Merrick Garland and "The Octopus"

Drugs. Money laundering. Human trafficking. PROMIS. Iran-Contra. BCCI. Nuclear technology. Maxwell. Epstein. Kushner. Trump. Stolen elections. Russia. Israel. The story of how it’s all connected.

This piece is long and twisty, so don’t be afraid to hit the play button if needed. This work becomes all-consuming—as it should when democracy is on the line.

I’m tired, and in some ways feel a bit like Danny Casolaro. We’ve spent the last year and a half investigating the stolen elections—but we just can’t stop looking at the data and checking the math on the fake county vote banks.

We have more than 15 million views—and we have all of you—so we’ll keep shining the light and remain deeply grateful you’re here.

Our Georgia and Nevada vote bank articles should drop next week. We know how they did it. And we know how to catch them.

Onward.

The Octopus

It’s the largest “good ol’ boys network” imaginable, and decade after decade, its primary objective has been to protect itself at all costs.

To be clear: Trump’s ties to Russian mobsters predated his 2015 campaign announcement by at least 30 years. Beginning in the 1980s, Trump Tower and several of his other properties became havens for Russian oligarchs laundering money, some of whom were later tried and convicted.

The DOJ could have arrested him at any point during that period, but never did. Instead, institutions remained silent as he announced his candidacy.

And Merrick Garland could have acted swiftly in prosecuting Trump for his crimes—but he didn’t. We’ll return to that later.

Donald Trump was—and remains—one of the most dangerous threats to national security in American history, yet in 2015 the intelligence agencies chose to do nothing to stop him.

Because in protecting Trump, they were also protecting themselves.

It is also important to understand the distinction between Zionism and Judaism. The difference is significant, and it matters. This piece discusses Zionism and its impact on democracy in the United States—an issue distinctly separate from Judaism.

This story does not begin with any single scandal. It begins with a pattern—one that resurfaces again and again across decades of American political and financial life.

It is a story that numerous investigative journalists have explored, at least in part: Danny Casolaro, Craig Unger, Seth Abramson, Sarah Kendzior, Christian Hansen, Ellie Leonard, Kait Justice, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Dissent in Bloom 🌻, our team, and others.

This article brings those threads together to present a larger picture—one intended to help people understand how long corruption has persisted and how accountability might finally be pursued. And that includes confronting stolen elections.

In our last piece, we traced the lineage of far-right ownership of election equipment companies and examined how long these systems have been used to influence outcomes in favor of the GOP:

In this piece, we attempt to explain the “why.”

The failure of multiple Departments of Justice—including Merrick Garland’s—to hold Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein accountable is connected to a criminal network that ties together nearly every major political and financial scandal in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Before his untimely death on August 10, 1991, investigative reporter Danny Casolaro believed those threads were connected.

He called it “The Octopus.”

The Undertow

On January 5, 1950, Estes Kefauver (D-TN), a Roosevelt Democrat, set out to take on the mob.

The Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce—later known as the Kefauver Committee—held televised hearings in cities across the country. More than 600 witnesses testified. For many Americans, it was the first time organized crime had a public face.

Among those named was Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky), widely described as the financial architect of the mob. He operated across gambling and offshore money laundering networks and helped broker cooperation between Jewish and Italian-American criminal groups.

The Kefauver hearings reshaped federal enforcement, laying groundwork for tools later formalized in statutes like the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). They also forced a shift within the FBI, whose director J. Edgar Hoover had long minimized the existence of a national crime syndicate.

Kefauver rose to national prominence as a leading anti-corruption voice. Thirteen years later, he died of a heart attack on August 10, 1963, at age 61.

Lansky, meanwhile, avoided the immediate legal fallout that ensnared others, maintaining a lower profile while continuing his operations. In the 1970s, he faced federal tax evasion charges and attempted to relocate to Israel under the Law of Return. He was denied residency, returned to the United States, and was ultimately acquitted in 1974.

One of Lansky’s known associates was Sol “Red” Steinhardt, a gambler and fence who moved within the same circles. His son, Michael Steinhardt, would later become a prominent hedge fund manager with ties to Les Wexner.

Networks evolve. Names change. Industries shift.

The connective tissue—money, access, and influence—remains.

Treacherous Waters

Danny Casolaro was a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience, an established author, and a successful Washington correspondent. In the summer of 1990, he sold his stake in Computer Age Publications to return to investigative journalism, and his friend and coworker Terry Miller suggested he look into the INSLAW case.

INSLAW was a software company founded by former NSA employee Bill Hamilton and his wife, Nancy. In the early 1980s, the Department of Justice contracted the company to develop a program that would allow U.S. attorneys to track criminal cases across jurisdictions. The result was the groundbreaking relational software PROMIS—the Prosecutor’s Management Information System.

PROMIS quickly became a key administrative tool of the DOJ.

But by the second year of the contract, the DOJ had stopped making payments and forced INSLAW into Chapter 11 bankruptcy—an action that prompted Elliot Richardson, the attorney general who resigned rather than obey Nixon during Watergate, to take notice of the case.

INSLAW sued the DOJ for stealing the PROMIS software and, in 1987, won INSLAW v. United States in federal bankruptcy court. Judge George Bason Jr. stated that officials within the Justice Department had attempted to bankrupt INSLAW through an “outrageous, deceitful, fraudulent game of cat and mouse, demonstrating contempt for the law and any principle of fair dealing.”

Judge Bason was later removed from the bench and replaced with S. Martin Teel Jr., a Justice Department lawyer involved in the dispute, and the ruling was ultimately overturned on appeal on the grounds that the lower courts had ruled too broadly.

The government had the money to pay INSLAW for the contract, so why didn’t it? Why steal the software and force the company into bankruptcy instead?

As Casolaro dug deeper, he became convinced it was far more than a software dispute. After connecting with the Hamiltons, they introduced him to electronics and computer expert Michael Riconosciuto, whose claims of covert operations and government corruption ultimately set Casolaro on the path of investigating what he called the Octopus Conspiracy.

Casolaro came to believe that INSLAW was just one piece of a much larger global network—one connecting the Iranian hostage crisis, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Watergate, and the Bay of Pigs. According to him, these events were not isolated, but orchestrated by a rogue intelligence network operating behind the scenes.

He planned to expose it all in a book he intended to call The Octopus.

In the summer of 1991, Casolaro met intelligence officer Joe Cuellar, who had recently returned from Iraq. They discussed much of what Casolaro was investigating, including INSLAW, and Cuellar offered to introduce him to a contact within the Department of Justice.

On August 6, 1991, Casolaro’s housekeeper, Olga, helped him pack a black leather tote bag. She remembered him placing a thick stack of papers into a dark briefcase. When she asked what he had packed, he replied, “I have all my papers ...”

He had been typing for two straight days, and as he left the house, he said, “Wish me luck. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Casolaro traveled from his home in Fairfax, Virginia, to Martinsburg, West Virginia, to meet several contacts, including one within the IRS and Cuellar’s source, who had promised a major breakthrough.

He told friends and family he had finally “cracked the case” and showed them a key document: a photocopy of a $4 million check signed by Iran-Contra arms kingpin, Adnan Khashoggi, and made out to Manucher Ghorbanifar. Casolaro believed this to be a key piece to the Iran-Contra operation.

And in the weeks leading up to the trip, Casolaro warned his brother not to believe it if anything bad happened to him.

At 3:00 p.m. on Friday, the day before Danny’s death, Bill Turner—a friend and confidante—met Casolaro in the parking lot of the hotel to deliver papers he had been keeping in a safe. The materials included two sealed packages bearing Casolaro’s name across the seal, along with a packet of Hughes Aircraft documents belonging to Turner.

Turner claimed he did not know what the sealed packages contained. Still, it appears he may have known who Danny was preparing to meet in Martinsburg because he reportedly wanted Casolaro to show the Hughes Aircraft papers to whoever the contact was.

Turner later told reporters he was “scared shitless” by information he had seen connecting Oliver North and BCCI.

“I saw papers from Danny that connected back through the Keating Five and Silverado”—the failed Denver savings and loan where Neil Bush had served as an officer.

Former Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe later told Bill Hamilton that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky, had been planning to meet Casolaro at the Martinsburg hotel on the day of his death. According to Ben-Menashe, Casolaro was not meeting with the FBI regarding PROMIS, but to turn over information involving drug trafficking and an organization known as “The Company.”

On the morning of August 10, 1991, Casolaro was found dead in the bathtub of his hotel room with multiple deep lacerations to both wrists—so severe that tendons had been severed.

Maintenance supervisor Eric Weidman described smeared bloody handprints on the wallpaper and countertop, later stating, “Something very wrong had taken place in here.”

A housekeeper reported seeing bloody towels in the bathroom shortly after the body was discovered, as though someone had attempted to wipe blood from the floor.

Journalist John Connolly later criticized the handling of the scene:

“The police reports of the investigation are certainly not professional. Fingerprints get lost, get messed up. They drain the tub without a strainer. Sloppy work. Police have a rule in this country. Government people have a rule. When they screw up, they cover up. Sad but true. Do I think they covered up here? Yes I do.”

Paramedic, Don Shirley, also questioned the scene, asking the police, “What do you think he did? You think he held his hands up and squirted the wall?” After learning Casolaro’s identity, he asked his supervisor how Casolaro used his arm with severed tendons to cut the other arm.

Authorities quickly ruled the death a suicide, but Casolaro’s notes and research files—materials he was known to carry everywhere—were missing. His body was embalmed before a full autopsy could be completed, and the hotel room was cleaned before his family was notified.

Even so, toxicology reports reportedly revealed traces of Hydrocodone and a tricyclic antidepressant—drugs that, according to Casolaro’s brother, he did not have prescriptions for. No corresponding pill bottles were found in the room, at his home, or in his Blue Cross Blue Shield medical records.

Dr. Anthony Casolaro stated:

“The actual autopsy report described a bruise on the arm and a bruise on the head which were never accounted for. I was told there were no signs of any struggle. Additionally, the tips of three fingernails were missing from one hand.”

Friends and family immediately challenged the suicide ruling, insisting Casolaro had been upbeat, focused, and energized by what he believed was a major breakthrough.

“He was always upbeat and positive,” Dr. Anthony Casolaro told The Washington Post days later. “He was not depressive. He was just not the type of guy to kill himself.”

Even the note found in the room did not resemble his personality. Those who knew him said he would have left something far more detailed.

To present the full story fairly, Casolaro was technically unemployed, in debt, and had taken out loans against his home to finance his investigation. Could he have become despondent after the contact stood him up and decided to take his own life? Possibly. But his family has long maintained that, if he needed money, he knew they would have come through for him.

The night before his death, Casolaro had been seen at a local Pizza Hut, working while waiting for someone who never arrived. The next morning, he was dead—and whatever he had been working on was gone.

After his death, Bill Hamilton referenced a call from software expert Michael Riconosciuto in a recorded conversation with an unnamed source. The source described Riconosciuto as “extremely intelligent … one of the best in the business,” to which Hamilton replied:

“This former NSA guy says, I don’t know how you heard that name … but you can get killed just knowing that name.”

The source responded, “That’s very possible.”

Riconosciuto was an electronics and computer expert working as research director on a weapons-design project at the Cabazon Indian Reservation in California in 1980.

In May 1990, he went on record to state that in October 1980, he and Earl Brian—close Reagan associate and owner of Hadron, a direct competitor of Inslaw—were recruited by Bill Casey, then Reagan’s campaign director, for a covert mission to Iran.

Earl Brian was fluent in Farsi, and the operation involved transferring $40 million to block a deal between the Carter administration and Iran to release American hostages before the election—what later became known as the “October Surprise.”

Riconosciuto claimed that Brian’s reward for participating in the operation was access to the stolen PROMIS software, which he then sold to law enforcement agencies worldwide for profit and to raise funds for covert government operations.

He further claimed that the PROMIS software was brought to him by Earl Brian as part of an intelligence operation, with a request that he install a “trap door”:

“I was asked to modify this existing software and develop a trap door … a trap door is any type of function that a third party can use to break into a system … they wanted to sell PROMIS to other governments and spy on what they were tracking … so that’s what I did.”

He also stated that Peter Videnieks, a Justice Department official associated with the INSLAW contract, later visited the Cabazon-Wackenhut project alongside Earl Brian.

Eventually, INSLAW received a letter from the Canadian government requesting French-language versions of PROMIS. It had already been installed within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Canada’s equivalent of the CIA)—software they shouldn’t have had unless it had been taken from INSLAW and sold to them.

Upon learning this, Bill Hamilton remarked:

“Fu*kin’ Riconosciuto is telling the truth. See, that’s what makes this thing unbelievably big.”

PROMIS was part of a global surveillance effort—the early architecture of digital surveillance as we know it. In today’s terms, PROMIS was the Palantir of the 1980s.

Danny Casolaro began his book with the murder of Riconosciuto’s friend and business partner, Paul Morasca, linking Philip Arthur Thompson to a string of murders for which he served remarkably little time.

Before Morasca’s death came the 1991 Cabazon triple homicide, another case tied to the PROMIS software and the Wackenhut-Cabazon project in California. Earl Brian and Michael Riconosciuto had been brought into the project by Dr. John Nichols—believed at the time to have CIA ties—and the private security firm Wackenhut to develop weapons on Cabazon tribal land.

Nichols planned to use the tribe’s sovereign status to operate an arms factory on the reservation and ship weapons to Central American rebel groups, including the Contras.

Riconosciuto later submitted an affidavit detailing his role in the modification and distribution of PROMIS. He also described a recorded call in which someone he identified as being from the DOJ threatened him for speaking publicly about the operation.

Three days later, the DEA arrested him on drug charges.

He was sentenced to 26 years in prison—charges he maintained were fabricated to silence him. Casolaro later traveled to California to search the grounds where Riconosciuto said he had discarded the tape during his arrest, but he was unable to locate it.

Riconosciuto had also contacted an attorney regarding the death of his friend and partner, Paul Morasca in San Francisco. Morasca was described as the financial counterpart to Riconosciuto’s technical expertise. According to Morasca’s girlfriend, he had become entangled with a man calling himself “Jason Smith,” a supposed CIA hitman whose real name was Philip Arthur Thompson.

In reality, Thompson was an FBI informant and convicted murderer who had repeatedly been released from prison. Riconosciuto later claimed Thompson was the individual who framed him on the drug charges, acting at the direction of the DOJ.

Riconosciuto also urged Casolaro to contact Brian Leighton, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Fresno who had helped prosecute 29 members of a drug-and-arms trafficking organization known as “The Company.”

On April 28, 1982, The San Francisco Chronicle published an article titled “Story of Spies, Stolen Arms and Drugs,”describing The Company as a sprawling criminal enterprise.

The article stated that the organization consisted of “about 300 members, many of them former military men or ex-police officers with nearly $30 million worth of assets, including planes, ships and real estate.”

The author went on to say that “federal drug agents said the organization had imported billions of dollars worth of narcotics from Latin America, and was also involved in gunrunning and mercenary operations.”

Former Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe later told Bill Hamilton that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky, had been planning to meet Casolaro at the Martinsburg hotel on the day of his death. According to Ben-Menashe, Casolaro was not meeting with the FBI regarding PROMIS, but to provide information related to drug trafficking and The Company, which was headquartered in Lexington.

This is where the story begins to intersect with Robert Booth Nichols, owner of Meridian Arms Corporation and a figure connected to the Wackenhut-Cabazon project, arms sales to the Contras, and FIDCO—a National Security Council corporate cutout network operating in Lebanon.

According to multiple accounts, Robert Booth Nichols had been mentored by Harold Okimoto, a World War II veteran and intelligence operative with ties to former CIA Deputy Director and Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci. Okimoto, owner of Island Tobacco Corporation, had also been linked to racketeering investigations dating back to the 1960s.

According to Riconosciuto, George Pender’s company FIDCO had been established to finance reconstruction efforts in Beirut and Damour, Lebanon. FIDCO operated alongside a companion company, Euramae Trading, which distributed PROMIS software throughout the Middle East.

Riconosciuto claimed the software distribution was facilitated through IBM Tel Aviv and another intermediary known as Link Systems because direct dealings with Arab governments were a political no-go.

Nichols later contacted Casolaro directly, offering to help him understand the bigger picture. Over the course of several meetings in Washington, D.C., Nichols connected Wackenhut, BCCI, Nugan Hand Bank, the CIA, arms trafficking to Iran and the Contras, money laundering operations, and intelligence operatives including Edwin Wilson.

According to Casolaro’s notes, Nichols told him:

“These scandals that bubble to the surface—they’re all connected to a rogue intelligence network that goes back decades … I’m speaking of people in intelligence, internationally, across the board—not just the CIA.”

Then, Nichols warned him:

“I wish you weren’t a writer. You know too much—and now you’re gonna have to die.”

Casolaro later wrote: “Was this a sinister joke or a friendly warning? I couldn’t tell the difference.”

Casolaro’s Octopus theory ultimately centered on eight men he believed represented nodes within a much larger interconnected network spanning intelligence agencies, organized crime, arms trafficking, narcotics operations, and the Justice Department itself:

• George H. W. Bush — WWII Navy pilot, CIA Director, vice president, president, Iran-Contra, and allegations tied to covert operations and the Contra drug pipeline, and allegations tied to the Franklin child prostitution scandal

• Dr. Ray Cline — WWII cryptanalyst, OSS officer, former CIA deputy director, and chief analyst during the Cuban Missile Crisis

• Thomas Clines — CIA operative tied to the Bay of Pigs, Laos operations, Chile’s Project FUBELT, and Iran-Contra, EATSCO plea bargain, convicted of tax evasion related to overseas accounts

• Richard Helms — OSS officer, CIA director, Operation CHAOS, MKUltra file destruction, Watergate, and covert Chile operations, convicted of misleading Congress

• E. Howard Hunt — OSS officer, CIA operative, Bay of Pigs participant, 1971 plot to malign President Kennedy, arrested and convicted for role in Watergate

• Dr. John Nichols — CIA operative, the Cabazon triple-murders, Cabazon-Wackenhut, later convicted in a murder-for-hire case involving five people

• George Pender — CEO of FIDCO, a National Security Council (NSC) corporate cutout, Lebanon

• Ted Shackley, known as “The Blonde Ghost” — WWII Army Counterintelligence officer, CIA operative, Bay of Pigs, deputy in charge of secret bombing of Laos, Phoenix Program, Project FUBELT in Chile, Nugan Hand Bank heroin scandal, Iran-Contra, EATSCO scandal (arms smuggling & overbilling the DOD)

Casolaro believed these men represented an interconnected intelligence structure spanning drugs, arms sales, organized crime, and the Justice Department—all operating beyond public oversight.

In the weeks before his death, Bill Hamilton gave Casolaro one final lead—a connection between Robert Booth Nichols and Michael Abbell at the DOJ. Abbell had served as director of the Office of International Affairs in the Criminal Division during Reagan’s tenure and was responsible for handling the extradition of Gilberto Rodríguez, head of the Cali cartel.

The cartel was responsible for roughly 70% of the cocaine flowing into the United States, and Abbell was supposedly paid $50,000 to stand down on the extradition.

Casolaro decided to call Robert Booth Nichols to discuss it—a move that would have directly exposed Nichols.

Then, Danny Casolaro traveled to Martinsburg, West Virginia, to meet his sources and the contact provided by Joe Cuellar—and was found dead in his hotel bathtub on August 10, 1991. To this day, his family and friends dispute the official ruling on his death.

It was later revealed that Joe Cuellar had worked in psychological warfare operations for the CIA. An eyewitness also reported seeing a man resembling Cuellar leaving Casolaro’s room the morning the body was discovered.

The lead was never investigated.

The Robert Maxwell Tentacle

Holocaust survivor and media tycoon Robert Maxwell was born Jan Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in Czechoslovakia in 1923. A World War II veteran in the British Army, he parlayed his work in the press section of the British Foreign Office into a publishing empire—and a seat in Parliament.

He was described as an intelligence asset for multiple governments, operating in lockstep with the Office of Strategic Services. None officially claimed him; each pointed to the others. In the 1960s, he served two terms as a Labour MP for Buckingham while maintaining a lavish lifestyle. According to the British press, at his Oxford estate, Headington Hall, Maxwell hosted extravagant parties that were allegedly used as “honey traps” to gather compromising information on powerful figures.

Leverage.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government briefly investigated Robert Maxwell for his ties to the INSLAW software PROMIS—stolen by the DOJ, modified by Israel, and sold worldwide in versions said to contain “backdoors.” The same company and software Danny Casolaro was investigating just prior to his death.

Casolaro was pursuing leads on Earl Brian of Hadron, INSLAW’s competitor. According to former arms broker and CIA contract operative Richard Babayan, Brian played a central role in marketing PROMIS to the governments of Iraq, Libya, and Korea. When Brian could no longer expand those sales, high-ranking Israeli intelligence officer Rafi Eitan allegedly recruited British publisher Robert Maxwell to continue the operation.

In a sworn affidavit, investigative author Gordon Thomas recounted that Eitan told him Maxwell alone sold more than $500 million worth of espionage-enabled versions of PROMIS, including licenses to the UK, Australia, South Korea, Canada, and the Soviet KGB.

In 1984, Maxwell traveled to New Mexico on behalf of his company, Pergamon Press, to sell the PROMIS software to American defense installations. He was alleged to have distributed the software to dozens of foreign intelligence agencies, militaries, and corporations, allowing Israel to spy on virtually every country that used it.

PROMIS was a tracking software, but with the Israeli “backdoor” in place, users of the software were under surveillance—everything they accessed could be watched by Israel. If deployed within the systems of nuclear weapons facilities Sandia and Los Alamos, it would have been the most significant intelligence breach in history at the time.

And it likely was—we just never heard about it.

The FBI had been alerted by whistleblowers at Sandia Labs and opened a foreign counterintelligence investigation. According to them, Robert Maxwell was selling the Israeli-modified version of PROMIS, containing the surveillance backdoor, to Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Why didn’t Americans hear about this egregious breach of intelligence? Because the DOJ under Ronald Reagan opened the investigation and quickly closed it without charges.

But the nuclear scandal didn’t begin in the 1980s. In the final months of 1960, the Eisenhower administration learned that Israel had been developing nuclear capabilities in secrecy since the late 1950s, centered on the Negev Nuclear Research Center. Separate allegations in the 1960s—often referred to as the Apollo Affair—claimed that weapons-grade uranium was diverted from U.S. sources to Israel.

Thirty years later, Robert Maxwell was selling the Israeli-altered PROMIS surveillance software to U.S. nuclear labs, while Israeli scientists were visiting those facilities in droves.

Then in 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former Dimona technician, revealed that Israel had developed a nuclear weapons program, including fission and thermonuclear capabilities, with estimates of up to 200 warheads. He was abducted by Mossad in Rome, convicted of treason in a secret “trial,” and served 18 years in prison—11 of them in solitary confinement.

In 1988, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his actions.

The late 1980s marked a period of financial collapse for Robert Maxwell. He siphoned funds from his employees’ pension accounts to prop up his debt-ridden empire. According to investigative journalists Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon in Robert Maxwell: Israel’s Superspy, Maxwell also began profiting from money laundering for Semion Mogilevich through the Bank of New York, reportedly in exchange for helping secure him an Israeli passport.

He then helped obtain Israeli passports for nearly two dozen of Mogilevich’s associates. Mogilevich would later be identified by Robert Mueller as a top target and placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted list.

In 1990, the Santa Fe Institute—a private research organization founded by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory—received a $300,000 endowment from the Maxwell Foundation and named a chair in Maxwell’s honor. This connection is important as it would later intersect with Jeffrey Epstein.

In 1991, Robert Maxwell fell into the drink near the Canary Islands. His body was flown to Israel, where he was buried on the Mount of Olives on November 10, 1991. His funeral was attended by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President Chaim Herzog. At the graveside, Shamir stated that Maxwell “has done more for Israel than can today be said.”

That might be the understatement of the century.

The same year, the “official” account of Ghislaine Maxwell’s entry into Jeffrey Epstein’s life begins.

The Epstein Tentacle

“In 1963, you were around 10 and I was 23…” — Dr. Stephen Levy, in a 50th birthday tribute to Jeffrey Epstein, noting the young Epstein’s early interests in math, music, Abraham Lincoln, and his “Mona Lisa smile.”

It’s a small detail—but in this story, timelines matter.

At the time, Dr. Levy served as president of Phi Delta Kappa at Columbia University. Also at Columbia: Donald Barr—father of William Barr—who had moved from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) into the early CIA orbit and was recruiting while running Columbia’s Science Honors Program.

In 1964, Barr left Columbia to become Headmaster at the Dalton School—a position he said he couldn’t turn down. A decade later, he hired Epstein as a teacher. No college degree. No teaching credentials.

Just access.

Barr’s 1973 novel Space Relations—a science fiction story involving elite exploitation and sexual control—reads today less like fiction and more like a blueprint. At minimum, it raises uncomfortable parallels.

For more on the Barr crime family, don’t miss this piece by Kait Justice: Is the Barr Family Blocking The Epstein Investigation Because It Would Expose What's Being Built Right Now?

By 1974, Epstein was teaching at Dalton, embedded among the children of some of the most powerful families in New York. From there, he began building the relationships that would define his career.

One of them: Ace Greenberg.

Greenberg, longtime CEO of Bear Stearns, hired Epstein—despite his lack of qualifications—and brought him into a world of immense capital and influence. Among the firm’s orbit: Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, the Bronfman family, and Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer known for his role in Iran-Contra—but also with ties to the Octopus conspiracy.

Danny Casolaro reportedly found a “missing link” between high-level scandals involving Khashoggi. Shortly before his death, Casolaro showed friends a key document: a photocopy of a $4 million check signed by Khashoggi and made out to Manucher Ghorbanifar, a shadowy Iranian arms dealer central to the Iran-Contra affair.

As for Epstein, the pattern is consistent: access granted first, credentials later—if ever.

According to former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe and key source for Danny Casolaro, Epstein was already present in Robert Maxwell’s orbit in the 1980s. If true, that would mean Epstein knew Robert before Ghislaine Maxwell claimed he did—something that directly conflicts with her sworn statements to the FBI.

At Bear Stearns, Jeffrey Epstein’s rise was rapid. As noted in a previous article, within four years he had embedded himself in a financial ecosystem deeply entangled with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)—at the time, one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world. Roughly $13 billion is estimated to have moved through Bear Stearns during this period.

BCCI also maintained a budget—reportedly around $6 million annually—for procuring underage girls to compromise powerful individuals. Sound familiar?

Again, leverage.

But BCCI was also a bank where Inslaw’s Prosecutors Management Information Systems (PROMIS) software was reportedly deployed by the CIA. And Jamie Gorelick—the woman responsible for Merrick Garland’s career—served as counsel to BCCI attorneys Robert Altman and Clark Clifford.

In 1995, she served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration’s Department of Justice and helped block H.R. 4862, a bill proposed to investigate the theft of the PROMIS software. According to senior intelligence officials in an interview with Wired:

“PROMIS, a database management software, was appropriated as part of a covert intelligence operation authorized by the Reagan administration. Once taken from Inslaw, PROMIS (which stands for Prosecutors Management Information System) was modified and then clandestinely installed in various computer systems, allowing U.S. intelligence agencies—particularly the CIA—to access the computers of foreign banks and intelligence services through a secret ‘backdoor.’”

Stick a pin in this Gorelick-Garland piece.

In April 1981, Epstein was deposed by the SEC in connection with insider trading tied to the Bronfmans’ attempted takeover of St. Joe Minerals. He denied wrongdoing and “resigned” from Bear Stearns the following month.

Soon after, he traveled to the United Kingdom, where he rubbed elbows with arms dealer Douglas Leese and Mark Thatcher. Leese had ties to BCCI and is reported to have introduced Epstein to both Adnan Khashoggi and Robert Maxwell—effectively opening the door into global arms and intelligence networks.

By August 1981, Epstein had established Intercontinental Assets Group, presenting himself as a specialist in asset recovery for wealthy clients and governments.

His client list soon included the aforementioned Iran-Contra arms kingpin Adnan Khashoggi. Around this same period, Epstein obtained a fraudulent Austrian passport under the name Maurius Robert Fortelni. The document listed his residence as Saudi Arabia and included travel stamps from multiple countries, including Israel.

By 1983, Epstein had partnered with J. Stanley Pottinger, a former DOJ official who had prosecuted a civil rights case against Donald Trump in 1973. Pottinger would later be linked to illegal arms transfer activities involving the Hashemi brothers. When they were indicted in 1984, Pottinger was not charged.

Somehow key evidence—three tapes in which Pottinger discussed arms deals—had gone missing.

But there’s more to it than that.

The Hashemi brothers were also linked to the Octopus conspiracy. Jamshid and Cyrus Hashemi—Iranian arms dealers tied to allegations surrounding the 1980 “October Surprise”—were accused of brokering meetings in Madrid between Reagan campaign manager William Casey and Iranian officials to delay the release of American hostages until after the election in exchange for future arms deals.

Jamshid Hashemi claimed that he and his brother personally arranged the meetings, and later testified to the House October Surprise Task Force in 1992 and in the Iran-Contra affair.

Cyrus Hashemi later worked as a U.S. government informant and undercover middleman in a massive Customs Service sting operation during the mid-1980s, overlapping with the period when White House officials were secretly running the arms-for-hostages enterprise.

Cyrus died mysteriously in London in July 1987 while congressional committees were beginning to probe the broader scandal.

Fast forward to the present timeline.

According to the depositions of Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke, six clients were identified as being primarily responsible for generating Jeffrey Epstein’s financial fee revenue:

• Leon Black

• Glen Dubin

• David Rockefeller

• Rothschild Banking

• Les Wexner

• Mort Zuckerman

Leon Black, the former CEO and co-founder of Apollo Global Management alongside Marc Rowan and Josh Harris, maintained a longstanding relationship with Epstein. Between 2012 and 2017 alone, Black reportedly paid Epstein between $158 million and $170 million in fees. However, a letter Black wrote in 2003 for Epstein’s 50th birthday book shows their relationship extended back much further.

Then there is Les Wexner—the Ohio State benefactor based in Columbus, where according to the Epstein files, Jeffrey Epstein was making $25,000 quarterly payments to the Ohio State OB-GYN department. Wexner has claimed Epstein took roughly $46 million from him, yet no criminal charges were ever filed.

The Zionist Tentacle

In 1985, the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program was established at Tel Aviv University by Prof. Yehuda Elkana. Highly selective, it drew participants from Israel’s National Defense College, the civil service, and the global Jewish diaspora. It was funded in part by a $10 million contribution from Les Wexner through the Wexner Heritage Foundation.

In May 1987, David Kimche, a prominent former Mossad official, was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. Kimche was a well-known operative nicknamed the “Man with the Suitcase,” and often associated with Israel’s back-channel diplomatic and intelligence efforts during the Iran-Contra era.

Investigative reporter Cheri Seymour suggested that Kimche and another former Mossad agent, Michael Harari may have been part of the Octopus conspiracy and involved in Danny Casolaro’s death. A liaison between Israeli leadership and the Reagan White House, Kimche managed to avoid testifying under a diplomatic immunity arrangement.

At the time, he was in the United States meeting with Rabbi Herbert Friedman, then president of the Wexner Heritage Foundation.

By February 1988, Jeffrey Epstein was managing Wexner’s finances.

That same month, the Wexner Heritage Foundation hosted a national fundraising retreat in Palm Beach titled Models of Ethical Leadership. The keynote speaker: Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 1991, Wexner and Charles Bronfman helped establish a private “Study Group,” later known as the MEGA Group—a network of wealthy businessmen focused on philanthropic and strategic initiatives related to Israel, including Hillel International, as well as institutions shaping U.S. foreign policy discourse such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Documents from the Wexner Heritage Foundation archives show 2001 MEGA Group membership included major figures across multiple sectors: Leonard Abramson, Charles and Edgar Bronfman, Lester Crown, Bill Davidson, Max Fisher, Israel Klabin, Ronald Lauder, Marvin Lender, Mort Mandel, Bernie Marcus, Peter May, Bud Meyerhoff, Michael Steinhardt, Henry Taub, Larry Tisch, and Wexner.

The Wall Street Journal once described the group as a circle of highly influential Zionist billionaires. But the connections run deeper.

As noted earlier, Michael Steinhardt’s father, Sol Steinhardt, was associated with Meyer Lansky—the organized crime figure widely regarded as one of the architects of modern offshore money laundering in the twentieth century.

The Bronfman family, meanwhile, built its fortune through liquor distribution during Prohibition.

Years later, Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt co-founded Birthright Israel (Taglit) with the support of Benjamin Netanyahu. Although the program was originally launched by Bronfman and Steinhardt, it later received substantial financial backing from Trump megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars.

In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney over his entire estate. Epstein also served as a trustee of the Wexner Foundation from 1991 to 2007. To outside observers, he appeared to have parlayed his time at Bear Stearns into one of the most powerful financial positions imaginable.

But the structure of that access raises questions.

Some analysts have pointed to overlapping timelines—financial, political, and intelligence-linked—to argue that Epstein’s rise was not incidental. Within that framework, he is described as an intermediary: someone capable of cultivating relationships with powerful individuals, facilitating access, and potentially gathering compromising information.

This is where concepts like “honey traps” and kompromat enter the discussion.

Epstein had no formal financial credentials and lacked the pedigree typical of elite finance circles, yet was granted extraordinary control over wealth and access to influential networks. To many observers, that trajectory is difficult to explain.

Unless something else was at work. Something more sinister than anyone could have known at the time.

An intelligence operation—designed to elevate Zionism as a priority within the U.S. government, to sustain funding and access for Israel’s nuclear program, and to do so by cultivating influence over powerful decision-makers by luring them into Epstein’s depraved circle.

The New Mexico Tentacle

After her father’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell—now having “met” Jeffrey Epstein in 1991—introduced him to scientists at the Santa Fe Institute in the 1990s through her father’s endowed position.

New Mexico: where the world’s first nuclear weapon was detonated. Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the bomb was designed and built. Sandia National Laboratories, where nuclear weapons components are engineered and tested. Kirtland Air Force Base, which houses the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and sits above one of the largest collections of nuclear warheads in the world.

Both Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories operate under the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), part of the United States Department of Energy.

Their primary responsibilities:

• Nuclear weapons design (Los Alamos)

• Engineering, testing, and systems integration (Sandia)

• National security, cybersecurity, energy, and advanced research

For a deep dive into the New Mexico connections, make sure to read Alisa’s work: Epstein Was Never Properly Investigated in New Mexico Despite Reports to FBI. Follow the Money Far Enough and It Leads to Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, DJT, and a Trillion-Dollar Nuclear Deal.

Then, in 1993, Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch from the sitting governor of New Mexico, Bruce King, using attorney John J. Kelly, then a partner at Hinkle, Cox, Eaton, Coffield & Hensley.

Nine months later, Kelly was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico. Meaning that in 1996, when Maria Farmer filed a complaint against Epstein with the FBI, John J. Kelly looked the other way.

Fast forward to today, and we find decades of buried investigations tying together the Reagan administration, Robert Maxwell, PROMIS, nuclear technology, New Mexico political networks, the FBI and DOJ, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Israel, and Russia.

In an interview with Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein explained that scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories were leaving government research programs to join private firms in Santa Fe, and that this migration of scientific talent was part of what drew him to the region.

And who owned property next to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch? Henry Singleton—an OSS veteran, Reagan insider, and founder of Teledyne.

Singleton became legendary on Wall Street for his unconventional stock buybacks between 1972 and 1984, repurchasing more than 90 percent of Teledyne’s outstanding shares and generating extraordinary returns for investors. But despite his reputation as a financial genius, Teledyne became embroiled in major scandals during the late 1980s and early 1990s, ultimately paying more than $100 million in fines tied to inflated Pentagon billing and illegal export activity.

Teledyne was also awarded lucrative defense contracts alongside a network of private-sector firms that regularly collaborated with Los Alamos and Sandia on weapons systems, research and development, intelligence infrastructure, and advanced technology projects.

Los Alamos and Sandia have long partnered with major defense and technology contractors through federal contracts, joint research initiatives, and classified systems work. Common collaborators include:

• Lockheed Martin

• Boeing

• Northrop Grumman

• RTX Corporation

• General Dynamics

• Honeywell

• Leidos

• SAIC

There is enormous money flowing through the military-industrial complex, which we will examine more closely in the next section. But it is important to understand that this defense ecosystem also intersects with surveillance infrastructure, intelligence operations, and the privatization of space—bringing figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk into the picture.

Epstein arrived in New Mexico through Ghislaine Maxwell and into close proximity with scientists and researchers connected to the same laboratory ecosystem where her father, Robert Maxwell, had reportedly helped distribute the PROMIS surveillance software years earlier.

Not a coincidence.

By 1996, Maria Farmer and other victims had already begun reporting allegations to New Mexico authorities.

No charges were filed.

And the cover-up continued—spanning six Departments of Justice and more than three decades.

The New Mexico property has since been sold to Don Huffines, a Trump-aligned politician who is now overseeing excavation work at Zorro Ranch despite ongoing investigations. Huffines has stated that he intends to demolish the property and transform it into a “Christian” camp.

Then, last week, an episode of 60 Minutes Australia aired featuring Rep. Melanie Stansbury, during which survivors described the sexual abuse of both boys and girls connected to the ranch.

The Elections Tentacle & the Military-Industrial Complex

As previously covered, Pro V&V is one of only two federally accredited laboratories authorized to test and certify the machines used to count votes in U.S. elections. The company is owned and operated by former CIBER employee Jack Cobb.

CIBER itself was a former election certification lab whose accreditation was later revoked after findings that it had certified voting system changes without proper testing, documentation, or auditing procedures.

At the time, the lab was overseen by Shawn Southworth who was taking payments from ES&S and Diebold—just as Jack Cobb has been doing at Pro V&V, taking payments under the table from Dominion.

For a deeper examination of Southworth, Pro V&V, and Jack Cobb, see the article published last year by Dissent in Bloom: Yes, The Voting Machines Were Changed & PRO V&V's Jack Cobb? His Fingerprints Are All Over It.

For years, election-integrity experts have pointed to financial relationships between certification labs and voting-machine vendors—including ES&S, Diebold, Dominion, and Pro V&V—as evidence of a deeply conflicted oversight system in which the entities responsible for certifying election equipment are financially intertwined with the companies whose systems they evaluate.

As outlined in our last piece, elections have been compromised by election equipment companies owned by far-right operatives and testing labs since they were made a part of our election system.

Now we move to how those systems intersect with New Mexico, the military-industrial complex, and the broader defense-contractor ecosystem.

Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, Alabama, is the second-largest research park in the United States and one of the largest in the world—a hub for defense contractors working on missile systems, satellite payloads, cybersecurity, and classified infrastructure.

The park is home to roughly 300 organizations, including major defense and aerospace firms such as Teledyne Brown Engineering, RTX Corporation, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Leidos, Blue Origin, Boeing, and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology.

As documented in court records, Pro V&V—the voting equipment certification lab under scrutiny for unlawful conduct—alongside its tenant, Dominion Voting Systems, with ties to far-right ownership, and the Election Assistance Commission, with Heritage Foundation operatives at the helm, also sits in Cummings Research Park.

This is where multiple threads begin converging.

Who’s across the street from Pro V&V, Dominion Voting and the EAC? SAIC and Leidos.

Why does this matter?

Because Shawn Southworth — the former CIBER executive associated with past election-certification controversies and allegations of taking money under the table from vendors — was pushed out of the election space and promptly landed at SAIC across the street.

Which is odd, considering he earned an associate degree in computer science in 1990, and nothing in his résumé suggests expertise in anything related to nuclear systems.

And SAIC’s founder, J. Robert Beyster, previously worked in nuclear research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. From its inception, SAIC focused heavily on nuclear weapons effects, systems modeling, and scientific analysis, embedding the company within the national nuclear research ecosystem from the beginning.

In 2013, SAIC split into two separate companies: SAIC and Leidos. Both continued supporting the nuclear and defense ecosystem through work involving:

• Modeling and simulation

• Nuclear weapons effects, including blast and radiation modeling

• High-performance computing systems used by national laboratories

• Systems engineering tied to nuclear infrastructure

• Cybersecurity for Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration systems

Those activities frequently intersect with programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.

SAIC and Leidos are not simply contractors. They are also major political actors that spend millions lobbying Congress and federal agencies tied to defense, intelligence, cybersecurity, and energy policy.

The U.S. national security ecosystem in New Mexico brings together major contractors and federal labs in a tightly interlinked network. Companies like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Leidos and SAIC all maintain programmatic ties to Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, as well as nearby installations Kirtland Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Range.

These connections are about shared participation in federal contracts, research programs, and testing environments spanning nuclear systems, advanced computing, missile defense, and space technologies. Over time, this has created a revolving ecosystem of contracts, personnel, and technical collaboration, where national labs, military facilities, and private contractors operate in parallel—often on the same programs—within a concentrated geographic and institutional footprint.

These companies share something else in common: they all thrive under Republican leadership, supporting military expansion and reduced oversight. Hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts are handed out when Republicans are in the majority.

The Russian Tentacle

By 1984, Trump Tower had become a revolving door for Russian organized crime. Under Rudy Giuliani’s prosecutorial focus on the Italian mafia, the balance shifted—out went the old guard, and in came the Russians. Around the same time, Donald Trump was on record making pro-Russia comments in a media interview.

For an excruciatingly in-depth account of Trump’s ties to Russia, make sure to read Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding In Plain Sight.

That same year, Soviet Army veteran David Bogatin purchased five luxury condos for $6 million, with Trump overseeing the transaction himself. By 1987, Bogatin was under investigation; he admitted to money laundering and using the properties to conceal assets. A Senate inquiry identified him as a significant figure in Russian organized crime.

His brother, Jacob Bogatin, was a known associate of Semion Mogilevich.

Trump’s efforts to establish a hotel in Moscow date back to that same year, 1987. In The Art of the Deal, he recounts discussions with Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. The visit to Moscow was arranged at the highest levels of the Soviet diplomatic service, reportedly with assistance from the KGB.

The trip occurred during a period when KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov was seeking to expand recruitment of Americans by refining the agency’s operational methods abroad. And two former KGB operatives—Alnur Mussayev and Yuri Shvets—have publicly identified Trump as a Russian asset, stating he was recruited in 1987.

Trump returned from the trip and placed a full page ad against NATO and America’s policies towards Russia.

In 1986, Donald Trump obtained complete ownership of the Harrah’s Plaza Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump had difficulty initially finding funding for his partnership buyout.

Ace Greenberg and Bear Stearns stepped in with the issuance of $250 million in junk bonds to finance Trump and buyout Harrah’s casino ownership.

In 1988, after a protracted legal battle with Merv Griffin and Resorts International, Donald Trump assumed ownership of the partially completed Taj Mahal Casino project in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump was able to complete the Taj Mahal project with $675 million in junk bond financing from Drexel Burnham Lambert.

The manager of the Taj Mahal bond issuance at Drexel Burnham was Leon Black.

Keep in mind that Leon Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management, was Epstein’s largest client and sat on the international advisory board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

In the early 1990s, Trump’s financial empire faltered. The Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy in 1991, followed by Trump Plaza and Trump Castle in 1992, along with the Plaza Hotel in New York. During this period, Wilbur Ross, then an investment banker at Rothschild Inc., represented bondholders and helped structure a deal that allowed Trump to avoid personal bankruptcy, though at the cost of significant ownership stakes.

Ross was later reported to have business ties intersecting with networks connected to Vladimir Putin’s circle.

Financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank—which has faced penalties related to Russian money-laundering schemes—continued to extend credit to Trump when other banks would not.

By 1992, Trump had lost all of his properties except Trump Tower.

During this same period, the KGB circulated internal guidance outlining how to identify and cultivate potential recruits in the West. The criteria included ambition, ego, financial vulnerability, and the potential to rise to positions of political power. Particular emphasis was placed on identifying compromising material—financial, personal, or sexual—that could be used as leverage.

And similar to Epstein, Putin found his perfect mark in Donald Trump: an arrogant, superficially charming, conscience-free opportunist, who cheated his way through college only to land on his father’s payroll. And with the same penchant for raping underage girls, he could also be controlled. Donald Trump was the ideal subject to carry out Putin’s agenda while maintaining leverage over him.

And let’s not forget the 2008 Florida property sale that supposedly fractured the bromance between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Just months after filing for Chapter 11 and struggling to secure financing, Trump paid $41 million in cash for the property.

According to Epstein, Trump didn’t have the cash on hand—it was “given” to him. Trump later sold the property in 2012 to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch, for $95 million—more than double what he paid.

The Art of the Deal is, in fact, the art of money laundering.

There are decades of documented financial ties between Donald Trump and Russian oligarchs, many of whom have faced money-laundering allegations tied to purchases of Trump properties. Additional connections extend into Trump’s inner circle, including Felix Sater, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone. Hell, Rex Tillerson, Trump’s former Secretary of State, received the “Order of Friendship” from Vladimir Putin in 2013.

Records from Eastern Bloc intelligence services suggest that a file on Trump may have been opened as early as 1977, the year he married Ivana Trump, a citizen of then-communist Czechoslovakia—placing him on the radar of both Czech intelligence (StB) and U.S. agencies.

We already know Don Jr. met with Russian operatives prior to the 2016 election, that’s public knowledge.

And to top it off, the latest tranche of Epstein files revealed that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Epstein colluded with Peter Thiel and Russia to rig it for Donald Trump. Then, on election night 2016, Epstein sent a one word email to Peter Thiel:

“Wow.”

Peter Thiel on democracy:

This anti-democratic, government welfare queen—who colluded with Jeffrey Epstein and Russia to rig the 2016 election—and deepened his relationship with Eaton Corporation, the company with access to 70% of our election equipment just before the 2024 election, is one heartbeat away from the presidency through his bought-and-paid-for vice president, JD Vance.

And according to the Epstein files, it appears that Peter Thiel’s bounce plan is New Zealand, where he has secured citizenship.

In 2025, Donald Trump took office and quickly cut aid to Ukraine. He has since dropped sanctions on Russia, and as of April 30, 2026, is moving to remove all U.S. troops from Germany following a 90-minute call with Vladimir Putin.

To quote Jürgen Nauditt:

“He doesn’t see Putin as an enemy of the free world—he sees a kindred spirit. This 90-minute call wasn’t a conversation. It was a deal. The withdrawal of troops from Germany isn’t ‘negotiating tactics.’ It’s payment.”

It just doesn’t get any clearer than this. Trump is loyal to a red, white, and blue flag. It’s just not the American one.

The Kompromat

Though the exact date of their first meeting is unclear, in 2002, Trump told New York that he had known Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years—and according to former casino president Jack O’Donnell, Trump and Epstein were seen together at a Trump casino in Atlantic City in 1989.

In 1992, footage surfaced of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a party in Palm Beach. Jean-Luc Brunel’s modeling/trafficking pipeline was already in place and predated the agency in which he later partnered with Epstein.

Florida businessman George Houraney told The New York Times that he organized a “calendar girl” party exclusively for Trump and Epstein featuring 28 women and in 1994, Paolo Zampolli organized a “Look of the Year” contest for John Casablancas in Ibiza.

Soon after, Casablancas encouraged him to relocate to New York, where he founded ID Model Management in SoHo.

One of Zampolli’s models was Adriana Mucinska, also known as Adriana Ross, who we now know to be part of the “Core Four,” identified by accusers as part of a group of women trained by Ghislaine Maxwell to procure girls for Epstein. All four of whom managed to find themselves on the receiving end of Epstein’s sweetheart deal and suffered no consequences as co-conspirators.

In 1999, Trump founded his own modeling agency.

All three agencies ran predatory industry practices at the time: recruiting young international models, facilitating visas, providing housing, and managing finances in ways that created dependency between models and agencies.

Zampolli’s business ties included major commercial relationships, including work connected to Victoria’s Secret, which at the time was owned by Leslie Wexner—the longtime associate and financial backer of Epstein.

And we learned that during the summer of 2008, Rudy Giuliani stayed in a bungalow across from Mar-a-Lago and accessed the property through underground tunnels. He said he was struggling with alcohol abuse at the time.

These tunnels are accessible from the beach and are located roughly one mile from Jeffrey Epstein’s Brillo Way residence in Palm Beach—creating a direct and discreet route between Trump and Epstein in which girls could easily be trafficked.

Within these structures, wealthy and powerful men with access to underage girls became normalized.

According to Trump, “It was the 90s.”

And just when it all looked like it was about to come crashing down, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019, in an apparent suicide.

Bill Barr was at the helm of the DOJ.

Corruption as Deep as the Sea

Are Russia and Israel running parallel criminal networks through Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and now Jared Kushner—and was the foundation of Epstein’s operation laid as early as his childhood?

That seems to be the most logical conclusion.

And as more connections come into focus, it becomes clear why Trump warned Marjorie Taylor Greene that his “friends will get hurt” if the Epstein files are made public. And “public” is doing a lot of work here.

The roughly 3 million files we’ve been granted access to—redacted—represent just 1–3% of the total. The Manhattan raid alone recovered around 50 terabytes of data. Across documents, photos, and videos, we’re looking at something closer to 100 million files.

For an in-depth expose on Michael Wolff and his ties to Epstein, don’t miss Ellie Leonard’s piece: The Beginning of the End of Co-Conspirator, Michael Wolff

Now consider the period during which Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein moved within the same social orbit—and that Trump biographer Michael Wolff, himself a bosom buddy of Epstein, has a tape of Epstein describing himself as Trump’s “closest friend.”

We’ve seen a handful of flight logs and handwritten messages, yes. But where is the correspondence from the 1990s through 2019, when Epstein died? Are we to believe they never exchanged written communication?

Again, we’ve only been granted access to 3 million files, redacted.

We aren’t waiting on the “remaining 3 million files.” We’re waiting on 97 million files—at a minimum.

The End Game

The usual suspects: greed. Power. Wealth.

Achieved through corruption. Decades of investigations buried by the FBI and the DOJ. Because in doing so, they protect themselves.

Why did Merrick Garland slow-walk the investigations and subsequent lawsuits involving Donald Trump?

One could surmise that a deeper investigation would have required scrutiny of Jared Kushner—and by extension, Garland’s close friend and colleague Jamie Gorelick, the Harvard-connected attorney widely credited with shaping Garland’s career.

Merrick Garland and Jamie Gorelick go back to their days at Harvard under Alan Dershowitz—Epstein’s longtime attorney, who has himself faced allegations related to Epstein’s trafficking network. He just likes “massages” from underage girls.

Gorelick’s résumé intersects with multiple controversies over the decades, including matters tied to BCCI and the PROMIS-era investigations that Danny Casolaro pursued. But the most politically sensitive issue for Garland to avoid was Gorelick’s role as counsel to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner during the security-clearance process for the Trump White House.

Security clearances that never should have been approved.

Despite repeated concerns raised within intelligence and ethics circles, Jared Kushner—who maintained close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu dating back to childhood—ultimately received access to highly classified intelligence.

Intelligence he later parlayed into a $2 billion Saudi payout—and now leverages as an unofficial, non-governmental sidekick to Steve Witkoff in matters involving Russia and Israel.

For all intents and purposes, Jared Kushner is the new Jeffrey Epstein. And for a deeper dive on Kushner and the Red Sea Conspiracy, don’t miss Seth Abramson’s Proof series.

Meanwhile, the corrupt system worked as designed. Garland slow-walked the investigations, ran out the legal clock, and in doing so protected Donald Trump—while also shielding his longtime ally Jamie Gorelick, and by extension, the FBI and DOJ.

Isn’t it interesting that the one person Donald Trump has no conflict with is Merrick Garland? In fact, he’s barely mentioned him—aside from praise in 2021 when Garland became Attorney General.

The Tentacles:

For Zionist actors: nothing was off the table—even leveraging blackmail—to extract sensitive weapons and nuclear-related information from New Mexico–based scientists and ensure continued strategic influence within the U.S. government to keep Israel deep in the legislative wallet. Both Republicans and Democrats are compromised.

For the military-industrial complex actors: the continuation of the American war machine in perpetuity—generating hundreds of billions through government contracts, expanded under Republican administrations and funded by taxpayer dollars.

For the “old school” GOP and the Heritage Foundation: to implement a Christofascist framework of governance through their manifesto, Project 2025—and lock in control of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court for decades via rigged elections and judicial appointments handpicked by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society.

For Red Sea Conspiracy actors: to gain access to the White House first through Jeffrey Epstein and then through Jared Kushner—and to ensure future decisions related to Middle East priorities remained top of mind for Donald Trump.

For Peter Thiel: to build a long-envisioned technological and political order—leveraging surveillance infrastructure and influence embedded within the DOD to break down democratic structures and establish himself as the top of the order once JD Vance moves into the Oval Office.

For Elon Musk: to secure a Trump victory to eliminate investigations, protect himself from legal exposure, and capitalize on geopolitical relationships—particularly with Putin—in pursuit of strategic resources and unprecedented personal wealth.

For Vladimir Putin: to use his asset, Donald Trump, to weaken NATO and cut off aid to Ukraine—advancing his decades-long dream of reestablishing the old world order.

And for Donald Trump and Epstein co-conspirators: he was the conduit for all of them to remain out of prison through a stolen election; then he shut down aid to Ukraine in alignment with Vladimir Putin and is cashing in on the presidency to the tune of billions.

Our theory as to why the 2024 election data doesn’t match pre-election polling and appears so far out of sorts: the GOP engaged in its typical, decades-long election rigging to benefit itself and the military-industrial complex, while Elon Musk and Peter Thiel stepped in with the fake county vote banks to ensure a win for themselves.

The result? The left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. They over-rigged the election.

In 2024, Donald Trump couldn’t fill a stadium and resorted to paying people on Craigslist to attend rallies—yet he somehow managed to win all the swing states just above the threshold for automatic recounts, flipping 88 counties red while none flipped blue.

A 34-count convicted felon and adjudicated sexual predator supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan’s 1984 historic win.

It’s okay to laugh here. Even if it’s just so you don’t end up in a padded room wearing an uncomfortable jacket.

To semi-quote George Carlin: There’s a club—and we ain’t in it. Elite billionaires with no concern for humanity are colluding with hostile states—and stealing elections to eliminate accountability for decades of horrifying corruption.

By stealing elections, they ensure their criminal impunity becomes criminal immunity.

Netanyahu and the Zionists. The military-industrial complex. Red Sea Conspiracy actors. The Heritage Foundation. The GOP. Peter Thiel. Elon Musk. Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump.

The tentacles of the new “Octopus.”

Again, networks evolve. Names change. Industries shift.

The connective tissue—money, access, and influence—remains.

Are We Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic?

That depends on your lens—and what we’re able to do with this information. For those in the “Kamala is part of the same corruption; she wouldn’t have done anything about it” camp, we disagree.

Opinion section: Kamala Harris, a lifelong prosecutor, was not about to take office and allow a rampant crime syndicate to continue business as usual. Her entire career has been “Kamala Harris, for the people.” She never switched sides. She never took the check.

“Perhaps it’s naive of me… but I believed that, on some level, there would be many who see themselves as guardians of our system and our democracy who just capitulated—and I didn’t see that coming.” – Vice President Kamala Harris

She wasn’t talking about Amazon or Apple. They are not the guardians of our system. She was talking about the “alphabets”—the institutions and legislators who rolled out the red carpet for Donald Trump.

Maybe that’s why Trump—and the actors around him—had to ensure he “won” the election. Because a Harris-led DOJ was coming for them. The Epstein class, on both sides of the political aisle, needed Trump to “win” to avoid prison sentences and orange jumpers.

The bad news:

• Trump never should have been able to run for president; the “alphabets” have been lying and running cover for longer than many of us have been alive.

• Our government has been infiltrated by pro-Russia and pro-Israel actors, and legislators continue to put foreign interests ahead of the American people.

• The GOP has been rigging elections since the implementation of voting equipment tied to far-right operatives.

• Elections are not safe or secure; democracy is a façade.

The good news:

• Now that we have this information, we can push Democratic state attorneys general to coalesce and investigate the 2024 election.

• There are constitutional avenues to remove this entire illegitimate administration.

• Bad actors—regardless of wealth or influence—can be held accountable.

• The Supreme Court can be impeached.

If this feels like a battle cry, it is.

We must be willing to take steps we’ve never taken before—at least not since the birth of this nation. No more slaps on the wrist for white-collar criminals. Crime is crime.

If there is a path to criminally charge John Roberts for profiting $20 million (WTF) from his wife’s legal work before the Court, then pursue it. The same goes for Clarence Thomas and any substantiated charges of bribery and tax evasion.

Charge the entire Trump administration with their crimes—removal from office is not enough. Track down every single ICE agent who defied the Constitution and prosecute them.

This is what we got wrong during Reconstruction—and the bones of those skeletons are still surfacing.

Scrap the compromised election equipment. Move to open-source systems or return to paper ballots. Hit the reset. Undo Citizens United. Get the obscenely wealthy and their money out of politics. Tax them appropriately. Take down monopolies. Fund healthcare. Bolster public education. Protect our parks and wildlife. Fund research and science. Provide access to affordable childcare and housing.

We the people are the institution.

It’s time our legislators remember that.

And how poignant that we’re marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—a reminder:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Our Founders made it clear: it is our right to alter or abolish any form of Government that becomes destructive of these ends—destructive of our rights—and to institute new Government.

And it starts with a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general investigating the 2024 election now, before the midterms.

States’ rights are on our side. It’s time to use them.

How did over 250,000 votes disappear the day after the election in Michigan? Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson should have noticed the disappearance of over 250,000 votes and is running for governor on an election integrity platform. She needs to investigate.

Phone calls are, by far, the most effective way to force accountability. Demand investigations.

Michigan
Contact Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office.
Call: 517-335-2436
Email: secretary@michigan.gov
Contact state Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office.
Call: 517-335-7622
Email: miag@michigan.gov

Similar election irregularities occurred in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin
Contact state Attorney General Josh Kaul.
Number to call: 608-266-1221
Email: https://joshkaul.org/contact-us

And Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania
Contact state Attorney General Dave Sunday.
Number to call: 717-787-3391
Email: info@attorneygeneral.gov

We’ve also documented significant election irregularities in Minnesota, where high turnout in mail-in ballots appears to have prevented the state from flipping red.

In fact, the Election Truth Alliance recently completed a longitudinal study documenting Minnesota’s sustained election interference for decades.

Attorney General Keith Ellison needs to be aware of this to open an investigation.

Minnesota
Contact state Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Number to call: 651-296-3353
Email form: https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Forms/ConsumerAssistanceRequest.asp

Even New York has skin in this game, as seen in Ramapo, where candidate vote totals raised concerns, including Vice President Harris reportedly receiving zero votes. Could that be a cultural anomaly? Maybe. Is it still worth investigating? Yes.

Attorney General Letitia James is likely aware of the situation—reach out anyway to let her know it’s important to constituents.

New York
Contact state Attorney General Letitia James.
Number to call: 1-800-771-7755
Email form: https://pcf.ag.ny.gov/form/CIVIL/natofcmp-voting

And if there are federal legislators who appear open to election integrity concerns—like Sen Andy Kim (D-NJ), Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Rep Robert Garcia (D-CA), who have opposed legislation they believe harms the American people—reach out to them as well.

We’re calling this the 5-5-5:

• Make 5 calls using 5calls.org

• Send 5 emails using https://www.usa.gov/state-governments

• Post on 5 social media sites using this article and others:

  She Won: Over Two Million Votes Removed From Florida’s 2024 Election Results

  She Won: How Epstein and Peter Thiel Colluded With Russia To Rig the 2024 Election

  She Won: Michigan Used a Fake County Vote Bank In the 2024 Election

This one was for Danny. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but we don’t believe for a moment that he took his own life. He died trying to expose a network of criminals he believed were undermining democracy itself. A tragic yet honorable way to leave this realm.

A salute to Danny Casolaro.

Once again, thank you for supporting independent journalism and standing with us in the fight against corruption. We’ve been able to continue this work for the past year and a half because of you.

And like we always say: hold on to your hope. This is not left vs. right—it’s all of us vs. the Epstein class. Again, we don’t need permission to enforce the Constitution. We just need courage.

Want the truth they’re not telling you? For fearless reporting and expert-backed research, read The Common Coalition Report. And if you believe in funding real, independent work—subscribe to our Substack or support our all-volunteer team here.

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