All those claims of a pedophile ring in the imaginary basement of a pizza place…psssht. False flag. Distraction. All that stuff. Instead, they should have gone digging into the backgrounds of billionaires and people closely connected to Donald Trump. Clots of filth keep tumbling out of the pipeline connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein is struggling to recover the reputation he had in his glory days.
In the early Aughts, Epstein was known to rub elbows with the likes of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey. His enigmatic rise from Dalton physics teacher to “international moneyman of mystery” who palled around with Prince Andrew and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was chronicled by the tabloids and New York magazine and Vanity Fair, which in 2003 reported, “Epstein is known about town as a man who loves women—lots of them, mostly young.”
I wouldn’t be particularly gratified to have rubbed elbows with that quartet. But being a registered sex offender now damages his ego, so he’s been flinging out millions of dollars in charitable donations through a newly labeled company, Gratitude America Ltd. I suspect one reason for laundering the money through this company is because the recipients of his largesse would love to have some of his money, but at the same time they’d rather not be caught rubbing slimy elbows with Epstein.
So Epstein has been filtering money to Larry Summers, Harvard, Deepak Chopra, a cancer research institute, Elton John’s AIDS foundation, various art philanthropies, etc., etc., etc. All this is claimed in tax filings by Gratitude America. But then it gets confusing…
The Daily Beast left messages for all the schools and charities that Epstein’s group listed as beneficiaries. Some representatives said they didn’t know who operated Gratitude America Ltd. Others said they never received any such donations.
In an email, Howard Straus, president of the Cancer Research Wellness Institute, said his group has “NEVER received a donation of that magnitude from ANYONE.”
“I would know,” Straus continued. “We are perennially short of funds, and would love to be the recipient of such largesse, but not from sexual predators.”
Jennifer Park of New York Concert Artists said her group never received a donation from Gratitude America. “I am sorry but you have completely wrong information,” she said in an email, adding that her nonprofit was perhaps confused with another group.
Well, cool. Shady stuff is going on. Someone ought to investigate.
In other news, another victim has stepped forward to testify against Epstein and his cronies. Maria Farmer was an employee of Epstein’s, and witnessed the young girls trooping off to his bedroom, and her own sister was molested by Epstein. There are also claims that Alan Dershowitz was actively involved in the rape romps.
“To my knowledge, I was the first person to report Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI. It took a significant amount of bravery for me to make that call because I knew how incredibly powerful and influential both Epstein and Maxwell were, particularly in the art community,’’ she wrote.
Farmer’s affidavit is one of 15 exhibits attached to a defamation complaint filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, against Alan Dershowitz, one of Epstein’s most vocal and powerful attorneys.
Giuffre claims in the lawsuit, as she has in past court filings, that Dershowitz, 80, knew about and participated in a sex-trafficking operation involving underage girls and run by Epstein and Maxwell, and that she was forced to have sex with Dershowitz and other prominent, wealthy men when she was underage.
I don’t know what Epstein thinks he’s going to accomplish with multiple large donations (maybe) given semi-anonymously. It’s all just confirming to me that anyone with billions of dollars in their pocket is a dishonest sleaze, and we should be working to take their money away.
It’s not as if they actually earned it, you know. No one earns a billion dollars.
Obviously I hope justice is finally done to Epstein but the direct accusation against Dershowitz is even more intriguing. It probably isn’t provable but we’ll see if any dam break ensues.
The podcast Behind the Bastards did a couple episodes on him (1, 2), and noted that no one knows how he got all his money. His self-mythology seems to be greatly embellished and threatens to sue those who try to root around in his personal life. Interesting/disturbing stuff.
More stuff about Epstein and his ability to deliver intimidation/threats: https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-tried-to-warn-you-about-sleazy-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-in-2003
If you’re inclined to adopt a charitable interpretation of Epstein’s giving, which I’m not sure I am, it’s that deep down inside he wishes he were a better person than he actually is, so he tries to do some good things to make up for the bad.
And here’s what I would say: Good people and bad people exist in the movies; in real life most of us are a bit more complicated than that. Probably no one is either pure good or pure evil. So when someone is trying to do the right thing, they should be encouraged, even if they’ve done wrong things in the past. You never know when the better angels of someone’s nature might show themselves.
I think you could argue that Elon Musk, by kickstarting the electric car industry and slashing the cost of getting into orbit, may in the long run have earned a billion dollars. That is 1/20 of NASA’s current annual budget, a large amount of which must be launch costs.
He is also pals with Lawrence Krauss and Steven Pinker. Pinker is on the flight logs, Krauss is not, as far is I know.
@5 I think PZ has mentioned that in other posts, but thank you for reminding me. I would love to know where Epstein got his money from.
“No one earns a billion dollars.”
Thank you! This is never said enough. It really bugs me that people seem to like things like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or Elon Musk running a program to visit Mars. Why in the hell have we given the authority to use the world’s resources to a few individuals? Why should Bill Gates have any say whatsoever, beyond the obligations we all have, in how education is done or how Malaria is mitigated? The fact that these individuals can have that amount of influence is absurd. These are massive undertakings that use our time, energy, and materials. It is bad enough that they have more property, houses, and other goods than they could ever enjoy. Do we also have to cede the authority to determine how our society is run?
Careful, there, psychomath.
I’m not saying you have no valid point. I’m just saying that talking about regulating capitalism three times is likely to cause teejay to appear.
Yes indeed. Who among us has not sexually abused underage girls, and trafficed them to our rich friends?
Gosh! He did that all by his own self? I’m impressed!
and when they are doing “bad” things they should be equally discouraged.
in this case sure take the money and thank you but go to jail just the same.
uncle frogy
KG, and Uncle Froggy, I didn’t say he shouldn’t have gone to jail. Had I been in charge of the justice system I’d have given him 20 years. But since that’s not what happened, the question is whether, having done bad things in the past, he should now be permitted to be a better person today than he was yesterday.
My understanding is that Epstein connections would have been a huuuuge issue in the 2016 election, were it not for the fact that both Bill C. and Donald T. were equally mixed up with him. So there ended up being an unofficial truce on name-calling.
thirdmill wrote:
Except he was doing donations prior to his conviction, and he used his influence to get preferential treatment for his conviction, so he isn’t a better person today. He’s the same person with a [slightly] tarnished reputation.
How do you make amends if you never admit to what you’ve done, why is anyone trying to consign fresh accusations to the dustheap, and since when did we regard filing false tax forms* as the “right thing” to do?
*particularly by a person suspected of money laundering and tax evasion, and whose “donations” were a pretext for acquiring access to victims and sharing that access with his cronies
It’s almost like their supposed concern for pedophilia (given that they’re never actually raising funds for child victims or doing any kind of work that might actually help real victims) is weaponized hypocrisy and projection, and they accept the conspiracy theories because they know on some level that they would do exactly the same kind of thing if they were in power so clearly the other people are.
Almost.