• Super Admin
• 08 Mar, 2026

The newly released Epstein files don't just implicate a handful of powerful men -- they expose an entire architecture of American power built on impunity, secrecy, and the quiet expectation that the rules apply only to everyone else. As Robert Scheer and Nolan Higdon dig into this week's revelations, the picture that emerges is not simply one of individual crimes but of a political and financial aristocracy that treats the law as a suggestion, democracy as theater, and vulnerable people as expendable. From Harvard boardrooms to Clinton‑era fundraisers to Trump's Justice Department slow‑walking disclosures, the documents reveal a culture where fixing, hiding, and protecting the powerful is the real bipartisan consensus. What's breaking open now is not just a scandal -- it's a portrait of a system that was never meant to be fair in the first place. Click to subscribe on: Apple / Spotify / Amazon 00:00:01.56 Robert Scheer Hi, this is Robert Shearer with another edition of Shearer Intelligence, no longer doing it for the NPR station in Santa Monica, KCRW and their network. I got to be too hot to handle in the Trump. 00:00:14.30 Robert Scheer years where he's going after NPR brutally. So like I don't want to excuse them, but I do take care of pulling in there, trimming their sales. Anyway, we still on Sharepost and we're carried on Spotify, Apple, blah, blah, blah. So it's available. and And also interviewing a very famous guy here every week. Usually I do it on Wednesday. Now we're doing it with shifting it around. Nolan Higdon, a professor at Santa Cruz Communications, but great writer and follower of the whole Epstein file. guy doing you know I don't want to do the deep dive there. It makes my nose bleed. 00:00:51.76 Robert Scheer It's stench is so high. I don't find it enjoyable rummaging around in the dirty underwear of the two major parties. Well, that brings me to my subject here with you. Oh, but I should remember you have the, what do you call it again? 00:01:07.64 Robert Scheer Yeah, the Gaslight Gazette, and and you'll give the all the thing. I mean, basically, if you want the full, Nolan Higdon, go to his site, go to his thing. He's doing it speed over. Let me just bring in my little two cents here. i watched the Trump's performance. I don't know what it was. 00:01:24.41 Robert Scheer Unstate of the union, disarray of the union. But anyway, the Democrats are all sitting here smugly, smugging, smugly. And that's what they're good at, being smug. And as if they have nothing to do with all this tragedy. And they're saying, what would did it say? Release the files? 00:01:43.13 Nolan Yeah, some them more ah buttons to the State of the Union were saying release the files, talking about the rest of the Epstein files. 00:01:49.27 Robert Scheer Yeah, and so what it means is they think the stuff on Trump is going to be much more devastating and that they're home free. And I want to explore that just for a few minutes and then you can do your weekly update on where we are and what you've learned in the last week. But I hear you have I'm just going to get back to the same old guy. forgot Clinton, OK, and Hillary says she has nothing to do with it. But on the other hand, she knew the woman who made it all possible. She was at their daughter's wedding, Giselle Maxwell, Giseline Maxwell. And 00:02:21.72 Robert Scheer You know, so I mean, it's disgusting. But I want to take Lauren Summers, a principal player in all this. And the reason I bring it up is not to pick on this guy in his time of misfortune. He just resigned from Harvard. He used to be the head of Harvard and and so forth. He was rewarded with that position. This is something really about higher education, America. Why was he rewarded with being the head of Harvard? Well, because he managed to screw over more Americans out of their homes, out of their savings, and particularly aimed at college graduate black people, brown people, according to the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, ah destroyed the economic well-being, contributed mightily to the increase of income inequality in America. Lawrence Summers, along with Robert Rubin, who was Secretary of Treasury before him, But then Robert, Lauren Summers really went after people like Booksteen Bourne, who saw otherwise destroyed her career and the government, and really ah gets rewarded for that by being out of Harvard. And then he opens the floodgates of Harvard to a child pornography practitioner as something and, and oh no, then, that Now he's in trouble, but not for all the other misery he caused. And to the Democrats, they're difficult to embarrass Democrats. 00:03:36.59 Robert Scheer They're always virtue wrapped, you know, and and nothing they do is terrible. They didn't really drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They didn't really do the Vietnam War. They didn't really, know, blah, blah, blah, you know. And you you know the list. So tell me, what is it they hope that's going to come out? What, that he had ah ah che this woman, the teenage person who, a child or whatever, who has testimony there? what What is it that they're so thrilled by revealing for once? 00:04:05.69 Nolan Well, it's it's a good question. and And I mean, to your point, and we we'll go into this today, I'm sure. I mean, Democrats are all over these files. And I do think there are legitimate questions about Bill Clinton, at least, and we can talk about those. But, you know, with without a doubt, Trump is the one who's in the White House. His administration is the one deciding to release or not release documents. 00:04:25.43 Nolan um This week was a really big week for this this question you're asking though, because just prior to the State of the Union, NPR and some independent and journalists they showed a really deep reporting on how documents have not been released. And some of the documents that were released have been retracted. 00:04:43.13 Nolan And this pressured the DOJ to say they're going to do an investigation if they've made any mistakes by not releasing certain documents. But one of those, which is one of the ones you're talking about, is an allegation against President Trump that he forced sex on a minor and also ah struck this minor. 00:05:00.57 Nolan And basically what journalists did was they looked at the file that was partially released. Basically, the file that was released said that... um ah they they found that the accusation was not credible, they being the federal government, but we didn't get to see anything else. And By looking at the way that that document was written, it was very clear there was an interview with this accuser and that interview was not released. And so that's part of the documentation that they're saying needs to be released. Like what what is in this interview? And and um the law is very clear on this, that they can retract a survivor's name um or they can keep any files for an ongoing investigation. But Congress is not aware of any ongoing investigation involving President Trump. 00:05:41.56 Nolan So this is gonna be something I imagine the DOJ is gonna say was a mistake ah not to release and I'm putting air quotes around mistake. And I think the the goal here for for Democrats is they want to get this released. They think the Epstein story is something that's winnable for them. 00:05:59.77 Nolan um I think to your your point about the the Democrats in terms of party loyalty, um the Democrats had an opportunity in the Oversight Committee to kind of block the... um ah any punishment for the Clintons if the Clintons refused to testify to Congress. But nine Democrats signaled that they were not going to defend the Clintons in that. And I think this gets to ah an interesting part of the the Democrat story, which is there's a lot of younger Democrats who, even if they're like conservative neoliberals or they're progressives, who would like to see the party for different reasons kind of shed the Clinton era. 00:06:36.41 Nolan And so i don't think there's as many defenders in the party ah that some other politicians like a Barack Obama might have, for instance. And I think that's why that this deposition ended up going forward in the first place. The Clintons we you know wanted it to be done publicly. Instead, this the decision was to be behind closed doors and released afterward. Hillary Clinton's completed um yesterday, Thursday, and Bill Clinton's is today, Friday, as we're recording. 00:07:04.50 Robert Scheer So let me say, why would the Clintons want it public if they're embarrassed by it? 00:07:11.03 Nolan Yeah, you know, it's I don't think I don't think there's anything for them to ah that. they're Well, sorry, for Hillary Clinton, I don't think there's anything for her to be embarrassed by that she seems to be signaling. I mean, most of what's known about Epstein and the Clintons, they must feel is is already out there, or at least Hillary does. 00:07:29.04 Nolan So for Bill Clinton, I'm not sure. i don't know if it's ego. I don't know if he thinks he could um make this into a partisan issue. But like I said, there's some real questions about Bill Clinton. and He had you know multiple visits from Jeffrey Epstein while he was at the White House. He flew on Jeffrey Epstein's plane. There's those pictures of him in the pool and one on the plane where there's a redacted face. 00:07:49.24 Nolan The government's supposed to redact survivors. So are those two redactions survivors? That doesn't necessarily mean Clinton did anything sexual with them, but was Clinton present while sex crimes was going on or engaged in them? 00:08:00.18 Nolan um I think those are the kind of questions that they wanted asked. My guess is that the Clintons thought they were savvy enough um lawyers that they could control the hearing or deposition and kind of shift it toward Trump. Other than that, I don't know why they were so open to have it publicly. 00:08:17.85 Robert Scheer Well, you know, I felt from the beginning of this, what why it's so significant? I mean, it's very significant that you can commit crimes and take advantage of people but underage, particularly about anybody, and you use your power in this way. and but I think it's really... 00:08:35.26 Robert Scheer even more depressing as a description of the decadence of our culture. And I don't mean decadence in some puritanical sense that sex is evil or people having libidos and so forth is to be denied, but it's the use of power on against vulnerable people you know And then punishing them, scaring them. 00:09:01.24 Robert Scheer It's that whole, that that is what's so terrifying about it because it shows a mindset. It shows that your survival, your success, your career, is and your joy and your appetites are all that matter. 00:09:15.99 Robert Scheer and And it's a piece with the thing I brought up about Lawrence Summers. His main achievement is that he screwed over ordinary Americans who life saving were in their homes and they lost them. 00:09:28.05 Robert Scheer And then he rewarded the banks that screwed them over. you know and And he justified it. And he silenced somebody like Brooksley Bourne, who was head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who called this out from beginning to end. He puts in this terrible piece of legislation that makes it all legal for them to destroy, their repeal, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. He's modernizing. It's like modernizing the mafia. 00:09:52.02 Robert Scheer by making them all legal. You know, as long as you don't use a six gun and you use a pen and you get some contract and everything, you can loan shark. And that's what it is. was loan sharking on a grand level made legal by Lawrence Summers and Robert Roode more than anybody else. Yes, they have their Republican allies. Now, what is shown in these tapes, and maybe I'm wrong. 00:10:12.60 Robert Scheer As I say, I don't like to hold my nose and and and dive deeply into it. It's so creepy, really creepy. I mean, when you think of The ways these people could have entertained themselves with their vast wealth ah without taking advantage of people you know who don't have many options. 00:10:32.95 Robert Scheer you know but It's disgusting. But I really wonder about the basic conceit that you will get away with it. that and And that is is something because I think us ordinary folks know we live in a surveillance society. 00:10:51.10 Robert Scheer We know we're monitored all the time. okay Drive somewhere that you're monitored. Anything you do is monitored. They must know that. But they think the fix is in, or at least they used to. now maybe that's the correction now. 00:11:05.50 Robert Scheer They actually believed that they were and and vulnerable. right uh and that they could do whatever they wanted because first of all even when he took epstein on those planes he's supposed to be on a humanitarian mission why would you want to make your sword it you know throw mud at your own mission to save people by bringing this guy who was already known to be you know decadent in the worst sense of the word 00:11:35.58 Nolan Yeah, so the the Clintons hide behind that by saying that ah Epstein's crimes weren't known when they um were hanging with them. That's debatable. But your your point still stands nonetheless. um One of the things that comes through in the files, and you've described the mafia, it's it's a very like sociopathic nature of trying to make wealth and accumulate power and the way these folks talk to each other. There's also just a above the law notion mentality that you see through the communications as well. you know We're talking about crimes like sex trafficking or insider trading, and they're talking about it the way you and I might plan like a lunch date. 00:12:14.78 Nolan And um Epstein has this you know big diverse network. you know One, I was just reading email where it's like, Catherine Romler, formerly of Goldman Sachs, the Obama administration was going to go to dinner with Epstein and Peter Thiel of Palantir and PayPal. And they were also going to be joined by Woody Allen of Hollywood and Cass Sunstein, um you know, the the academic of the Obama year. So like you would have this really diverse network of ah powerhouses that you see throughout that. And you're right, there is this decadence. And this is why I think we we touched upon this briefly last week. But, um you know, the 00:12:52.67 Nolan The kind of new cool or hip kids post 1960s, starting in the 1970s and that neoliberal era, they were more like kind of Michael J. Fox's character on Family Ties. The conservative Republican who maximizes wealth and sees like the good of society coming from the accumulation of one's individual wealth. And so didn't surprise me that they looked at a problem like humanitarian efforts around the world and thought it could be solved with capitalist measures. I mean, it's a it's a sociopathic ideology amongst these these people. 00:13:26.97 Nolan But I will say this week was the first week I think we really started to see some action, albeit small, by the United States to kind of move in a direction of having some accountability. I think the public rage is boiling. I think it needs to go a lot further to get anything resembling justice. 00:13:43.80 Nolan But, um you know, the Democrats did um interview Les Wexner in a deposition and Wexner, you the thing that made the headline was that Wexner's lawyer. 00:14:02.74 Nolan Yeah. And he himself, yeah, accused of having the home where a lot of these sex crimes occurred. ah Wexner, under deposition in front of a congressional committee of Democrats, said that the FBI had never contacted him about his relationship with Epstein. 00:14:18.65 Nolan ah His lawyer didn't correct him. The FBI has not denied that. Wexner is named as one of the 10 co-conspirators in the F.C. and files by the very same federal government. If they didn't interview him, that speaks volumes about how high far above the law these people are, and it's caused outrage. 00:14:36.09 Nolan um I imagine ah the deposition of Bill Clinton, when it if it comes out, is going to cause outrage as well. He's also seen some grassroots efforts. So another associate of Epstein's who's also been accused of sex crimes, Leon Black, another major investor who the files show was paying Epstein to like millions of dollars to do these tasks for him. um Leon Black used to own Apollo Management and he stepped down in 2021 over his ties to Epstein. 00:15:06.11 Nolan We're seeing this grassroots efforts for people who want transparency at Apollo because Apollo manages things like the retirement money for like a the American Federation of Teachers. It also does it owns like subsidiaries like Life Touch, which is a photography company. 00:15:23.16 Nolan ah that schools use, like schools in Detroit have suspended their contracts with Life Touch. ah The American Federation of Teachers and others other teacher unions are demanding transparency from Apollo's finances. 00:15:37.20 Nolan Morgan Stanley was giving Epstein accounts as late as 2019, well over a decade after his sex crimes were known. There's a grassroots effort demanding transparency there. And the polls show outrage. um Even the people, the same pollsters who take polls about how many people are upset with the Trump administration, more people are upset with his handling of the Epstein file. So even people who support Trump and everything else are angered at him about the Epstein file. So I think we're starting to see that that kind of rage. you know It needs to be obviously organized and directed and in a substantive way. But I think this was the first week where I started to see the america the American people kind of get on board, where a lot of European countries already have been doing investigations and making arrests, such as France, Norway, Slovakia, and the UK. 00:16:21.56 Robert Scheer know, what is the issue here is written basically What is our organized communal ethical civic consensus? What is the basic agreement of our democracy? 00:16:37.85 Robert Scheer And one way you could defend the founders, to defend the model, is if you believe in at least trying to attain some sort of Adam Smith's capitalism of accountability, the invisible hand of the market. So the market may be cruel. People may lose their jobs. Things might not sell. You may go through business cycles. 00:17:02.30 Robert Scheer But if you feel it's sort of in the natural order of things, right? There's a bad crop, but the weather was bad, or, you know, people don't like that product. or Your country doesn't have oil and they do and you have to pay more for it. 00:17:15.70 Robert Scheer As long as that fantasy, and it was always a fantasy because at the time of the revolution, we had the English tea company and everything else controlling trade and the king controlled trade and everything else. But the spirit was one of as long as it's in the market, 00:17:31.64 Robert Scheer it's going to operate on a certain rough basis of justice and fairness or something, you know, and then if you get in and you work hard and you keep your nose clean and you study and you invest wisely, blah, blah, blah, you'll come out all right. 00:17:45.18 Robert Scheer reading the world of the of this techno-fascism, which is why it's insist on calling it, and that you bring in a Peter Thiel, and you bring it, and he is ah supposed to be a libertarian. I once engaged in a little one Q&A about this, you know and he said he is a serious libertarian. 00:18:06.83 Robert Scheer You watch these, the files, you read the files, you realize, and you're getting in it in a kind of voyeuristic, peak through sexuality and everything else or the pretensive exploitation or not pretensive pretensive sexuality it's really brutal exploitation but nonetheless you realize everything is fixed that it's all a fixed game there is no invisible hand and these guys consult each other about well who can fix that and who can take care of that and who can make that go away and it's all about you know uh challenging 00:18:43.32 Robert Scheer any notion of fairness, because if it applies to them, of course. You know, I remember once I interviewed, I think her name was Brooke Astor about the death of Nelson Rockefeller. And, you know, he died, heart attack and with an inappropriate female. command And I remember she said to me, oh, that silly girl, you never call 911. You she she did yeah so they you know The Rockefellers had people to fix things. 00:19:07.59 Nolan Thank you. 00:19:13.59 Robert Scheer Well, what the Epstein files really reads is that the world has become even more corrupt and top down. These people fix everything. and Everything. How do I handle my ex-wife? How do I do this? How do I get this one in? How do i Jeffrey Epstein, get to hang out at Harvard? That'd be a lot of fun. I can make new contacts and new conquests. And it's all about fixing. 00:19:39.02 Robert Scheer It's the exact opposite of the model of capitalism that we have advertised to our government and our power leaders advertise. It's not a world of free market. It's a world of a rigged Richard Schauffler, so judicial system rigged economy rig politics and and you are spending a lot of time, maybe you can what are. Richard Jr.: Maybe if you agree with that, what are the examples of that, I mean what are they talking about most of the time aren't they talking about how do I handle this, how do I fix this, how do I get that break. 00:20:11.03 Nolan I do agree with that. And I think um and helpful kind of scholar who described this long before the Epstein files were released was Sheldon Wolin talking about inverted totalitarianism, where you live in a society that looks like it has all of the structures of a free system and democracy. 00:20:26.81 Nolan But as you point out, they're they're hijacked behind the scenes at one level or another. And you see that extensively like in the files. So just to give you a couple examples, like in academia, 00:20:38.10 Nolan um It was John Mersheimer and Steve Waltz in like 2006. We're going to release one of the first like really extensive scholarly scholarly works on the influence of the Israeli lobby on US politics. 00:20:52.18 Nolan And you see in the files, Dershowitz is working with Epstein to discredit it behind the scenes to get that from not being released or if it's going to be released, don't have Harvard University's name on it, even though Waltz was at Harvard University. 00:21:05.33 Nolan So it's it's killing things like scholarship. um It's you know bill Bill Gates supposedly trying to conceal an affair that he's now admitted to, apparently. He calls Epstein. ah you know Larry Summers trying to get away with using his power over a student to extract... 00:21:25.56 Nolan ah sexual favors from them. He contacts Epstein to get that done. And then there's more like direct moneyed evidence where Epstein and Leon Black are going back and forth and Leon Black is being told by Epstein how much he has to pay for Epstein to seemingly make these calls or make these financial tweaks on his behalf. 00:21:47.61 Nolan um there's insider trading allegations with like Andrew, right? So you're friends with like the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew. So can get information so you can rig the markets. um and And to your your point about how um it's a different system. Folks will remember listening to this, the so-called Robinhood app or GameStop controversy, which essentially a lot of young people online found a way to fix the market for themselves with the fall of GameStop. And they did it through the Robinhood app. They were essentially doing what the Epstein class and all financial elites have done for forever. 00:22:24.95 Nolan But what happened? The owners of Robinhood app shut it down. You you know you you poor working people, you you don't get to play that game. that That's for the super wealthy. We have mechanisms to shut you down when you do that. And I think it's that that two kind of um tiered system of of justice is what's fueling a lot of the rage I was talking about earlier in the Epstein files. There there seems to be this kind of two-track minds. And one of the things I point out in my recent piece, though, is that You know, and you you mentioned this about the kind of democracy and theory versus what we have here in practice. the The freedom of the press is supposed to be an essential part of informing the public. And one of my great frustrations when I talk about the Epstein files is I'll get establishment press people who will say like, well, 00:23:09.88 Nolan If he was intelligence, it would have come out already. And and the assertion is like, well, we have a free press and you know we we find things. The Epstein files reveal like, no, that's not really the the case, man. A lot of these people in the press are compromised. they're They're taking directive from people like Jeffrey Epstein and how they orchestrate different stories. 00:23:29.72 Nolan And even in, they were reporting on e Epstein, like Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, a lot of these outlets wrote like um puff pieces on him. ah And they even think in 2003 Vanity Fair took out an allegation of a sex crime against him from a profile they wrote. 00:23:48.98 Nolan ABC's Amy Robach still claims that in 2015 she had evidence of Epstein's continued crimes and that ABC killed the story. So there's there's a lot in there that I think feeds this. And it it to me seems more like what Sheldon Wolin called like this inverted totalitarianism where people walk around with all these institutions that are seemingly part of a free society that has a democracy and they have this sense of choice between Republicans and Democrats. But there's there's a larger power structure behind that that's pulling the strings in a lot of cases. 00:24:19.51 Robert Scheer Well, you actually see it so visibly with what Trump is able to do into blackmailing the American universities. It's not connected directly with the Epstein thing, but the fiction of the university is the old liberal arts college and somehow the students or their family are paying for this education and dedicated teachers are giving it back to them. 00:24:42.36 Robert Scheer And instead, there's this whole other world going on of federal and state grants and private industry and big philanthropy, and that drives the salaries up of favored professors enormously. And then you have this other college system of, say, community colleges or state colleges on a different level. No, they they don't ever get ahead of the game. They don't ever get really out of debt. They don't ever get. So, you know, the lies, 00:25:07.70 Robert Scheer I know what let me ah say one big lie is these through the social network. Our crowd was the way it was described in one very important book on class in America. 00:25:28.13 Robert Scheer Why would you invite her to your daughter's wedding? What is her accomplishment in medicine, science, politics, philosophy? 00:25:38.51 Robert Scheer What is her accomplishment? Yes, she's the daughter of a a robber baron press lord in England who was disgraced and dies under weird circumstances. But really, why what is this Our Crowd? 00:25:51.83 Robert Scheer That was the title of a very important book. you know and And this you find even in, say, studying the rise of German fascism. there's our crowd and you know of course jews have to be excluded but the rest of us can get in and they'll take care of us and they'll destroy everyone else and i look at the clinton phenomena and they're supposed to be products of the 60s in the case of hillary she's supposed to be a product of right-wing 60s you know cohorta and bilkin's supposed to be a product of a progressive uh left 60s or something but the fact of the matter is 00:26:19.40 Nolan Mm-hmm. Cold water. Yeah. 00:26:30.36 Robert Scheer They all, they all learn how to be corrupt. That is really the main point of their education. How to get away with it. 00:26:41.50 Nolan Yeah, and it's it's funny you bring up education because another project I'm just finishing right now is the, it's called Mag Academy, and it looks how the corporatization of higher education led to the the takeover by Trump you were just describing. And, um you know, initially I didn't think this book had anything to do with Epstein, but there's so much overlap in the way that the corporatization of our formerly public structures, such as education or the press, um has really... 00:27:09.34 Nolan made them vulnerable because they are guided by the for-profit model, not the people. And so as you pointed out, when ah the um Trump comes in and he threatens to take away funding, the school's number one thing is funding. It's not a commitment to education. So they'll they'll bend the knee to him. Ditto with a lot of news media as well. We've seen that from these buyouts. it looks like CNN may be purchased by another Trump ally very soon here. 00:27:35.96 Nolan um but But your point about, i think that fits with what you were asking about with Ghislaine Maxwell going to Chelsea Clinton's wedding with Hillary Clinton. The political class isn't above that either. um They're motivated by money and fundraising and Epstein either personally, which he he did donate. but also through the people he had contacts with could get massive amounts of money. and And Bill Clinton was the first real democratic party presidential candidate to say like, let's shed all that like leftist fear about corporations, let the corporate dollars roll in him and Donna Brazil, the so-called new Democrats, 00:28:09.91 Nolan um they They really transformed the party and in doing that. And the party's never been the same. the The populist left rhetoric emerges every four years here and there on the campaign trail, but they govern totally like the old school corporate Republicans. And so rubbing shoulders with someone like Ghislaine Maxwell, the money and connection she has for the political class, that's a really big deal, especially in the nineteen ninety s to elevate yourself above other candidates. And it's all about that kind of club mentality. Because if I'm not in the club with Glenn Maxwell, she may put her money at whoever's opposing me. 00:28:43.16 Nolan And I think that's why you keep folks like Glenn Maxwell in that inner circle in the ninety s 00:28:48.38 Robert Scheer So what and have you learned while we wrap this up just since last week when we talked? What would you say the breakthrough or any breakthroughs? 00:28:58.10 Nolan um Well, like I mentioned some of them earlier, I think a lot of the pushback has been um major breakthroughs. These efforts were seen from grassroots efforts, whether it be like teacher unions or parent groups to try and um disentangle themselves from Epstein-associated institutions. and But we also did see some major revelations as well. um Epstein apparently was under two investigations that we didn't know about. One was in 2019. Apparently he had cultivated a relationship with the US Customs and Border Protection. 00:29:31.99 Nolan And what that relationship was or what the investigation found is not in the files. Relatedly, he was the focus of five-year DEA investigation, which started in 2010. 00:29:44.73 Nolan Again, don't really know what came of that investigation, but what's interesting about it is Epstein was also implicated in the so-called Iran-Contra affair in the nineteen eighty s where the airplanes that flew drugs in and out of the United States as part of the US s supporting the Contras and the weapons to Iran through Israel. 00:30:04.98 Nolan Epstein was at the center of all that, and the planes ended up um being transferred to Les Wexner, who comes back into that story as well. So this DEA investigation is is interesting for that reason as well. 00:30:21.91 Robert Scheer that I have missed this. Wait a minute. Wexler, who has not been charged with anything, I guess, right, yeah is nonetheless. 00:30:29.94 Nolan Now that I know 00:30:31.27 Robert Scheer And what is he? He's selling scanty clothes, right? He's selling provocative clothes to people who are normally thin, right? 00:30:40.37 Nolan Right. 00:30:40.79 Robert Scheer and setting the standard of beauty at an unattainable level for any healthy person. but And I could probably be sued, so no, let me say I'm sure it brings great joy in everything. and So not a categorical dismissal of the wonders of Victoria's Secret. But the fact the matter is, what is he doing at the center of this? You just tossed it off. Is this documented? Is he at the center of it? 00:31:18.71 Nolan The planes that, yeah, were used in the Iran... Well, because remember, the Iran-Contra affair had to be done in secret because Congress had told President Reagan that he could no longer fund the Contras. So they went to go use private planes to get money to the Contras. But the way they had to get money was by taking taxpayer-paid weapons and giving them to Iran... 00:31:38.30 Nolan who was supposedly our adversary at the time, who was fighting Iraq, who where we were sort of supporting, to get the weapons to Iran. The private planes went through Israel. Epstein helped broker that deal. 00:31:51.96 Nolan And then the funds would come back. When the planes finally landed here in the United States, that's when they were handed over to Wexner through, I believe, a subsidiary in Ohio. Yeah. 00:32:01.20 Robert Scheer You have to stop you for each one of these points because you're acting you have a lot of knowledge. But you are saying things where every clause opens up like a book that I want to read. 00:32:12.66 Robert Scheer What does it mean? Here's Iraq fighting Iran. We told what? It was a battle. We were on the side of Iraq because Iran was the wrong brand of Muslim religion and so forth. So we back S.A.T.H.S.A.N. Just think of that sentence. 00:32:26.46 Nolan Mm-hmm. 00:32:26.78 Robert Scheer United States, which then has to go to war to overthrow Saddam Hussein because we claim he's developing nuclear weapons and so forth and evil incarnate. Yet we backed him in the war against Iran. Now, most people don't know these little contradictions. They didn't know why the war was going. They never hear about it. OK, and you know, and again, in a free society, you're not going to be free if you don't have the basic information and know what's going on. 00:32:49.37 Robert Scheer So here's this bizarre situation where we're helping people control politics in Latin America. In order to do that, we're shipping things around and helping one side in a war between the Shiites and Sunnis, although it turns out Iraq has a lot of Shiites. So it's complicated and it never gets resolved. 00:33:08.38 Robert Scheer and and and and And then so how do we teach history? How do we keep reading about our society? It gets crazy. And then the idea that this, you know, degenerate Epstein is somehow central to this thing. 00:33:24.09 Robert Scheer Where does he come from? how did they, how does he get to be a player in this? He didn't even take a course in college about international relations or anything, right? I mean, 00:33:34.17 Nolan Not that we know of, no. How Epstein ends up brokering that deal for Israel something that we don't have too much clarity on. Dropside News are the ones who've reported this through documents they've obtained. believe these, I got to check, but I believe they came from the Epstein estate. um But to your point, yeah, and in Latin America at the time, and this is during Ronald Reagan's war on drugs, um the Contras had lost funding by the Democrats in Congress because of human rights abuses they were committing. So the Democrats said, you can we can no longer fund them. So Reagan used this kind of secret network as a way to circumvent Congress by taking U.S. weapons to pay to fund the Contras. there is there's a highly Speaking of highly controversial, there's a highly controversial question of whether or not um the Reagan administration knew that some of those flights that were coming in and out of Nicaragua to the United States had drugs in them. 00:34:27.67 Nolan And this was reported on by... Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury, who there was a huge campaign to discredit him. He reported this right when the internet was coming out though. So he put all his documents on the internet. um He got like small things wrong that were not like major to the story, like normal stuff that journalists kind of get wrong. 00:34:46.81 Nolan But there was this huge like effort to blow it out of proportion and they discredit the guy, he lost his career. I think he died of suicide and alcoholism. I believe he shot himself twice is what the coroner says. Gary Webb. So it's it's ah it's a really huge story. But Epstein is, at least from Dropside News reporting, Epstein plays a major role in helping to broker the deal with Israel on those airplanes, which end up with Les Wexner. 00:35:16.45 Robert Scheer What is Epstein's connection with Israel? You've gone through all these papers and, you know, Israel, has its own propriety about sex, right? It's a society that takes seriously the commandments of the Old Testament, at least claims to, right? Now, a lot of wild stuff happened in the Old Testament, but nonetheless, you would assume this is not not supposed to be a center of decadence. 00:35:45.14 Robert Scheer why so it all is what, power politics somehow trumps everything else? uh is that i mean what what what is the attraction what i mean yes he he's i guess jewish i don't know did he practice at all does he care about it does he uh 00:36:03.86 Nolan I you know i didn't didn't see any evidence of ah deep faith in the the files from Epstein. um but to you're so do kind of connect your question to what we were just talking about, like Epstein was had connections to arms dealers. 00:36:19.16 Nolan And that's how he ends up in Iran-Contra. But then he's central in brokering this deal with Israel. And this question of Epstein's relationship with Israel has has always been around. And there's a a few things that point to it and some of it's new information from this week. But but one is that, of course, Ghislaine Maxwell's father... 00:36:36.02 Nolan I mean, it's basically accepted, but we could say highly suspected that ah Robert Maxwell was Israeli intelligence. Her father, Glenn Maxwell's father, he got a state funeral when he died as well. 00:36:49.69 Nolan And a lot of people kind of describe him, his mysterious relationships, all these countries and people, because he was a media mogul as well as kind of being like Epstein before. Epstein. 00:37:00.34 Nolan um Epstein also had an extensive relationship with the former prime minister, Ehud Barak, who also ran Israeli intelligence. um This relationship was not just friendly. um It was not just financial either. They had a lot of financial dealings like Epstein was in financial dealings with like Peter Thiel and he would, he's the one who brought, he Epstein thiss one who brought Peter Thiel's Palantir to Ehud Barak. 00:37:22.90 Nolan um Israel also was heavily invested in developing spyware such as like Pegasus. And um Epstein was on the front line of talking to a lot of people in big tech who could, you know, make that happen, hackers and others. 00:37:36.98 Nolan ah And then we have, you know, Dropside News has done some great reporting on this in the files that, you know, You know, Epstein would work through it, mostly through Ehud Barak to make deals with countries like Nigeria and things like that on behalf of like Israeli companies. 00:37:52.50 Nolan And then in the files, there's one confidential human source and another FBI informant who both told the federal officials that they concluded that Epstein was Israeli intelligence. 00:38:03.32 Nolan And the bombshell that came out this week ah was that the files reveal that Israel put in a whole security apparatus inside Jeffrey Epstein's property. 00:38:14.58 Nolan And this included alerts, cameras, all kinds of things. So Epstein's property was managed by Israeli intelligence at some level as well, which means they have some insight in who was going in and out of that property and what was going on there in the Epstein files. 00:38:35.17 Nolan That's yeah what a lot of people conclude is because everybody who walked in there would theoretically be under this ah type of surveillance. now the surveillance itself definitely existed, whether or not they have content to the use for black males on them. 00:38:44.18 Robert Scheer What's kind reason is so weird is because, first of all, Russiagate was largely predicated on the idea that the Russians had something on Trump. There was all these stories about his peeing on women in hotels or something. 00:39:03.07 Robert Scheer But yet it was freely asserted that somehow this decadence and they took advantage of it. And you're spinning a tale here or that's being revealed. 00:39:13.89 Robert Scheer that would show vulnerability on a high level. And ah and and the connection with Palantir is really strange. We've accepted Palantir as sort of a normal entity in terms of the media. 00:39:26.56 Robert Scheer This is a company that was started, first of all, with an investment from the CIA, from In-Q-Tel. it's a company that had no client during its first three years other than the cia as a result they had access to ci data they perfected their models of investigation by having access to the most secret trove of information right that was done on on that level. And Peter Thiel, who turns out to be a person of strong views, let's just say, about the limits of democracy and freedom, you know, and so forth. He's actually central to this. He's major to Palantir, right? He's major. And then 00:40:09.11 Robert Scheer You know, what what happened if if Epstein had, first of all, he needed sex because that's group p belin that in. That turns out to be the central lecture here. but But it seems like the non-sexual part is actually more, I don't know what, the consequential in terms of how the world works. 00:40:29.68 Nolan Thank you. 00:40:31.64 Robert Scheer Now, you use the sex to intimidate people or get blackmail or lure them and so forth. But really, there's a story here that I don't think has been at least as a reader, i don't feel I've read enough on what what does this all mean? Or this spy apparatus, which is the most powerful in the world and can destroy anybody's life either physically by blowing them up or and smearing them or so forth, is in the hands or of really corrupt people, right, that will do anything for their own wealth and survival. 00:41:06.78 Nolan Yeah, and that's why it's funny you bring up Russia there, because the only time US media seems to be willing to even engage with the idea of Jeffrey Epstein being connected to intelligence or blackmail, they desperately want to connect him to Russian intelligence. MS Now always runs segments on this. 00:41:21.98 Nolan You know, he definitely had connections to u s intelligence. He definitely tried to ingratiate himself with the Russian government, but the connections with Israel are just like overwhelming. It's it's ridiculous to even put them in the same category as the rest. But to your your point about this powerful network, 00:41:39.51 Nolan um yeah I always remind people that ah big tech Silicon Valley emerged out of the military industrial complex and the federal government used its money to pick winners and losers. Like you talked about Palantir, Oracle, Larry Ellison's company is another one, largely thanks to government contracts is how it was able to dominate the market. 00:42:00.21 Nolan So you you always have that private public partnership and it it emerges sometimes in the public eye, like when Snowden revealed the extent of U.S. s surveillance by these companies on behalf of the the federal government. 00:42:12.89 Nolan But usually we we think of them incorrectly as kind of separate. um What we do here, what I just described there, is is also occurring in Israel as well. The development of things like spyware. Pegasus has long been discussed by critics of human rights and and privacy. 00:42:34.81 Nolan but this spy network does have the potential for blackmail um that was always a theory about epstein and yeah he lures people in with sex he also lured them in with money that could be you know the idea you need funding because you're an academic um or he would lure them in with um careers like if you want an art career or a modeling career um he knew really how to wave a carrot to lure people into his orbit And from all accounts, he seems like someone who would just never stop. He wouldn't let you get away. Like in one of the emails, Leon Black is basically trying to cut some business ties with Epstein. And Epstein just like, no we're going to do it the same old way and you're gonna pay what you always paid. It's it's he he kind of controls it in that way. Now, the blackmail potential is is huge. It's always been a theory. um We've seen little evidence to prove actual blackmail. ah The. 00:43:25.17 Nolan Bill Gates one is probably the most famous where Epstein is writing to himself about how to blackmail Bill Gates. um But beyond that, we haven't seen too much in terms of that. 00:43:40.63 Nolan Okay. um Bill Gates wrote to, or ah sorry, Jeffrey Epstein wrote to himself in his email that he um was going to Basically tell Bill Gates or remind Bill Gates that he knew that Gates had had an affair when he was married to Melinda. This is when he was married to a Melinda. And that in that affair, he caught an STD and then he gave the STD to his wife, Melinda. And he was asking Epstein how to give his wife antibiotics to get rid of the STD without her knowing. 00:44:13.08 Nolan and asked Epstein to to do that. So Epstein was gonna use that as leverage against Bill Gates. Bill Gates denies this, but recently he did just admit that he did have an affair ah with a Russian woman. 00:44:35.10 Robert Scheer But, you know, I mean, really, what It's a nightmare world because you've got such a huge PR machinery to justify, or explain a away, rationalize everything and create these images. So Bill Gates is the good guy. He's stamping out diseases. He came up with great products. so Jeff Bezos, you know, it's a, wonderful and Amazon supplies this and you know, and then yet, you know, and Bezos can put things in his publication that he personally owns Amazon doesn't even own it, right? 00:45:10.23 Robert Scheer and And yet he's a a war manufacturer. He's, ah you thisc you know, providing basic technology to the whole military apparatus. And it's the same thing, you know, Elon Musk. Yes, I still these cars, but I also got all these other things that are very lucrative. And we're talking about Rome and its decline, I think. 00:45:33.56 Robert Scheer And I use the techno-fascism because the delivery mechanism here is more than it's different than patriotism, which was one mechanism, what George Washington warned against the, you know, pretended patriotism and justifying that's been traditional. 00:45:51.78 Robert Scheer And it's more than religious divide and conquer and scapegoating as we're doing now also scapegoating with undocumented people and immigrants and so forth so kind trump's speech was very heavy on the other that you're going to destroy central to the speech but at the heart of it 00:45:53.93 Nolan Thank 00:46:13.29 Robert Scheer It's something that at least, not going to defend more overtly totalitarian societies, but where at least there's some restraint by some bureaucracy or some, or maybe democratic governments, like in Europe, for instance, European Union, there's some pushback on privacy issues. There's some pushback against Google. There's some pushback against Google. 00:46:36.47 Robert Scheer just rearming or building all the time. And if you could just take a few more minutes to consider this techno fascism thing, which we talked about last week, I think it explains a lot. 00:46:50.84 Robert Scheer The technology is so powerful, so rapidly expanding, so effective in so many ways, not the least being misinformation, not the least shaping the narrative, but providing for fake journalism, you know, everything else. 00:47:06.23 Robert Scheer Right. But also ah it's wedded to government, as you just pointed out, comes out of government, it's financed by government. And it's wedded to the elitism of a certain kind of capitalism. That's a betrayal of Adam Smith, just to tie these big themes together. After all, of Adam Smith's capitalism was self-correcting. 00:47:30.68 Robert Scheer people who misbehaved in this way would be punished because their consumers would reject them and they would be exposed to it by the odds. Okay, that's the invisible hand. 00:47:41.41 Robert Scheer You don't need government doing it through regulation because the market will do it Well, that turns out to be bogus. They eliminated competition in the markets. So the companies you mentioned have no effective competition, right? 00:47:53.94 Robert Scheer Whether it's Amazon, whether it's Oracle, whether it's, you know, Google, uh and uh so there's no there's no really consumer input consumers have no real choice and in fact most of the time the consumer not even sort as a real consumer forking out money you're not paying for google you're not paying for a lot of things and they want your information so they'll get you in yeah you know uh yes exactly and so what you've got is really 00:48:26.43 Robert Scheer An extremely unhealthy state of affairs. and And that's why I don't think it's going too far to call it techno-fascism because what if there's any meaning to this label of fascism, it's the ability of essentially private corporations to use a totalitarian politics and a divisive politics and a scapegoating politics to justify their own power and greed and to maintain it. 00:48:54.17 Robert Scheer That, actually I think, it is a pretty clear assumption description of what happened in Germany. And yes, you have to have a demon of the Jews who and other groups or the Russians or the gypsies. And so everybody can hate them. 00:49:07.96 Robert Scheer And yes, you have to give the consumers some Volkswagens and some other benefits and some appearance of employment. But in the main, it's asserting power du t your power By any means necessary, including concentration camps, including the destruction of race. That's where the fascism comes in. that a Mercedes, BMW, Messerschutz, all those things said, hey, Hitler, whatever you got to do. 00:49:39.35 Robert Scheer whatever you gotta do, and we'll build pillings for you, and we'll do this, and we'll support you, and we'll even try to get some support internationally with our friends in America or elsewhere. But in the main, we don't wanna go under to these Bolsheviks and these radicals, a mob, right? And and so the crypto-fascism is not a just a slogan you throw out there. 00:49:59.16 Robert Scheer It is the marriage of high tech with political dominance on the part of a super wealthy class. That's the key, a super wealthy class that can only maintain its power because the public sees that it's failing them. 00:50:15.22 Robert Scheer So even Trump and his, I wish it was his farewell interest, in his you know and yeah State of Union speech, 00:50:23.08 Nolan State the Union. 00:50:26.49 Robert Scheer had to pay had to make reference to the economic problems yes we have to stop the gouging by pharmaceuticals yes we have to make sure you know trade agreements go to the benefit of american workers yes we have to yes yes yes but that's just window dressing the main thing is if you have people who have inordinate power, you're a billionaire class, right? 00:50:49.30 Robert Scheer And how do they stay in power in a situation where the public will increasingly demand that they give up their power or that it be curtailed or made more responsible? You do it as Orwell talked about it. We're finding an enemy by divide and conquer and so forth. And, and, uh, 00:51:07.67 Robert Scheer And your ally in this case, because you're a communications professor, the ally in this case is that media is not your grandfather's media. There's no Tom Paine writing pamphlets since the time of the revolution. There's no responsible local papers telling the truth about what's going on. There's not even NBC or CBS. I mean, they get bought up, they get intimidated. So, you know, we kind of we want to make this an even hour. And if you've got the time, we're at 51.39 now. Really, you don't talk enough on these things. 00:51:44.18 Robert Scheer I'm serious. So you have so much knowledge, but really give us the bigger picture here. First of all, do you think that label doesn't work? Is it an exaggeration? You've got a better one. 00:51:55.10 Robert Scheer Take it away because, you know. 00:51:56.44 Nolan No, i think I think it works. And I think you described the infrastructure correctly. And and you know say what you want about Americans. One thing they are skeptical of is big government. And if you... told them the big government was going to build the surveillance infrastructure that you just described, they would probably outright reject it. But that's the you know genius of this corporatization, right? You put a smiley face on it, ah an emblem, you make it seem like it's fun, it's cool, it's in the new consumer market, and people just adopt it widely with without even thinking. And that infrastructure is is so normalized in in people's lives now, carrying around these 00:52:34.12 Nolan Devices that have capabilities that we created with our own taxpayer dollars, the internet, a touch screen, GPS, um all those kinds of things came from tax dollars, but we're we're handed over to private industry um and sold right back to us and and now normalize this infrastructure. 00:52:50.20 Nolan And, um you know, not not to go too deep in this history lesson here, but like during Trump's, you know, first term, I sort of recognize that the guy was a buffoon, that the elites would entertain him so long as they had to. And I thought he acted like a fascist, but he didn't have the infrastructure around him. 00:53:10.52 Nolan um When Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris took over, they allowed like whatever resistance amongst elites there were to Trump to totally dissipate. And by the end of um the last year of Biden's administration, i saw you know not only some labor unions, but also industries like big tech and news media start to rally around Trump. And that's really when I started to get the chills because that kind of consolidation of power is what occurs right before what you were just talking about, the emergence of these fascist regimes. 00:53:44.25 Nolan um From that though, I take, you know as a historian, I like to always think of the roads we missed. you know Why do we allow this industry to consolidate? Why don't we break these folks up? Why didn't we put regulations in place to protect people's ah privacy? ah The other lesson I also take from from history as well, as someone who's read ah extensively about ah fascism, 00:54:05.88 Nolan the overwhelming amount of fascist regimes that try and consolidate power fail. um The ones that do take power don't last that long, typically speaking, for the reasons you just said. that They operate on an illogical set of assumptions. They they cannot ah maintain any sense of stability or continuity for for that long, resistance being a part of it. But it's not even, i mean, bottom-up resistance is certainly a part of it, or outside resistance, like the Bolsheviks you were mentioning. but also resistance within elite circles. um once Once you've really stamped out the other, you need to find some other excuse to continue the fascist war on the other. And leaders start getting desperate because they can feel their power slipping when they don't have those kind of excuses or legitimate power. And they start doing things like starting wars that they can't win. And it becomes more and more obvious to the state that the regime isn't in power and elites in the inner circle are now concerned that the person they've kind of hitched their ride to 00:55:00.41 Nolan is not going to succeed. That's when you get like these attempts on people's lives. like Hitler had people in his own circle trying to kill him up until his death. so I think if this this plays out, my hope would be that the people wake up, organize, put pressure on this administration to avoid the full consolidation of that that fascist regime. but It would take a lot of work. and you've You've pointed this out in the last two podcasts. I think it's an apt point, which is big tech has to be a part of that conversation. You have to break up this industry. You have to recognize it for for what it is. It is a system that operates on surveillance. It operates from an anti-human ideology that sees humans as products. It believes democracy is an outdated way of life. 00:55:45.14 Nolan um And so we need to attenuate, I think, these tools, if we're going to keep them at all, to serve the purposes of democracy. Otherwise, it might be the end of it. 00:55:54.26 Robert Scheer Well, just to take the last three minutes and push this, the big problem we have is big tech is big brother. That's really what you just described, smiley face. 00:56:06.71 Robert Scheer Big tech is ingenuous in its ability to manipulate, to sell, to package. That's what they do. They don't make things really. Those are made in China or India or someplace. you know I mean, when did they make iPhones in Cupertino? They're very good at packaging, at manipulating, it marketing, branding, all these things, and and ah setting up defenses against critics and you know changing the language and so forth. So we really are in this Orwellian moment. 00:56:41.37 Robert Scheer even though he wrote before big tech you know we're really but huxley wrote about the market and the seductions of you know the the market economy and it is absolutely startling you on college campuses i dare say it's very difficult to get a discussion going about this because many people benefit from it they have contracts They replace students with them, companies. they This is their coinage. Oh, I can get you in for an internship or something at Apple or Google or so forth. And Epstein is simply the ugliest face of it that we've had so far. 00:57:19.83 Robert Scheer Right. He did it crudely. he exploited the obvious. You don't do this with underage girls. You know, you find more delicate ways and happier ways. Right? So once again, and I'm not saying you shouldn't keep your work going, but once again, we have an easy target here. We have an easy target. And when I watched that State of the Union, while the Democrats sat there stony face during a lot of Trump stuff. They also applauded at key moments of the right symbol of patriotism, the right middle symbol of America great again, the right symbol of this. And they certainly don't want to cut their ties to big tech. 00:57:57.18 Robert Scheer So the real issue, and I'm going to stick to this and cut this off now, but the the big issue really is we don't have alternative political movements or parties, which they do have in Europe. 00:58:12.75 Robert Scheer And they still have some vitality and they kind are reflected in European Parliament votes and so forth. We don't have that. We're trapped. But I mean, when you look and that's why I think Clinton being in that hot tub is so symbolic of what we're talking about it's jason epstein's hot uh jason epstein jason is a great editor of mine at the uh at random house sorry jason uh but uh it's you know wallowing 00:58:44.82 Robert Scheer in that and then now that okay we have to expose and we have to see it but the fact is they'll find some other way of entertaining themselves but the basic the thing itself is so corrupt you know 00:58:58.90 Nolan Yeah, no, the system is, and ah you mentioned about the lack of alternatives. I mean, that that's also by design. Clara Matei wrote this great book called Capital Order, where she talked about that there's an element of fascist regimes that's largely understudied, which is when... 00:59:16.63 Nolan the ah center or pro-corporate, pro-market party becomes the left and it neutralizes any real left alternative. That's what allows fascist regimes to emerge because then the center is seen as the left. It's the status quo. And when it fails, people go to the right-wing populism. 00:59:34.52 Nolan And I think you see that here in the the United States. you know the The idea of the Democratic Party is the left party is at this point is like laughable. But for decades now, you haven't had a real like organized left, even just a labor union movement has been squashed in this country, for example, or you go to like, Bob Putnam talks about Robert Putnam talks about in um bowling alone, how we just have a lack of like community civic centers, organizations, ah that organization infrastructure has been gutted for this idea of like individual pursuits of the market or scrolling through your screen or becoming a brand. And so when you you talk about how other countries have these parties, they also have organizational bases behind them. That's something else that that the left really doesn't have. that's why it makes it easier to get squashed. And if the left does create like even like the slightest viable alternative, like a Bernie Sanders campaign or Mom Donnie, for example, they're not only fighting the right, they're also fighting the Democratic Party, which tries to squash him as well. So you end up fighting both the major parties which have that infrastructure behind them. 01:00:36.97 Robert Scheer Well, it's a gloomy note on which to end, but then and we do have to remember to reinforce that point that the Nazis had socialism in the and their label and Hitler was not above co-opting leftist slogans, just as Trump did in his State of the Union, things that, oh, suddenly I wanted to cheer until I realized, wait a minute, This is drinking, a dangerous drug. Okay. Thank you. I want to thank Robert Scheer for keeping these shows together and booking us and all that. And then as our producer, and we'll see you Maybe go back to next Wednesday, ah next week. or What's the best day for you? Let's. Source: https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/08/the-real-state-of-the-union-epsteins-shadow-network-and-the-illusion-of-american-democracy/