Normally, the confirmation process to anoint a new Secretary of Labor isn’t especially interesting. We certainly don’t learn anything new or scandalous most of the time. But in 2017, the confirmation process of Alexander Acosta was a very notable exception. At the time, the Trump administration was vetting Acosta, and they asked him whether anything in his past might pose a problem during his confirmation hearings.
That’s when Acosta told Trump officials about his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein criminal case, back when he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2007. Acosta recounted that he had agreed to give Jeffrey Epstein the mother of all sweetheart deals. He granted immunity not only to Epstein, but also to any potential co-conspirators, known or unknown. Acosta also hid the existence of this non-prosecution agreement from Epstein’s victims, in violation of the law. As a result of the deal, the federal investigation into Epstein was shut down. Epstein ultimately pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring a girl for prostitution under the age of 18. He was out of prison in a few months.
All of that was known to the Trump team when they interviewed Acosta. These are the kind of facts that could have killed his nomination to be Secretary of Labor. But Acosta offered an explanation for his handling of the Epstein case. He told investigators for the Trump administration that he had been directed by U.S. intelligence agencies to let Epstein off the hook. He was told that Epstein, “belonged to intelligence,” that the matter was, “above his pay grade,” and that he needed to, “leave it alone.”
When this news broke a couple years later, following Epstein’s arrest, Acosta was asked about it. He refused to say it was false and he gave maybe the most equivocal answer he possibly could have given. This will go down in history as maybe one of the worst attempts to evade an answer that has ever occurred in a press briefing in Washington. Watch:
That’s an admission, obviously. There’s no other way to interpret what Acosta was doing there. He’s not a particularly good liar. That non-denial is confirmation that yes, Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence asset. He was being used by the intelligence agencies, and therefore he couldn’t go to prison for amassing an army of child sex slaves.
And that’s not all the help Epstein and his associates received. On July 6 and 7 of 2019, shortly after Epstein was arrested on new sex assault charges, FBI agents photographed a variety of evidence in Epstein’s New York townhouse. They discovered binders with CDs and photographs lining the shelves. Inside a safe, which they opened with a saw, the agents found lewd photographs of children. They also discovered even more CDs that had handwritten labels on them, with the names of two individuals on some of the labels.
It’s not hard to conclude that this was probably blackmail material. According to the official story, agents simply photographed all of these items, but they didn’t take them, because they didn’t have a search warrant. Incredibly, the agents left the property to get a warrant, which somehow took four days to acquire. This by itself is ridiculous, since in a high-profile case like this, judges could obviously have approved a warrant almost immediately, while agents remained on-site. But in this case, the agents left the property, and they didn’t come back until four days later. And by that point, the materials they had photographed were all missing.
Supposedly one of Epstein’s lawyers later brought the property to the FBI, but of course there’s no way of knowing if the CDs are the same ones that were removed from the safe. There’s no way of knowing how much evidence was tampered with.
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Given this history, there was really no conceivable way we’re ever going to learn the truth about exactly what Jeffrey Epstein did, and who his associates were. But in 2017, the independent journalist Mike Cernovich did his best to get some answers anyway. He tried to force the government’s hand. He filed an intervening motion in an existing defamation case concerning Epstein. This motion, which went all the way up to federal appellate court in New York, demanded that the government release information it possessed about Epstein. And the courts ultimately agreed.
But just days before documents were set to come out, coincidentally enough, Epstein — and Epstein alone — was booked on the new sex assault charges by the federal government. That arrest delayed the release of the documents, pending the prosecution. Of course that prosecution never came because Epstein “committed suicide.” The materials in his safe began to disappear. And outside of Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein’s associates evaded scrutiny. The legal documents containing the names of many Epstein associates, as well as transcripts of key witness depositions, remained redacted.
Last night, after many years of delays, we finally got a partially unredacted look at some of the documents that Cernovich has been seeking for the better part of a decade. More documents are expected to be un-redacted in the coming days. This is just the first batch. But most of the materials we’re now allowed to see, as you’ve probably guessed, are not particularly shocking. We all knew, for example, that Bill Clinton had flown on Epstein’s private jet, and had been photographed with some of Epstein’s victims.
What’s new is unredacted testimony from Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s victims. She was asked, “Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Bill Clinton?” In response, Sjoberg testified that, “He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”
It’s not clear whether that testimony refers to underage girls, nor is it particularly new information. Neither is the fact that, according to one witness, Michael Jackson once visited Epstein at his home in Palm Beach. To be sure, there are more alarming accusations in these documents, although for the most part, they aren’t new. There’s the testimony from Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre that she was directed by Ghislaine Maxwell to have sex with Prince Andrew, for example, as well as hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin.
There are also renewed claims in these documents that Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz had sex with one of Epstein’s underage victims. Again, we’ve heard this before. Going down the list, the billionaire executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels, Thomas Pritzker, is also alleged in these documents to have had sex with one of Epstein’s victims. Pritzker, incidentally, is related to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, as well as the Harvard board member Penny Pritzker, who played a key role in promoting Claudine Gay to the Harvard presidency. Just in case you thought this week somehow couldn’t get any worse for Harvard.
There are some mildly interesting tidbits, all the same. For example, the magician David Copperfield’s name appears in these documents, and according to Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, Copperfield appeared to be aware that Epstein was recruiting underage girls. But there’s no evidence Copperfield himself engaged in any illegal activity. There’s also the news that Epstein wrote an email explicitly denying that Stephen Hawking had ever participated in an orgy at his island, which is a strange email to write. Regardless, this isn’t exactly groundbreaking stuff, nor does it provide much clarity.
And there are still many more questions than answers. If you go through the nearly-600-pages of documents that were released last night, you’ll still find a lot of very conspicuous redactions. On page 497, for example, you’ll find this question that was posed to Virginia Giuffre: “Ghislaine Maxwell told you to go give a massage to [Redacted], correct?” The name of the person is hidden.
By the same token, on page 502, you’ll find this question to Giuffre: “Other than Glenn Dubin, [Redacted], Prince Andrew, Jean Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, another prince, the large hotel chain owner and [the late MIT professor] Marvin Minsky, is there anyone else Ghislaine Maxwell directed you to go have sex with?”
Once again, there’s a name missing from the list in that question, and for some reason we’re still not allowed to know who that is. There could be good reasons for concealing the name. Maybe it’s an underage victim of Epstein’s. On the other hand, maybe it’s someone with a lot of power who’s still under the control of the intelligence agencies. We really have no idea. Whatever the case, there are a lot more redactions like this. You can download the documents and see for yourself. What this means is that, several years after Epstein’s death, we’re still left to fill in the blanks of court documents that were supposed to be made public before Epstein died. We’re not entitled to know anything more than we already knew and we’re definitely not allowed to know what exactly was on those blackmail CDs that disappeared from Epstein’s safe.
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Most of what appears in the documents released yesterday leaves plenty of plausible deniability for those named. None of it amounts to actual proof of wrongdoing. It all raises more questions than it answers. But there is very good reason to believe that there exists out there somewhere — or did exist, at one point — actual physical direct proof that a bunch of powerful people raped children on Epstein’s island, or on one of his other properties. But that proof is not being released, and nobody has ever been arrested.
It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Epstein was an international pimp and pedophile, but apparently he had no clients. That’s what we’re supposed to believe anyway. But we can’t believe that, because it’s nonsense. Which means that the truth — the real truth, the full truth — is still being kept secret from us.
Those are secrets, as Alexander Acosta said, that are above our pay grade. And they will remain above our pay grade — at least, until the people Epstein was blackmailing step out of line. Then we might see the names on those CDs. Then we might learn the identity of all the people named in those binders in his New York townhouse. Otherwise, the feds will continue to stonewall Cernovich and everyone else who’s been seeking the truth. That’s because, more than four years after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, he still belongs to intelligence.
The CIA has a term called “limited hangout.” This is a tactic where some small portion of the truth is made public while the most important details — the stuff that really matters — is kept hidden. Intelligence agencies do this in hopes that the stuff they release will satisfy everyone’s curiosity and they’ll stop asking questions. These Epstein files appear to be exactly that. This is a limited hangout. A diversion meant to satisfy you without actually telling you what you need to know. They want you to stop asking questions. Don’t fall for it.