The Epstein Documents: What Still Doesn’t Make Sense ft. Mike Benz

Summary

The Charlie Kirk Show

Episode: The Epstein Documents: What Still Doesn’t Make Sense ft. Mike Benz
Date: February 6, 2026
Participants:

• Charlie Kirk (Host)
• Mike Benz (Guest, Executive Director Foundation for Freedom Online, former State Department)
• Blake (Co-host)
• Andrew (Regular contributor)

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Main Theme Overview

This episode delves deep into the recently released documents surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, aiming to move beyond sensationalist headlines and public conjecture to grapple with the true scale and character of Epstein's activities. Charlie Kirk and his guest, Mike Benz, explore evidence for Epstein's links to intelligence agencies, the structure of his international relationships, and why so many widely accepted stories—especially about blackmail—might be misleading. The conversation uncovers new and direct evidence, challenges widespread assumptions, and contextualizes Epstein in a sophisticated web of international power, finance, and espionage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What’s New in the Epstein Document Dump?

[02:28]

• Mike Benz notes the huge volume of new evidence—three million new documents—some containing direct evidence as opposed to previous circumstantial claims against Epstein.
  • “It's shocking, but not surprising... so much that has turned up in these files has just been, you know, what you'd call in an evidentiary proceeding, a direct evidence.” (Benz, 02:28)
• The documents confirm and clarify many long-discussed aspects of Epstein’s role as a “Where’s Waldo” in international power and intelligence.

2. Was Epstein an Intelligence Asset?

[05:51–17:26]

• Charlie pushes Benz to clarify Epstein’s ties to agencies like Mossad and the CIA.
• Benz recounts a newly surfaced fact: Epstein filed FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to the CIA about himself in 1999 and 2011, years before he became a public figure.
  • “Epstein FOIA’d the Central Intelligence Agency twice for records about himself...” (Benz, 05:51)
  • The CIA gave a boilerplate “can neither confirm nor deny” response—typical for personnel files and classified matters.
  • Importance: Suggests that Epstein had reason to believe the CIA had pertinent records about him.

Discussion on Legal FOIA Nuances
[11:21] Benz explains how this was done through the Privacy Act (not public), likely for self-protection or to see what an external FOIA might expose.

• Co-host Blake questions the significance, doubting this alone proves anything about his intelligence ties.

Epstein’s Early History and Adjacency to Intelligence
[12:18–17:26]

• Benz details Epstein’s career jump from Bear Stearns to high-level clients like Adnan Khashoggi (Saudi arms dealer with CIA ties), involvement in BCCI (the “CIA’s bank”), and the intricate web linking U.S., British, Israeli, and Saudi intelligence interests.
• Example: After Bear Stearns, Epstein was frequently tied to major intelligence and arms trade figures, suggesting his unusual access and partnerships were intelligence-adjacent.
  • “Jeffrey Epstein before the age of 30 had so many high profile clients –– that makes sense given the fundamental constraints on someone who’s 29, 30 years old... The fact that he worked on those deals...” (Benz, 15:29)

3. Deeper Dive: Mossad, Israel, and the Global Web

[19:40–24:04]

• Benz details Epstein’s relationship with Ehud Barak:
  • Barak, former head of Israeli military intelligence and Mossad’s boss by function, was recorded by Epstein in a three-hour conversation where Epstein coached him on “monetizing” government connections.
  • “Jeffrey Epstein secretly recording Ehud Barak during a three hour conversation…literally helping that person cash in on the outside. But it also shows a kind of the mercenary aspect of Epstein's operation.” (Benz, 21:14)
• The overlap among U.S., Israeli, and other intelligence partners is intricate and transactional, not strictly employer-employee.

4. The Myth of the Blackmail–Intel “Masterplan”

[31:10–34:33]

• Benz pushes back on the dominant narrative that Epstein operated a coordinated blackmail operation for intelligence agencies.
  • “Epstein wouldn't have enough time in the day to run some sort of…global...pedo ring in an organized and structured fashion...I do think it is possible that there could be a blackmail element in the sense that if you compile certain things...None of that has ever been proven or there's no even open leads to follow.” (Benz, 31:10)
• Argues for a distinction between “offensive blackmail” (not supported by evidence) and “defensive blackmail” (to protect himself if challenged or threatened).

5. What Really Motivated Epstein?

[34:20–35:53]

• Hosts and Benz discuss various possible motives: accumulation of influence, self-protection, intelligence facilitation—for profit, not always for ideological purposes.
• Kirk: “There’s just too much smoke for there not to be at least a little bit of fire...He wasn’t just...a good party boy that liked to hang out with Prince Andrew.” (Kirk, 18:40)

6. Disentangling Fact from Myth and Sensationalism

[46:00–49:04]

• The hosts express frustration with how much of the Epstein story is shaped by speculation in the absence of details.
  • Sex stories and blackmail have likely been exaggerated in the public mind.
  • Real intrigue is in Epstein’s ability to move money, people, and assets across borders—and the alignment of his activity with political power-shifting decades.

Notable Reflection:

• “...So much of this has been sensationalized, like especially the sex stuff...Some of that stuff I think has been really sensationalized....There's been a lot of sensationalism around that, a lot of sensationalism around the blackmail.” (Kirk, 47:14)
• Benz: Americans lack “the language to put these things into words”; foreign policy, finance, and intelligence overlap in hidden networks that “can only really be shared through social media networks...” (49:04)

7. The Intelligence “Peri-Contact” Web

[28:53–30:35]

• Benz introduces intelligence terminology (“asset” vs. “contact”) and the sprawling “peri-intelligence” ecosystem.
• Epstein was likely a “facilitator,” not a formal agency “asset,” but functioned as a logistical extractor and fixer within these networks.

Quote:

• “There is a difference between an asset and a contact...there is a vast web of kind of peri-intelligence intelligence-adjacent adjacencies that; that is the way in which intelligence work is done.” (Benz, 28:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Epstein’s Own FOIA Requests
  • “He FOIA’d the Central Intelligence Agency twice for records about himself, first in 1999 and then again in 2011...at that point, he was still a private citizen...” (Benz, 05:51)
• On Blackmail Narrative
  • “Everything you’ve built would crash down in an instant the moment that rumor is even around...there’s no open leads on it.” (Benz, 31:10)
• On the Difficulty of Explaining the Story
  • “America does not yet have the language to put these things into words...because we have a national security state...all of our statecraft is classified...” (Benz, 49:04)
• Skeptical Reflection
  • “The rush to fill the vacuum...is filled with things they can understand...” (Benz, 49:04)
• Kirk’s Synthesis
  • “There's just too much smoke...there's got to be some fire there. But I think some of the sex stuff maybe has been sensationalized. Some of the blackmail stuff…I'm with you on that, Mike.” (Kirk, 53:11)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [02:28] – Benz’s first impressions: direct vs. circumstantial evidence in the document trove.
• [05:51] – Epstein’s FOIA requests to the CIA: significance, oddity, possible motives.
• [12:18–17:26] – Epstein’s rise via Bear Stearns and international clients; Iran-Contra contextualization.
• [19:40–24:04] – Israeli intelligence, Ehud Barak, and actual tapes of covert “coaching” from Epstein.
• [31:10–34:33] – Blackmail: myth versus evidence.
• [46:00–49:04] – Critique of media/societal narratives and enduring mysteries.
• [49:04] – Complexity and lack of “language” for shadow international networks.

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Tone and Language

• The conversation is analytical, skeptical, and thick with historical references.
• Both host and guest are eager to move beyond tabloid sensationalism.
• Benz speaks with the precision of an intelligence historian but keeps the discussion accessible for regular listeners.

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Synthesis & Final Thoughts

• The new Epstein documents offer more “direct evidence” for Epstein’s deep, transactional engagements with intelligence and elite power—but nothing easily reduced to a tabloid blackmail conspiracy.
• Much of Epstein's power and mystique likely stemmed from his role as a high-level fixer/facilitator—operating at the intersection of finance, intelligence, and global politics, not as an official “asset” running blackmail honeypots.
• The episode warns against simplistic narratives, urging listeners to see the real story as a window into hidden power structures, not mere scandal.

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For those seeking the “truth” behind Epstein, this episode offers an advanced crash course in the shadowy overlap between intelligence agencies, global finance, and elite influence—with a sharp-eyed skepticism for what’s not actually supported by the evidence.

Transcript

[A]

My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You gotta stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord.

[B]

Use me.

[A]

Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. The Charlie Kirk show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers.

[C]

All right, welcome back. Hour two of the Charlie Kirk show is underway, and I am very excited about this conversation with the great Mike Benz. Mike Benz has been. He just had a tour de force on Joe Rogan. Three hours with the great Joe Rogan. All about Epstein. So much to get into. We, of course, had Jay Beecher on the show yesterday. I loved that interview. I actually think it's a. It was a sobering kind of analysis of six years of investigative. Investigative journalism. But Mike Benz has different insights. He's seeing different things. And I want to make sure that we approximate the truth here by getting Mike Benz's insights in the mix. So without further ado, Mike, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you.

[B]

Thanks. Thanks for having me, guys.

[C]

Yeah, well, I was talking to you a bit offline. The reason I wanted to have you on is because there is so much to the Epstein dump. There's 3 million documents. It's impossible for one, most recent one. Yeah. To get the whole scope of what's happening here. And you've been making headlines here. We've got clips from your Rogan interview that we're going to play. You made a lot of news in general. Just let's start at the beginning. What do you think that we learned from this? Has it added contours to your understanding? The floor is yours.

[B]

Oh, an unbelievable amount has been turned up in this. It's. I guess the way I describe it is. It's shocking, but not surprising. I don't think there's anything in. In here that has surprised Me. But it still is very shocking to see the details laid out. And it also confirms, in my view, essentially from almost every angle, the way that I've tried to prescribe people or prescribe people to view Epstein in context, to sort of understand the Epstein cinematic universe beyond a lot of the kind of simple, easy to grasp onto things or the things that he was arrested for. In my view, understanding the character of Epstein helps understand the world around you and the role that he played, because there's a little visage of Epstein in almost every industry, every government, every intelligence service, every private investment fund. And so, you know, what we're getting are the. To know something for a fact versus to have a constellation of circumstantial evidence is a very different thing. You know, many of the allegations around Epstein until this point involved highly compelling circumstantial evidence. But so much that has turned up in these files has just been, you know, what you'd call in an evidentiary proceeding, a direct evidence. That is, it's not, oh, we think that he was talking to X or Y, because He talked to 13 of his associates. And there's a rumor going around and someone said that he did. Now, you have a direct email or you have a direct, you know, a direct audio file that says X or Y. We can get in all the specifics of what all those things are, because there's frankly 3 million of them. But, you know, I can either turn to that or you guys want to go in a different direction.

[C]

I'll leave it to you. So I'll be honest. One of the things that I was challenging. Jay Beecher, phenomenal interview. I encourage everybody to go watch it and listen to it. But one of the things that I just couldn't shake was this sense that I've had that he was an intel asset or he was working with CIA, with Mossad, whatever. And he seemed to be thinking that, you know, those claims had been overblown. Yeah. Why would he work with Mossad if he could just call Ehud Barak? Or why, you know, yes, he was involved, but it was softer. It was more kind of veiled in business transactions or whatever. I. I just couldn't shake it. And I kept pushing him on that. And I've seen that you've kind of been going into this. There's this email, Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's. Maxwell, apparently threatened Mossad. And you've kind of gone into some of this, but there's so much there. And I just wanna let you make those connections. If they're there if it's true? Because I feel that there's gotta be a there there.

[B]

Well, I was laughing because when you said, I couldn't help shake the feeling. I thought, well, you don't say. I mean, this is a. This is a bad week to be a Epstein intelligence denialist. I'll give you some. We'll start with the US Side of it. One of the things that turned up in these documents that I again shocked but not surprised, is Epstein foia, the Central Intelligence Agency, twice for records about himself, first in 1999 and then again in 2011. Now, Andrew Blake, have you guys. Have you ever.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Have you ever foided the CIA to see what any. Any CIA records about yourself? It has.

[C]

That. That wouldn't even occur to me to contemplate that as an option, you know.

[D]

I guess, but I'm also not a billionaire either.

[C]

Or.

[D]

Sent a millionaire.

[C]

Sent a millionaire.

[B]

Okay, well, would you request for any, quote, open or acknowledged agency affiliations?

[C]

So that was okay. Just so I'm understanding, Mike, he. This is in 1990. Did you say 1991 or 2001?

[B]

1999.

[C]

1999.

[B]

This is two years before he became a public figure.

[C]

Right. Okay.

[B]

At that point, he was still a private citizen. Not publicly known, not written about in the mainstream news. It wasn't until 2001, in 2002, when he began flying the most recent president of the United States, Bill Clinton, around in Africa on his private jet, that the media started to take interest in him. So he was still basically a private operative who basically, two years before he became a public figure, first asked the CIA if there were any open or acknowledged links, agency affiliations. What's also interesting is the CIA, we actually don't have exactly what he asked the CIA, even though I think we should and I know that we are entitled to it. And now I'm happy to report that after I made a bit of a crusade about this, multiple people have now filed FOIAs to the CIA to get Jeffrey Epstein's correspondence with the CIA, but which is not classified because FOIA requests at the CIA are not. Now, the CIA is obviously not allowed to tell you, by virtue of it being a spy agency, any classified records that it has. But for example, it can send you declassified records, or if the CIA has acknowledged any links to a particular individual, it can send you the records on those. But what's interesting about that CIA letter is it says, with respect to your request about open or acknowledged links, we have conducted that. We grant the request for Documents. We have searched for documents. No documents are responsive to to that. With respect to the portion of your FOIA request that touched on classified matters, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non existence of such documents. Which means that Jeffrey Epstein not only asked for open and acknowledged agency links, but also asked something about himself that was classified. Now, for what it's worth, that is the same stock response you get when you ask the CIA for CIA personnel files.

[C]

That is so. So he's not yet a public person and he foias the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, asking for what it has on him. Basically, yes. And we don't know exactly how he stated his question or what he included in that, but we do know that it touched on classified documents because the CIA's response was regarding that specific line of questioning. We cannot confirm nor deny. That is really shocking, actually. That's a bombshell.

[B]

And what's very exciting is unless the law is not followed and the Justice Department does not come down on the Agency for not following the law, if it doesn't follow it, we are legally entitled to actually see the correspondence between the. Because they left a. In the Epstein files. Again, none of this was known until last week. That again in 1999 and then again in 2011, sent an identical request. And now this is before again the. The 2019 rearrest. But. But there's a case reference number, so we know they have the files.

[C]

All right. Mike Benz. I have a co host here. Blake. Blake was. I could see his mind thinking he went to Dartmouth. He's a very smart guy.

[D]

I know Mike. I know Mike.

[C]

Mike and I go way back. So, Mike, we've sparred over. Yeah. Blake.

[D]

Over his theories on a lot of things.

[C]

Yeah, Blake takes on a lot of things. Blake had an incredulous look on his face. I'm gonna throw it to Blake. What were you thinking, Blake?

[D]

Well, I guess I'm just thinking. I. I just. It strikes me as innately implausible that Epps like that. The reveal that Jeffrey Epstein is an intelligence asset is that he FOIA'd himself at the CIA. I guess I would ask why would he do that? Like, why would he do that? If the CIA needed to hide anything, why would they get outed by their legalistic response to a FOIA request? I think there's, like, a lot of ways they could get around that. I just. I find it highly unlikely.

[B]

Okay. It's done through the. Blake. It was done through the Privacy act, meaning there was no public alert. We only know about this because it's in the FBI file. This was, this is a way, if you go through the Privacy act, you can see what records there that are publicly searchable about you without it being revealed to the public so that you can see what other people would get if they were to do that same. For in theory, anyone could do a FOIA about Jeffrey Epstein. But if you do it through the Privacy act, you get it and you get it alone. And it's kept as a private correspondence between you and your lawyer.

[C]

That's smart, Mike.

[B]

That's how it's done.

[C]

So I learned this yesterday. I know this is public information, but it's one of those pieces of the Epstein saga that people forget that he was arrested either in the late 80s or early 90s and his partner went to prison for it anyway. I'm just saying, like he skated free.

[B]

You're talking about the Towers financial collapse.

[C]

Yes, yes.

[B]

Which at the time was the biggest Ponzi scheme effectively in US history at that time. But the, But Epstein is a Where's Waldo figure. I make the argument that Epstein's intelligence adjacency started in 1978, 1979. There's kind of a Forrest Gump story around this. When he worked at Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns was one of the top three largest clearinghouses of the BCCI Bank. That was the CIA's bank. The, the. It went down in flames in 1990 when Bill Barr effectively covered it up. He wrote the pardons for the six BCCI officials. That's the bank of Credit and Commerce International. That was the CIA's bank for laundering basically gun and drug money to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. And you have to understand, in 1979, Iran, the Iranian Revolution happened at the very moment that the CIA was at its weakest because of the Church Committee hearings and the Halloween massacre. And the CIA was setting up a complex offshore intelligence web through a network that's called the Safari Club, the Mount Kenya Safari Club that was run by Adnan Khashoggi, this, the largest arms dealer in the world who was the Saudi middleman between the US and Israel during the Iran Contra affair. Adnan Khashoggi was Jeffrey Epstein's client when he started Intercontinental assets group in 1981 after the SEC investigation of him at Bear Stearns for handling Edgar Bronfan's money on a deal involving St. Joe's Mineral Company. That Edgar Bronfman was, you know, played a very senior role in policy. He was the, he was the head of the. Oh my gosh I know I'm blanking on the name, but it's, he was, he was the head of a, of a major international Jewish advocacy group that played an effective kind of shadow State Department role in many aspects of the Iran war. But the Reagan administration had this Iran Contra operation that involved effectively the US and Brits getting guns to Iran to fend off Iraq and doing it through Israel with Saudi Arabia as the middleman. And it's at this time, while Bear Stearns is laundering money effectively in a CIA gun running operation. This is, you have to keep in mind also there was an international arms embargo on Iran at the time. So that was illegal to do. And I find the Nicaragua side of that, the gun running to the Nicaraguans with the skim interesting because Jeffrey Epstein had a very lurid history in South American affairs. For example, when Ghislaine Maxwell was asked by Todd Blanch in her DOJ interview last year to give an example of Jeffrey Epstein's business transactions, she could only think of one example to illustrate it. And that was imagine if the Sinaloa cartel was owed money by the Los Zetas cartel or rival cartel and they needed a way to trace the assets of the other cartel to get the money back. They would hire some, they would hire Jeffrey and Jeffrey would take a 10% cut, a 5 to 10% cut of the money. I just find that interesting because we're only 13 years removed, 14 years removed or so from the Fast and Furious operation when the Obama White House greenlit an operation to run guns to the Sinaloa cartel so that they could win a gang war against the Los Ados who were cutting into effectively US pipeline interests in Mexico. But the fact is, is you need to find, you need to explain how Jeffrey Epstein before the age of 30 had so many high profile clients stretching from the Middle east to France to the UK to these high level contacts in Israel. That makes sense given the fundamental constraints on someone who's 29, 30 years old from handling being competent enough to handle billionaires money. And the fact is, is the fact that he worked on those deals, the fact that he was flying back and forth cross country to visit Doug Lease at that time who was the main British arms dealer involved in Iran Contra, the fact that he was living at the time with Stanley Pottinger who was the CIA's mop up man, who literally also got investigated by the FBI for running those same guns to Iran. But then the case was magically dropped when the FBI said the audio recordings that they had on him malfunctioned. It's. It's his whole career.

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

All right, so Mike, summing up. I mean, your mind is like, you just like have this incredible ability to capture all of these connections. It's truly, truly amazing. And so if I'm going to sum up what you were getting at, and I was taking notes, I was trying to track each piece, you only FOIA yourself at the CIA, if you've got a lot of reason to believe that they've either got stuff on you, they've got personnel files on you, whatever. When you've got all these smoke, there's gotta be fire. With all these connections, all these connections, Iran, Nicaragua, whatever, all these relationships, it has to mean something. This can't just be pure coincidence. He wasn't just like a good party boy that liked to hang out with Prince Andrew. There's more going on here. So you're touching on the American side. Are there connections that you would draw with Mossad or Israeli intelligence? What about Russia, Russian intelligence?

[B]

Well, absolutely. And these are all linked. So as I mentioned, Jeffrey Epstein was handling the money for the CIA's point person between the US and Israel in 1983, when Adnan Khashoggi, Epstein's client, flies to Washington D.C. to meet with Robert McFarland, the National Security adviser to plan this operation. And that itself would be something I would Think the crucial middleman who's also rumored at the time to be the world's richest person and who earned more. Adnan Khashoggi.

[C]

Okay, yes, yes, of course, yeah.

[B]

So, but, but the point is, is at, at that point that was a coordination between American intelligence and Israeli intelligence. Who was running Israeli military intelligence at that time from 1983 to 1985, it was Ehud Barak. Ehud Barack, even before this week's drop had been documented something like 47 times at Jeffrey Epstein's house and were business partners on Carbine911 and, and did business deals together in everywhere from Mongolia to Cote d' Ivoire to Ahud Barack seeking Jeffrey Epstein's counsel for how to evade sanctions on Russia after the 2014 Crimea affair. But the fact is, is what, what these new revelations show is a much, much deeper and, and complete overlap for many years between Epstein and Barack in a way that is really interesting. I'll give you an example. One of the things that surfaced here and that I blew up, I think it's sitting at about six and a half million views right now is Jeffrey Epstein secretly recording Ehud Barak during a three hour conversation they had while Hud Barak was the sitting Minister of Defense. Now, now understand, Ahud Barak went from running Israel's most elite covert commando unit to running Israeli military intelligence to becoming the Prime Minister of Israel who Mossad reports directly to. The Mossad is structured to sit in the Prime Minister's office, effectively answers directly to. And so it's not structured quite the same way as our CIA. And then Uhud Barak became effectively the equivalent of the head of our Pentagon, which means constant coordination with Mossad. But, but it's also more, you know, he's more closely affiliated with Amman, which is Israeli military intelligence. And the fact that he was the head of it while that, and this is also how you see Epstein so involved in the arms trade, Both in the U.S. israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK and always working with these arms dealers. But what I'm getting at is in this conversation, Ehud Barak is one, one month before he leaves office as the head of Israel's military and he's looking to make it big in the private sector. So Epstein records under the table, I guess the FBI has a three hour recording of this, a three hour coaching session where Jeffrey Epstein instructs Ehud Barack on how to convert his lifetime of accumulated government power into getting rich on the outside with, in private business. And what he tells Hud Barack is stop focusing on your, you know, skills, your Military background and the things you've accomplished, that doesn't, that's not going to get you money. That's not why people are going to pay you. What you need to do is compile a list of people who owe you something. IOUs think, think people who owe you favors. Now is the time to call in those favors. And what, what, what I find so fascinating about this is one, you know, on the one hand, someone who's worked in these kind of Israeli military and intelligence adjacent networks for 40 years is now literally helping that person cash in on the outside. But it also shows a kind of the mercenary aspect of Epstein's operation. He was secretly recording the head of the Israeli military, not the other way around, which I just think is kind of an interesting, you know, through the.

[D]

Look, isn't that a point kind of against some of this? I guess it just, it seems like so much of the argument that he's running this masterful blackmail ring or is part of all this intel stuff is presumably that stuff would be well hidden. And yet so much of this is actually quite public, somewhat glaring. And then once we also start digging out stuff that was originally hidden, it doesn't seem to produce that much of a smoking gun. I mean, Ehud Barak, he's, I mean, he gets attacked by. The first person to basically bring this to public light as a big deal is Benjamin Netanyahu. He attacks him about it in Israeli politics. In fact, I think they're attacking him about it right now because they say, I guess some of the conversations they say Epstein was kind of a liberal and he wanted to like, make Israel more liberal and all of that.

[B]

Right. But I mean, every country has got, you know, heterodox political factionalism. The, the, the US as well as, I mean, a change in leadership or a change in what faction of RCIA is dominant can determine whether or not a foreign country's government lives or dies. I mean, the fact is, is what, you know, when Biden is in control of the CIA, you get things like the government of Brazil turns over. You know, when, when Trump becomes head of the government, suddenly the CIA, US aid operations in Hungary stop. And so there is a similar thing in, in Israel in terms of whether or not you have Nehud Barak or a Benjamin Netanyahu government. What's interesting in these files is it describes how hard it was for them to even get a meeting with Netanyahu. And you see Ehud Barak actually playing a not insignificant role in the Biden world. He was closely affiliated with the West Exec faction, if you guys remember that in between period when the Hillary Clinton folks were out of power, but before they Biden got in, basically every major person in the cabinet was a part of a private consulting group called West Exec. It had Avril Haynes, Anthony Blinken, you know, pretty much all of the people who would populate the cabinet. And they worked very closely with Ehud Barak. I believe he even funded them or hired them for private consulting type things. But you know what you see is it is true that a foreign country's spy apparatus or covert influence apparatus does have an effect on American politics. I don't think it's wrong in any sense to call that out. I think that it has been silly to try to deny any links between Epstein and Israel. It's all over the place for his whole career. But the fact is, is this class of person a outside financial fixer is while they are affiliated with governments, there is also a on again, off again only if it's good for me type relationship that happens. Like I don't think Epstein. I would not be surprised if Epstein sent those FOIAs not because he worked at or for CIA, but that he occasionally worked with CIA when it was profitable for himself and his partner network and he wanted to know if that adjacency might turn up in a public record search. Well, same thing with his connections with Israel. He certainly worked with high level Israeli intelligence and military figures. That doesn't mean he gets a paycheck from, from it necessarily. There are these affinity networks where you yourself can get rich by doing a favor for people in government. I believe that's likely the case with Epstein both in the US and in Israel. And likely, you know, when you look at the UK and French and Saudi webs, it looks like at a much less involved level there are, there's a there there too.

[C]

Well, it makes, it makes perfect sense to me that he was worried that it would be public information, especially as his he became more famous. And he kind of probably had an inkling that he was getting more and more high profile, that he wanted to check to see what was publicly available if somebody else could find this out about him, about what the CIA had scooped up on him.

[D]

I mean if he's an intel operative, why would he have to make the application himself?

[C]

Well, because he's probably understood you do it.

[B]

Well, let me just correct that. He did it through his lawyer using the Privacy act, which is the way you do that if you want to effectively anonymously see what other people would see. If they had filed that foia.

[D]

Okay, but he's also. Apparently he's like an intel asset. I just, I feel like this is.

[C]

Kind of careful, careful code stuff.

[B]

No, no, no, no, no careful review. You got, you got to. You got to be precise with your language. Okay? The. There is a difference between an asset and a contact. And, and this is very important. I've done lectures on 20 different figures in recent American history who were CIA contacts, facilitators, logistical support notes, but that do not rise to the level of asset. Asset is a technical term that requires the compilation of a 201 personality file. That is if you are a formal asset. But Epstein could have done all of this with intelligence. Appears to have done it with us, but only on an off and on basis, not as a. Okay, the CIA told me to do it, therefore I have to do it. This is a really important one because a lot of people don't understand the sticky gooey layer, the. The mortar between the bricks. When it comes to intelligence work and non intelligence work, there is a vast web of kind of peri. Intelligence. Intelligence adjacent adjacencies that. That is the way in which intelligence work is done. By its very nature, anything that is a covert action cannot be actualized by a overt. I admit, I'm a CIA. The hard and fast distinction is literally impossible. What you have is a layer of contacts that facilitate that action. And sometimes those are formal assets, often in their most significant form, they're actually not. And I can give you a bunch of examples.

[C]

But Mike, you exposed a lot of this with the censorship industrial complex. How the government basically figured out that they could outsource certain actions that would be deemed illegal if it was done directly by the government. Right. And so it follows that this is the exact same formula that they were using somebody like a Jeffrey Epstein for. There's so much explosive stuff you've said on Joe Rogan that you didn't think that he was actually. His main motive was blackmailing people necessarily. I wanted to give you that.

[B]

It's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, this is something that, you know, is. Because people have gotten so invested in it, I think, you know, you're sort of trying to stop a runaway train when you say it. But it's just the simple fact, first of all, Epstein wouldn't have enough time in the day to run some sort of, you know, global, you know, pedo ring in an organized and structured fashion. I mean, the guy is, you know, 12 funds and all the. The business and meetings influence nodes. He's in science, technology, military, gun running, you know, all these different. To, to be a full time pimp like that. I, I don't even know is is technically possible. The main thing is, is I do think it is possible that there could be a blackmail element in the sense that if you compile certain things on, if you have something on, you could sell that to a corporate espionage client or to an intelligence client and there could be some sort of indirect blackmail capacity that other people have. None of that has ever been proven or there's no even open leads to follow. But the second is, is your entire network would, everything you've built would crash down in an instant the moment that rumor is even around. That rumor didn't arise about an Epstein blackmail until after he was already arrested and you know, dead in a jail cell somehow if that, if you blackmail one person offensively, people tell their wives that they go through a major crisis of PR in terms of they may tell their publicist and their, and their wife and no other soul. But wives talk to wives. And the moment one person that's friends with Jeffrey Epstein tells another person, hey, don't mess around with that guy, that guy threatened me with stuff, then all the parties stop, all the access stops, all the confidant relationships stop. Now I do think it's possible that he could defensively blackmail someone, if you will, which is that if somebody says I know that the dirt you were involved with, I'm going to tell the, I'm going to tell NBC News this happened at your party. And he goes, not so fast. You were at that party. And look what I have you on tape doing. That's very possible. I mean you saw, you saw. For example, I remember seeing a clip from a long time ago and not throwing any shade at Milo Yiannopoulos when I say this, but I remember him holding up like a, you know, like a recording or something of just of just saying listen, when I talk to people, I, you know, I try to have it on tape. Now I don't think Milo's ever offensively blackmailed someone with that. But I can see when you are a high net worth or highly influential public figure and like, you know, you, in case anyone comes after you, you have something on them. But that doesn't mean it's like some highly organized like I mean he did that for example with the head of Israeli. Yeah, the Israeli military. Do you think that, I mean he was under the table recording him for three hours.

[C]

Well, that's. Yeah, exactly. So the question is if he Wasn't motivated by blackmailing or honey pots or whatever. What was he motivated by? We have three minutes left. Mike. I could talk to you for hours and hours.

[B]

So there's a million reasons he could have been. He's gotten in trouble his whole life. I mean when he was 27 years old he got in trouble at Bear Stearns, you know, for. On both on the SEC thing and another intra office thing. He may have had a bad experience where someone tried to blackmail him. And he goes, I wish I had recorded, you know, that thing because they were doing dirty stuff too and then made a practice of it. And then when he, the more property he owned, he just had everything hooked up. We don't, we. That's a hard thing to substantiate given that this guy who's got a hundred thousand high level people in his Rolodex, not a single one after his death, after he couldn't even drop the blackmail, has even, has even made an allegation that Epstein tried to blackmail. So there's no open leads on it. And there's an entire cinematic universe that is very useful for understanding the modern day. As you pointed out, the censorship industrial complex is structured the same way the Epstein network is the same way intelligence work is. These the, the data points to mind here in terms of what we can understand about our own government, what we can understand about our relationship with foreign governments. How to understand New York hedge funds and the role that they exert or high finance or London banks exert. There's a, there's a whole world to see in the Epstein looking glass. And I think that should be. That's primarily my focus.

[C]

People are free to know. I think you're search for whatever they want. Right? I think you're super right. I mean I'm convinced there's just too much smok there to not be a little bit of fire. Even if it's not as sensational as some would make it. I just, I just, I was pushing back with Jay because I felt like there was something I would close out with.

[D]

My, my closing thought here would be. I feel like for years, I mean Epstein died almost seven years ago. It's crazy how long it's been, but it seems like. I know you've pushed back on this, but the widespread assumption is oh, this had to all be explained as part of a big blackmail ring. And that would justify the intelligence connections. But as you point out, nobody's made a blackmail allegation. Nobody talked about it being blackmail. It turns out there kind of is no blackmail. Because if no one's alleging it and there's no evidence of. Seems to have not happened. And at that point, like you pull on the thread and so many. There's so many interlocking assumptions. Oh, well, he was doing blackmail. What would he do blackmail with. Oh, well, it was these underage girls. So he would get compromised on people. But we don't have examples of that being used. I just.

[C]

I feel like we can go over.

[D]

So many interlocking assumptions.

[C]

Yeah, we can go questionable. Go ahead, people.

[B]

People latched on to that, what Blake just said because they didn't understand all of this. And there was no other way for most normie civilians to even understand the Epstein operation. And that's my concern is that all of that. That momentum was all built up because nobody was saying all of this with a. With a large platform. And so that became the only explanation, even though in my view, there's not much of a. There, there.

[C]

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[D]

Sensational versions. And also things that aren't proven become fact. A thing I mentioned, if you want to comment on this, Mike, but a thing I mentioned with our guests yesterday that stood out to me was how I heard over and over it was kind of taken as an article of truth. I saw it repeated in many articles that the prosecutor in Epstein's Florida case had told the Trump administration, oh, well, Epstein belonged. I was told he belonged to Intelligence. So I didn't pursue it. And I heard that over and over again. And then it turned out I was reminded that was an anonymous named source providing hearsay that they said someone told, I think the Washington Post that they'd heard this.

[C]

Or then he denied.

[D]

And then he denied it. Not even publicly, he denied it in a statement to the Trump administration that we then surfaced with these files. And that just got me thinking. That was such a core part of what people used to argue for this. And it was a kind of runaway hearsay statement that if anything has direct evidence against it.

[B]

Right, right. And no. And I saw that that was in the OPR report that during the Justice Department investigation. But I have my own questions about that. I don't know how to feel about that allegation in I agree with you that it is not the core receipt, so to speak, to base any of this on because it's contested. And I do think that the way the question was phrased in terms of the opr, this is the Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department. I think the way it was phrased and the lack of any follow up questions beyond just, you know, did you have knowledge that he was an asset sort of thing leaves the door open. But I think that there's so many other layers of it that, that speak to it. And again, I'm very curious to see now that the, the FOIAs have been fired, what the CIA comes back and says because they are legally required to give us that correspondence. One of the things that I pointed out earlier today on X was we have, because we have the file reference numbers for the whole back and forth of the foias. Now, while through the Privacy act, it's not, you know, publicly searchable that you sent that. It is not inherently classified communication between the CIA and Epstein's lawyer for Epstein records, which means if you have the reference number, the they're required to send it to you unless they classified that correspondence after the fact. And if the CIA drags its feet on this foia, if it obstructs, if it says you can't have it for one of two reasons. One, we classified it, that says something pretty damning, or two, we lost it. We are, our record somehow deleted it between 2011 and 2019 I would demand a Justice Department investigation into that in terms of who at CIA may have deleted it or how it may have when exactly the files were no longer retained. If it turns out that, you know, the CIA says we don't have it and then an FBI investigation into the forensics of why they don't have it says well it got deleted in our system in a fluke malfunction on, you know, July 10, 2019. I think that tells you something as well. But you know, the fact is is from this, from the CIA's work through BCC BCCI while Bear Stearns was handling the clearing of those CIA transactions through the Adnan Khashoggi Iran Contra affair. And here's another one. The CIA's proprietary airline Southern Air Transport used an Iran Contra that Jeffrey Epstein was handling the CIA main point man's main operatives transactions for that very gun running CIA proprietary airline Southern Air Transport. Epstein negotiated its move to Columbus, Ohio where Jeffrey Epstein was running the limited out of when he got durable power of attorney can, I mean Blake, Andrew, can you guys negotiate the the move of a CIA proprietary airline to serve your business? Now at that time son Air Transport just two years earlier had divested. So it was no longer owned by the CIA and operated by the CIA. It was owned to a CIA, a retired CIA agent who had been, who had been part of its management team while it was CIA. So it's technically a private business. But then it goes to serve Jeffrey Epstein's company. By the way, just two years after that, the State Department leased one of the largest residential buildings in New York City to Jeffrey Epstein right after it seized it from the government of Iran. So Jeffrey Epstein had his the State Department as his personal landlord after seizing. I mean can you go on Zillow or Airbnb or has the State Department ever been your personal landlord? And by the way, the only reason that Jeff that that arrangement ended up expiring was because Jeffrey Epstein violated the terms of his agreement with the State Department by subleasing it out to two of the lawyers for both the French Connection and Pizza Connection scandals, which were both CIA drug running scandals from the prior decade. The French connection was the CIA's role in facilitating illegal narcotics from Lebanon to France. And the Pizza Connection scandal was when there was a basically a CIA protected transshipment of drugs to Italian mafia organizations in New York and New Jersey that was laundered through pizza shops. So I mean the whole thing up and down. You can trace it to the kind of CIA earthquake of the Carter Administration giving way to this kind of US Israel, Iran, Iran, Saudi, Iran centric foreign policy web. And then it just metastasized from there as, as all these things require money, hedge funds and private equity funds get in on the action. Epstein makes his way from the, you know, finance world to the you know, kind of fixer world, financial bounty hunter world into the high finance world. And you can trace us, Israeli, British and to some degree French and Saudi foreign policy for decades through the figure of Jeffrey Epstein.

[C]

Mike, I had to ask you about this and I know we're going long here so thank you for your time. There was like now all of a sudden there's like a, there's like George W. Bush is in these emails and so is Macron from France. Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

George H.W. bush was the CIA director in 1975 and the Safari club grew out of his network. The whole Khashoggi family, you have to understand. I mean George H.W. bush was the CIA director and then played this very interesting role in the October Surprise around Iran and then was the Vice President of the Reagan administration during Iran Contra and was effectively the blocker to protect Reagan on it. A lot of people think he was kind of the main progenitor of the whole Iran Contra affair. It was, it was when he became president his attorney general was Bill Barr who not only was the COVID up, he who started his career in the CIA. For the first seven years of his career he only became a lawyer and then the Attorney General because he went to law school at night while he was in the CIA. The Democrat media in the early 1980s blamed him for the CIA blocking the congressional investigations into Iran Contra. And then while he picked Bill Barr as his ag Bill Barr wrote the pardons for the six BCCI officials who were cleared of any wrongdoing in the CIA. Bank's disaster. There's a lot of getting started.

[C]

I know man, there's so much smoke. There has to be fire. That's where I, that's where I'm at. I listen, I think I just want to kind of synthesize this for our audience that's listened to day one with Jay Beecher and day two with Mike Benz. I think so much of this has been sensationalized, like especially a lot of the sex stuff. You know, apparently you find out he was deformed and he had erectile dysfunction and he wasn't even able to like perform. I hate to, you know, I'm trying to be sensitive for our 11 year olds that might be listening but the Point is, some of that stuff I think has been really sensationalized. The underage girl things. I think Jay had a lot of really interesting intel on Virginia. Guthrey was apparently recruiting them, and they were presenting themselves as over 18. Whether he knew or not, I don't know. That's a big question mark. He liked them young. There's no doubt 18 to 25 was his presumption. The point I'm making is there's been a lot of sensationalism around that, a lot of sensationalism around the blackmail. But one of the questions that I go back to is what JD Vance said. Why was this man able to make so much money when basically everybody with a brain, a finance brain, says that he was like, subpar, mediocre at finance at best. Some say he was good at avoiding taxes. Okay. But some of the video that we have of him talking finance, people are not impressed. People that should be impressed are not impressed. So the question is, how did he make all his money? What you present as a theory or connections that seem to believe make me believe that there's smoke, there could be fire. Seems like a lot of fire in this area. And so it's like, kind of like both of these angles feel like they have truth in them. And then in the.

[B]

In the.

[C]

In the void of where there's details, the Internet runs in and sensationalizes, you know, to the max. Is that. Is that a fair summation? Kind of.

[B]

Yeah, I think so. I think. I think one of the reasons that. I think people's intuition about the immensity of what's hidden about the Epstein story is completely true. But the. The rush to fill the vacuum of that is. Is filled with things they can understand. And the fact is, when I'm talking about all these networks, America does not yet have the language to put these things into words, because they don't. These things are hidden from them in part because we have a national security state. We have. All of our statecraft is classified under, you know, as a foreign policy and sensitive. And the fact is, this is something that makes our politics Coke and Pepsi. The fact that these networks are not talked about on network news. The fact is they can only really be shared through social media networks and the like, which is why I think that the collective understanding on this, particularly on the right, because the right, you know, there's kind of a universal thump goes around moment here, insofar as the left was actually quite wise to this in the 1960s and 70s, after they were run through the mill by the national security state during the, during the Cold War when there was a war on communism. And so a lot of socialists or socialist light folks were targeted and they had to. They went through the same sort of collective wow, this is the CIA's relationship with private business. And this is how the military connection comes into this. And there was a very robust scholarship for about 20 years in the Democrat party around that. And there has really never been on the Republican Party until now because the Republican Party's base of support in American politics for the past century has come from basically three places. The military industrial complex itself, which was largely set up by Eisenhower. The big oil industry, which is tightly connected with the military industrial complex, and the Chamber of Commerce for just general big business, who like low tax free enterprise policies. And, and there was never like they were always on the giving end rather than on the receiving end. So Republicans by and large were kept dumb unless you were in the business that this entire cinematic universe exists. And now that Republicans or half of the Republican Party has been systematically targeted by this apparatus. I mean, this is part of my frustration for many years in trying to explain the censorship industrial complex is that to even know that the CIA people saw the CIA on the board of Facebook. I'm sorry, on the trust and safety team on Facebook and the trust and safety team of Twitter and the trust and safety team of YouTube and couldn't understand how this could be possible or USAID's role in this, or the State Department's role in this. Or they're funded grantees. And so you need to explain essentially how US Foreign policy works. How domestic sentiment is a. They call this the driver. The domestic drivers of foreign policy is critical to our international business, our multinational business and private equity. And US Foreign policy focused things depend on what people vote for here. Because if you vote for the wrong president, those businesses that make money abroad go kaput or the foreign policy initiatives can radically change. And so they targeted the Trump movement. You know, regardless of whether what you voted for him for. If you are a Trump supporter and Trump wanted to go a different way on Ukraine, a different way on Russia, a different way on China, a different way on Syria, a different way on Iraq, well then you have to target the whole movement to make sure that guy doesn't get elected.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And you target it through these. This peri. Intelligence layer.

[C]

Yeah, that's well said. I think that's a. Blake. I mean you and me are probably just a little bit on different wavelengths normally on the, on the normie here. Yeah, no, I mean, listen, I think, Mike, that was a really good summation. I think there's just too much smoke. There's got to be some fire there. But I think some of the sex stuff maybe has been sensationalized. Some of the blackmail stuff, I'm kind of. I'm with you on that, Mike. You've made a lot of time for us at the drop of a hat. Thank you so much for giving us as much of these connections. You've given us a lot to think about and I think a really important other side of this Epstein saga. Mike Benz, the executive director for the foundation for Freedom Online and so much else, former State Department. You're crushing it out there. Congratulations on all the success.

[B]

Thanks. You guys, too. Be well, all right? Take care of. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.

[D]

Com.