She Won: How Epstein and Peter Thiel Colluded With Russia to Rig the 2016 Election

And the Bad Actors Who Helped Them—Receipts Attached

Trump Didn’t Win In 2016, Russia Did

Senator Harry Reid was right about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Computer scientists said they had strong evidence the election was rigged against Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—and we’ve been documenting the evidence for years.

Now others are beginning to connect the same dots.

The release of the Epstein files brings together a network of bad actors with an aligned agenda. A few elements of the timeline below are not new; they’ve surfaced in fragments since 2016.

But access to the files reveals Russian operatives, Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, Jeff Giesea, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Tom Barrack, Erik Prince, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and others—all conspiring together in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

The Scene and Timeline

Following the Russian parliamentary elections on December 4, 2011, reports of widespread vote-rigging, ballot-box stuffing, and falsified voter rolls emerged, leading to immediate public outrage and demonstrations.

Thousands of protesters, including activists and ordinary citizens, gathered in Moscow and other Russian cities to protest the results on December 5 and subsequent days, with an estimated 5,000 gathering on Red Square early on.

On December 6, 2011, while attending a meeting in Lithuania, then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the election results, stating that Russian voters “deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation”.

For years, experts—including Hillary Clinton—have argued that Putin’s ire toward her stemmed from her alleged role in encouraging the 2011 protests. Whether grounded in reality or not, that perception seems to have hardened into doctrine inside the Kremlin.

Also keep in mind that in 2011 Epstein’s largest client Leon Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management, sat on the international advisory board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF)—and met with Putin at the inaugural meeting in 2012.

Meanwhile, as tensions escalated overseas, a parallel web of relationships was quietly taking shape.

2013–2014: Crypto Alliances and Technical Capabilities

May 10, 2013
Jeffrey Epstein emailed Thorbjørn Jagland—former Norwegian Prime Minister and Secretary General of the Council of Europe (2009–2019)—about helping Putin beat the West by “reinventing the financial system”:

“When sputnik was announced , the West was caught flatfooted. The same can now happen with Russia taking the lead in finance. Instead of competing with the west for nano tech, copying silicon valley, looking for start ups, playing catch up to Microsoft . apple google and the like, Russia can get out in front and leapfrog the global community by reinventing the financial system of the 21st century..”

May 14, 2013
Jagland emailed back with his strategy to secure a meeting with Putin.

Note: Thorbjørn Jagland has now been charged with “aggravated corruption” over his ties with Jeffrey Epstein.

May 21, 2013
Epstein followed up with an email to Ehud Barak about meeting with Putin:

“Putin asked that i meet him in st petersburg the same time as his economic conference I told him no, . If he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy, lets see what happens”

Epstein had reason to believe he had Putin’s ear—which tracks, considering Leon Black’s position on the RDIF board—placing Epstein’s financial network at the center of Russia’s state capital strategy.

Note: Years later in 2017, an FBI report cited a Confidential Human Source (CHS) who stated “Epstein acted as Vladimir Putin’s wealth manager, and provided similar services to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.”

November 1, 2013
Joi Ito, formerly of MIT, emailed Epstein about computer viruses capable of bypassing air-gapped computer systems—they scheduled a call for 4:30 pm that day.

Note: In 2017, Dr. J. Alex Halderman—one of the computer science experts who warned of evidence the 2016 election was rigged—testified before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure, including “air-gapped” systems.

2014
Epstein secured another Russian visa—this one sponsored by Russia’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development and former FSB operative Sergey Belyakov. After graduating from the FSB Academy, Belyakov landed a position as an adviser to aluminum oligarch and Putin loyalist, Oleg Deripaska.

Note: This connection to Oleg Deripaska matters as it later relates to Paul Manafort.

In 2016, Belyakov joined the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, led by CEO Kirill Dmitriev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Note: This is the same Dmitriev that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, citing Ukrainian intelligence, said has offered Trump a sweeping economic cooperation proposal worth about $12 trillion, which he referred to as the “Dmitriev package”.

January 19, 2014
Epstein continued the “financial system” conversation with Jagland about a sophisticated Russian version of bitcoin and setting a meeting with Putin.

“you can explain to putin , that there should be a sopshiticated russian version of bitcoin. it would be the most advanced financial instrument availbale on a global basis”

April 11, 2014
Epstein emailed Peter Theil:

“thorbjorn jagland will be on the island for the entire next week, come visit”

Note: Peter Thiel appears in Epstein’s orbit as early as 2009 in an email from John Brockman referring to Thiel’s view of democracy as a “failed experiment.” Thiel appears again in 2011 and 2012 in emails from and including Ian Osborne.

By 2014, Epstein and Thiel were communicating and meeting regularly—and Epstein began laying the groundwork to integrate Thiel into his Russian network.

May 21, 2014
Epstein emailed Ehud Barak:

“when do you return and for how long? I thjnk you should spend real time with peter thiel”

September 13, 2014
Epstein arranged a meeting between Peter Thiel and William J. Burns, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, President Obama’s deputy secretary of state, and later director of the CIA under President Biden.

November 17, 2014
Vincenzo Iozzo—later identified as Epstein’s “personal hacker”—emailed him about Peter Thiel and allegations that Thiel was “bankrolling” the neo-Nazi hacker and hacker troll known as “weev.”

Note: The late David Golumbia viewed “weev” (Andrew Auernheimer) as a catalyst in Silicon Valley’s turn toward fascism, devoting nearly an entire chapter to him in Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology, “Weev’s Dangerous Wisdom” (p. 394).

Pause here for a breath.

By 2014, we have:

• Financial conversations about “reinventing” global systems in ways that would put Russia in a position to dominate the West.

• Technical discussions about bypassing air-gapped computer security.

• Russian visa sponsorship linked to a former FSB operative.

• The early foundation of Epstein’s relationship with Peter Thiel and his introduction into Epstein’s Russian networks.

This is the backdrop.

2015: Political Positioning

Spring 2015
Despite denying any communication with Epstein, according to the FBI, “President Trump had just been to Epstein’s property for lunch.”

June 16, 2015
Shortly after meeting with Epstein, Donald Trump announced his candidacy.

June 27, 2015
Epstein’s Kremlin handler, Sergey Belyakov, had his assistant send Epstein his travel details for the first week of July.

Their relationship appears to have been reciprocal. In another email, Belyakov asked Epstein to procure “innovation companies” for the Open Innovation Forum in Moscow. Epstein responded with a who’s who of high-net-worth individuals:

“i will be all the help i can. who is your dream att=ndees? peter thiel? nathan myrhvold. ? reid hoffman.?”

June 30, 2015
Epstein floated the idea of introducing Peter Thiel to his Kremlin handler, former FSB operative Sergey Belyakov, describing him as “My very good friend that I’d organizing innovation conference in Moscow - w=II be in Palo Alto. Any interest ??”

July 1-6, 2015
On July 1 the email introduction was made—on July 6 Belyakov had his assistant reach out to Thiel to line up the meeting for July 8.

July 10, 2015
Epstein emailed Thiel to follow up:

“how did it go ?”
“fine... they wanted me to come to Moscow, not sure if I can do that”

July 10, 2015
James Comey, Director of the FBI, opened a criminal investigation code named “Midyear Exam” into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information while secretary of state.

Note: Hillary Clinton later cited “Email-gate,” Comey’s actions, and Russian interference as the primary factors contributing to her supposed loss in the 2016 election.

In a statement from statistician and pollster Nate Silver:

“When FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Oct. 28 that he was reviewing additional emails pertinent to the case of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Clinton had an 81 percent chance of winning the election according to our polls-only forecast.”

July 24, 2015
Emails make clear that Belyakov acted as something of a fixer for Epstein. On July 24, Epstein emailed Belyakov seeking information about a Russian woman who was “blackmailing a group of powerful biznessman in New York.”

On July 27, Belyakov responded:

“Hi Jeffrey! tomorrow I’m meeting with a guy who knows her/about her. if you have any details about case you have mentioned it could help”

On July 28, Belyakov responded with information he gathered and advised, “6. Deny of the access to the US would be a great threat to her business.”

Then on July 29, Belyakov followed up with more details of her sex business: “sex and escort. in good season (may-august) it brings her over $100 K”

Note: on the same day, Epstein emailed Brad S. Karp:

“is it possible for your contacts to 1 get her current visa=status ? 2. is there a way , for us to file someth=ng that would revoke a tourist visa.”

July 25, 2015
Russian hacking group “Cozy Bear” launched a “sophisticated cyberattack” against the Pentagon’s Joint Staff unclassified email system. The officials also report the suspected Russian hackers coordinated the sophisticated cyberassault via encrypted accounts on social media.

August 2, 2015
Three weeks after Thiel met Belyakov and seven days after Russia hacked the Pentagon, Reid Hoffman hosted a private dinner in Palo Alto—the guest list:
Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Ed Boyden, Desiree Dudley, Michelle Yee, Priscilla Chan, Navaid Farooq and Joi Ito.

Epstein emailed the picture to himself. Leverage.

It’s important to note:

• Peter Thiel was Facebook’s first outside investor and sat on the board from 2005-2022.

• Palantir was deeply embedded in the illegal Cambridge Analytica operation.

• Over 80 million Facebook profiles were harvested in a major data breach that Trump adviser Steve Bannon compiled through Cambridge Analytica to both micro-target American voters and push Brexit.

Cambridge Analytica was an organization whose sole mission was to illegally acquire data and illegally interfere in elections using an algorithm devised by the Kremlin.

According to whistleblower Aleksandr Kogan, Zuckerberg allowed Russian trolls to buy U.S. election ads, hate groups to spread fake news and, because Facebook shirked privacy concerns, allowed Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica to surreptitiously gain access to personal data mined from as many as 87 million Facebook users.

Note: In yet another glaring example of a two-tiered justice system, no criminal charges were filed in connection with the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook heist.

The elite protect the elite.

December 10, 2015
Michael Flynn, who was cultivating Russian connections and later seeking to profit from them, was paid $45,000 to speak at a 2015 gala for the Russian state-funded television network RT. He was seated to the right of Vladimir Putin during the event.

Note: Yes, that’s Jill Stein. Interesting that she only crops up during presidential election years.

2015–2016
Epstein invested $40 million in Thiel’s Valar Ventures, which Ehud Barak later described as “co-owned” by Thiel and Epstein as they acquired a stake in the Israeli surveillance technology firm Carbyne, formerly Reporty.

This is no longer just shared ideology or social overlap. It’s a financial partnership—and it has an agenda.

2016: Escalation

February 3, 2016
Sergey Belyakov asked for an introduction to Vincenzo Iozzo, later identified by the FBI as Epstein’s “personal hacker.”

April 8, 2016
Epstein had a two hour meeting at Thiel Capital run by Jeff Giesela who wrote a paper on “memetic warfare” and ran Thiel’s PAC MAGA3X which ran psyops against Hillary Clinton including Pizzagate.

April 2016
Russian government hackers “Fancy Bear” gained access to the DCCC network and began exfiltrating data.

June 2016
Donald Trump Jr. met with three Kremlin agents at Trump Tower to receive illegal election aid—and contacted a known Kremlin operative for the release of stolen DNC and Clinton emails on WikiLeaks.

June 15, 2016
Epstein’s “personal hacker,” Vincenzo Iozzo sent Epstein the link to Guccifer2:

Epstein: “fun, but the only important ones would be hillarys secret”
Iozzo: “Think you need to wait for Wikileaks for those :)”

Thirty-seven days later, the emails were released on Wikileaks.

June 26, 2016
Epstein emailed Thiel celebrating Brexit:

“return to tribalism. counter to globalization, amazing new alliances. you and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, and as i said in your office, finding things on their way to collapse, was much easier than finding the next bargain”

“Finding things on their way to collapse”? As evidenced in these files it was more along the lines of causing things to collapse.

July 5, 2016
James Comey issued a statement on Hillary Clinton’s email server investigation recommending no charges and effectively clearing her.

July 21, 2016
Peter Thiel broke with Silicon Valley and headlined the Republican National Convention in support of Trump.

Note: Knowing that for two years, Epstein and Thiel had been coordinating the downfall of U.S. democracy with Russian operatives adds context here.

July 22, 2016
WikiLeaks released 19,252 DNC emails stolen by Russian hackers.

Note: in November 2019, former Trump deputy campaign manager Rick Gates testified in D.C. federal court that Roger Stone informed then-candidate Donald Trump in July 2016 that WikiLeaks would publicly release Russian-hacked documents in the months leading up to the election.

July 25, 2016
Jeffrey Epstein received an email from Richard Kahn noting Trump’s favorable polling data.

July 27, 2016
Trump stated at a news conference: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

On that same day, Russian hackers targeted Clinton’s accounts.

Note: GOP operative Peter Smith reached out to the Russian hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0” and to alt-right activists in his effort to obtain the supposed emails that had been stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Smith’s effort emerged as a topic of intense interest as investigators probed the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

August 2016
Paul Manafort handed off proprietary polling data to Kremlin operatives Konstantin Kilimnik and Oleg Deripaska.

August 29, 2016
In an email between Epstein and Tom Pritzger, referencing Ehud Barak, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, and Tom Barrack who was exposed by a whistleblower for orchestrating a nuclear deal with Russia, Saudi, and Mike Flynn:

Q: “Questions you would like posed in your absence?”
A: “How close will race need go be for Russians to give us an October surprise? Which of Hillary’s emails was most entertaining?”

So many tentacles to this octopus.

September 14, 2016
Jeffrey Epstein received another email from Richard Kahn with election polling data.

October 7, 2016
Epstein put his “girlfriend” Karyna Shuliak in charge of an “important lunch” meeting to introduce Thiel to Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin—the same Vitaly Churkin that facilitated Trump’s first trip to Moscow in 1987—to discuss the Access Hollywood tape coming out that day.

Note: Thiel had MAGA3X—the alt-right neo-Nazi group funded by Thiel’s right hand Jeff Giesea, and directed by Russian asset, psychological warfare expert and disgraced criminal Mike Flynn. The Russians had Podesta’s emails. Within 30 minutes of the Access Hollywood tape release, WikiLeaks began publishing the hacked Clinton-Podesta emails.

It doesn’t take a high IQ to connect these dots—the timing is not a coincidence.

Alt-right online trolls—funded by MAGA3X—reframed the Podesta emails to push the false claim that Hillary Clinton was Satanic and leading a cabal of pedophiles. Mike Flynn and Erik Prince amplified the narrative.

The operation largely spread through Breitbart, then run by Steve Bannon and financially backed by Rebekah Mercer.

Additional support for these online psychological operations was provided by Wagner chief Yvgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency through Facebook, which was later investigated and indicted by Robert Mueller.

October 13, 2016
Epstein received an update on the program they were running on Twitter giving Clinton a 72% chance of winning the election.

October 28, 2016
FBI Director James Comey reopened the email case against Hillary Clinton.

October 30, 2016
Psyop Pizzagate began—run by Thiel and Giesea’s MAGA3X, it alleged that Hillary Clinton was a pedophile and trafficking children.

November 4, 2016
Erik Prince gave an interview on Breitbart radio—he falsely accused Hillary Clinton of visiting Epstein’s island at least six times:

“They [NYPD] found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times.”

Note: Erik Prince became a subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election due to a clandestine January 2017 meeting with the aforementioned Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian banker who reports “directly” to President Vladimir Putin. According to Mueller, the purpose of the meeting was to establish a backchannel between the Russian government and incoming administration officials.

November 5, 2016
Epstein sent an email to cancel a trip to Doha, “unfortunatlely , too much work around th= election.”

November 6, 2016
FBI Director James Comey cleared Hillary Clinton (again) in a second letter to Congress just two days before the election.

November 8, 2016
The world watched in shock as Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by close to three million votes—yet somehow “lost” the electoral college by just 77K votes across three swing states.

Behind the Iron Curtain

In August 2016, Senator Harry Reid warned that if Russia concentrated on “less than six” swing states, it could alter results and undermine confidence in the electoral system. That would pose challenges, given that most states have paper backups, but he noted that hackers could keep people from voting by tampering with the rolls of eligible voters.

VR Systems, a vendor operating in multiple swing states, was hit with Russian spear-phishing attacks. It was later revealed that Russian military intelligence successfully installed malware on the eve of the election.

The 2016 election data went off the rails. Historically, undervote percentages—ballots where voters skipped the presidential line—hovered around 0.5%. But in 2016, that number suddenly spiked to around 1.9%—more than tripling the norm.

75,000 votes were left on the table in Michigan due to malfunctioning voting equipment in 59% of the precincts in Detroit.

Dr. Walter Mebane, Jr. flagged statistically significant irregularities in both Michigan and Wisconsin.

In December 2016, Senator Reid called for James Comey to resign for covering up Russian influence on Trump’s behalf—and withholding information revealed in a CIA report that Russian operatives gave hacked emails to WikiLeaks.

Then in 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference found that the Russian government had engaged in an “extensive campaign” to sabotage the election in favor of Donald Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers.

The committee described “an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure” by Russian intelligence that targeted “all 50 states.”

Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes on the Brian Tyler Cohen show:

“…the Trump administration is completely opposed to that notion because they’re so allergic to the fact that Russia intervened twice to try to elect Donald Trump. Uh, three times actually—twice successfully…”

So they know—and are openly acknowledging—that Russia infiltrated our elections. And we’re doing nothing to remove this illegitimate regime?

If just a portion of the undervotes in MI, WI, and PA had gone to Hillary Clinton—say, 70–80%, which aligns with down-ballot Democratic Party trends—she would have won the presidency.

• Michigan: Just ~15,000

• Wisconsin: ~23,000

• Pennsylvania: ~45,000
  → Clinton gains 46 electoral votes—more than enough to change the outcome.

What caused the election equipment in Detroit to malfunction? Or the sudden spike in undervotes? We don’t know because it was never investigated.

But we know.

No Quarter

For months, we’ve been writing about the Epstein files and the powerful men who couldn’t allow a Kamala Harris DOJ to take shape—powerful men on both sides of the political aisle whose secrets needed to remain just that: secret.

We previously exposed Peter Thiel and his 2015 alliance with Epstein and Russian operatives to undermine U.S. democracy—something that should be front-page news but continues to slide under the radar, thanks to a captured mainstream media ecosystem.

We’re not the only independent outlet connecting these dots—Seth Abramson, Zev Shalev, Lev Parnas, Dean Blundell and Jim Stewartson are doing the same.

The emotional gravity of learning the truth about the Epstein files—the depth of the corruption and the length of time it has been allowed to continue—it’s overwhelming for many. Compounded by the irregularities in the 2024 election that went unchallenged, and the proof that 2016 was infiltrated, it can feel like the last decade should have unfolded differently for all of us. It’s almost too much.

We are at a crossroads.

It’s tempting to feel disenfranchised and voiceless—to ask, “Why even vote if the system is rigged?” We hear that question all the time.

Our answer: It’s time to demand something different.

The erosion of our freedoms didn’t happen overnight. It has been a series of injustices our party allowed to go by the wayside out of ill-placed loyalty to the institution—when their loyalty should have been to We the People.

It’s time to demand something different.

An ethical crisis at the Supreme Court. A decision declaring corporations to be people and opening the gateway to purchased elections. A Bush win when we knew the rightful president was Gore. The steady chipping away of voting rights. In some states, the elimination of Trans and women’s rights.

For people of color—wondering if we’ll ever have equal rights.

The knowledge that Epstein could have been prosecuted under Bush and the suffering ended. And that Donald Trump, an Epstein-adjacent pedophile and Russian asset should never have been able to run for office. Yet five DOJs and over a thousand victims later—here we are.

Rather than dropping the anchor into an ocean of what could have been, think about what could be. This Supreme Court is the judicial byproduct of a stolen election—an opportunity to chart a new course. We must be willing to pursue solutions that, before these revelations, never would have been considered.

They knew and did nothing.

There are more of us than there are of them.

It’s all of us versus the Epstein class.

It’s time to demand something different.

The facts outlined in the Epstein files warrant immediate investigations and prosecutions. We cannot afford to wait until November in the hope that Democrats prevail.

Given Trump’s current “nationalizing” rhetoric—and the election interference we’ve already experienced in 2016 and 2024—it would be reckless to assume the midterms will simply be “free” and “fair.”

State attorneys general must open investigations now to safeguard the integrity of the 2026 election.

What We Can Do Together

YOU can: Call, email, and tag your state legislators and state attorneys general in Democratic-led states—ask them to open investigations.

YOU can: circulate this Substack article to everyone you know and ask them to do the same. It’s up to us, We the People are the media now.

YOU can: support independent journalism. We aren’t tethered to corporate narratives, and we’re among the few willing to tell the truth. That’s why Trump’s regime is coming for us.

YOU can: Help get this article in front of The I’ve Had It Substack ladies, Under the Desk News, MeidasTouch Network, media, influencers, the clock is running and we need help.

And 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.

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