Elon Musk, a South African white man, may or may not have realised the power he wielded when he discarded the USAID budget in order to fund tax cuts for billionaries like him.
Nearly 15,000 will have died already because of Trump and Musk’s cuts to USAID, advocacy program claims
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has saved more than 25 million lives since it began in 2003
And now we can look at the facts on an hourly death rate basis, from a website using the much acclaimed AI ability to search a wealth of data – although check their disclaimer!
Executive summary
Multiple peer-reviewed forecasts and real-time trackers estimate that USAID funding cuts could already have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in 2025 and will cause many millions more by 2030 if not reversed. A Lancet modelling paper projects roughly 1.78 million excess all-age deaths in 2025 from per‑capita funding reductions and more than 14 million cumulative excess deaths through 2030 under complete defunding; independent real‑time trackers and commentators put current, already‑occurred deaths in the hundreds of thousands range [1][2][3][4].
And at a 6 month anniversary since the cuts, this is what Africa experienced:
In dollar terms, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia have seen the greatest cuts. However, their large populations and economic heft may obscure the true impact of the cuts, which may appear more visible in smaller and less diversified economies such as Mozambique and Mali, where USAID funding accounted for a greater proportion of Gross National Income (GNI).
Fig 2
Reframing the data to examine those countries most affected in terms of USAID funding as a proportion of GNI shows that the impact is most acute in smaller and less diversified economies. This includes Liberia, Somalia – as well as Malawi and Mozambique, highlighted in the first chart.
Take Liberia for example, founded by American slaves, and yet has had a cursed existence, now continuing in its sorrowful path since tariffs and cutting of USAID:
MONROVIA, Liberia — Why is Liberia poor? The answer is long and nuanced, the multifaceted causes are deeply ingrained in the system of governance and socioeconomic ecosystem. However, one of the most widely spread root causes for nation-wide poverty is violent conflict. This is certainly the case for Liberia, the West-African nation originally founded in 1821 by former American slaves under the American Colonization Society.
Founded on pillars of liberty and freedom, its recent history is marred by a coup in the 1980s, which followed with years of civil war, a repressive government under Charles Taylor until 2003 and then a serious outbreak of Ebola in 2014. It is only now that Liberia can begin its road to recovery.
The U.S. is trying to facilitate a total financial support package of up to $40 billion for Argentina, but only $20 billion comes from U.S. government funds.
The deal includes a $20 billion currency swap between the U.S. Treasury and Argentina’s central bank. That was authorized in October and was heavily criticized in both countries, especially after President Donald Trump initially tied support to President Javier Milei’s performance in the October election in Argentina. Critics argue that using financial assistance to influence foreign elections sets a dangerous precedent.
The remaining $20 billion was originally expected to come from private banks and sovereign wealth funds, coordinated by the Treasury Department to invest in Argentine debt. But in November 2025, a group of banks backed out of a plan for the matching $20 billion package, instead opting to explore a smaller, short-term loan deal, according to reports.
The September 2 2025 killing by drone strike of 2 survivors, clinging to debris after their boat was destroyed by a US military strike in the Caribbean, has caused distress, outrage and a massive response in the media.
Hegseth gives chilling reply amid report of ‘kill them all’ order during first Caribbean boat strike: ‘Just begun to…’
Story by Shuvrajit Das Biswas
• 8h
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reportedly issued an order to ‘kill everyone’ during the first US boat strike in the Caribbean.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a chilling one-liner after a Washington Post report claimed he’d given a directive for everyone to be killed during the first Caribbean boat strike.
Hegseth, on X, said “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
And Jack Goldsmith has written an analysis of the legal position.
I am a Harvard Law School professor, a non-resident senior fellow @AEI, and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel. I teach and write about, among other things, the presidency. My work can be found at jackgoldsmith.org.
He wrote a piece on Substack today, here is an extract:
One can imagine stretching Article II of the Constitution to authorize the U.S. drug boat campaign. The wildly overbroad Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) precedents, as I have written before, provide “no meaningful legal check on the president.” And there are dim historical precedents one could cite. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. noted in The Imperial Presidency that in the 19th century presidents unilaterally engaged in “[m]ilitary action against Indians—stateless and lawless by American definition—pirates, slave traders, smugglers, cattle rustlers, frontier ruffians [and] foreign brigands.”
One might also, possibly, stretch the laws of war to say that attacks on the drug boats are part of a “non-international armed conflict,” as OLC has reportedly concluded. This line of argument likely draws on a super-broad conception of the threat posed by the alleged drug runners as well as the expansive U.S. post-9/11 practice of treating as targetable (i) dangerous non-state actor terrorists off the battlefield; (ii) those who merely “substantially support” the groups with whom one is in an armed conflict; and (iii) activities that provide economic support to the war effort, such as Taliban drug labs or ISIS oil trucks. I don’t think this argument comes close to working without deferential reliance on a bad faith finding by the president about the non-international armed conflict and much greater stretches of precedent than the United States previously indulged after 9/11. Still, the unconvincing argument is conceivable.
But there can be no conceivable legal justification for what the Washington Post reported earlier today: That U.S. Special Operations Forces killed the survivors of a first strike on a drug boat off the coast of Trinidad who, in the Post’s words, “were clinging to the smoldering wreck.”
Prohibition Against Declaring That No Quarter Be Given. It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given. This means that it is prohibited to order that legitimate offers of surrender will be refused or that detainees, such as unprivileged belligerents, will be summarily executed. Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations. This rule also applies during non-international armed conflict.
This is an old principle of the laws of war. The Hague Regulations of 1907 state that “it is especially forbidden . . . [t]o declare that no quarter will be given.” The 1863 Lieber Code—the famous U.S. government rules governing military conduct during the Civil War—provides: “Whoever intentionally inflicts additional wounds on an enemy already wholly disabled, or kills such an enemy, or who orders or encourages soldiers to do so, shall suffer death, if duly convicted, whether he belongs to the Army of the United States, or is an enemy captured after having committed his misdeed.” And the currently governing DOD Manual in Section 5.9 states clearly that persons “placed hors de combat may not be made the object of attack.” The Manual defines “hors de combat” to include “persons . . . otherwise incapacitated by . . . shipwreck.”
In short, if the Post’s facts are correct, it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder when the “two men were blown apart in the water,” as the Post put it.
…………….
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
The Post then reports that after then-Joint Special Operations Command chief U.S. Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley became aware of the survivors, he “ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.” This makes it seem like Hegseth—even if his initial “order” was (as it seems) a command to take no quarter—might not have been in the loop between the first and second strikes.
I do not believe, based on the facts in the Post story, that Bradley could have relied on Hegseth’s order—even if Hegseth formally ordered the second strike. The prohibition on targeting a disabled combatant is so clear that Bradley had a duty, in the words of 18.22.4 of the Manual, “to refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.”
According to the Post, Bradley at some point argued that “the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” That is wrong. The theoretical possibility of calling other traffickers for help is not the test. The incapacitated survivors simply may not be targeted unless, as Section 5.9 of the Manual says, they affirmatively committed a “hostile act” or “attempt[ed] to escape.” If the Post’s facts are in the vicinity of the truth, that could not have happened. (The Intercept, which reported the kernel of this event in September, said that the survivors were “killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.”)
I wrote a few weeks ago about the possibility of an OLC golden shield as a defense to illegal conduct in connection with the boat strikes. OLC is forbidden to “advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law” and is exercising power delegated from an Attorney General unflinchingly beholden to the President. But I do not believe that even the Bondi OLC could legally justify the events the Post reported. In an opinion last summer upholding the general legality of the drug boat campaign, OLC apparently stated (or at least assumed) that the law of armed conflict governed the strikes. In this light, it is hard to see how OLC could bless these strikes, much less do so ex post. Which leaves the pardon power as the option that can, and no doubt will, eventually immunize what happened.
Hegseth has emphasized that he wants to restore the “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military. In the hours after the story, he signaled generic support for the boat strike campaign and chest-thumped that “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
Yet the warrior ethos has always demanded honorable conduct in warfare. The Navy Seals, for example, describe themselves as “a special breed of warrior” but the Seal Ethos thrice emphasizes the importance of honor, including “on . . . the battlefield.” And surely the warrior ethos, whatever else it means, doesn’t require killing helpless men clinging to the burning wreckage of a blown-up boat. The DOD Manual is clear because the law here is clear: “Persons who have been incapacitated by . . . shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack.”
Dec 1st, 2025
White House, protecting Pete Hegseth, now appear to throw Admiral Bradley ‘under the bus’ for having ordered the ‘double tap’ killing of survivors clinging to previously struck boat.
Who is Admiral Bradley?
Adm. Frank M. Bradley is a U.S. Navy SEAL Officer. Originally from Eldorado, Texas, ADM Bradley is a 1991 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he studied physics and was a varsity gymnast. He began his career as a SEAL after completing Basic Underwater Demolition school (BUDs/SEAL) Class 179 in 1992.
He has commanded at all levels of special operations, including Joint Special Operations Command, Special Operations Command Central, and Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He has multiple tours in command of joint task forces and was among the first to deploy into Afghanistan following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Additionally, he has served with SEAL Team FOUR, SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team TWO, and the Italian Incursori (Italian SEALs) as an international exchange officer.
Adm. Bradley earned a Masters in Physics from Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he received a provisional patent for his research in 2006.
His staff duty has included service as the Assistant Commander, Joint Special Operations Command as well as the J-3 Technical Operations Division Chief and the Deputy J-3; the Vice Deputy Director for Global Operations for the Joint Staff J-3; the Executive Officer for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr.; and the Deputy Director for CT Strategy for the Joint Staff J-5.
Intelligence on U.S. Military’s Boat Strikes Is Limited
What Happened: A New York Times investigation found the U.S. has killed over 80 people in Trump’s Caribbean/Pacific boat-strike campaign despite having little idea who was being targeted. The Pentagon concedes it only has vague confidence the boats carried drugs, meaning many victims may have been fishermen, couriers, or civilians.
Why It Matters: The U.S. is carrying out lethal operations with almost no intelligence, normalizing extrajudicial killing, and risking massive blowback. Lawmakers warn the strikes mirror discredited “signature strikes,” erasing oversight and creating long-term security risks.
Trump says the U.S. will ‘very soon’ take action on land to stop alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers
What Happened: Trump said the U.S. could “very soon” begin land strikes in Venezuela, escalating a months-long military campaign that has already killed at least 83 people in maritime operations. His comments come as he massed major naval assets in the Caribbean, designates a pro-Maduro faction as a foreign terrorist organization, and weighs a broader military intervention.
Why It Matters: Threatening ground operations pushes the U.S. to the brink of an unauthorized war driven by politicized claims about drug trafficking that experts say have little basis. Trump is using a narcotics pretext to justify regime-change and an oil grab, raising the risk of regional conflict and catastrophic miscalculation.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in helping drug traffickers move hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump, his wife announced Tuesday.
How did this happen? Well, thanks to Ed Martin, the ‘pardon’ lust producer, also was the lawyer for Jan 6th insurrectionists, and Roger Stone’s letter:
Roger Stone claims Trump announced pardon for Juan Orlando Hernández “three hours after” he sent Trump a letter from the former Honduran president
Ana García de Hernández to Stone: “We also want to express our helpful gratitude for the support that you had given … to my husband and the father of my daughters. Since you start speaking about this case, you made such a huge difference.”
The latest strike came the same day Navy Adm. Frank Bradley was in Congress to brief lawmakers on the U.S. military’s Sept. 2 strike against an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, where 11 people were killed.
During the briefings, which were held in both chambers, Bradley, the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, denied reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued an order to “kill everybody” aboard before the Sept. 2 operation.
The briefing from Bradley came as lawmakers in both parties were asking the Trump administration for more information regarding the Sept. 2 mission, where the U.S. military conducted four strikes, two to kill those on board and two others to sink the vessel.
Since early September, the U.S. military has conducted more than 20 strikes against purported drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 87 people, according to the Trump administration.
Thursday’s strike in the eastern Pacific represents the first U.S. strike against an alleged drug-smuggling vessel since mid-November, when the U.S. military blew up a purported drug-smuggling boat and killed three “narco-terrorists.”
Summary of Trump pardons (to Dec 10, 2025) for criminals who can afford to buy a pardon:
Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric
What Happened: Trump has granted clemency to more than 100 people convicted of drug crimes, including Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, gang leader Larry Hoover, Baltimore drug boss Garnett Gilbert Smith, and Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, tied to 400 tons of cocaine entering the U.S. The pardons come even as Trump orders lethal strikes on suspected boats under the guise of countering drugs.
Why It Matters: Trump is freeing some of the world’s most notorious traffickers, exposing clemency as a tool of loyalty and influence rather than public safety. The contradiction undercuts his drug-war theatrics and shows how violent offenders walk free while militarized operations serve political showmanship.
How the rich and powerful jockey for pardons from Trump
What Happened: Trump has issued nearly 1,600 pardons this year, an unprecedented wave that bypasses the Justice Department and turns clemency into a political weapon. Wealthy allies, lobbyists, and insiders now compete for influence as Trump overrides prosecutors and hands out pardons to figures like a Honduran ex-president convicted of drug trafficking, Rep. Henry Cuellar, and even an executive charged by his own DOJ.
Why It Matters: Trump has turned clemency into a loyalty marketplace, rewarding allies while clearing corruption cases and delegitimizing Biden-era prosecutions. By collapsing the formal pardon system, he’s turned justice into a patronage network where money, access, and allegiance decide who walks free.
UK poised to approve massive Chinese embassy in London
China angrily warned of “consequences” if the embassy was not granted planning permission.
A flag flies atop a pole on the roof of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United Kingdom, on Portland Place in London on November 18, 2025. | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
LONDON — Keir Starmer is set to approve a new Chinese “super-embassy” in central London despite a string of security concerns which were raised through the planning process.
The Times reported Friday that intelligence services MI5 and MI6 are now satisfied that the project — long a source of controversy in the U.K. — should go ahead, with some “mitigations” to protect national security.
In a plot twist straight out of a techno-thriller — if techno-thrillers starred incompetent billionaires and corrupt presidents — Elon Musk just got busted sneaking 2,000 TONS of Chinese electrical transformers straight into the heart of America’s top-secret AI supercomputer—the Pentagon’s own xAI “Colossus”.
And here from the Daily Beast:
Musk’s AI Fortress Hides a Secret That Trump Will Hate
Trump Planning New Superclub With India? All About Buzz On New Core-5 Grouping
The idea is to create a new body of major powers, one that isn’t hemmed in by the G7’s requirements that the countries be both wealthy and democratically governed.
US President Donald Trump is reportedly exploring a new elite ‘C5’, or ‘Core Five’, forum of world powers that would bring together America, Russia, China, India and Japan, sidelining the existing Europe-dominated G7 and other traditional democracy and wealth based groupings.
While so far there has been no official word on the matter, American publication Politico reported that the idea for the new hard-power group came up in a longer, unpublished version of the National Security Strategy that the White House published last week.
The publication said it could not confirm the existence of the longer plan, but it was reported by Defense One.
The idea is reportedly to create a new body of major powers, one that isn’t hemmed in by the G7’s requirements that the countries be both wealthy and democratically governed.
“The strategy proposes a ‘Core Five,’ or C5, consisting of the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan – several countries with populations over 100 million. It would meet regularly, like the G7, at summits on specific topics. The first on the proposed C5 agenda: security in the Middle East, specifically the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” the report said.
A “Trumpian Idea”?
According to Politico, the White House has denied the existence of this document, with press secretary Hannah Kelly insisting that “no alternative, private, or secret version” of the 33-page official plan exists.
However, national security experts believe the idea has a “Trumpian” ring to it, and the creation of the C5 could be appropriate for the current White House.
“This is consistent with how we believe President Trump views the world, which is non-ideological, through a sympathy for strong players, and through a tendency to cooperate with other great powers that maintain spheres of influence in their region,” Torrey Taussig, who served as director for European affairs on the US National Security Council during the Biden administration, told the publication.
She noted that Europe does not feature in the theoretical C5, “which, I guess, would make Europeans believe that this administration views Russia as a leading power capable of exercising its sphere of influence in Europe.”
Michael Sobolik, an aide to US Republican Senator Ted Cruz during the first Trump administration, noted that the creation of C5 would be a departure from Trump’s China policy in his first term as president.
“The first Trump administration adhered to the concept of great power competition, and that’s how we framed and discussed relations with China… This is just a huge departure from that,” he said.
Allies’ Concerns
The report comes at a time when Washington is already debating how much the second Trump administration intends to upend the world order. The idea casts existing forums like the G7 and G20 as inadequate for a multipolar world, prioritising deal‑making among major population and military‑economic powers.
US allies view the move as legitimisation of “strongmen” by elevating Russia over Europe and potentially weakening Western unity and NATO cohesion.
And poor Memphis population:
Aug 13, 2025 1:00 PM GMT
‘We Are the Last of the Forgotten:’ Inside the Memphis Community Battling Elon Musk’s xAI
Five days after Elon Musk’s Grok 4 became one of the most powerful large language models in the world, Alexis Humphreys had her first severe asthma attack in 15 years. She laid down in her house in Boxtown, Memphis in the humid, sticky summer, struggling to breathe, inhaling a smell of gas that had started wafting into her neighborhood about a year before. “It felt like my chest was caving in,” Humphreys, 28, says on her front porch a couple of days later.
The countries involved in the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes alliances and their partners
Five Eyes countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
Nine Eyes countries: The Five Eyes plus Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and France
Fourteen Eyes countries: The Nine Eyes plus Italy, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Spain
Partners of the Fourteen Eyes: Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, British Overseas Territories
It’s worth noting that although all countries in the Fourteen Eyes share information within their group, the Nine Eyes and Five Eyes are both more secretive.
While the Five Eyes are privy to the information collected by the Nine Eyes, Fourteen Eyes, and the partners, not all the information collected by the Five Eyes is available to the others. The same is true of the Nine Eyes. The partners, while they do share information they collect with the other alliances, do not have any access to the information collected by the alliances on alliance countries.
As the want for increased surveillance grows, more countries apparently align themselves with this global surveillance system. This system of alliances seems to have a hierarchy of secrets.
Trump’s intel chief freezes out Five Eyes allies on Ukraine
The intelligence alliance of the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as the U.S. is one of the closest in the world.
The move by Gabbard is the second major curb on intelligence-sharing by President Donald Trump’s administration this year. | POOL photo by Eric Lee/EPA
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is blocking America’s closest intelligence allies from receiving updates on Russia-Ukraine peace talks in a shock move that upends decades of tight cooperation.
That effectively cuts America’s Five Eyes partners — the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — out of the loop, stunning the intelligence community that has relied on the network since the end of World War II.
December 6, 20255:58 PM GMTUpdated December 6, 2025
Summary
US could withdraw from some NATO planning mechanisms if unsatisfied with progress
Unclear how US would measure progress
Trump rhetoric towards alliance runs hot and cold
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) – The United States wants Europe to take over the majority of NATO’s conventional defense capabilities, from intelligence to missiles, by 2027, Pentagon officials told diplomats in Washington this week, a tight deadline that struck some European officials as unrealistic.
The message, recounted by five sources familiar with the discussion, including a U.S. official, was conveyed at a meeting in Washington this week of Pentagon staff overseeing NATO policy and several European delegations.
Howard Lutnick was a neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein from 1998, when he purchased the property next to Epstein’s townhouse, until Epstein’s death in 2019, making it approximately 21 years. Newsweek Go.com
So some emails between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein, recently released show Trump visited Howard Lutnick in 2019:
5/13/2019 1:07 PM – 1:22 PM
The homes of Jeffrey Epstein and Howard Lutnick, #9 and #11 E. 71st St., NYC
JE: i won’t be home otherwise i could have come out an waved.
SB: Ha! I love it
Howard Lutnick
The economy is not stopping. It just doesn’t feel that way to me,” said Lutnick, who became CEO of Cantor in 1991 and chairman as well in 1996.
Lutnick joined Cantor in 1983. He is known for rebuilding Cantor after the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center terrorist attacks. The company lost more than two-thirds of its then 960 New York-based employees, including Lutnick’s brother. Cantor and its affiliates now have more than 10,000 employees globally.
President Donald Trump said last month his tariffs on Chinese goods are causing companies to move production out of China and into places such as Vietnam.
Once those supply chains move, China won’t be able to get them back, argued Lutnick, also chairman and CEO of BGC Partners, a brokerage that was spun off from Cantor in 2004.
“I think each 6 months [of the trade war] will cost China 1% of GDP,” Lutnick told CNBC’s Bob Pisani. Therefore, “they’ll try to make a deal with the [Trump] administration before” the 2020 presidential election, he added.
‘Total disregard’ for the law: Inside Howard Lutnick’s sports betting gambit
Cantor Gaming was years ahead of the mobile sports betting craze. But it repeatedly ran afoul of state and federal regulators.
Cantor Gaming, a company founded by Donald Trump’s Commerce secretary pick, Howard Lutnick, repeatedly violated state and federal laws, authorities said. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
There were 46 donors who contributed to the transition effort, according to a copy of the list published by The New York Times, which reports the transition raised slightly more than $14 million and spent $13.7 million.
Among the biggest names on the list are billionaires Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, who co-chaired the transition effort and went on to be named Commerce Secretary and Secretary of Education, respectively.
And Lev Parnas comments after becoming tired of press conferences where Trump has degraded and insulted female reporters when they ask a question based on facts:
For me, this is where I draw the line: if Donald Trump cannot treat women journalists like human beings, then no respectable outlet should be in that room. Major networks and newspapers need to stop pretending this is business as usual. Journalists’ organizations and unions should be demanding better — not just for their members, but for every woman who’s watching this and learning what men in power can get away with. Editors and executives have a decision to make: are you journalists, or are you producers for Trump’s abuse show?
We cannot keep rewarding this behavior with ratings and ad dollars. We cannot keep sending women into a room where their job description now includes being humiliated on live TV by a man who ran with Epstein and sees women as disposable
The Justice Department just released over 3 million pages of Jeffrey Epstein files. Buried in the dump: documentary proof that the two men who funded Trump’s return to power – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk – both lied about their relationships with the convicted sex trafficker.
Lutnick brought his wife and four children to Epstein’s Island for Christmas 2012.
Musk asked about “the wildest party on your island.”
Lutnick now controls the most sensitive portfolios in American foreign policy: Ukraine. Israel. China. Russia. Musk was Trump’s key donor and ran voter manipulation campaigns to help elect Trump.
And both are closely connected to Vladimir Putin.
THE PUBLIC RECORD: LUTNICK’S OCTOBER 2025 STATEMENT
The Story Lutnick Told
October 2025. Howard Lutnick is fighting for Senate confirmation as Commerce Secretary.
He goes on the New York Post podcast. Tells a story about his former neighbor Jeffrey Epstein.
The year was 2005. Lutnick and his wife had just moved next door to Epstein’s East 71st Street townhouse. Epstein invited them over. Showed them around.
Then the massage room.
“How often do you get a massage?” Lutnick asked.
“Every day,” Epstein said. Then got close. “The right kind of massage.”
Lutnick says he and his wife walked out. Took “six to eight steps” back to their own house. Made a decision right there.
“I will never be in a room with that disgusting person ever again.”
He called Epstein “gross.” Called him “the greatest blackmailer ever.” Said he assumed everything in that massage room was being filmed.
The relationship ended in 2005. Done. Over. Never again.
The Senate believed him. Confirmed him as Commerce Secretary three months ago.
What The Documents Show
The DOJ had the files during Lutnick’s confirmation hearing. They didn’t release them until today.
December 23, 2012 – seven years after “never again”:
Lutnick’s wife Allison emails Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff. The Lutnicks are heading to Little St. James from St. Thomas. They need to know where to anchor the yacht.
They’re bringing their four children. Another family. Coming for lunch with Jeffrey Epstein.
December 24, 2012:
Email to Lutnick from someone writing for Epstein: “Nice seeing you.”
The visit happened.
October 3, 2013:
Epstein emails his accountant Richard Kahn. Attaches “the resume of Lutnick nanny.” Says he’s “trying to arrange a time via Peter for you to meet her.”
Why is Epstein’s accountant interviewing the Lutnick family’s childcare provider?
November 2015:
Lutnick invites Epstein to a Hillary Clinton fundraiser. At Cantor Fitzgerald. Lutnick’s own company.
Ten years after the massage room. Three years after Epstein’s conviction.
2017:
Emails between Lutnick and Epstein about construction on a building across the street from both their townhouses. Still neighbors. Still talking.
2018:
Epstein contributes to a philanthropic dinner honoring Howard Lutnick.
Thirteen years after “never again.”
When He Got Caught
The New York Times called Lutnick this afternoon. Asked about the documents.
“I spent zero time with him,” Lutnick said. Then hung up.
The Commerce Department released a statement: Lutnick had “limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife.”
The documents show his wife emailing about bringing their children to the island. Show thirteen years of contact. Show business arrangements. Show a relationship that never ended.
Lutnick lied under oath during confirmation. The DOJ had proof. They held the files for three months.
Feb 17 2026
Feb 17 Trump-Epstein Map: $10 mansion, Cantor Fitzgerald money laundering and the Duchess of Grift
Howard Lutnick – Lutnick “was a neighbor of JEFFREY EPSTEIN in the adjoining property at 11 E 71st Street.” Lutnick “bought the property for $10 through a trust.” “LES WEXNER and EPSTEIN owned the building.” – Narativ
Sarah Ferguson – Lutnick gave Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York office space above Cantor Fitzgerald for a charity called Children in Crisis. Ghislaine Maxwell and Ferguson attended events called Dolce Vita Parties.
Relationship maps help connect the dots in the Republicans coverup of the Epstein files to protect Trump. Click on any face for details, search by name (top left), or click on Category (bottom left) on the map.Explore the Feb 17 Trump – Epstein relationship map
Epstein Files – Public Document Archives
Search 293,936 declassified documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case. All documents from U.S. Department of Justice, FBI vault, and federal court filings. We index public records — we don’t host or modify them. Independent, non-commercial project for journalists, researchers, and the public. 100% free, open source, no ads, no tracking.
The FBI 302 That Should Have Stopped a Cabinet Pick
An FBI whistleblower’s 302, published in the latest Epstein file release, accuses Lutnick of money laundering with the Russian mafia through Cantor Fitzgerald, fraud, and facilitating charity theft alongside Ghislaine Maxwell. The whistleblower, a 30-year securities industry veteran who worked on Cantor’s desk, gave the FBI this information in 2021. A search of FBI databases returned 34 hits on Lutnick including three suspicious activity reports. When the FBI vetted him for Commerce Secretary, those red flags were either minimized or withheld entirely. “They were just brushed away,” Zev reported.
And
Ellie Leonard uncovered a previously unreported email in the Epstein files from Richard Kahn, Epstein’s accountant, attaching the resume of Howard Lutnick’s nanny and arranging a meeting with Epstein. “Epstein doesn’t have children. Epstein doesn’t need a nanny,” Leonard noted. The email surfaced months after Lutnick’s documented December 2012 visit to Epstein’s island — a trip he swore under oath never happened until confronted with his wife’s own emails describing the boat ride there. Lutnick bought the Manhattan townhouse next door to Epstein’s from a trust Epstein controlled, reportedly for as little as $10
And Daily Beast reported in Jan 2026:
Trump Goon Who Denied Epstein Ties Begged for Island Visit
Updated Jan. 31 2026 4:06AM EST Published Jan. 30 2026 5:02PM EST
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has tried to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein, but the latest release of documents by the Justice Department revealed the top Trump official once planned a trip to the convicted sex offender’s private island.
Lutnick was Epstein’s next-door neighbor when both lived in townhouses on the swanky Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Amid the fallout over the slow release of Epstein files last October, Lutnick described the late disgraced financier as “gross” and a “blackmailer.”
But documents released on Friday showed the billionaire businessman also once planned a trip to Epstein’s private island in 2012.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and his wife Allison Lutnick attend the premiere of “Melania” on Jan. 29, 2026. On Friday, the latest batch of Epstein documents released showed Lutnick planned to visit Epstein’s island in 2012.Taylor Hill/WireImage
The documents from that December showed that Lutnick sent Epstein an email letting him know that a group of people, including his wife, children, and another family, would be visiting the Caribbean. Lutnick asked where Epstein was located and if they could come over for dinner.
Lesley Groff, Epstein’s assistant, replied to Lutnick on her boss’s behalf and invited them over for lunch at his private island, Little St. James. They confirmed the lunch for Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012.
Another email suggested the gathering did take place. One day after the scheduled lunch, Epstein’s assistant forwarded Lutnick a message from her boss that read: “Nice seeing you.”Late convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, pictured in 2005, lived next-door to Lutnick on the Upper East Side.Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image
The New York Times reported that they reached Lutnick on Friday by phone to ask him about the island visit, but Lutnick said he could not comment because he hadn’t seen the latest batch of documents.
“I spent zero time with him,” Lutnick said before hanging up.
In a separate email, dated Oct. 3, 2013, Epstein sent an email to his accountant, Richard Kahn, attaching “the résumé of Lutnick nanny,” noting that he was trying to “arrange a time via Peter for you to meet her.”Email from Jeffrey Epstein regarding “Lutnick nanny.”Department of Justice/Department of Justice
Meanwhile, another email released as part of Friday’s document dump showed that Lutnick also invited Epstein to a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in November 2015.
Lutnick sent the invitation to the event being hosted at the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, where he previously served as chairman and CEO, to Epstein’s assistant.
Groff then forwarded it on to Epstein. It’s not clear whether Epstein attended the event.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick speaks as President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting on January 29, 2026.Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
But both the island visit and fundraiser invite raise further questions about the commerce secretary’s interactions with Epstein after he insisted he had almost nothing to do with his one-time neighbor.
“This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments including securing Trillions [sic] of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals, and fighting for the American worker,” a Commerce Department spokesperson told the Daily Beast in a statement.
Howard Lutnick and Tether, by Narativ, Mar 24 2026
Oil reserves that remain have a calculation attached which tells producers how many years remain that they could expect wealth from this fossil fuel.
Present regimes of United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia might not like Venezuela holding the highest oil reserves, as they know their own leadership in producing the highest amount currently merely emphasises they will drill to the last drop in decades from now.
Just read this about the present situation around Steve Witkoff’s deal making, by Susan Zakin, Journal of Plague Years, Substack:
Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer who is the point man for Trump’s foreign policy, along with Kushner, is also suspected of mixing the personal with the political, engaging in private tete a tetes not only with Vladimir Putin but also with Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s top economic negotiator and, as the Kyiv Independent put it in a Nov. 22 article, “an operator in Moscow’s efforts to influence Washington.”
Witkoff, as reported earlier by the Journal, has significant financial ties to Leonard Blavatnik, the richest, and arguably, the most urbane of the Russian businessmen who became billionaires in the so-called “aluminum wars,” of the 1990s, a resource grab that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union. While Blavatnik denies that he has ongoing contact with Putin, he is regarded as a prime purveyor of Russia’s soft power, making massive contributions to universities, think tanks, and cultural institutions. A few years ago, he became involved in multi-billion real estate deals with Witkoff. Real estate had not been Blavatnik’s business, but it seems likely that the relatively obscure real estate developer caught the oligarch’s attention because of Witkoff’s long friendship with Trump.
Whatever his motives, according to the Independent, Witkoff has successfully sidelined the foreign policy professionals that remained in the Trump White House. Most prominent among them is Keith Kellogg, the career diplomat and special envoy to Ukraine, who announced recently that he will be leaving his post.
The result of Witkoff’s private meetings was a proposal that has been roundly criticized as a Russian template – one that includes ceding territory that Russia does not currently control, giving up the hope of NATO membership, slashing the Ukrainian military, and dividing Ukraine into Russian and Ukrainian-controlled territory with a high-security, 21st century Berlin Wall.
“Witkoff has spent the past month quietly shaping the framework, working directly with Dmitriev, a source familiar with the matter said,” according to the Independent.
“Multiple sources noted that European allies were excluded from drafting the plan — and Ukraine was cut out as well.”
The proposal appears to be dead in the water already.
And this latest plan for Ukraine’s surrender which Trump is pressuring them to accept? The international view was that this was drawn up by Americans, but it seems the wording was drawn up by Russians:
Marco Rubio told US senators that Ukraine peace plan was not America’s — but a ‘leaked’ Russian ‘wish list’
Donald Trump is pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a controversial 28-point peace plan that includes significant concessions from Ukraine, such as ceding territory and reducing its military size. Zelensky has warned that Ukraine faces one of its most difficult moments in history due to this pressure and the potential loss of U.S. support. BBC chathamhouse.org
And sadness prolongued for Ukraine, written by Viktor Kravchuk on Substack:
I lived there for several months when I had nowhere to go after the invasion.
A moment in our nation when the war scattered millions of us and forced us to find new places to just carry on with life.
I had never visited this city before. No friends, no contacts there. My father used to say that our peasant roots came from that part of Ukraine generations ago, but nothing concrete.
Still, Ternopil opened its doors to me when I was lost.
I cooked, delivered food, baked bread. I worked any job I could find just to stay afloat.
I walked those streets late at night trying to rebuild a life that had collapsed in my hands.
In streets I did not know, trying to convince myself that life had not ended yet.
Ternopil held me up so softly, that is why I felt the attack this week like a knife reaching my soul.
When I knew that the missile hit the eastern side of the city, I checked the map.
It was only some blocks from where I used to stay.
I knew those windows. I knew those balconies where people used to keep bicycles and flower pots.
Above, the residential building after the attack. Below, the image of the same building from 2015 in Google Maps, you can check it here
Russia struck a place where people trusted the distance.
I do not know exactly, it must be one thousand or so kilometers or miles from the nearest frontline.
A place closer to Berlin than to Moscow, where parents sent their children to feel safer.
Putin sent missiles that hit two apartment buildings.
They created poison in the air.
Chlorine levels six times above normal.
And there are still those in the world who believe this nightmare can be settled with a handshake with that demon in the Kremlin.
You would understand the truth if you ever walked through that city.
Humble workers. Mothers at the market selling berries.
Families who keep the Ukrainian flag in their windows even after losing sons at the front.
People who believe in this country with strength even though they have no idea where it comes from.
They deserved a morning that stayed whole. A night that did not collapse on them.
I tried to write about this attack several times.
Three or four full drafts, all in trash now.
None of them worked. Nothing felt worthy of the people who died.
Nothing really seemed to carry their faces, their streets, their kindness.
To see them hit is more than unbearable.
The horror is so strong that it knocks the words out of us, but I cannot stay silent.
Not when a city that once gave me shelter is now digging the bodies of children out of its ruins.
And on the same day, at the same moment of that insanity, many voices outside Ukraine were speaking about peace at any cost.
Land concessions, reduced armies.
Surrender wrapped in polite language.
And yet here we are, burying families in a city located one hour’s drive from the border with that bastion of civilization called the European Union.
This other building above, below in a Google Maps photo from 2015. Russians are so mad that I would not be surprised if the graffiti “Slava Ukraini” was behind their decision to attack these innocent places (even though the ink probably did not survive the weather for so long, but still…)
I keep thinking about how I used to walk those sidewalks while trying to rebuild my own life.
I never felt like a stranger there.
Ternopil made room for me in a moment when I needed it. And suddenly the streets I walked were full of smoke and broken glass.
But I will not let Ternopil vanish into a headline of a past week.
This city once held me up when I had nothing, now it is my part to carry some words for her.
For some significant time I really thought that Ternopil would be the last stop of my life.
It would be much more justice if I would be in those apartments than those families and children there.
But I learned not to question the decisions that destiny makes beyond our control.
I can only mourn. To feel. To cry.
To write.
To carry this city in my heart.
Forever.
And today at least, you are carrying Ternopil with me.
—Viktor
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From left, Donald Trump, Aras Agalarov and Emin Agalarov walk the red carpet at the Miss Universe pageant competition in Moscow in November 2013. (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)
Now, like an anxious schoolboy dying to ask out a girl to the prom, Trump reached out to Putin again. He couldn’t keep his feelings to himself. So on June 18, 2013, just as the planning for the pageant was getting underway, Trump tweeted: “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?”
It was not until June 26, 2013, more than a week after his tweet, that Trump finally mustered the courage to write Putin, inviting him to be “guest of honor” at the upcoming pageant in November. Dropping Aras Agalarov’s name, as if to show that he was in bed with one of the Russian’s president’s favored oligarchs, Trump noted that “we turned down many other competing countries in favor of Russia.”
At the bottom of the typewritten letter, he added, in his own familiar penmanship, “The World’s Most Beautiful Women!”
See Chris Ungar, Substack: 34. From Las Vegas to Moscow: The Miss Universe Pageant and Trump’s Russian Ties (2013)
1990s, the ‘aluminium wars’ when gangsters and billionaires flourished in Russia:
Millions of files in the Football Leaks dataset relate to the business of a Kazakh-Turkish family called the Arifs. For the past 25 years they have operated almost unnoticed, but built an empire which has cultivated relationships with Russian mobsters, post-soviet plunderers, wealthy Turks and even presidents.
The source of the Arifs’ wealth is a polluting chrome foundry in Kazakhstan. Since the 1990s, the Arifs have been in business with the ‘Kazakh trio’, controversial businessmen close to Kazakhstan president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. It is these relationships that the family has spent over two decades trying to protect
Oleg Deripaska has a colourful history, much of which has come under scrutiny in the courtroom. Despite clearing his name several times, there’s another high-profile case on the cards
Oleg Deripaska and the Russian aluminium wars
Oleg Deripaska has a colourful history, much of which has come under scrutiny in the courtroom. Despite clearing his name several times, there’s another high-profile case on the cards
The story contains colour, adventure, allegations of criminality and accolades for public service. Much of it, for legal reasons, remains unprintable. The sole owner and chief executive of diversified investment group, Basic Element, Deripaska has been in several courts of law in several countries attacking and defending his countrymen over manoeuvres to control lucrative corporate interests. Estimates of his net worth have seen his position in the Forbes list of billionaires swing from ninth to 164th place in the space of one year (2008-2009), but by 2010 he was back up to number 57. This is certainly a man to watch.
Born in 1968 in a region east of Moscow, Deripaska grew up in a poor rural area to the south of the country, not far from the Black Sea. He studied theoretical physics at the Moscow State University, and later earned an economics degree from the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics. During the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s he claims to have been close to starvation, working on building sites to earn money for food and the continuation of his studies. As with so many other modern-day Russian oligarchs, he is then vague about his wealth accumulation, obtaining a 20 percent holding in a Siberian aluminium factory during the period 1993-96.
The wild wild East This was the start of what is now referred to as the Russian ‘aluminium wars’, a bloody period in the country’s post-communist asset grab from which a few dozen oligarchs emerged – and several potential oligarchs lost their lives. At the beginning of the period, Russian aluminium production was in disarray. Alumina, the main raw material, was in short supply domestically, and the foreign holders of refining plants were engaging in a lucrative practice called ‘tolling’. In this complex form of tax evasion, offshore companies took advantage of duty exemptions on the purchase of raw materials which they sold on to their refining facilities at market prices, booking the profits in the low-tax jurisdictions of their offshore havens. The government, allegedly, looked the other way.
As the state began to sell off its resource assets, the size and value of the global market for aluminium, along with the potential for moving money around the globe, attracted such fierce competition that it is estimated 100 people were killed. In the words of Roman Abramovich, who testified recently in his suit over events of that period, “Every three days, someone was being murdered.”
Deripaska rose to the top of the pile with a controlling interest in Sibirsky Aluminium Investment Industrial Group, having somehow managed to survive the influence of the local Russian mafia and other threats to his life. With allegations of organised crime and multiple murders apparently dogging his every move, his wealth grew over the next ten years into one of the largest fortunes in Russia.
No 1: Larry Summers whose ‘wingman’, he said in an email, was Epstein. (2013 to 2019).
Larry Summers had a connection with Jeffrey Epstein that spanned several years, including meetings and communications even after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Summers served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, during which Epstein donated millions to the university, and their interactions continued until Epstein’s arrest in 2019. The Harvard Crimson Wikipedia
The Zionist link cannot be ignored.
Summers joked about ‘intelligence’ of females with Epstein.
Ex-Harvard president Larry Summers joked about ‘women being less intelligent than men’ in emails to Epstein
Larry Summers, as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, continued to engage with Epstein after the financier’s first arrest and plea deal. Summers’ administration accepted substantial Epstein donations, including funds channeled into the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Summers and his wife dined at Epstein’s Manhattan home. After leaving Harvard, Summers stayed in touch with Epstein even as the financier’s abuses became increasingly public. Summers used the same revolving door that has long connected elite universities, Wall Street, and presidential administrations—moving freely and comfortably across all three.
Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law Professor and Epstein’s close associate and legal strategist, exemplifies another pillar of this system: elite legal protection. Dershowitz defended Epstein vigorously, attacked survivors publicly, and remains embroiled in litigation connected to the case. Whether one believes Dershowitz’s claims of innocence is secondary to the structural fact: elite institutions reliably shield their own
Published date: 9 February 2021 11:54 GMT|Last update: 4 years 9 months ago
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz helped craft a proposal for the release of convicted paedophile and businessman George Nader from prison so he could be sent to the United Arab Emirates to help in diplomatic talks, according to a report by the New York Times.
According to the report, Dershowitz told Nader’s representatives that he had reached out to officials in the US and Israeli governments to see if they would support the commuting of his 10-year sentence for possessing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor if he would help negotiate what would become the Israeli-UAE normalisation deal.
Nader, 61, previously served as a key point of contact between members of former US President Donald Trump’s inner circle and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, to whom he had served as a senior political adviser.
George Nader: How a convicted paedophile became key to an Emirati hook-up with Trump
Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein’s investment in an Israeli start-up reveals a myriad of links to Donald Trump and Israeli spies.
What we found:
Jeffrey Epstein is an Israeli spy. He is an investor in a start-up with ties to Israeli Intelligence. Two Putin-linked oligarchs are his partners. The start-up poses a privacy risk. + Ties to Erik Prince, Michael Cohen, Ge…
The publicly available material paints a remarkably consistent picture. Epstein helped facilitate a security cooperation agreement between Israel and Mongolia on behalf of former prime minister Ehud Barak. He took part in discussions about a possible diplomatic pathway in Syria that would involve Russian participation, an effort that—had it succeeded—would have been profoundly consequential for Israeli strategic interests during the height of the civil war. He inserted himself into talks concerning a surveillance infrastructure package in Côte d’Ivoire, a project tied to Israel’s intelligence-industrial ecosystem. Taken together, these emails place Epstein in the middle of conversations that resemble private-statecraft more than social networking………
………American administrations have used unofficial intermediaries from Henry Kissinger to Erik Prince to Jared Kushner. Israel operates parallel networks of former intelligence officials and private contractors who move between government and commercial projects across the world. The pattern documented in the Epstein emails fits that existing model. If anything, Epstein’s wealth, discretion, and international reach made him unusually suited to operate in this murky space where private power intersects with state strategy.
How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Establish A Police State In This Country
Story by Edited by NDTV News Desk
When a West African nation teetered on the edge of chaos, two unlikely figures moved behind the scenes to shape its future. One was Jeffrey Epstein, infamous financier and convicted sex offender. The other, Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister and defence minister. Together, they turned Cote d’Ivoire’s political unrest into a business opportunity using secret emails, private meetings, and behind-the-scenes diplomacy.
In the 1980s, Wall Street’s trading floors were dominated by open‑outcry systems. Brokers shouted orders across crowded rooms, using hand signals and verbal commands to complete trades. This method had been the backbone of exchanges for decades, but it was limited by human speed and physical presence.
The shift to electronic trading in the 1990s and 2000s transformed how markets operated. Orders could be executed in milliseconds, and investors no longer needed to rely on floor brokers. According to Market Daily, this transition marked one of the most significant changes in modern finance, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
Someone who was born in Kyiv, Ukrane in 1975, went on to graduate at Stanford, then worked at Goldman Sachs and earned an MBA at Harvard, whose life has been travelling to key locations like Saudi Arabia and Ukraine, and who is now a key negotiator for Putin, trying to force the surrender of Ukraine at Nov 21, 2025:
Putin’s Man From Stanford
Who is Kirill Dmitriev, the key Russian negotiator with the U.S.?Доступно на русском
Date
18 Feb 2025
Kirill Dmitriev at the negotiations in Riyadh, February 18. Photo: REUTERS / Hamad I Mohammed / SCANPIX / LET
Negotiations between the U.S. and Russia on the terms of ending the war in Ukraine have begun in Saudi Arabia. One of the main figures on the Russian side is Kirill Dmitriev, a Stanford graduate, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), and a person close to Vladimir Putin. Bloomberg has named him, along with Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergei Naryshkin, as part of the team of “heavyweights” in the negotiations. Dmitriev arrived in Saudi Arabia with Ushakov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
IStories has gathered the main points about Dmitriev.
Kyiv native at Stanford and Harvard
Kirill Dmitriev was born in 1975 in Kyiv, Ukraine. He studied at a physics and mathematics school and wanted to continue his education in the U.S. In the early 1990s, he met an American family who had come to Kyiv through a “citizen diplomacy” program. They told him what a foreign applicant needed in the U.S. First, Dmitriev studied for two years at Foothill College in California, and then entered Stanford University. “I had no relatives there, I was one of the few foreign students who received a full scholarship for the entire duration of their studies,” he said.
After graduating from Stanford with honors, Dmitriev worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, then received an MBA from Harvard Business School.
In 2000, he moved to Russia, taking the position of Deputy General Director at IBS. Two years later, Dmitriev became Investment Director at Delta Private Equity, a division of the U.S. Russia Investment Fund, which was created under Bill Clinton. The fund was later transformed into the U.S. Russia Foundation. In 2015, Russian authorities designated it an “undesirable organization.” Dmitriev worked at Delta Private Equity until 2007, overseeing several major deals, including the sale of the TV-3 television channel to the Profmedia holding for $530 million.
In 2007, he returned to Ukraine, heading the Icon Private Equity fund with a capital of about $1 billion. The fund was owned by Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Returning to Russia several years later, Dmitriev spoke about Ukraine: “There were so-called democratic changes as a result of the Orange Revolution, which led to a three- to fourfold increase in corruption, to a wild battle between these democratic clans, which were only united at the beginning of the struggle, and after coming to power, began to devour others and each other, and as a result, they lost. Accordingly, the democratic idea in Ukraine has been largely discredited precisely because of the Orange Revolution.”
Fixer close to Putin
An important event in Dmitriev’s life was meeting and then marrying Natalya Popova. She is a friend of Katerina Tikhonova, Vladimir Putin’s younger daughter. They studied together at Moscow State University. Popova is now Tikhonova’s deputy at the Innopraktika Foundation. According to Popova, Putin’s daughter “called her into service.” Dmitriev is on the board of trustees of Innopraktika. It was Popova’s friendship with Tikhonova that made Dmitriev a “powerful figure in the Kremlin,” the Financial Timeswrote.
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump denounced ABC News’ Mary Bruce as a “terrible reporter” Tuesday and threatened the network’s license to broadcast after she asked him three sharp questions at the White House.
And many Americans felt shame at cosiness displayed by their president toward this man who would be king. I am reproducing Michael D. Sellers Substack:
Yesterday the US President, Donald J. Trump welcomed to the White House Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, lavishing VIP treatment on the man who is credibly believed to have orchestrated the murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Let’s recall, in some detail, what exactly happened to Khashoggi — and what evidence connects bin Salman to the killing. Some of what follows is disturbing. It’s worth a deeper look in order to understand the depths of the shame of today’s events at the White House.
What Happened to Jamal Khashoggi
The Dissident Who Walked Into a Consulate
Jamal Khashoggi wasn’t some fringe figure. He’d been part of the Saudi establishment for decades — adviser to the royal court, editor of major newspapers, a man who knew the system from the inside. Over time he drifted into dissent: criticizing the crown prince’s authoritarian turn, the Yemen war, and the crackdown on dissent. By 2017 he had left Saudi Arabia and was living in Virginia, writing columns for The Washington Post.
In 2018 he planned to marry his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish academic. For that, he needed paperwork from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul — proof that he was divorced.
September 28, 2018: Khashoggi goes to the consulate once; he’s told to come back on October 2 to pick up the finalized documents.
In the days between: Two private Gulfstream jets bring a rotating cast of Saudi officials and security officers to Istanbul. Turkish and Western media later identify them as a 15-man team including intelligence officers, royal guards, and a forensic doctor.
Whatever was going to happen was planned in that window.
The Trap Is Set
On the morning of October 2, 2018, members of the Saudi team arrive at the consulate and at the residence of the consul general, Mohammad al-Otaibi. Turkish staff are abruptly told to take the day off. Security cameras inside the consulate are later reported to have been disabled or their footage removed.
Around lunchtime:
CCTV captures several Saudi operatives entering the consulate.
Among them is Maher Mutreb, a close security aide who frequently traveled with Mohammed bin Salman and was photographed at his side on previous trips to the U.S. and Europe.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Khashoggi walks up to the consulate with Hatice Cengiz. The building looks ordinary: a flag, a steel gate, a guard. He leaves his two phones with her and walks in, expecting a brief appointment.
He never comes out.
Cengiz waits. Hours pass. The consulate closes. She calls friends and Turkish officials. A missing-person report is filed that evening. By then, whatever happened inside is over.
Inside the Consulate: The Killing
We don’t have video of the killing. What we have are:
Turkish intelligence audio recordings from bugs inside the consulate.
Forensic evidence from the crime-scene search.
The travel records and identities of the 15-man team.
Leaks to Turkish and Western media from officials who heard or read the transcripts.
Pieced together, they give a chilling narrative.
According to Turkish officials and multiple media reports based on the audio:
Khashoggi is brought to an office near the consul general’s.
He is told to return to Saudi Arabia. He refuses.
He is then overpowered, and a plastic bag or similar device is placed over his head. His reported last words: “I’m suffocating… take this bag off my head, I’m claustrophobic.”
He is strangled and dies within minutes.
The team had not come to negotiate. Turkish and UN investigators concluded this was a premeditated execution, not an interrogation gone wrong.
The Forensic Doctor and the Dismemberment
Among the 15 was Dr. Salah al-Tubaigy, a forensic pathologist associated with the Saudi Interior Ministry. Turkish leaks say he brought a bone saw. On the audio, he is reported to tell colleagues to put on headphones and listen to music while he dismembers the body.
This is not Hollywood horror; it’s bureaucracy meeting brutality:
A government doctor.
Specialized equipment.
A team flown in on government-controlled jets.
According to Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, Khashoggi was strangled immediately upon entering, and his body was then dismembered and “disposed of.” No remains have ever been found.
Turkish investigators later floated two main theories for disposal:
Acid – biological traces in the consulate garden suggested his body may have been dissolved in acid.
Cremation – a large, newly-built oven at the consul general’s residence may have been used for incineration.
Whichever is true, the intent was clear: erase the body, erase the crime.
The Cover-Up
While this was unfolding, Riyadh tried to run a classic disinformation play.
At first, Saudi officials insisted Khashoggi had left the consulate by a back door.
When Turkish authorities began leaking evidence, Saudi Arabia shifted to a story about a “rogue operation” that went bad during a botched attempt to return him to the kingdom.
Eventually they admitted he had been killed in a premeditated operation — but insisted the crown prince knew nothing about it.
Turkey, meanwhile, kept turning the screw with controlled leaks: snippets from the audio, details on the hit team, CCTV images, the flight plans.
International outrage followed:
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnès Callamard, concluded in 2019 that this was a “deliberate, premeditated execution” for which Saudi Arabia bore state responsibility.
An Istanbul court later tried 26 Saudi suspects in absentia, including senior officials close to bin Salman.
Saudi Arabia staged its own trial, behind closed doors, acquitting top aides and sentencing a handful of operatives. The proceedings were widely condemned as a whitewash.
How the Trail Leads to Mohammed bin Salman
The Saudi line has always been that Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had no prior knowledge of the operation. The U.S. intelligence community — and most serious investigators — don’t buy that.
Here’s why.
1. The Hit Team’s Composition
Several members of the 15-man team belonged to elite units that effectively answer to MBS:
Royal Guard and close protection: Maher Mutreb, seen traveling with MBS and photographed next to him on foreign trips, is part of the crown prince’s inner security circle.
“Tiger Squad” link: Reporting by Middle East Eye and others identified some of the team as part of a clandestine unit allegedly used by MBS to silence dissidents.
The idea that such a unit would freelance a murder of this magnitude, involving a prominent Washington Post columnist, without higher authorization is at odds with how Saudi security services actually operate.
2. The Planes and the Chain of Command
The operatives flew on jets owned by Sky Prime Aviation, a company that had been transferred to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — the Public Investment Fund (PIF) — which is controlled by MBS.
This isn’t conclusive on its own, but it’s one more data point: state-controlled aircraft attached to funds overseen by the crown prince, used for a covert operation on foreign soil.
3. The Aide on the Skype Call
According to Turkish and Reuters reporting, Saud al-Qahtani — a powerful royal court adviser and one of MBS’s closest enforcers — was patched into the consulate via Skype as Khashoggi was being held. He allegedly ordered the team to “bring me the head of the dog.”
Qahtani doesn’t freelance. He is an extension of MBS’s will. The UN investigator later wrote that there was “credible evidence” warranting investigation of MBS and Qahtani for potential liability.
Qahtani was publicly fired after the killing, but there has never been a transparent accounting of his fate. By all accounts he remains protected.
4. Pattern: What Happened to Other Critics
Khashoggi’s murder didn’t come out of nowhere. It fit a pattern:
Mass arrests of businessmen, royals, and clerics in 2017’s Ritz-Carlton “anti-corruption” purge.
Abduction of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri in Riyadh.
Kidnapping and forced repatriation of Saudi dissidents abroad, including princes living in Europe.
The message was clear: MBS’s Saudi Arabia does not merely tolerate dissent; it hunts it.
5. The U.S. Intelligence Assessment
In February 2021, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a declassified assessment. Its key line:
“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”
The assessment cited:
MBS’s “absolute control” over security and intelligence operations.
The direct involvement of his key aides and bodyguards.
The unlikelihood that such an operation could occur without his authorization.
The CIA had reportedly reached the same conclusion back in late 2018.
This is not speculative NGO rhetoric; it is the formal view of the U.S. intelligence community.
6. Saudi Arabia’s Own Admissions
Saudi Arabia has never admitted that MBS ordered the killing. But they have conceded:
The operation was “premeditated.”
Senior officials around the crown prince were involved.
The death occurred inside the consulate at the hands of Saudi agents.
MBS himself has said he bears “responsibility” because it happened “under my watch,” while denying he gave the order.
Why This Matters When Trump Rolls Out the Red Carpet
Against that backdrop, what happened at the White House yesterday is not just another diplomatic photo-op.
Trump didn’t merely host a controversial ally. He:
Praised Mohammed bin Salman’s leadership and downplayed Khashoggi’s murder, suggesting such things “happen.”
Announced or advanced major arms and investment deals — including prospective sales of F-35 stealth fighters and a new Strategic Defense Agreement.
Symbolically rehabilitated a man the U.S. intelligence community has publicly assessed as having approved an operation to kill a U.S.-based journalist.
Jamal Khashoggi walked into a consulate in Istanbul thinking he was handling a paperwork errand on the way to his wedding.
On the audio, his last words are a plea for air.
Yesterday, the man U.S. intelligence says approved that operation stood on the White House lawn, smiling for the cameras, as an American president celebrated him with a military flyover and a red carpet.
That’s the arc.
Thank you for your support. Your support though free and (especially) paid subscriptions makes Deeper Look possible. I will continue to monitor and report — and I thank you for being part of what I’m trying to do here. Many thanks.
So far this year 330 executions have taken place in Saudi Arabia, one of these was another journalist:
June 14, 2025 3:58 PM EDT
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Washington, D.C., June 14, 2025 — Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior announced the Saturday execution of prominent Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser, who had been detained for seven years on charges of treason, foreign collaboration, funding terrorism, and endangering national security and unity.
Saudi authorities arrested al-Jasser in 2018 and seized his devices, believing that he was behind an X, then known as Twitter, account that documented allegations of corruption within the Saudi royal family. Saudi officials have been accused of spying on Saudi X users and journalists, including Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.
“We are outraged by Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent journalist Turki al-Jasser, who was detained for seven years because the regime believed he reported on allegations of corruption within the Saudi royal family,” said CPJ Chief Program Officer Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “The international community’s failure to deliver justice for Jamal Khashoggi did not just betray one journalist; it emboldened de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to continue his persecution of the press, and today, another Saudi journalist has paid the price.”
Al-Jasser was a prominent Saudi journalist who wrote on sensitive issues, including women’s rights, the Arab Spring, and corruption. He contributed to the now-shuttered Saudi newspaper Al-Taqrir and his personal blog between 2013 and 2015.
While detained, Al-Jasser was subjected to enforced disappearance, denied access to legal representation and his family, and allegedly endured multiple forms of physical and psychological torture.
In 2024, Saudi Arabiaexecuted 330 people — nearlydouble the 172 recorded the previous year and the highest in decades. So far in 2025, over100 executions have already taken place.
U.N. experts and rights groups have repeatedly called on the Saudi government to halt executions, raising serious concerns about due process.
CPJ’s email to the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., requesting comment about al-Jasser’s execution did not receive an immediate response
The revelation of the crown prince’s photograph inside Epstein’s mansion has sparked a storm of criticism on social media.
Many social media users expressed their lack of surprise, with one remarking on another photograph of Mohammed bin Salman with George Nader, another convicted criminal and serial paedophile.
“Whenever Mohammed Bonesaw isn’t orchestrating the murder of journalists (a reference to the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi) and dissolving their remains in acid, he seems to enjoy posing for photos with pedophiles.”
Meanwhile, families of 9/11 victims—who have spent decades trying to hold the Saudi state accountable in court—reacted with fury that the de facto Saudi ruler was being feted in the Oval Office just as their lawsuit against the kingdom finally moves toward trial.
Hanan Elatr Khashoggi and Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) stand outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC on November 21, 2025 with a sign reading “RELEASE THE TRANSCRIPT” of President Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Photo: Rep. Eugene Vindman/X)
Calls Grow to Release Transcript of ‘Highly Disturbing’ Trump-MBS Call After Khashoggi Murder
Rep. Eugene Vindman—who was a White House national security lawyer at the time of the 2019 call—said it “would shock people if they knew what was said.”
By 2007, New Labour had presided over the longest period of economic growth in the post-war period. It was the goldilocks economy with low inflation, low unemployment and an impressive rise in spending on the NHS and education. But, the devastating global credit crunch caused a deep recession and higher unemployment.
1999, Enter Prince Andrew, as described in the book by Lownie:
On the morning of 9 February 1999 a small group gathered at Teterboro Airport, just outside New York, ready to catch a Gulfstream jet to Saint Thomas, second largest of the US Virgin Islands. One of the three waiting passengers was the glamorous socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who had fled to New York in 1991 from the UK on a hundred-thousand-dollar annual allowance to support her father Robert Maxwell’s business activities. Shortly afterwards, the media baron with longstanding connections to British, Russian and Israeli intelligence had met a sudden and mysterious death whether from suicide, an accident or as his youngest daughter believed, murder. Her personal assistant, Emmy Taylor, waited with her. The third and final member of the group was Prince Andrew.
Entitled, by Andrew Lownie
Larry Ellison, who had begun growing his database software system, Oracle, in the US in 2000, met Tony Blair in 2002 and developed a long friendship with Tony Blair whilst Blair was PM in the UK, but also had said the UK stood with the US after the 9/11 terror attack.
The pair at No10 in 2003 to announce Mr Ellison’s company Oracle will supply software to schools
2001 – 3, Mandelson always attracted to making big money:
The prime minister earlier summoned Mandelson to Downing Street to “establish the facts” of his involvement in the passport application of controversial Indian billionaire Srichand Hunduja.
Mandelson had come under increasing pressure over the issue since the weekend following claims he pulled strings to help Hinduja secure a UK passport after he pledged 1 million pounds (1. 47 million U.S. dollars) in sponsorship for the Millennium Dome, while Mandelson was in charge of the project.
Mandelson was first forced to quit the cabinet in 1998 after failing to disclose that he had secretly received a 373,000 pound loan from his then fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson to buy a house in London.
Epstein paid for Mandelson’s travel in 2003, documents show
Image caption,Lord Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US on Thursday
By Olivia Davies
Published 12 September 2025
Jeffrey Epstein paid for Lord Mandelson’s travel on two separate occasions in 2003 totalling more than $7,400 (£5,400), according to documents released by the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee.
Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US on Thursday over his links to the late convicted paedophile.
The government said the “depth and extent” of Mandelson’s relationship with the financier had not been known when he was appointed last year.
This is the first time financial evidence of Epstein paying for Mandelson’s travel has come to light. The BBC has contacted Mandelson for a response.
May 18, 2023, 11:09am EDTMay 18, 2023, 02:44pm EDTShareSave
This article is more than 2 years old.
Topline
Deutsche Bank has paid at least $225 million to settle cases over keeping more than 40 accounts for the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly used the accounts to fund a sex trafficking ring—a legal snarl that could also cost JPMorgan Chase.
Key Facts
The German-based bank on Monday paid $75 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by a woman identified in court documents as Jane Doe, who alleges Epstein sexually abused and trafficked her from 2003 to 2018 and says Deutsche Bank ignored warning signs, including payments from the Deutsche accounts to multiple young women.
Doe claims Deutsche Bank played an “essential role” and “knowingly participated” in Epstein’s abuse of underage women by enabling him to pay the women from 2013 to 2018.
Epstein was a member of Deutsche Bank’s Key Client Partners group and kept an account at Deutsche for his nonprofit charity foundation, Gratitude America, which was used to accrue tax benefits and divert funds, and did not donate to all the charities it said it did, the Wall Street Journal found.
The bank was “laundering money for wealthy Russians and people connected to Putin and the Kremlin in a variety of ways for almost the exact time period that they were doing business with Donald Trump,” Enrich said. “And all of that money through Deutsche Bank was being channeled through the same exact legal entity in the U.S. that was handling the Donald Trump relationship in the U.S. And so there are a lot of coincidences here.”
Blair and Bush – Coalition attack on Iraq after ‘dodgy dossier’accepted as fact, yet it was a group of Saudis who hijacked the planes for the terrorist act
.
leftvoice.org
Concept of ‘crusades’ revisited:
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns launched by the papacy between 1095 and 1291 against Muslim rulers for the recovery and defence of the Holy Land, encouraged by promises of spiritual reward. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095 in response to a Byzantine appeal for aid against the advancing Seljuk Turks Continued in Wikipedia)
When we look back:
The Iraq Invasion 20 Years Later: It Was Indeed a Big Lie That Launched the Catastrophic War
Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they were promoting false information.
2003, Making money out of inflicting death on innocents (Iraq population). Remembering this sad time by veteran Independent journalist, Donald MacIntyre:
Once the war was underway, of course, it was given daily extensive coverage. When I arrived in Baghdad in May 2003, I saw for myself how far US forces were from fulfilling President Bush’s February 2003 promise of building an “inspiring” Iraq when the hot war was over.
Much like in the case of the current caliph, the identity of the overarching leader of the General Directorate of Provinces remains unknown. Nevertheless, as of the time of writing, UN sources have named Abdallah Makki Mosleh al-Rafi’i (alias Abu Khadija al-Iraqi), an Iraqi national born in 1991 and one of the main known leaders of the Islamic State, as the possible Head of the Directorate and the Delegated Committee. His listing as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist was announced by the US State Department on 8 June 2023.
Israel’s enemies were to be picked off by North African countries destruction by the ‘Christians vs Muslims’ in Iraq and Libya. Tony Blair converted to Catholicism in 2010, saying his wife persuaded him.
The former Prime Minister, who now runs The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, switched from the Church of England to Roman Catholicism two years ago
The 2007 implosion of two Bear Stearns hedge funds that invested in risky mortgage bonds led to the wider crash of the financial system, and as it turns out years later, a fairly sizable and eyebrow raising settlement paid by mega bank JPMorgan to the convicted pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The hedge funds went belly-up in the summer of 2007, the first public casualty of the smoldering financial crisis that would take down Bear, then Lehman Brothers, and were it not for a government bailout, the entire financial system in 2008.
After Bear’s collapse, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, at the insistence of the government, took over the firm, its assets and many of its liabilities, including claims by investors that they were misled about the financial condition of the hedge funds before their collapse.
Epstein invested over $57 million of his cash into something called the “Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage hedge fund,” On the Money has learned.
Blair accused of taking blood money over £1m job with US bank profiting from Iraq war
13 April 2012
Tony Blair has taken a lucrative job with an American bank
JPMorgan is expected to pay him £1million a year as a part-time adviser.
It is the first of a series of posts that could see the former prime minister rake in a staggering £40million.
The move brought fierce criticism last night. Reg Keys, whose soldier son Tom was killed in Iraq in 2003, said it was “almost akin to taking blood money”.
Documents obtained by i and Liberty Investigates show Palantir Technologies has partnered with police forces in the East of England to establish a “real-time data-sharing network” that includes the personal details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses alongside suspects.
Trade union membership, sexual orientation and race are among the other types of personal information being processed.
The project has sparked alarm from campaigners who fear it will trample over Britons’ human rights and “facilitate dystopian predictive policing” and indiscriminate mass surveillance.
Numerous police forces have previously refused to confirm or deny their links with Palantir, citing risks to law enforcement and national security. However, forces in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire have recently confirmed working with the firm
Larry Ellison, as I have written in a previous blog, runs Oracle, a portal to Palantir
Jeffrey Epstein had a long-standing relationship with JPMorgan Chase, where he was a client from 1998 to 2013. The bank has faced scrutiny and legal challenges over allegations that it facilitated Epstein’s sex trafficking activities, leading to significant settlements, including a $75 million payment to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Axios BBC
Tony Blair and Israel:
Blair patron of charity that shows Gaza and West Bank as part of Israel
Jewish National Fund’s UK branch also includes Golan Heights in map of Israel on website
Former British prime minister Tony Blair speaks during a ceremony marking one year since the death of the late Israeli President Shimon Peres on September 14, 2017 at the Mt. Herzel cemetery in Jerusalem (Gali Tibbon / AFP)
Published date: 22 November 2024 16:16 GMT|Last update: 12 months 2 hours ago
A British charity associated with former prime minister Tony Blair displays a map on its website including the occupied Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Israel.
Now the British organisation, which has charitable status, risks being drawn into a fresh scandal over a map on its official website.
As of 3pm on Friday, the website, viewed by Middle East Eye, displays a donation campaign for JNF UK’s activities in the Negev, a desert region in southern Israel.
The website reads: “Israel’s centre is prosperous but crowded. Its peripheries have enough space for millions of new homes, but the infrastructure is lacking.”
Israel moved to seize about 450 acres of the historic Sebastia site in the West Bank while settlers established a new unauthorized outpost, amid rising settler violence, the detention of a Palestinian activist, and a Human Rights Watch report accusing Israel of committing war crimes through mass expulsions from refugee camps.
Aaron Parnas, Substack
And no official body is preventing this theft of Palestinian land. Attacking Iraq gave us ISIS, when the Ba’ath Sunnis fled to Syria, and ISIS has grown as a violent militia, often becoming mercenaries to fight Hamas, funded even by Israel to do that.
Ruslana Korshunova, a Kazakh-Russian supermodel who rose at fifteen through IMG and had flown on Epstein’s jet, plunged from a New York high-rise in 2008, ruled a suicide despite a diary describing entrapment and manipulation.
IMG:
IMG Models was founded as a division of the International Management Group (IMG) by Mark McCormack in 1987. The agency has since become a leading modeling agency, representing a diverse range of talent globally. Wikipedia
Victims of 2008 sub prime mortgage crash, plus other notorious crashes, will be interested in this research put together by Zev Shalev. He has produced a carefully researched timeline of events around Epstein et al plus New York and international locations which hosted their corrupt money theft activities:
Here is a snippet:
Meanwhile, Ben-Menashe revealed the staggering scale of the slush funds Maxwell controlled. To fund Iran-Contra, Israel and the United States each contributed $600 million in off-the-books money—$1.2 billion in secret funds that Americans would never be able to trace. When Maxwell died in 1991, control of these funds passed to his network, including his daughter Ghislaine and her partner Jeffrey Epstein. Did Epstein inherit the CIA’s $600 Million?
See Zev Shalev Substack.
Remember John Paulson?
The Man Who Turned $147 Million Into $15 Billion by Betting Against the American Dream?
It is interesting that in recent days John Paulson’s name has been connected to Epstein. Did he become known to Epstein before or after he became a billionaire?
Major NYU donor and Stern board member John Paulson was named “one of the billionaires” in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact list last week by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who is spearheading a bill to release all files related to the convicted sex offender.
Paulson’s name was also publicly listed in the first “black book,” published by former blog site Gawker in 2015 and containing 1,748 other names dating back to 2004. Being listed in the books does not directly indicate criminal activity.
“If John Paulson is in Epstein’s black book, it’s news to him. He never shared a meal or even a drink with Epstein,” a spokesperson for Paulson’s investment firm Paulson & Co. told Newsweek in a statement. “This is a weak attempt to imply a relationship with Epstein that never existed at any level or of any kind.”
The billionaire hedge fund manager graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 1978 and has been one of the university’s most prominent donors since 2009. As of 2023, Paulson gifted at least $146,000,200 to NYU — with more than a decade of yearly donations ranging from $100,000 to $20,200,200. The $1.2 billion John A. Paulson Center opened in 2023 with funds from Paulson’s $100 million gift to the university in 2012 — “among the largest NYU has ever received at its Washington Square Campus.”
An NYU spokesperson did not respond to request for comment.
Contact Amanda Chen at achen@nyunews.com.
Watching shorts:
Carson Block’s Muddy Waters is now Wall Street’s best known activist short seller, having taken down a number of high-profile frauds. Block began his short selling career by focusing on Chinese companies with a listing in the US and Canada, with his hedge fund’s name derived from a Chinese proverb: “muddy waters make it easy to catch fish”. His big break came in 2011 when he released a scathing report alleging fraud at Chinese forest plantation company Sino-Forest, which later collapsed into bankruptcy. The report caused about $460mn in losses for funds managed by US billionaire John Paulson and established Block as a short to watch on Wall Street
And a summary of the beneficiaries of the 2008 crash:
The main beneficiaries of the 2008 financial crisis included large financial institutions that received government bailouts, such as banks and insurance companies, which were propped up by programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Additionally, some banking executives with political connections made significant gains during this period due to insider knowledge related to the bailouts. Wikipedia imperial.ac.uk
Update from Zev Shalev Dec 2025:
Zev revealed new details from The Greatest Heist showing how Epstein triggered the 2008 financial crisis. Using 57 million dollars from Leslie Wexner’s Financial Trust Company, Epstein invested heavily in Bear Stearns mortgage-backed securities in 2006. In 2007, Epstein demanded full redemption. That 57 million represented a billion dollars of value, Zev explained, he knew that as he was telling them to redeem, he’d be starting the collapse of the American economy. Within weeks the funds collapsed, then Bear Stearns fell, triggering the broader market collapse. The timing placed the economic crisis at the doorstep of the incoming Obama administration.
The images of wealth and the benefits flowing to Jeffrey Epstein:
In 1991, Les Wexner began building his New Albany home:
The Wexner mansion is located in New Albany, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and it is spread over 336 acres of land. The mansion is located in the middle of the estate, surrounded by lush greenery, private lakes, and exquisite gardens. Leslie Wexner bought the land for $3 million in 1990, and construction of the mansion was completed in 1991. The mansion has been the residence of Leslie Wexner and his family ever since.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Documents unsealed Tuesday from cases tied to Jeffrey Epstein, who died while facing federal sex trafficking charges, have named Ohio’s richest person as one of those involved with his victims.
The documents from the 17th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, tied to a Jan. 16, 2016, deposition of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, show quotes where she directly names L Brands creator Leslie Wexner as one of the “powerful business executives” she was sexually trafficked to.
1995:
Donald Trump fed his daughter into the model world machine when she was just 14:
Ivanka’s modeling career started at the age of 14.
Trump and the Elite Modeling Scandal: How Power Seduced and Silenced Teenage Dreams
The untold story of Trump’s presence among predators exploiting underage girls at the world’s biggest modeling contest — and the culture that enabled it.
Two yacht parties in September 1991 and 1992 became defining moments of discomfort and coercion. Shawna Lee, age 14 in 1992, was pressured to descend stairs and “dance” before Trump and Casablancas despite her objections, The Guardian reported. Another 15-year-old contestant said she was warned that refusing would jeopardize her standing in the competition. Witnesses described underage drinking and inappropriate touching during these events. Trump denies any knowledge of or participation in such behavior and stated he was unaware of misconduct by others.
Note the founder of Elite Models had a fondness for underage girls:
Elite Model Management was founded in 1972 by John Casablancas and Alain Kittler in Paris, France. Casablancas is particularly noted for his role in creating the supermodel phenomenon. Wikipedia WWD
divorced in 1983,[13] as he was having a public relationship with Look of the Year contest finalist Stephanie Seymour, 16 years old at the time. Casablancas was frank about his preference for girls of barely legal age.[14]
In 1993,[15] the 50-year-old Casablancas married his third wife, 17-year-old Aline Mendonça de Carvalho Wermelinger, winner of Elite Model Look 1992 in Brazil. Wermelinger was close in age to Casablancas’s children, who were 22 and 14 at the time. The couple had three children: John Jr., Fernando Augusto, and Nina.[1][16]
A resident of Miami, Florida, Casablancas died on July 20, 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, where he had been receiving treatment for cancer. He was 70 years old.[1]
Donald Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985:
Mar-a-Lago was placed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was designated a national historic landmark in 1980. Upon Post’s death in 1973, it was bequeathed to the federal government with the intention that it would be used as a presidential and diplomatic retreat. In 1983 it was conferred back to the Post Foundation because of its high maintenance costs.
Real estate mogul Donald Trump purchased the property in 1985 and used it as a private residence until 1995, when it opened to the public as the Mar-a-Lago Club. Amenities offered to the club’s guests and members include a full-size croquet lawn, a beach club, a spa and fitness center, and a 20,000-square-foot ballroom with imitation Louis XIV gold and crystal finish, completed in 2005. Nearby in West Palm Beach is tshe Trump International Golf Club, which has hosted professional golf tournaments.
When did Epstein buy the property and what did the house look like?
The front exterior of the Palm Beach home of late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as it appeared shortly before demolition of the property … Show more
DAMON HIGGINS/PALM BEACH DAILY NEWS
The residence had stood since 1952 on three-quarters of an acre facing 170 feet on the Intracoastal Waterway at the end of a quiet dead-end street in Palm Beach’s Estate Section. With a total of 14,223 square feet, the compound included the main house, a cabana building by the swimming pool and a separate building used by household staff.
With Bermuda-style architecture, the house had been designed originally by society architect John L. Volk but had been extensively remodeled. The house had a white-stucco exterior, a gray roof, simple balcony railings and an exterior spiral staircase leading to and from the pool deck.
Epstein had paid $2.5 million in 1990 for the house, which at the time carried the address of 358 El Brillo Way. In 2011, he transferred its ownership from his name to an entity named Laurel Inc., a company registered in the U.S. Virgin Islands
1990s and 2000s: Background of Trump and Epstein’s connection
Epstein and Trump reportedly met in 1990 when Epstein bought a mansion 2 miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and estate.
Over the next decade or so, the two would party and socialize together between Florida and New York, where they also at one point lived within miles of each other.
Trump famously called Epstein a “terrific guy” for a 2002 article in New York magazine.
“He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump told the magazine. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Jeffrey Epstein was one of the only people I knew, back when Donald Trump was still, at best, a novelty candidate, to believe that Trump would become president. He was also, from the first, terrified of this outcome. Both views came from the same place: he understood that Trump was uniquely ruthless, with a preternatural, or as he put it “sociopathic,” focus on getting what he wanted.
They had spent more than ten years side-by-side in pursuit of fashion models (age of little consequence), in a post-playboy climate of permissibility, and access to capital, as markets and opportunities were geometrically expanding. At some point these two quests became, for both men, finely intertwined—money, power, permission, entitlement. But by the time Trump was running for president in 2015, their friendship had broken up with great enmity and promises from each man that they would be the agent of the personal destruction of the other. Epstein believed that if Trump became the president of the United States, he would not be safe from his former friend.
Michael Wolff, Substack, 13th Nov 2025
The Modeling agency That Helped Build Trump’s Empire. He Secretly Closed It Down In 2017 So He Could Run For President
According to a report in the Miami Herald, Epstein associate Jean Luc Brunel’s model agency sent a busload of paid models, some underage, to a Mar-a-Lago party, at which former model Zoe Brock says she was given a spiked drink.
Shortly after publishing her Weinstein article on Medium in October 2017, Brock wrote another article detailing her sexual harassment in 1992 at the hands of her French modelling agent [11]Jean-Luc Brunel. Brunel is accused of sex-trafficking underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein and of exploiting, raping and drugging young models since he was first exposed by a CBS 60 Minutes episode that aired in 1988.
Multiple women and[12] some men have come forward to try to help French and US police locate Brunel.
Who brought the internationally trafficked girls to New York? The answer has been on the Internet for many years:
He didn’t start as a mogul.
He started as a teenage scout.
At nineteen, in Milan, Zampolli was already studying the equation that shaped the rest of his life:
beauty + poverty + powerful men = leverage.
He wasn’t running an agency — he was learning how the game works.
By the mid-1990s, in his late twenties and living in the U.S. on a student visa, Zampolli launched ID Model Management. The structure was exactly what you’d expect from someone trained in the Casablancas–Brunel ecosystem:
The real machine came in New York.
See:
Annotated Source List (for publication)
1. Vanity Fair (2001)
Profile of Zampolli confirming ID Model Management launched mid-1990s and describing its operations and culture.
2. Associated Press investigation (2016)
Confirmed Melania Trump performed paid modeling work while on a tourist visa that did not permit employment.
3. PBS NewsHour (2016)
Detailed timeline of Melania’s visa status and work history.
4. CBS News interview (2016)
Former modeling agent confirmed Zampolli’s involvement in Melania’s visa pathway.
5. Trump White House Archives (Dec. 22, 2020)
Official release naming Paolo Zampolli to the Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Center.
6. Kennedy Center “Board of Trustees” official page
Public listing confirming Zampolli’s position.
7. Paolo Zampolli biography pages (multiple)
Confirming his roles as Director of International Development for the Trump Organization and Special Envoy for Global Partnerships.
8. Industry testimonies, lawsuits, and public reporting (1990s–2010s)
Documenting the model-import visa pipeline used by Elite, MC2, Brunel, and Zampolli.
‘We brought a saw’: FBI found diamonds, cash, passports, CDs and hard drives after cracking open safe in 2019 raid on Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse
Dozens of CDs and hard drives found in 2019 FBI raid on Epstein’s 19,000sqft Manhattan townhouse, Bevan Hurley writes
Wednesday 08 December 2021 14:37 GMT
A safe found in Jeffrey Epstein’s 5th floor dressing room contained large amount of cash, diamonds, foreign passports and CDs and hard drives (US District Attorney’s Office)
…………Ghislaine…….
On Monday, FBI special agent Kelly Maguire testified in Ms Maxwell’s trial at the Manhattan federal court
She led the team that searched the 40-room, 19,000 square foot property at 9 East 71st Street on 6 and 7 July 2019 and walked the jury through what the photos depicted.
Yet, in the same article:
Ms Maguire, from the child exploitation and human trafficking task force, said they arrived at Epstein’s property at around 5.30pm on 6 July after obtaining a search warrant for the property, and forced their way into the building when no one had answered the door bell.
After conducting a sweep to ensure no one was home, they methodically searched the 40 rooms, finding CDs and hard drives stashed in plastic bins and draws throughout the home.
She said they found the safe in a closet in a fifth floor dressing room and pulled it into the middle of the room.
borderslynn 
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