almost entirely fictitious or wildly exaggerated narrative. And also it comes tied to it with the most potent of taboos that discourage everybody from politicians to journalists who you think should be the most eager to do a proper critical examination from actually doing one. So that leaves me appearing to be in the wilderness here. But you know, so be it.
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
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Isaac Saul
Well, let me ask you, I mean, I guess to kind of like really focus it for a moment. How would you describe, based on all the evidence that you've taken in and you know, studying the Epstein files and reading the old court documents from 2008 and again in 2016 or whenever it was 2018, how would you describe the crimes that Epstein has been formally accused of and maybe even some of the crimes you think there is circumstantial evidence for? I mean, how would you put it in your terms on what he actually did and what it's maybe likely he did that we have some substantiated accusations around?
Michael Tracy
Yeah. So I just want to clarify so people are aware. It is true that the lion's share of everything that I've done on this story journalistically has been based on what's been available in the public record. But as the months have gone by, it's probably now also includes around 10% of original reporting from one degree or another. And I only say that because I want to underscore that for the most part, taking the perspective I do is more than possible given the almost mind blowing quantity of public domain information that has long been available. Like I said before, even prior to this most recent round of Epstein files productions. Now I'll answer that, but I just want to sort of set the context by noting that the reason why people got so inflamed about the Epstein story most recently so around last summer when this FBI DOJ memo came out that appeared to dispel a lot of the common mythology around the Epstein story, meaning that unsigned DOJ FBI memoir leaked on January 6 to Axios, where it dispels the idea that there's any additional third party individuals for whom there's a predicate to charge with any child sex crimes or any crimes at all, that Epstein conducted this kind of wide scale trafficking, child sex trafficking or blackmail operation and on and on and on. It kind of dispelled a lot of the common mythology, but then they threw in a bunch of other bizarre claims that kind of kept the fire burning or poured fuel on the fire, to clarify my metaphor. But none of that, none of the reasons why people were so incense about this issue. Right. Meaning demanding something called. They refer to what referred to as a client list or some other list of co conspirators of Epstein that have been covered up at the highest levels of government, or something to do with this smoking gun that they presume must exist having to do with his accumulation of wealth. Meaning people always love to ask in this very implicative, insinuating, wink in a nod type way, how did Jeffrey Epstein make his money? As if there's no information about how he made his money. I'm not saying there's comprehensive information, but there's plenty where if you're asking that question constantly, you are more than able to go and look at a lot of information that would shed a good deal of light on how he made his money. You just want to keep anthropology asking the question in this insinuating way more than likely because you want the enigma to continue to swirl.
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, the Times and Bloomberg did like incredibly extensive detailed reporting on all of that.
Michael Tracy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, I always want more. I always tell people who ask me some variation of that question, I would love it if we could have a full forensic audit of how Jeffrey Epstein accumulated every last penny of his net worth. But that being said, here is a bunch of information that is presently available, if you'd like to look at it, that would give you at least some insight into how he accumulated his wealth. And more often than not, I found the people who do ask that question are not interested in taking my research leads and going to study how he accumulated lots of his wealth. The reason why I give that preface is because I'm happy to answer the questions about the Florida prosecution in which he entered his guilty pleas in 2008. But I just think it's worth noting almost like thematically or just so people can structure how they think about this in a little bit more of a precise way, that really doesn't have very much to do with these additional layers of the mythology that fueled the reemergence of the Epstein story as the number one controversy in US politics and also British politics, French politics, et cetera. So I think that's just kind of like worth making a little clearer to people.
Isaac Saul
Yeah, We'll be right Back after this quick break.
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Isaac Saul
And just really quick, I think that's a great preface and I am interested, I mean, in the 2008 guilty plea. But also, I mean, just as we sit here today, maybe as you as Michael Tracy, like, what threads of this story do you actually find worth pulling at? Or what. You know. Yeah. What elements of like his alleged criminal behavior do you think there's actually, like, maybe some there there as you've. In the beginning you've laid out, the things that you feel like are just totally ridiculous and out there.
Michael Tracy
So threads worth pulling at with respect to his personal potential criminal behavior or about the story writ large, because there's personal.
Isaac Saul
His personal potential criminal behavior, I think.
John Wall
Hey, everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription. Or you can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription, which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews, and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. I will join you again for the daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'. All. Peace.
Isaac Saul
Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kaback and Associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tango and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
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Episode: PREVIEW: SPECIAL EDITION - Jeffrey Epstein Part 1
Host: Isaac Saul
Guest: Michael Tracy (independent journalist, skeptic)
Date: March 23, 2026
This special edition of Tangle delves into the deeply controversial and complex Jeffrey Epstein story. Host Isaac Saul interviews two journalists with sharply contrasting views—Michael Tracy and Tara Palmeri—separately, in order to give each space to fully lay out their perspectives. Part 1, summarized here, features Michael Tracy, known for his skepticism about the mainstream narratives surrounding Epstein. The episode seeks a balanced and critical examination of one of the most polarizing stories in recent American—and global—discourse.
“He believes there is a mass hysteria equivalent to something like the Salem witch trials that is kind of taking over everybody's brains…” (Isaac Saul, 02:10)
“It's taken to be true and unassailable that Jeffrey Epstein was the most notorious pedophile in American history... and therefore, given that presupposition, every piece of discrete information that ever comes out… is immediately viewed through that incredibly incendiary lens.” (Michael Tracy, 07:12)
“People just absorb, like this ambient folklore, that's my new coinage… around Jeffrey Epstein…” (Michael Tracy, 12:05)
“It’s like the Salem witch trials and the satanic panic daycare craze, but on steroids…” (Michael Tracy, 13:37)
“For some reason I'm like the one person on the Internet obliged to be constantly declaring every part of my income now. And I'm happy to do it because I literally have nothing to hide…” (Michael Tracy, 14:22)
“You just want to keep... asking the question in this insinuating way more than likely because you want the enigma to continue to swirl.” (Michael Tracy, 19:45)
“This really is the most just mind bending moral panic, mass hysteria that humanity has been beset with in perhaps generations.”
— Michael Tracy (13:18)
“People who are so angry at me… don't seem to have nearly as much of a concern for tethering themselves to the available facts and evidence.”
— Michael Tracy (12:32)
“I would love it if we could have a full forensic audit of how Jeffrey Epstein accumulated every last penny of his net worth. But that being said, here is a bunch of information that is presently available…”
— Michael Tracy (20:35)
“That leaves me appearing to be in the wilderness here. But you know, so be it.”
— Michael Tracy (14:53)
Isaac Saul maintains a measured, facilitative tone, stressing the importance of clarity and rational examination over confrontation. Michael Tracy is forthright, polemical, and unapologetically skeptical, repeatedly stressing the need for rigorous evidence and lamenting what he sees as an industry—and public—motivated by myth, speculation, and hysteria.
Part 1 of the Tangle Jeffrey Epstein special provides a platform for Michael Tracy’s critical, forensic approach to a story awash in sensationalism. Tracy’s thesis is that mass public and media hysteria have inflated or outright fabricated key parts of the Epstein narrative, and he calls for a reset, grounded in public record scrutiny and factual rigor. The next episode will present Tara Palmeri’s countering perspective on survivor stories and the media treatment of the case’s victims.