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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
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Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.
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See full terms@mintmobile.com start the spring with a new pair of Tokovas Western boots. Handcrafted in over 200 steps from genuine leather. They're built to last and feel broken in the moment you put them on. From cowhide to exotic leathers to Kovas blends timeless style with all day comfort. Pair them with premium denim Western shirts and accessories for an effortless, polished look. Shop quality Western goods in store or online@decovas.com I wore Donald Trump presented with the options he was presented with and I saw my enmeshment in this Epstein story that truly got to the heart of why Donald Trump is so unpopular even among many of his voters, why his coalition was starting to crack. You have to wonder if the only person who got anything out of that whole war beyond BB was Donald Trump, for changing the subject away from the Epstein files, which cut to the heart of the corruption and impunity of which he is of course one of our greatest living embodiments.
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B
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast and there are three words that have been put on the back burner with the war in Iran. Regular listeners and viewers will know the words. I'm talking about Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Well, today the writer and the chronicler of elites, multi book author Anand Girdedas, has just dropped his fifth and I think final chapter in his series on the Epstein class. He has spent more time than most digging around in the Epstein files and what he's found is, well, it's remarkable and it gives us insight. Insight into power elites and the collateral human damage that still hasn't really been addressed. But before we get into it, just a reminder, we are independent media. We love to bring you conversations you can't find anywhere else. But we really appreciate your support, which you can give us by joining the Beast Tier membership here on YouTube or by smashing the subscription button so we can include you in our increasing number of subscribers. All right, no more to do let's get into it. Anand Girdedas, welcome back to the podcast. Anand Girdedas is back with us and with the concluding episode of his really readable, thoughtful, provocative series on Jeffrey Epstein on Substat, which I recommend to everybody. Anand, I was going to get you actually to kick off today's conversation by reading the opening chapter because we're going to discuss so much about the Epstein files today and the Epstein class. But I guess my question to you is, has Donald Trump won the Epstein files? Are the Epstein files over? And I wanted you to start with your opening paragraph because I thought it was a good place for us to start the conversation.
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A
Well, it's great to be back with you. Yeah, I'm happy to read. This is the opening of chapter five in our series, which is called the Epstein Class's Secret Weapon, and it begins exactly where you did. Already it feels like the world has moved on. There was a dark, shining moment when all the world, it seemed, was focused on the crimes and schemes of Jeffrey Epstein and his coterie of associates and enablers. And then news stories vied for attention. A war broke out. Human beings circled the moon. Kim Kardashian was spotted with Lewis Hamilton. Memories faded and the virus of collective rage went hunting for new hosts. Was the Epstein story just another story? Was it just more grist for the mill? Was it a chance to vent the frustrations of an age in which some get away with anything they do and others never get anything they need? Will we take this moment, this phenomenon of a story, as a spur to charting a new course or enjoy the catharsis of fury and move on?
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B
So have we moved on? Have we moved on from the Epstein files?
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A
Yes and no. I think there is no doubt that even since the last time you and I spoke, there has been a lot that has happened. And some of a more conspiracy oriented bent, or even, frankly, a corruption minded bent, might think that some of what has gone on was a deliberate effort to change the subject. Certainly, if I were Donald Trump presented with the options he was presented with, and I saw my enmeshment in this Epstein story, that truly got to the heart of why Donald Trump is so unpopular even among many of his voters, why his coalition was starting to crack, you might almost imagine it was rational for someone in such a desperate situation to do literally anything to change the subject. And tragically, literally anything turned out to be perhaps the war in Iran. Now, we don't know exactly why Donald Trump did what he did. We also know that he was very determined to be, as I keep calling him, Bibi's vp, subordinating the foreign policy of the United States to the whims of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. So certainly kind of following his kind of top dog, Bibi Netanyahu, into war was part of it. But I wonder if part of the attraction of this tragic war of whim in Iran, which has made the world less safe and literally caused all of the President's goals to be more elusive than they were before. You have to wonder if the only person who got anything out of that whole war beyond Bibi was Donald Trump, for changing the subject away from the Epstein files, which cut to the heart of. Of the corruption and impunity of which he is, of course, one of our greatest living embodiments.
- [07:02]
B
So you talk about the Epstein class, and I was thinking it's such a good. It's so much more provocative than just talking about Epstein's friends or Epstein's buddies. Who exactly is the Epstein class? As we take a step back from the 3 million files that have dropped and some of the close reading, a lot of which you've done, what are you left with in understanding who made up these people, this Epstein class?
- [07:37]
A
Well, you started by asking, is the story over? And so the sense in which it's over is that the subject has been changed, but the sense in which it is not over is what has been revealed, what we have seen and learned through this historic glimpse into the power elite, into the Epstein class, as I and others have called it. I think Congressman Rowe kind of coined it originally. And in that sense, the story is not over. Right. So let's talk about what that class is. When we first got these glimpses of files, and there was a big tranche in November, and then there was a lot more in the new year, it's overwhelming, right? It's lots of emails. It's a lot of redundant emails. It's lists, it's flight requests to a centurion concierge. It's desire for Hermes Apple watch bracelets. It's, you know, random things about how to set up an LLC for an art acquisition. And so if you're looking at it, you know, as a civilian or even a journalist kind of trained to do normal work, it's a little bit like, wow, this is just like a bunch of people, as you said, just a bunch of friends. And, you know, and the. And the kind of way to look at it for many people was individuals, right? The human brain is very good at understanding individuals. We can. What's the story with Leon Black. Think of. There's no Hollywood movies about systems, right? Like, movies are always about people, you know, and so, yeah, we can understand, oh, Leon Black, he did this. And, and then we kind of understand it in the ways that we are very good at almost biologically. What did he get? What did he give? What was the deal? And so that level of analysis, I think, comes to us very naturally. And there was a. There was a deluge of data that would allow journalists and analysts and regular people to sit around and say, wow, this is what Leon Black did. Wow. Can you believe Woody Allen was here? Wow. What was Steve Bannon getting out of it? And I partook of those revelations as much as the next person. But when I started reading it in November, it was really kind of screamingly clear to me, maybe because of the work I had done previously, that what we were really seeing, if we squinted a little bit, was an operating system of a group, right? And so of this Epstein class and that to understand it merely as a list of bold faced names doing stuff, or a compendium of rich people behaving badly and then why are their professors? It was to miss something more fundamental. So I think this Epstein class, as I would define it, having now done this work over these months, is. It is a group, it is a network, right? It is a social network. The way, you know, in your neighborhood, there's a kind of social network that one could map and draw on a piece of paper and she always bakes the baked goods and he always, you know, he's having an affair with two of the moms, you know, whatever the. Whatever the two of the moms.
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B
Two of the moms. You obviously live in a much more exciting part of town than I do. It's all going on in Brooklyn, you
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A
know, poly capital of the world.
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B
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A
So when you start to look at it as a system, you see there's this group of people. It's this network. It is defined, I would say, primarily by being a wealthy and powerful group of people. There's a lot of finance people, there's a lot of business people, by the way. There's not a. Even within that, there's a kind of specific kind of business person who tends to have a little bit of kind of freedom in their life, right? So it's not SVP's of Coca Cola. It's not like working stiff at a high level. It's not people in big structures. It's people who have a little bit of freedom. They're a little bit all over the place. They're traveling. So it's VCs and it's silicon Valley guys and it's finance people. It's people in the business world who are in a kind of less regimented structure. It's not like your IBM number two in general. A lot of finance people, a lot of tech people. But then importantly, it wasn't only wealthy and powerful people, right? Otherwise we could just say like the elite class or the billionaire class. It was also other groups that were quite important. So there were kind of elite professors which were a very important part of this network, who had kind of various forms of relationship with Epstein and with these other rich people. It was, you know, entertainment, select kind of entertainment people. It was people in and out of government on the right and the left. It was kind of international diplomat types, you know, the kinds of people. I once, a long time ago, the New York Times called these people docs. Like, there's certain people in every country that kind of make themselves available as like, if you want to do something in Norway, like technically you could approach, you know, a few million people, but really there's like five people as an outsider that you should approach to like get something done in Norway. So a lot of those types of people. The docks were kind of.
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B
What does docs stand for? Spell that for me.
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A
D O, C K. Like, like a. Like a boat.
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B
Oh, like a sort of human dock that you throw your rope around, pull anchor by.
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A
Yes. Like, I lived in India for six years and I was a foreign correspondent for the Times for most of that. And I saw this at work in India where anytime new foreign correspondents would come in or the, you know, Sotheby's would send a new head of something to like, there was always like 20 people in India, the same 20 people that those people would end up finding. And then those people could just like open doors to whatever and they could be rich, they could be middle, but they were like somehow connected and they just knew a lot of people and they took pleasure in, in. In being those kind of connectors. So you have these kind of docs, like, you know, people. And this is often a thing in developing countries or just countries outside the U.S. where people, you know, Dubai. How do you get something done in Dubai? Well, that's probably complicated. But if you as. As a kind of certain person in Dubai, make yourself the kind of person who one would call if one needed something complicated in Dubai or a visa on short notice or wanted to throw a conference and the permissions were difficult, there are these people who kind of put themselves in that role. And they were actually, these kind of docs, as I call them, were a pretty big part of this network. Right. Often if you found a stray Norwegian in there or a stray Kuwaiti in there, or a stray Nigerian in there, they were often that kind of person, Right. Who made things possible.
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B
Right. And with Epstein, he literally had the chair of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, no less. I mean, astonishing that he was a doc for so many people coming to New York.
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A
So then you look at this group as a whole, and this is why I think this Epstein class formulation is important. Because it's not just rich people. It's rich people and it's professors and it's some government people. I think there are people in that network. I actually know for a fact, because I wrote one of my chapters about them, there are people in that network making 100 grand and there are people in that network making $100 million a year.
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B
Well, and we talked in our last conversation, which we got enormous response to, we talked about the idea of his kept intellectuals and people that he was paying for their grant. We talked about one in particular whose emails you'd gone through, Joshua Bach and a scientist, someone talking about the philosophy of cognition. A philosopher, too, and caught up in Jeffrey Epstein's web because MIT had said to him, oh, Jeffrey Epstein will pay some of your fellowship, he'll pay for some of your salary. And so people not only caught up with him, but dependent on him.
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Yes. So now when you understand this class as being multi profession, multi levels of income, some masters of the universe, some academics, as you say, some artists, you know, who've kind of been successful, some, you know, tax professionals, others, you have to say what is binding this group? Because it's not necessarily obvious and it's not a simple tribe to define. And what I realized spending a lot of time in the documents is that what this group is defined by is a kind of like, loyalty to the network as the source of all good things that you need, and a kind of blind loyalty to this network. And a loyalty to this network that comes at the expense of downward vertical loyalty to the places you come from. Right. So you and I and most normal people watching this probably feel some loyalty to, you know, where you were born or where you live now or the place where you're, you know, kids play their, their weekend sports or a team that you happen to cheer for, that you, your dad and grandfather also cheered for. That's how most people are built in this group. It's really, really different. The loyalty in the group is to the group. The loyalty in the Epstein class is to the Epstein class. And therefore, even though on the. On cable television, people in this network will joust each other for your and my entertainment, what the emails show is how they relate to each other when the cameras are off and it turns out they have each other's backs. It's not that all agreements, disagreements are. Are neutralized or not real. They just understand something fundamental that is the heart of this fifth chapter, which is that their shared interests with each other are more important to them than any ideas or principles. They hold that, yeah, they have ideologies, yeah, they have things they believe in, yeah, they have theories of nationalism or globalism or this and that, but at the end of the day, they have a view and they live according to this view, that if this elite group can maintain a kind of solidarity with each other, if the, if the rich people can take care of some of these professors, if the professors can go to places like TED and make sure that they give talks that provoke interesting insight, maybe help industry along, but don't challenge the power structure of the kind of people who fund ted, so on and so forth. If they have each other's backs. If the bankers are kind of willing to overlook lending to shady people like Epstein, if Epstein is able to kind of grease relationships between people who maybe wouldn't meet in more formal settings, that they have so much to gain from holding their nose, from kind of bracketing their disagreements and practicing a kind of elite solidarity with each other. And the more I thought about this and the more I read this behavior, it sort of led to the landing place of this series in chapter five, about their secret weapon, which is their secret weapon, is solidarity. And it occurred to me that we've lived in an age of impunity in which people in this group, this network, can get away with anything. Obviously the pedophilia at the heart of this story, but so much else, so much economic immiseration, technological immiseration, so much scandal and corruption, they keep getting away with it. And they get away with it partly because they have these allies who protect each other. And down here among the 99% of people who are not in this group, we snipe at each other. We assume the worst of each other. I wrote a book called the Persuaders about arguing that what I called the Great American write off, writing other people off as irredeemable, unchangeable, stupid, never going to change their ways on all sides was the kind of death of our democracy. These people at the top protect their impunity through their kind of elite solidarity. And the 99% in this country kind of succumb to tribal warfare with people who actually share fundamentally the same interests.
- [22:01]
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- [22:04]
A
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B
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A
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B
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A
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B
okay, so I'm going to ask you something. I'm currently in the UK where two people have been or are in the process of being held accountable. One is Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, who lost his princely title and was pulled in for questioning by the police. Was there for 11 hours. We've all seen that remarkable photo of him being driven away in the Range Rover from the police station. He's sort of laying back. His eyes are just open to, I think, the realization that he is going to be held accountable for some of his behaviour. And then of course, Peter Mandelson, who was the British ambassador to Washington, who was fired once his birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday was revealed in the birthday book so is it a specific American thing that these people have not been held to account? Because also in Norway people have been held to account. In other countries in Europe, people have been questioned. And it's true that Peter Mandelson and Andrew, formerly known as Prince, haven't been charged, but they've, they've lost enormous social standing, they've lost jobs and essentially they've been deeply humiliated and embarrassed by their connection with Jeffrey Epstein. And then they're sort of lying about it. So. So is there something different going on in America?
- [23:55]
A
There is. And I, with, with the indulgence of you and your, and your audience, I want to put that question in a slightly bigger, long view historical context, because I think it's so meaningful and frankly, painful. So, you know, King Charles recently visited the US for the 250th celebrations. And it puts one in the frame of mind of that time period. And it's worth remembering that when those then British subjects came over here and eventually declared independence and started this country, they did so with a lot of different radical and powerful ideas. But I would say if I had to sum up the heart of the kind of distinction they were trying to make, they were leaving a society in the UK with very deep seated notions of inherited class, social structure, you are who your grandfather was. And they were leaving it, to start this notion, this first sentence, right? All men are created equal. Obviously they had giant blind spots, but they started with the notion they were really pushing against a kind of European, kind of feudal idea of society, of these kind of landed estates and domains and the kind of medieval, like there's the lord and the castle and the. They were really pushing for like a new theory of who people were. And I would fast forward, you know, 70 years after that, Tocqueville comes from France and travels around America and makes, you know, the Declaration. That's the theory, right? Tocqueville is just like traveling around doing like street anthropology. What's this new place like? He's a French aristocrat and he feels like what he calls the leveling principle, right? This notion that like no man is better than anybody else. He feels like it's spreading around the world and it's like gonna come for him too, right? It's gonna come to France eventually and he wants to see the source of it. So he goes to America and he writes about prisons a little bit. And then he just does a general thing that became democracy in America. And he makes these penetrating observations about how kind of 60, 70 years. 50, 60, 70 years in the Declaration of Independence and this notion of no man's better than anybody else, how it was playing out in the culture. I remember this incredible observation. I promise this will get back to the Epstein class, but it's really important to understand, he says he observed this thing where in America, if a person who employed a servant and that servant interacted, let's say at 4:55pm inside the house, they would speak to each other one way and in the kind of customary senior person and a servant, maybe a little bowing, maybe a little groveling, if then the servant left at 5pm and they happened to run into each other on the street at 5:05pm they would interact with total equality as two gentlemen. And Tocqueville was flabbergasted by this. This was. If you've been to a place like India, if you've been to many countries in the world, you know exactly what a. Because in India still, at 505, they're still going to act in a hierarchical way because they're still different. They still perceive themselves to be different types of human beings. And what Tocqueville was noticing was the birth of something profound, maybe the profoundest thing about the United States of America. And I say all that to say when we now get to a place where countries in Europe are practicing the notion that even a prince who committed crimes like this may have committed crimes like this should be held accountable. Doesn't matter who he is, doesn't matter who his dad and mom was. And the United States is, as you say, one of the only places to basically practice as a de facto principle the notion that people like this should not be held accountable. They're too important and powerful to be held accountable. We have essentially reversed the whole reason we quit Britain. We have allowed our revolution to come to a point of profound hypocrisy. Even, you know, of course, it started with many of those hypocrisies to begin with. And now we come to this place where we are the shining example in the world of. If you were one of these special rich, elite people, the rules don't apply to you. We started an entire country to get away from that idea.
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B
That's such a profound insight into what's happened here. If I were to push back, I would say the public outcry about the Epstein files is something to feel optimistic about. That people are like, this is not okay. Women need to be. Girls in particular need to be protected. The victims have been heard. We've had two members of Congress. You mentioned Ro Khanna but also Thomas Massey get a unanimous House to vote for the release of the Epstein files. What does accountability look like for this Epstein class? What should accountability be at this point? We saw the attorney general get fired, Pam Bondi, through her mishandling of it. We talked to Glenn Kirschner, you know, for 30 years a federal prosecutor, on Friday night, and he was saying that he thought she got fired specifically because of the evidence that was released about the 13 to 15 year old girl who was, was investigated or interviewed four times by the FBI with her allegations about Donald Trump. What does accountability look like now?
- [30:44]
A
I think there's several levels of it. Right? So, and I've said this many times, you can't forget the burning heart of the story of this Epstein story, which is not the behavior of a class, but is the extremely depraved sex crimes by a relatively small subset of this group of people against specific women survivors who have come forward and made their voices heard in some cases. So before we get into the wheeling and dealing and the LLCs for art acquisitions and the Hermes Apple watch bracelets and the whatever, there are sex crimes here, a lot of them potentially, and almost all of them unpunished. So those need to be prosecuted. Accountability looks like those actually being investigated and prosecuted. There's this kind of weird quality to the story where we're all just like watching, watching the story, but we're forgetting, like this is a crime scene, this is a crime story. Like these are crimes that should be investigated. So, you know, it may be that Donald Trump is disinclined to investigate the kinds of crimes he, you know, he, and people like him don't think of as that serious. But these are crimes, they should just be, they should just be prosecuted. They should be prosecuted. You know, we also have the advantage in this country of lots of different levels of jurisdiction, right? So if we have bad, bad Department of Justice, well, you know, there's states and there's cities and there's district attorneys across this country. According to what these, these files show, what these women have said, this stuff took place lots of places. Lots of places have jurisdiction here. And look, we've just lived in an age of historic under prosecution, you know, and I say this to prosecutor friends of mine and they're always like, well, Anand, let me give you five reasons, you know, and then I just like fall asleep. Because they never say that when it was the million or whatever it was people being put in jail for low level drug offenses, somehow prosecutors were able to do their thing when it was Like a bunch of people, you know, dealing weed. But I mean, we. The, like, there's an entire genre of music called hip hop that is just telling the stories of how hard the government came down on people for selling drugs to survive and like, you know, not even make a ton of money, as. As has since been revealed. And yet this, this, this story of, of Epstein and, and, and some of his friends and associates, you know, sex crimes, is just kind of. It's like a spectacle, and somehow we just can't marshal the same prosecutorial energy that we could for putting away, you know, drug dealers making like $30,000 a year. So, you know, that's certainly one level of accountability and the fundamental one, but I do think it goes. It goes beyond that. And, you know, Virginia Giuffre, who wrote a remarkable book, nobody's Girl, she's one of the survivors. She talks about this as, you know, a kind of, you know, being trafficked to some of those powerful people in the world. And she talks about a world order that's kind of corrupt to the core. So she's not only saying a few bad guys did bad things to me in a massage room, she's saying there's a system that is corrupt. And I think, you know, what she is calling us to do from beyond the grave and what others who are very much alive are also calling for us to do, is to hold that, that power elite accountable. And that means beyond investigating and prosecuting the sex crimes, various things like getting money out of politics, so these people can't buy access in Washington. That keeps them from being prosecuted, so they can't influence what Congress looks at and what it doesn't look at. But it also looks like having kind of, you know, more transparency at every level of our society. You know, these are people who thrive by their conduct being in the shadows. And what was so remarkable about the Epstein files is that it opened a glimpse that we seldom get into how they think, how they operate, how they feel about the very consumers they sell to and they lend to and they. They live off of, but often seem to have quite a bit of dripping contempt for.
- [35:26]
B
So the one person that has been held to account in the States is Ghislaine Maxwell, who, as we know, was in jail in Florida. Todd Blanche, who was then the number two at the Justice Department, but now they're acting number one at the Justice Department. And like Pam Bondi, a former personal lawyer of Donald Trump, as we know, went down to interview her for a day and a half, and then very quickly she was moved a much lower security, a prison camp, in fact, in Texas, where she has a relative. What do we make of that? Of the move from Florida? And, well, now the fact that she won't give any more evidence that she's just said that's it. And she's not prepared to talk anymore.
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A
I mean.
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B
I mean, she's got 20 years for sex trafficking. 20 years.
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A
I mean, it's. By the way, it's interesting that they've gotten. There's been whatever limited accountability you mentioned, Pam Bondi, you know, they've gotten a handful of women who were. Who were, you know, deserve to be held accountable. But all these men continue to, you know, to operate, which is not a defense of those women. But it is interesting. Look, I mean, you can't force her to testify. But I think the idea that she knew a lot, she probably knew more than anybody else. It would be great to have that information if, you know, perhaps she feels, as some people do in prison, some remorse, some evolution. Sometimes you get a little more time to read. I've seen these videos of her just pacing with nothing to do all day in jail. I would recommend books sometimes. There's quite a long record of prisoner in jail actually getting. I wrote a whole book about a guy who went to death row and actually became kind of deepened and grew for the first time in his life because the kind of background he had in Texas, of all places, he hadn't really had the kind of time to reflect and think and read his whole life. That he got on death row and death row was for him, this kind of strangely deepening, spiritually awakening experience. May not be that for everybody, but Ghislaine Maxwell has a chance to reflect on being involved in this totally depraved thing. And maybe there's a part of her that wants to come forward, not as part of some deal, but maybe because there are thousands and thousands of future women who could be saved if she were to explain in public how this works, if she were to maybe help kind of inoculate women in the future, girls in the future, to this by talking about how this works. You know, one of the things that interrupts these kinds of patterns of abuse and predation is when people are inoculated because they know the moves, right? And someone like Ghislaine Maxwell can tell you the moves. Ugh. You go to a mall and a slightly older teenage girl comes up to you, as Virginia Giuffre describes, and says, love your outfit. You know, I have this guy, he's Great. He'll give you. You know, like, there's a way in which someone like her, if she had an iota of character or through the growth of solitude in prison, could save potential future victims. I'm not holding my breath, but I also don't think we should counter any one person here. We have a government, for the purpose of, among other things, investigating things like this. We have thousands and thousands of people in the FBI and local police. This is what they're supposed to do. We shouldn't just depend on one person, you know, coming. Coming to Jesus. Although, you know, it would probably be a good thing if she did so.
- [39:38]
B
One of the things that's really striking about the Epstein files is the lack of emails after he's been convicted of. Of solicitation of a minor in 2008. In fact, there's almost the opposite. I mean, Peter Mandelson's letter is like, this is disgraceful. This would never have happened in England. You know, your friends will love you and support you. Similarly from Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah Ferguson. Why do you think people weren't more concerned about it? I mean, I think if you ask the average person, and one should never sort of fall back on the average person. But I do think that if your close friend is found guilty of such a heinous crime, you would think twice about remaining their friend. I think especially with children, I mean, I'm fascinated that Howard Lutnick took his family and another family who he was with, I think a total of eight children to the island, one of the Virgin Islands, Jeffrey Epstein's island, as if this man were just a regular guy.
- [41:04]
A
I wrote about in my first chapter of the Epstein class series. I wrote about someone I knew who I found in the Epstein files, to great disappointment and dismay, and tried to reach out to his wife, who had been my friend. And some of these emails, the guy is asking Epstein if his wife, I guess solo, could take a ride, get a ride, hitch a ride with Epstein, you know, back on his plane, you're thinking, what kind of person is sending his wife without him on a plane with Jeffrey Epstein? How important is that transportation to you? Look, I think it gets to the core of thesis here, which is this is a group of people. You have to understand something very like most people watching this. Your life does not work the way the lives of people in the Epstein class work. Right? You work in a much more meritocratic environment, which is to say, if you're good enough at teaching, you get a job as a teacher. If you Fail at it, you'll be fired. If you do really well at it, you might become the principal of the school, so on, in truck driving or your local bank branch or whatever it is you do. And you get what you get based on, like, how you do on a test or how you do in an interview or how you do once you get a job. That's just like normal life for 99% of people. One of the things you see in this group at the Epsian class is that it's not quite like that. In other words, Josh Kabak is getting that fellowship at MIT. And Goodwin Proctor, the law firm that investigated MIT's relationships here with Epstein, said clearly that fellowship came through. He got that fellowship because Epstein agreed to pay a part of his salary because Epstein liked that thinker instead of some other thinker. Okay? Your life at home does not work like that. You don't get your job at the grocery store or the bank or whatever because there's some billionaire pedophile subset like it, right? So it's a. This is a different world. And, you know, Epstein is getting money from. From, you know, JP Morgan Chase that really he shouldn't be getting. And some of it's flagged, but he still keeps getting these transactions anyway because he has cultivated ties to people like Jess Staley at the bank. And someone else wants their kids to get into Trinity or another private school in New York. Maybe they wouldn't get in anyway. But Epstein is helping. My point to you is the network is very, very valuable to these people. You at home get the things you get from normal activities like work and trying and taking interviews and whatever these people get the things they get from their access to this network, they get into their schools from this network. They get finances from banks, not just because the way banks lend to you based on a credit check, they make sure a bank official gets a happy ending massage. And then they borrow on the basis of that. Right. They are able to, like, get information about a thing that is going to happen in the oil markets or whatever. Not because they read the Financial Times like you and me and other suckers, but because some guy in Kuwait sends them a signal message about what's going to happen in the energy markets. Right. So to answer your question, why don't they say anything? That was the question, actually, of chapter one in our series, Epstein's Network of Bystanders. The reason they don't say anything is it's too valuable to say anything. It's too costly to say anything. It's too Valuable to stay in the network. And one of the things I tried to tease out in that piece is I think this is tale as old as time in some ways, these kind of elite networks. But there's something about an age of networks that has heightened this, right? That land and position and your grandfather's job matter less than they did historically. And your centrality in the network, your web of connections, matters more. And so what you really see across his network, even for someone, I mean, this is the. It stretches to the comic level of like even a British royal family member at some level is making a calculation that there is more opportunity for them in a pedophile's global network than from being a British royal. For most of human history, that would have been an unimaginable calculation. Like one would have sacrificed membership in the pedophilia network to protect membership in the royal family. But our world has so changed that sometimes now royals leave the royal family to pursue Netflix deals in California. Right. That we have leaders who seem to view being president or being prime minister of countries as stepping stones to sort of building their own networks and kind of production and all of that. We have gotten to a place where being in this network is so sacred to people that princes are willing to sacrifice their position in a family that once ruled a quarter of the earth's surface just to stay in a network that can get you to anybody who's anybody.
- [47:08]
B
Your series is fascinating. Do you have plans to put it in a book? I know it's available free on substack, but is the goal to put it into a book?
- [47:19]
A
I thought about it, I don't know and I'm keeping it as an open question. But for now, before it becomes a book that you have to go somewhere to get it is all available, all five chapters and heink which is the.ink I N K and you just click on this kind of Epstein class tab on top and you can read all five chapters. I hope they give people a glimpse behind what have been a lot of headlines and a lot of bold faced names and a lot of speculation. What was always interesting to me was what we learn about how the world works through these revelations. So I encourage folks to read it. And even though we've left it free to the public, if people like this kind of work, appreciate this kind of work, it's independent media, so it exists if people subscribe. So subscribe to the Inc and join us. And if you want to see some more work where this came from, well,
- [48:26]
B
we would love to have you back to discuss many other things. The Epstein file certainly isn't as on top of the news as it was, but we don't think it's going to leave yet. And of course there's another 3 million files still to drop. We learn. So I hope you will come back and discuss with us and other things anand we don't only have to talk about the Epstein files, though I know you've been buried deep in them. Thank you very much for joining us and enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
- [48:56]
A
Thank you very much for having me, as always.
- [49:03]
B
And Anne says that that is the final chapter in his series on the Epstein files, but I wonder if that's true. We're still expecting 3 million more Epstein files that Katie Fang on Substack has now demanded and filed a lawsuit to try and provoke their release. Well, who knows? But I think found his insights, particularly into how networks work and are now substitutes for communities, really insightful. I love talking to him and obviously I'm extremely jealous of his hair. It's fantastic. I don't have my regular hair tools with me in the UK right now. I'm debating whether or not to invest in some more, but when I saw his hair looking so fabulous today, I thought, yep, mine is looking a little bit flat. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. I'll be back tomorrow with David Rothkop, Rothkop's vision on the world. He will be funny, he will be mean, and he will, as always, be deeply, deeply insightful and knowledgeable, having talked to his friends in dc, in the Pentagon and in the entire intelligence services all weekend. Thank you for joining us. And don't forget, as our first lady would have us, bee beast. So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.