Episode Two Hundred Fifty Eight: A Hoax Within A Hoax

An assassination in Utah, the hoax within a hoax called Epstein, a racially motivated murder in North Carolina, the Philly Karen, why Zig's not surprised about Malcolm Gladwell, the LA Clippers scandal and lots of football.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to episode two hundred and fifty eight of the
Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zigler. I'm
your host on today's jam Pack Show. The Epstein story
continues to be a problem for Donald Trump in the
dumbest of ways. We speak to the independent journalist who
was kicked out of the Epstein survivor press conference. A
gruesome videotape murder in Charlotte sends the liberal legacy media

(00:24):
into a tailspin. My sort of friend, Malcolm Gladwell, admits
he's a coward. Yes, I'll give my two cents on
the Phillies baseball, Karen. I'll also provide a possible alternative
explanation for the bombshell LA Clippers NBA scandal, and I'll
review the past weekend in football at nearly every level.

(00:48):
Not long after episode two hundred and fifty eight of
the Death of Journalism podcast was recorded, there was major
breaking news to which I will respond before we actually
air what had been recorded before that breaking news. And
you're probably well aware of what I'm referring to, and

(01:11):
that is the shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and
an event on a college campus in Utah. Now because
of timing considerations, I am recording this based upon very
limited information. As of this taping, all I know is

(01:36):
that Charlie Kirk was shot and that the situation from
the videos that have circulated appears to be grave. And
while it is not as of this moment, being reported
that Charlie Kirk has been murdered and is deceased, based

(01:57):
upon what I currently know to be the case, that
is the most likely scenario. I hope that's not the case.
I hope that by some miracle his life was saved,
maybe because he was right there in a place where
he could get mediate, immediate medical attention. But the videos

(02:17):
of the shooting are beyond horrific and look extremely ominous,
So it is quite possible that by the time you
are hearing this, there is a far more definitive and
even more pessimistic result regarding what happened to Charlie Kirk.

(02:37):
Regardless of whether or not there is some sort of
miracle that saves Charlie Kirk, which as of this moment,
I'm still hoping for, and I know as of this moment,
many many, many people across this country are hoping for.
This is an extremely significant event one which I will

(03:00):
obviously respond to in greater detail in the next episode
of the podcast once I have more information about what
really did transpire, But as an initial reaction to what
we currently know, which is very very little, I just
want to share two elements of my reaction. First is

(03:23):
the personal I never really was a huge fan of
Charlie Kirk, although I respected his ability and his impact,
partially because I did not like the way that he
handled the Carrie Lake situation in Arizona, especially in the
aftermath of her running for governor of Arizona, and he
claimed that she had won when she clearly didn't. But okay, fine,

(03:47):
and that's certainly not a big deal right now, but
it's just contexts for my view of Kirk.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
However, my view of Charlie Kirk very.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Recently took a significant change because, much to my surprise,
my thirteen year old daughter Grace had become a huge
fan of Charlie Kirk. And she's not alone. I mean
among the Christian community, which my daughter Grace is very
into Christianity. Among young people and conservatives, Charlie Kirk is

(04:18):
absolutely considered to be a hero, and without any knowledge
on my end, Grace became a big fan of Charlie Kirk,
and I even recorded a video of Grace talking about this,
and I posted it online and I sent it to Charlie.
Charlie had been following me on Twitter, and I guess

(04:43):
was aware of me and vice versa, and Charlie shared
that video, which got Grace all excited and even promised
to send her both privately as well as publicly, promised
to send her a sign Maga hat. And I remember

(05:03):
telling Grace that he had done that. I was hesitant
to even tell her because a lot of celebrities, you know,
they get busy or they aren't in full control of
who's in charge of doing things, and is it possible
that it falls through the cracks, And I don't want
to set her up for disappointment if she's all excited.
But I had a good feeling that Charlie Kirk would

(05:23):
come through, and she got all excited anticipating this package
in the mail, and sure enough, a week later, there
was a package in the mail with a sign Maga
hat from Charlie Kirk, a copy of his book and
some other things. And then I posted her video of
her reaction to opening that where her joy was overwhelming

(05:46):
and quite evident, and Charlie shared that video and I
thanked him privately.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Because obviously, when you're a dad, there's.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Not much more someone can do for you than to
give your child joy, which Charlie Kirk clearly did, and
to that I will always be very appreciative. And you know,
just a moment or so before I recorded this, I
had to call my wife, who teaches at Grace's school,

(06:19):
and alert her that this had happened with a grave prognosis,
to make sure that Grace, as well as.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
I'm sure many other fans of Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
At the school, would you know, the day, would be
prepared for this news should it break within school, which
sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
With cell phone restrictions.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
But I know I've not spoken to her yet, but
I'm sure that Grace is going to be beyond devastated here,
regardless of what the outcome is. And so from a
personal standpoint, you know, this one hits home in a
big way for multiple reasons that I think I've already articulated,

(07:03):
and I'm sure I'll have more information about in the
next episode of the podcast. The second and The obviously
much larger ramification of this horrific event is what it.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Does and says.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
To and about our national public discourse, which is clearly
in disarray, obviously in a worse position than it has
ever been before. We've not had something like this happen
to a person like Charlie Kirk, who is a commentator.

(07:40):
Obviously Trump had an assassination attempt against him, but he
was a presidential candidate, and I think that's a different category.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
But especially coming on the heels of what happened.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
In Charlotte, which I do talk about in this episode
of the podcast, where Charlie Kirk actually became a significant
part of that story. He was even called out by
Van Jones on CNN, I believe incorrectly, and who knows.
We have no idea at this moment whether or not
that helped provoke this shooting. But the timing is certainly

(08:13):
rather suspect, and so you know, when I talk about
that later on in this episode of the podcast, please
keep that in its context. But the timing here is
obviously very horrendous, suspicious, very damning. There's a man in

(08:34):
custody who's in middle aged, bolding white guy. You know
at this moment nothing about him, and so I don't
want to rush to any judgments about what his motivations were.
But it's not hard to presume that he is a
liberal and who knows, maybe was provoked by the issue
in Charlotte or the transgender issue, or who knows what

(08:56):
he was provoked by. We may never know, but he's
still alive. But this is going to send an earthquake
shockwaves through the entire media ecosystem. I don't know what
ramifications it will have. I don't know whether or not,
you know, we suddenly tone down the rhetoric. I have
no idea where we're going to go from here. It's

(09:18):
just that this is going to be a massive media
and political story. And like I said, once I know
more about it, I will comment on it in the
next episode of the podcast. But as of right now,
I'm hoping for the best when it comes to Charlie
Kirk fearing the worst. And I just wanted to make

(09:39):
sure that, obviously, since this was going to be on
the top of everyone's mind when they listen to this episode,
that we at least addressed it in some way, shape
or form. Even though the amount of information I have
is extremely limited as of this taping, So that's.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
The Charlie Kirk situation.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Again. The rest of this episode was recorded before the
shooting of Charlie Kirk, and obviously I will have more
on that story as well as anything else that happens
regarding it, in the next episode of the podcast. Until then,
here is what we recorded before the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

(10:20):
We have a ton to get to in this episode
of the podcast, so I may be streamlining some of
my commentary so that it is not a four or
five hour episode. It also includes an interview that have
already alluded to that we're only going to play the
first half of or it's so long, we're going to
break it into two parts, So the first part will

(10:41):
be in this episode, and part two our interview with
Michael Tracy, the independent journalist who has gotten deeply into
the Jeffrey Epstein story, in the next episode of the podcast.
But that's where I want to start, because after episode
two fifty seven was recorded, there was this, I guess
you would call it a press conference with Epstein's survivors

(11:04):
in Washington, d C. All sorts of very strange things happen,
including with our guest in this episode, Michael Tracy. And
it's a topic that I have obviously spoken about quite
a bit from a contrarian perspective, mostly with regard to
how I think that this entire story has been completely blown, misunderstood.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Greatly exaggerated.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
My bottom line on this is that Epstein was guilty,
and I'm not sure that anybody else was, and that's
certainly this massive, grand, bizarre conspiracy involving sex trafficking to
lots of very powerful men is a sick fantasy. There's
no evidence or logic for it. And I put myself

(11:51):
in a very odd position here because I'm obviously not
a fan of Donald Trump. I try to be fair
to him as much as I possibly can, but I'm
in this particular issue, I am almost entirely defending him,
although he's made some weird missteps that I'm going to
try to explain.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
In this episode of the podcast.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
The most recent controversy as of this taping is that
as part of I guess you would call it the
Epstein file release, which keeps coming out in dribs and
drabs and doesn't seem to satisfy anybody there is this
birthday card for Jeffrey Epstein's fiftieth birthday, which occurred back

(12:31):
in two thousand and three, where previously The Wall Street
Journal had reported that Trump had written this very odd
and very intimate prose that was basically imagining a conversation
between he and Jeffrey Epstein in this rather body birthday

(12:54):
card that allegedly was sent from Trump to Epstein. And
Trump was so enraged when The Wall Street Journal reported
this that he not only denied it, but he threatened
a lawsuit. Not one hundred percent sure if the lawsuit
was ever filed, but I presume that it may have been.
They certainly have as every intent and his history shows

(13:14):
he has no hesitation filing lawsuits against major media outlets,
even those that are owned by people that are supporters
of Donald Trump, like News Corp.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Owns the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
And so basically Trump took the position that this was
a fabrication, This didn't happen, and I'm so positive it
didn't happen, I'm gonna sue. But then out came the
actual birthday card as part of I guess you would
say it was leaked, but I guess this is part
of the Epstein files, although apparently it came from the

(13:47):
Epstein estate. Regardless publicly, this card came out and it
has what appears to be Donald Trump's signature. It's got
the the very very rude outline of a female that
you know, where the pros for this birthday card is

(14:09):
inside the female and it doesn't seem like Trump at all.
I'm the first to acknowledge that. However, the signature, whilst
it's not Trump's current signature, does appear very consistent with
his signature back in two.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Thousand and three.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
And the liberal media has gone absolutely bananas over this, bananas.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Like this is the smoking gun.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
We got him, We got him for the thousandth time
in the history of his political career. You know, at
any other presidency, this would be devastating. And the only
part of that hilarious narrative that I can somewhat understand
is that Trump will would have been seen if this
is actually authentic as having lied. Of course, I don't

(14:57):
even buy that it's a lie. I have a theory
and what really happened here, which I'm gonna get to momentarily.
But there are so many problems with this entire narrative.
In fact, I just think this is so stupid.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
This whole story is stupid, but particularly this birthday card thing.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Why because the birthday occurred in two thousand and three. People,
in two thousand and three, Jeffrey Epstein had not been
arrested for anything, charged with anything, played guilty to anything.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
You haven't, He.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Hadn't killed himself yet he was a card caring member
of the liberal elite in two thousand and three. And
if you don't believe me, and I've posted these on
social media, and I'm absolutely baffled as to why Trump
supporters have not made these old articles go viral. But

(15:53):
in two thousand and three, Epstein was the focus of
a glowing profile in Vanity Fair. In Vanity Fair in
two thousand and three, and the focus of not one,
but two glowing articles because of the money that he
had donated in the Harvard Crimson.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
So you have Vanity Fair and.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
The Harvard Crimson, the Harvard newspaper slobbering all over Jeffrey
Epstein in two thousand and three.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
So why the fuck.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Do we care what non politician Donald Trump sent as
a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein in two thousand and three.
By the way, you know who else sent a birthday
message in this batch, Bill Clinton, who had already been
President of the United States for two terms.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Bill Clinton.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
So the only difference really was the weird verbiage and
the outline of the female figure, which I mean, which
to me, given who Trump was in two thousand and three,
is not a big deal. And I am absolutely in
the camp of those who believe that the text of
this birthday card does not, in any way, shape or

(17:10):
form read like something that Donald Trump would have written.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
First of all, I don't think it's.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Something any man would write to another man. It's just
weird and it's certainly not Donald Trump. And so I
do not understand why it is that the Trump side
of this has not emphasized the two thousand and three date,
emphasized how Jeffrey Epstein was being treated among liberal elites

(17:38):
at that time, specifically Venity Fair, the Harvard Crimson and
Bill Clinton, and then I you know, to me, that
should end the story right there. This is but it's
just absolutely mind blowing to me that there are serious
people who think that somehow sending a birthday card to
someone in two thousand and three is relevant to whether

(17:59):
or not they knew or should have known that Jeffrey
Epstein would end up being perceived as one of the
worst child sex traffickers of all time, which we have
no idea if that's really even true. But I fully
acknowledge he was guilty, which is why he killed himself in.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
A federal prison.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
So but my theory on this, my theory on this
is that Trump forgot that he took part in this
birthday card. Now I don't know that anything that I'm
about to tell you is one hundred percent true, but
this is a story that actually makes sense to me.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
That makes a hell of.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
A lot more sense than any of the alternative explanations,
which aren't even fully fleshed out.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
They don't even make any goddamn sense. So, you know,
what was this?

Speaker 1 (18:42):
This was all part of Trump covering up something that
no one else knew at this time, that Epstein was
this serial sexual abuser and sex trafficker, and that Donald
Trump should have known something that Vanity Fair didn't know,
that Harvard Crimson didn't know, that Bill Clinton didn't know,
that the whole public didn't know. That's ridiculous. But here's

(19:04):
what I think probably happened. So I believe that Glene Maxwell,
who's currently in prison for having enabling Epstein's crimes, I
think she got a raw deal.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
I think she didn't get a fair trial.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
I think she was probably planning the birthday party. She
wanted to get birthday cards from very prominent friends of
Jeffrey Epstein. She knew Donald Trump well, and I think
that she probably asked Trump whether he would participate. Trump
probably said sure. Maybe even Trump said, hey, why don't

(19:39):
you write something for me? Maybe she suggested, I'll even
write it for you, you can just sign it. This
is all speculation, but I don't I think it makes
a lot of sense here based upon the verbiage, which
is clearly written by a female to me, certainly not
Donald Trump. And it's clearly written by somebody who has
familiarity with both Epstein and Trump, and Maxwell is really

(20:02):
the only person that fits in that category. She writes
up the card, she gets Trump to sign it. This
happens in two thousand and three when the Wall Street
Journal comes forward with this report. And remember Trump is
tired of this story. He's pissed off about this story.
He doesn't want to have to deal with it, and

(20:24):
he doesn't remember participating, and the verbiage that he's he's
given by the Wall Street Journal reporters. Hey, you know,
mister president, did you write this? Certainly doesn't sound like him.
So if you don't remember, it's twenty plus years ago,
you're Donald Trump. You get asked to do a billion
things in this kind of category, and it doesn't sound

(20:48):
like you, and you don't want it to have happened
because it's not good for you politically. I can totally
see Trump saying this didn't happen. And once Trump says
it didn't happen happened, he's basically in a corner and
all the people around him are in a corner because
when Trump says it didn't happen, you can't defend it.

(21:12):
That's the stupidity of this stance that the Trump people
have taken, because to defend it is essentially to acknowledge
its authenticity. And the Boss has already said it didn't happen.
So Trump's ego and maybe bad memory and wishful thinking

(21:33):
has put him his own side in a pickle here
in a corner. Because that's why they're not defending it.
It's easily defensible for the reasons I've already given, but
they're not willing able to do that because they don't
want to piss off the boss, and the Boss Donald
Trump is still, I believe, absurdly claiming that the birthday

(21:58):
card is fake, that he didn't participate in it. I
don't believe that, because that certainly appears to be his signature.
There have been signature experts that have said that's his signature,
and so, you know, the idea that it was faked
back in two thousand and three seems rather ludicrous. And
unless there's something really dramatic that we're missing, which is possible,

(22:20):
but I don't anticipate it. Trump is wrong. Trump is
wrong about whether or not he participated in this. Now,
to what level he participated, I don't know, because under
my theory, I don't think he actually wrote it.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
I just think he signed off on it. Probably is
a joke.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
I mean, that's the other part of this is that
a lot of this was supposed to be a joke.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
It's a fiftieth birthday party for a guy friend. That's
what guys do.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
So the idea that Trump had nothing to do with
the actual verbiage of the card and doesn't remember it
or thought it was a joke.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
To me, is way more plausible than whatever the hell
the liberal media is the narrative is on this. And
it's very, very frustrating for me, as someone who doesn't
even like Trump, to see Trump getting attacked you for
something that I don't think he's culpable for and for
him to not fight back in the smartest way possible,

(23:16):
all because he's stuck.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
For the reasons that I've already mentioned.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Now, there's another element that frustrates me about Trump's response
to this, because I actually think Trump understands this story
probably better than any other prominent figure, partially because he
knew Epstein well, partially because he knew Maxwell well, Partially
because he has been falsely accused of a lot of
things in this realm of sexual abuse, and he's he's

(23:45):
one of the very rare, huge public figures that's been
willing to take unpopular positions, not always cracked, but unpopular
positions when it comes to the issue of allegations of
sexual abuse. So Trump has pretty good instincts in general,
but in this particular case, I think he has a
lot of knowledge and he keeps using the word hoax.

(24:06):
In fact, he uses the phrase democratic hoax to describe
what's going on here, and he did so again when
he was asked a question almost i think literally during
last week's Epstein's survivor press conference. This is at the
White House, and here a reporter is asking him to

(24:28):
respond to what's happening in Washington, d C. With this
press conference of Epstein survivors and all the allegations that
they are making. And they want thing the so called
Epstein list, which doesn't even exist.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
To be made public, and they may.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Try to create their own list, which is bizarre. But
regardless of all that, here was Trump being asked about
that press conference in the Oval Office, and he refers
to what is.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Happening as a democratic hoax.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Right now, there have been survivors of Jeffrey Epstein speaking
at a press conference on Capitol Hill. They're calling for
these case files, these doctors to be released. And Thomas Massey,
who is fuck who is sponsoring at destructure positions you'd
get the House to vote release of his documents, says
he doesn't be you're applicated in.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
These files, but many of your.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Friends and donors maybe, and he says that's why the
Justice trumpet is predacting them in slow walking their release.
Are is the Justice Department protecting any friends.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
Or donors, sir?

Speaker 3 (25:29):
So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends.

Speaker 4 (25:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
It reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation.

Speaker 5 (25:38):
We gave him everything over and over again, more and
more and more, and nobody's ever satisfied.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Now, I agree with the essence of what Trump says there,
that this narrative, as Epstein narrative, is in fact, in
large part a hoax, but it's not a democratic hoax,
and maybe a decratic hoax now.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
I mean, the whole birthday card I.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Think is a democratic hoax, but he's you know, Trump
is unfortunately playing right into it. I said on Twitter
the other day that this, in this entire Epstein matter,
you know, Trump is basically like that episode from Happy
Days where Fonsi suddenly loses his cool power for those
that are older in the audience, and remember the TV

(26:24):
show Happy Days. I mean, normally he's very very good
at this stuff, and he keeps making missteps when it
comes to Epstein, like one begets the next and so
I acknowledge that there are parts of this story right
now that are indeed a democratic hoax. But what bothers
me is he's not explaining, and neither is his press secretary,

(26:46):
because she got asked the same question about what does
he mean by hoax? And the answer is extremely unsatisfactory
to me, because the proper answer here is pretty simple.
Epstein was guilty, and there was a moral panic surrounding
that when he killed himself in prison, and then a

(27:08):
series of circumstances have created a misimpression about what really
transpired here, and that the grand conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Are in fact the hoax. That's the hoax part.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
But unfortunately for Trump, he'swilling or able to say that
partially maybe because that part of the hoax was largely
created by his own supporters. And that's the other part
of this that's not accurate in what Trump is saying.
This part of the hoax, the essence of the hoax,
of the Epstein hoax, was created by Magaworld, mostly during

(27:50):
the Biden administration. I think there's a lot of amnesia
and reverse engineering, and you know, I think a lot
of people aren't remembering their history very well as to
how this whole thing, you know, actually evolved. Yes, Epstein
was a big deal when he was arrested.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
It was not a national obsession.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
It wasn't until he, in my very strong opinion, killed
himself in prison that this thing really caught fire and
all the conspiracy theories flew, you know, flowed from that.
It's very much like Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswell,
which of course happened to him live national television, which

(28:34):
is a completely different animal as opposed to what happened
with Epstein.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
But the idea that Ebstein must have killed.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Himself, even though there's no evidence of that, And now
we have Donald Trump, Bill Barr, Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino,
and Cash Mattel all very much on the record saying that.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
He actually committed suicide.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
And I'm one hundred percent convinced that he did commit suicide,
have been for a very long time because we don't
have a goddamn suspect, which is the very least you
need even start to build that kind of a conspiracy theory.
But that whole issue is key to understanding what happened,
because after that we started to leave the gravitational pull
of the rational Earth on this story, and that's when Magaworld.

(29:17):
Once Trump was out of office and no longer in
charge of the prosecution of Epstein or the federal prison system,
that's when Maga World started to build this fantasy. Helped
by a lot of right wing influencers and talk show
hosts who didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
They created this myth, this hoax.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
And so now we basically have two hoaxes combined colliding
with one another because now everybody is incentivized. That's what's
so weird from a media perspective about the story. Everybody
is incentivized to buy into some level of hoax.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Here, the Maga world has egg all over their face.
They're enraged.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
They don't want to believe that they were duped or
that they built this entire fantasy.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
So now they're desperate to save face. That's why they
keep wanting more and more information, because they got to find.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Something that makes them feel better about themselves, that justifies
their belief. As I've phrased it many times, in Santa Claus.
They don't like the fact that they have been told
that Santa Claus does not exist, and so that's I
think driving a lot of their obsession, and I think
a lot of the right wing maga world commentator's obsession

(30:35):
with give.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Us something, give us something that.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
We can use as a fig leaf so that we
don't have to be humiliated that we were duped here.
And then the left wing media now finally sees that
Trump is vulnerable on this issue. They see blood in
the water. Now I don't think there's actual blood in
the water, because I think they're using ways of evaluating
this that are antiquated. So maybe ten to twenty years

(30:59):
ago would and clearly blood in the water, but not
in today's world and not with Trump. But they see
now as a way to get this whole story, as
a way to get Trump, and so now they're also
invested in this mythology, this hoax, of this grand conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
And I am one.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Of basically, as far as I can tell, two public
commentators that have any kind of understanding of what really
happened here, that the Grand Conspiracy is not based in fact,
it's not based in logic, it makes no sense, and
that everything that has happened is far more easily explained

(31:38):
in what I would call Occam's raiser, the simplest explanation
is usually the most valid. And the only other person
that I'm aware of who has been doing any sort
of contrarian commentary in this direction is a guy by
the name of Michael Tracy. Now, Michael Tracy is an
independent journalist, and he is online on x and on

(32:04):
his substack and stream has been saying very much what
I have been saying. He and I are not in
total lockstep, which is going to become very very obvious
when you listen, especially to part two of our interview
together in the next episode of the podcast. But in
the big picture, we both agree that the grand conspiracy

(32:24):
here doesn't make any sense. It's not based in facts
or logic.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
He even has I.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Think more questions about the level of Epstein's culpability and
guilt than I do, but that's a minor difference. But
Michael Tracy decided that he was going to attend this
press conference, which was hosted by two members of Congress,
one Democrat and one Republican. Thomas Massey, a guy who

(32:52):
I used to like until this whole fiasco from Kentucky.
He's a libertarian and sticks up against Trump, and Trump
has vowed to take him out because he has not
been loyal enough to Donald Trump, and I think that's
part of what has incentivized Massy. Everyone's self interest here
is completely fucked up. There's perverse self interests all over

(33:13):
the place. And so now Massey, because he's being attacked
by Trump, needs to appeal to the portion of MAGA
that's deeply invested in the entire Epstein mythology because he
needs them to support him in a primary on the
Republican side in twenty twenty six. And I think that's
probably what's a large and large part motivating Massy. But

(33:35):
Tracy went to this press conference with all these alleged
Epstein survivors and two members of Congress and other members
of Congress and survivor lawyers, and basically the entire situation
was to try to put media pressure on Congress to
release more information to get justice for the survivors. And

(33:57):
Michael Tracy decided that he was going to go and
try to ask a legitimate question because everybody else of
the media is just lap dogs, just accepting this mythological
hoax narrative and nobody knows the basic facts of the case,
which are completely contradictory to that narrative. And when Tracy

(34:20):
went to this press conference, he had a situation occur
that was incredibly reminiscent to me, because I myself have
been treated, I think even worse than Tracy was treated
at an event involving Matt Sandusky, which was not a
press conference, but where I didn't even get to.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Ask a question.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
All I did was sit at a public event with
a ticket in my name, exactly where I was told
to sit. And then Matt Sandusky got upset that I
was there was refusing to go on stage, and the
authorities told the police to get me off the premises,
and they dragged me out of my seat and on
the floor, roughed me up, and I got charged with

(34:59):
all sorts of bullshit that I could have spent allegedly
nineteen years in prison, and it costs me like six
thousand dollars to get out of the whole situation, including
a trip back to Pennsylvania. It was a total nightmare.
It was an unbelievable injustice. Nobody in the media leapt
to my defense at all because they all thought, you know,
I'm a pedophile defender, and that Matt Sedusky is a saint,

(35:23):
and so therefore there's no reason to can be concerned
about the journalistic issues involved here. For the state freedom issues, well, Mike,
what happens with Michael Tracy is remarkably similar. And Tracy
asked a really good question about a topic that I
have discussed on this podcast many times, which is that

(35:43):
the key, and when I say key, I mean the primary,
by far, most important accuser in this entire case of
Virginia Geoffrey, that she does not have nearly the credibility
that the media pretends. And we know this for a
lot of reasons, but the most obvious, clear cut, smoking

(36:06):
gun reason is that she, on multiple occasions, accused Alan
Dershowitz of sexually abusing her, and she was forced to
recant that.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
So she is acknowledged.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
She's dead now because she committed suicide earlier this year,
but she had been forced to acknowledge that she made
a false allegation against a very very prominent, very very memorable.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Man in Alan Dershowitz.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Now that's not the only reason to question her credibility,
but it's by far the most prominent, and it's the
most clean cut. It's the easiest to understand, and it's
the most difficult to explain if you're her defender. So
Tracy goes to the press conference and asks a very
good question, very concise, very well put together, and immediately

(36:56):
those on the podium recognize Tracy and hear what he's
saying and where he's going, and.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
They immediately shout him down.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
They all say, don't answer, don't answer the question, don't
answer the question, I mean, which is a ridiculous response.
I mean, you're there to answer questions about this case.
It's more than a legitimate inquiry. And to me, their
reaction was very, very telling.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
But here is a clip.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
It's a little bit over two minutes long, and it's
I believe this is from Michael Tracy's own audio. So
you're not going to hear what happens on the podium
that well, you'll get a little bit of sense of it.
On the podium, it was far more dramatic than the
audio that you're about to hear. But this will give
you a sense from Tracy's perspective of what transpired when

(37:43):
he tried to ask a very important, very simple, very
relevant question, how he was not responded to, how other
media members.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Didn't do anything to defend him.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
I mean, in the old days, the news media would
understand and then even if they didn't agree with a question,
that it was in their self interest to make sure
that all questions were answered in some way, shape or form,
because if that's not the case, if you're not going
to answer somebody else's question, why are you gonna answer
my question? But we don't live in that world anymore.

(38:17):
And you'll hear media members trying to change the subject,
basically helping those on the podium avoid Michael Tracy's inquiry.
And then you're gonna hear Michael Tracy being escorted away
on the orders of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, and.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Which is just ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
We talked to Michael about this whole situation in which
you'll hear in just a moment, but you'll hear him
being threatened with arrest and he decides to go along
and walk away from this press conference without ever getting
his question answered.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
And here's what that sounded.

Speaker 5 (38:55):
Like, mister Ebwick's right here, please, mister Edwicks. Yeah, so
you represented Forrigina Roberts Guffrey for many years.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
She eventually had to recant.

Speaker 5 (39:03):
The allegations that she made against Alan Dershowitz. She alleged
that on at least six occasions she had been sex
traffick to Dershowitz. She recanted that question, and so why
is it that she should be regarded as credible in
this respect?

Speaker 4 (39:16):
You're not gonna answer the question. Is that not a
fair question?

Speaker 6 (39:19):
How did the victims feel about the interview that was
given to Glene Maxwell by Todd Blanche Why aren't you.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
Gonna answer that question? How's that an illegitimate question?

Speaker 2 (39:27):
We're good, guys, We're not good.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
They just devoted to my question. Don't care when.

Speaker 6 (39:31):
You've talked in the past on MSNBC about the that's amazing.

Speaker 5 (39:34):
Since of the Epstein birthday book, have you yourself, in
the course of litigation seen it?

Speaker 2 (39:41):
I don't. I don't know that we're able to reveal
what we've seen.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
And what we have not seen by way of protective order.

Speaker 6 (39:46):
But my point, being in that circumstance was if anybody
wants answers, there's an easy place to get it.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
I told you where to get it.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
I said, the estate of Jeffrey.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Epstein has it service of pine on them.

Speaker 5 (39:57):
They'll turn it over, and if we had served you know,
in them in the past, they would have turned it over.

Speaker 7 (40:02):
And we would have seen it, which I don't usually
miss subpoenas like that.

Speaker 4 (40:05):
So there we go.

Speaker 8 (40:07):
Your question about the allegations, there's a simple answer, release
the files, I agree the American public instead.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
Of But you and your college are talking about this
woman as though she has unblemish credibility. She made up
egregious allegations against a prominent individual, among others. She wrote
a memoir and then had to admit Edwards and his
other council had to admit it was the fictional Heights memoir.

Speaker 4 (40:32):
He knows what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 (40:33):
That contained hugely salacious allegations that gets a whole host
of prominent individuals.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
So shouldn't you tell the public about this? He avoided
the question release. I agree, that is the answering question.
I'm not interrupting. He just came and answered my question.

(40:58):
Are you what are you doing? Are you kidding me?
Are you even stuff? Not confessional stuff?

Speaker 6 (41:08):
What do you think I'm doing here? Bro connoisance given
for you know, I'm a turnalist, was inflator.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
If you don't move with me, you're gonna be placed
on the arrest. Okay, Okay, I don't.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Know, have a great day.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
So when I saw that happen, I'm like, oh boy,
you know, I certainly haven't understand how that feels.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
That that's very reminiscent to me.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
And I know Michael because I've actually appeared on his
show a couple of different occasions on different topics, including
this one, and so I was.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Very much aware of his position.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
He's very much aware of my position, and I figured,
you know, I got to have him on the podcast,
and I asked him to him on and he agreed
to do so. So a couple of days after this
entire fiasco, at this so called Epstein's Survivor press conference,
I interviewed Michael Tracy and it went on for.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Almost two hours, which I did not anticipate.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
And a couple of disclaimers here before we play part
one of what we're now creating two parts of because
it's just too long. But I think this will actually
work out well. One of the disclaimers is that I
find Michael to be a frustrating character.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
I think that he's very smart and he's very good
in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
But you're going to hear, In fact, I think you're
going to hear a couple of different times where Michael
is addressing my frustration with him, which you would not
have actually heard if he hadn't addressed it, because what
he's responding to is my facial expression of frustration when

(43:03):
he starts to get sideways and isn't as focused as
I would like. And so Michael is not particularly disciplined
in my opinion, when he tells his story, he likes
to get bogged down in the minutia. He likes, I think,
to show off how many names he knows. And I'm

(43:25):
a big picture guy. I'm a bottom line guy. I
don't like to get you sidetracked. I try to be
as focused as possible, and I try to keep the
audience as much in mind.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Whether I'm doing an interview as the host.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Or I'm being interviewed as the guest, I'm always focused
on what is it that the audience needs to know
and making it compelling for them. I'm not sure Michael
looks at this the same way, and so this interview
is very odd because we are We're on the same

(44:00):
side essentially in this whole thing, and we're pretty much
the only two people who are on the same side
when it comes to public commentary, and a lot of
this interview is very good where Michael provides his perspective
on how he got into this situation, what happened at
the press conference, why a lot of the press conference
was a farce and a joke, and basically we're going

(44:25):
to cut it off after we stopped talking about the
press conference itself. So there's essentially two different parts to
this interview, the press conference and the issues related to
the press conference.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
And then in part two, we're going to get into
the big picture of this story, and that's when.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Things get really heated. I'm sure, way more heated than
Michael ever anticipated, especially when it comes to the issue
of Epstein's suicide in a federal prison, because on that topic,
Michael and I disagree slightly. We don't even disagree dramatically.
Michael was just unwilling to say that Epstein killed himself,

(45:09):
and I find this to be a source of great frustration,
but that's for next week. Here is part one of
this two part interview with independent journalist Michael Tracy about
what happened when he went to this Epstein Survivor press
conference last week in Washington.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
D C.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Michael Tracy, Welcome to the Death of Journalism podcasts.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
Always a pleasure, John, It's always.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Good to talk to you, and it's a very important
discussion we need to have because you were involved in
a very interesting way in the so called Epstein's survivor
press conference last week. We've already played a clip from
it where you tried to ask what I think was

(45:57):
a very relevant question and essentially got shout it down.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Before we get into that.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Incident specifically, give us just a little bit of background
as to why you have been focused so much on
the Epstein case and from what perspective. What do you
think people have been getting in general, especially in the
media and online wrong about this Epstein narrative.

Speaker 5 (46:24):
Right, So, I guess by way of context, even broadening
it out from Epstein for a moment, I do find
myself compelled to dig into the unseemly details whenever there's
a consensus that emerges around a sexual harassment or sexual
misconduct style story that has something to meension with the

(46:48):
political arena, because oftentimes there's ideological blinders. As I'm sure
I don't have to explain to you that prevent people
from examining this stuff rationally use it to foment political
hysteria for whatever their.

Speaker 4 (47:03):
Expedient purpose is.

Speaker 5 (47:05):
So one example is Andrew Cuomo in twenty twenty one,
he was forced to resign the governorship of New York
based on essentially a fabricated set of allegations that were
amplified strategically by his political enemies. And I never had
any particular affinity for Andrew Cuomo politically. In fact, I

(47:27):
covered him very negatively and critically in the past when
I did cover his tenure as governor. But there was
clearly a kind of an operation going on that this
guy Mamdani was kind of was involved in as a
member of Who's the New York Democratic mayoral nominee? He

(47:47):
was involved, you know, peripherally in the New York State
legislature kind of pushing this tactic to dislodge Quomo because
otherwise Almo was.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Not the only one. I mean, al Frankin got the
same treatment.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
I mean we yeah, But like I don't want to
get too bogged down, right, I don't understand I appreciate
your can Tara Reid.

Speaker 5 (48:10):
The Biden thing I was no fan of Joe Biden,
but Tara Reid was just a made up story.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
All right, I'm with you on all that. So we
both have a contrarian mindset. But why have you been
so focused on Epstein?

Speaker 2 (48:24):
And from what perspective?

Speaker 4 (48:25):
Right? Okay?

Speaker 5 (48:26):
So I had intermittently followed the Epstein story, probably since
early twenty fifteen when the first really salacious court filing
was publicized. It was called emotion for Joinder. It was
filed by Bradley Edwards, who was the MC at this
press conference last week in front of the Capitol, as

(48:46):
well as Paul Cassell, who was a former federal judge.
And that motion for jointerer was filed on behalf of Virginia,
Roberts Guffrey, who became the central accuser, the central purported victim,
the one who could have introduced a lot of the
mythological claims around Epstein that are now so widely believed today,
perhaps more people than ever believe them, given the prominence

(49:08):
of the story recently, and as time went on, every
now and then there would be a development around various
dimensions of the Epstein case. So you had ongoing litigation
for multiple directions involving Gallaine Maxwell, involving Epstein itself, involving

(49:29):
allegations that other prominent people might have been involved in
certain sordid activities, and more and more like whenever I
would kind of revisit the story, there would be more
and more grounds for skepticism in my mind as to
how to conceptualize what was really going on here, and
that I think came to a head in particular in

(49:50):
twenty twenty two. Now, I didn't closely follow the Gallaine
Maxwell trial when it was ongoing. I wish I had.
This was in November and December of twenty twenty one,
because even as a casual observer, I sent something was off.
I didn't comment on it though really publicly at the time,
but you know, privately, I would just kind of mention
to people my intuition. But if I'm not well versed

(50:11):
in something, I don't necessarily want to just spout off
in public, right, So I didn't cover it that closely.
And but then it came to head in twenty twenty two,
because that's when this Dirshowitz defamation lawsuit culminated or was resolved,
whereby Virginia Opera was good Fray again the central accuser.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
I mean people say there are over a.

Speaker 5 (50:30):
Thousand victims or something now as though, and people try
to say that to me when I emphasize the centrality
of Virginia Roberts good Frey, they'll say, oh, what does
it matter if she might have some credibility problem. Look,
they're these this whole other universe of victims, but they
all stem from her. I mean, she's the one who
gave rise to this whole thing and kind of created
the contours around which subsequent victims kind of emerged. And

(50:54):
she actually personally lobbied for the Lurchship.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Let me, Michael, let me stopu the evers. Yeah, because
I need people to be reminded. This is the woman
who accused Prince Andrew. This is the person who, by far,
and you make an incredibly important point which I have
found in every case I've ever investigated, there's no more
important accuser than the first and most prominent one, because

(51:18):
everything else flows from that. If people see blood in
the water, then it is the possibility there's the possibility
for less than credible, maybe even fake accusers.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
She is the person who a.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Few months ago, apparently or allegedly was involved in a
bus accident and then not soon after that she killed herself.

Speaker 4 (51:39):
So I'm sorry, that's what we're told.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Well, what do you believe happened there?

Speaker 5 (51:46):
You know, I don't have a belief job, But let
me just clarify something. I'll get into that in a minute,
but just to clarify something for Genia Roberts, Coufre was
actually not chronologically the first accuser related to jeff Repsten.
She was the first accuser who introduced these sprawling sex trafficking.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
And blackmail allegations.

Speaker 5 (52:03):
So she was the first accuser for that aspect of
the Jeffrey Epstein allegations. There had been earlier accusers on
various other sort of tracks having to do within but
she's the one who breathed such her fervid life into it.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Yeah, without her, Michael, we're not talking about that, correct, correct? Okay,
So that's what I mean by that, And so so
go back, So you realized that through the Dershowitz story
that Jeffrey is not credible or at least has credibility problems,
and so take us down the path that you were
going down at that time.

Speaker 5 (52:39):
Right, because people who need to understand what happened with
that Dershowitz lawsuit resolution. It was incredibly brutal litigation that
stretched on for years. It originated in early twenty fifteen
when Dershowitz s got sued by Bradley Edwards, representing Goufray
because once that for Jointer came out and Dershowitz was

(53:01):
accused of committing heinous child sex crimes, Dershowitz came out
and vigorously denied the validity of the allegations. He says
that he said that he would be vindicated, that he
would pursue this to the fullest extent of the law
that was available to him. He would provide dispositive an
evidence showing that he couldn't have possibly been at the

(53:22):
places he was accused to have been when he allegedly
sexually victimized Goufrey.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
He said that she was a liar, she was a fabricator,
et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (53:33):
And when he issued those strident denials, he was then
sued for defaming Virginia Roberts Gouffrey by calling her a liar,
but he established that she made it all up. Eventually,
after eight years of torturous litigation, with a really intense
discovery really, you know, every motion under the sun. It
was very, very, very intensive litigation. So it wasn't just

(53:54):
like they you know, this out These accusations were dangling
out there, and after a while people came to their
senses and decided to come to a resolution.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
Toe it was like a.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
Brutal you know, brutal law fair that was raging for
nearly a decade, and Dershwitz prevailed and a chief exactly
what he said that he wanted to achieve, which is
to just get an admission from this person that he
had not committed these crimes.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
And just to make sure people understand how significant this
is because of Goofree's significance to the larger conspiracy element
of the story, she claimed, I believe laughably that she
mistook Alan Dershowitz or misidentified him on multiple occasions. I
don't believe that's even theoretically possible, given who Alan Dershowitz is.

(54:42):
And to me, you know, this is a massive hit
to someone's credibility. There's also problems with her story involving
Prince Andrew, and so if you don't believe her, then
it becomes much more difficult to believe this larger grand conspiracy,
the narrative, which is Epstein was blackmailing all sorts of

(55:05):
rich and powerful people and that that was why he
was murdered in prison.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
And you know, and that's.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Why we're still talking about this today, because this story
is much much larger than just one horrific a child
sex abuser, which I believe Epstein is because he acknowledged
that he was, he pleaded guilty, that he I believe
he killed himself. So that's why this is significant. So right,
So tell us then, what happens in your evolution of

(55:33):
your involvement in this story.

Speaker 5 (55:36):
Well, and there's a million other data points that could
give you that undercut fatally for Ginda Roberts, who praise credibility,
and I knew a bunch.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
I knew much of this.

Speaker 5 (55:46):
After that, the July sixth, twenty twenty five doj FBI
memo came out on behalf of the second Trump administration,
announcing that they had conducted some kind of supplementary investigation
into the Epstein now and had concluded that there was
no quote unquote client list, that there was no there
were no additional third party individuals against whom any further

(56:11):
charges could be predicated that they Even if you read
that memo closely, they sort of reprimand people who might
feversly speculate about some kind of larger conspiratorial element here they.

Speaker 4 (56:26):
And basically they are.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
The memo essentially asserts that there's no further action to
be taken with respect to Epstein after people in the
Trump administration, not quite so much Trump himself, but definitely
his underlings and boosters who had been on the podcast
circuit as private citizens like Cash Hotel, Dan Bungano especially,
but also others just in the general right wing kind

(56:50):
of mill u had been putting.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
You know, Donald Trump Junior said stuff like this. JD.
Vance occasionally would talk about it.

Speaker 5 (56:58):
But so there was this whole orbit of people who
had been amping up their followers and generating lots of
anticipation about how if you voted in Donald Trump in
twenty twenty four, he would defeat the deep state. Right
he would have these this Avengers team behind him with
RFK Junior and Tulca Gabbard and all this crap. And

(57:19):
one of the natural consequences of him vanquishing the deep
state would be to unearth the hidden Epstein files, including
the quote unquote client list was I think was kind
of just invented by right wing podcasters as a concept.
Like it's only a few years old that there was
supposedly some kind of client list. I don't even know,
Like it's hard to even tell where exactly that notion

(57:39):
came from because the people who were actually have been
a long term involved in the case never asserted that,
like Bradley Edwards, this lawyer has never asserted that there
was some kind of consolidated list. It was kind of
an invention of like just media entrepreneurs. But anyway, when
that membo came out, there was a huge uproar, right
and the immediate assumption right everywhere in between was that

(58:03):
this must show that there's some gigantic cover up and
now Trump was in on it. Like a week or
so after that memo came out, there was this Turning
Point USA conference in Orlando.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
That's Charlie Kirk's organization.

Speaker 5 (58:16):
It's basically like a conventional conservative youth oriented organization.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
It's like Seapack Junior or something that he runs.

Speaker 5 (58:23):
And you had people appearing at that conference speaking on
the stage saying Donald Trump has covered up a giant
child rapist ring. It was Dave Smith, this guy that's
the guy who said it, and like the crowd collapsed
like Lemmings. And this is like a Republican event, right,
So something crazy was going on where they were willing
to accuse at a Republican event Donald Trump not just

(58:45):
they weren't just like criticizing him for some policy, right,
they were accusing him of doing something that would be
among the worst things that any president could ever do, right,
which is cover up child rape. And so like there
had to be some corrective offered, and I undertook that
myself because nobody else was doing. Nobody else was willing
to withstand the pushback that they would get. Where you're

(59:07):
I'm constantly called the pedophile twenty four to seven, or
if like everybody's saying that the FBI needs to come
check my hard drives, etcetera, etcetera. So I must have
some sinister personal motive for doing this.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
And you know, I'm the only.

Speaker 5 (59:18):
One who seems to I mean, John, tell me if
it's somebody else out there, because I'm the only one
that I've run across who has a command of the
facts and evidence such that when I see bs being spewed,
whether it's in the alternative media like a podcast sphere,
or on the main more mainstream media, or among politicians.
I can actually refute it or show why it's a
distortion or misleading, but nobody else can do it. Nobody

(59:38):
else seems to have the motivation, so they just that
dynamic just allows a moral panic and mass hysteria to
proliferate unfettered. And I really dislike that because mass panic
inevitably a bridges civil liberties. We can get into it,
but there's a million different examples of how this Epstein
stuff has abridged core constitutional liberties. It catalyzes the collapse

(01:00:01):
of journalistic standards because nobody thinks they have to even
check basic facts or evidence because everybody's just on already
on the same page, right, So if there's you don't
have any expectation that anybody's gonna be challenging you. You
become much more lazier, much more lazy and cavalier with
the facts. And also it's breeding what I consider to
be a rampant misdiagnosis of actual political problems, where now
everybody's viewing like US foreign policy through the prism of

(01:00:27):
the assumed existence of this massive sexual blackmail ring that
must be pulling the strings in terms like on Trump
or whomever. And that's just nonsense. So there's a real
world political impacts I find and it even has come
to a head in the past week because Thomas Massey
and Rocanna, who I otherwise had some admiration for, just

(01:00:48):
as legislators, they're sort of unusual or idiosyncratic members of Congress.
Thomas Massey's one of the extraordinarily few Republicans who it
doesn't just buckle to Trump on command.

Speaker 4 (01:00:59):
And Rocana, uh, you know, he could be a little
bit of a gadfly.

Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
And then within the Democratic caucus and he'll at least,
you know, he engages with ideological diverse media. I've done
interviews with him. He'll go on right wing podcasts and
so forth. So he gets out of the Democrat dem bubble.
And now they're they're sullying themselves by pushing this mythology.
They they've aligned with Bradley Edwards, the extortionist lawyer, and
you know, and so there's has to be some corrective

(01:01:24):
and if I'm in a.

Speaker 4 (01:01:25):
Position to do it, I'll do it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Okay, Oh, you're getting a little ahead of yourself in
the timeline of the story here, but I certainly empathize
with your position because I've been in it myself many
many times. And I think politically what you're describing, and
this is very relevant to getting us to the press
conference or whatever you want to call it that occurred
last week where you were eventually escorted away from the proceedings,

(01:01:49):
is that we have a very unique set of circumstances politically,
which you somewhat described there, and that is that this story,
at least during the Biden administration, was largely driven by Maga.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Maga became completely.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Invested in this idea of Epstein as this mastermind of
this incredibly vast conspiracy where all the liberal elites were
sexually abusing underage girls and somehow getting away with it
never being sued, and that there was this Epstein list,
and the left wing media was never all that interested
in it until they started to see blood in the

(01:02:29):
water when it came to Trump's potential culpability. So now
you have both sides weirdly invested, and in my opinion,
we have a massive audience for this what I think
is a mythology of the Epstein story, and there are
people desperate to give the audience what they want to hear.

(01:02:51):
It is an audience in search of a narrative, or
at least a justification for the narrative.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
That they have selected.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
And so, because this story will not and you've already
mentioned the two congress people want a Democrat and want
a republic and Thomas Massey, who I used to respect
too before this, a libertarian from Kentucky, they decide to
take part in this Epstein survivor hastily put together quote

(01:03:18):
unquote press conference in Washington, d C. Last week, and
you decide to attend it. Now as you were planning
on attending whatever you want to call this, and I
hesitate to use the phrase press conference because I don't
think it deserves the term press conference.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
Especially it was a press conference. It was a flawed
press conference, but it was still a press cost.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Okay, whatever, whatever you want to describe it. As you
were preparing for this, what were your goals, what was
your strategy, and what was your expectation?

Speaker 5 (01:03:50):
Right, So it wasn't I wouldn't say it was hastily convened.
I heard this, I heard about this. You know, almost
a month ago. That's when it was announced by Rocanna
and Nazi. And if they put out a press release,
I want to say it was mid August sometime.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
And did they picked this date because the first I
heard about it was one day before, but okay, I
knew about it for weeks, all right, Well, fine, whatever,
it certainly appeared to be hastily put together because it
didn't appear to be very well organized. But fine, however
long ago it was organized, what would give me the
answer to your question?

Speaker 5 (01:04:24):
Because you got to remember, I mean they flew you know,
they flew in women. You know, they threw in so
called survivors from around the country, maybe even the world,
I'm not sure, but definitely from around the country.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
So there had to be some advanced notice for that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Just logistically, well, I mean, Donald Trump, before the debate
with with Hillary Clinton, was somehow able to get every
Clinton accuser in the world the Saint Louis a day.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
And a half after the access.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Hollywood money of Broderick.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
I don't know how the hell that happened. I've always
been mystified by that. But let's not get sidetracked, as
often happens with you, Michael I don't care when the
thing was planned answer my question.

Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
My thinking going into it, Okay, well, I mean when
I was preparing for it, you know, I was. My
goal was to be able to ask a question, in
particular to Bradley Edwards, who is a hugely central player
in this entire Epstein saga. So for him to be
made available in a public press conference type setting, I

(01:05:23):
thought would be a valuable opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Why is he so important? Why is he so important?

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):
Because he was basically Epstein's longest term arch legal antagonist.
As a lawyer in Florida, he started filing claims essentially
against Epstein in two thousand and eight, right around just
after Epstein first pleaded guilty to two state level charges
in Florida in June two thousand and eight. And it

(01:05:49):
was Edwards who kind of cooked up this whole theory
that the government had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act
in two thousand and eight, which was a fairly new statute.

Speaker 4 (01:05:59):
It had only been sign into law by George W.

Speaker 5 (01:06:01):
Bush in two thousand and four, and Bradley Edwards wanted
to find some way to essentially go after Epstein in
the wake of this plea agreement or not prosecution agreement
that entailed him pleading guilty to state level charges in
exchange for no federal indictment. And he just kind of
dove into the vour types of Epstein from there, and
he represented it was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Stray what were your goals and what was your strategy and.

Speaker 5 (01:06:25):
Expectation again, so my goals were to be able to
ask Edwards some pointed questions that I would imagine he's
never been asked before. So here were some I wish
I had an hour with them or longer, but I
knew I would have to probably prioritize, and I didn't
know how exactly the press conference was going to be structured.
But it turns out it turned out that he was
essentially orchestrating the press conference. Like Massey and Kanna, they

(01:06:49):
delivered some remarks, but they kind of stepped aside. Right,
it was Bradley Edwards who was running it, supposedly on
behalf of the purported victims, because we're supposed to stand
back and honor the victims, right, and he's their legal representative,
and so you know, among the things I would have
asked him, and I'm not gonna I don't want to
get too bogged down on this because I could drone
on forever, which I know you enjoy. But like, for example,

(01:07:12):
Edwards had this whole situation early on in his conflict
with Epstein, where the law firm that Edwards worked at
was owned or founded by this guy, Scott Rothstein, who
had hired Edwards, and Rothstein not long into Edward's employment
at this law firm, absconded to the United States, fled

(01:07:34):
literally to Morocco because he did legal research in the
fact that the Morocco didn't have an active What does.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
This to do with it?

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
What the hell does this have to do with the
Nepstein narrative.

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. And
it turned out that Rothstein was running a Pozzi scheme.
He was charged with running a Ponzi scheme. It was
considered to be the second largest Ponzi scheme in US
history at the time after Bernie made off. And the
Ponzi scheme was about enticing wealthy investors to invest in
his firm because he said, we have settlement money coming
in from prominent people who have been charged with sexual misconduct,

(01:08:05):
including sexual misconduct against miners and He used Epstein as
one of his examples of somebody who's gonna be paying
out big settlement money, So these investors should have get
invested and will get a piece of it later. And
Bradwords was Bradley Edwards was the one furnishing the investigatory
materials to to uh Rothstein. So essentially there was like
fraud at the beginning of this whole Epstein saga. That

(01:08:26):
might have been difficult to distill into a question to Edwards.
But there's other weird stuff. Yeh, yeah, there's other weird stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Okay, for example, naming people don't people don't know that's true,
You're you're too far afield.

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):
That's that would have been question.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Yeah, I'm glad you didn't ask that question because that
would have been just ridiculously.

Speaker 5 (01:08:43):
I know, I agree, I agree. Maybe for an hour
long thing I could have done it. But for instance,
also in his book, in his book, Bradley Edwards admits
he was an FBI in format He was a confidential
FBI in format He participated in an FBI staying against
Epstein's former houseman who worked at the house in Palm
Beach to put him in prison.

Speaker 4 (01:09:02):
So Edwards could get the so called.

Speaker 5 (01:09:03):
Little Black Book that he then gave to Gawker or
a journalist who later brought it to Gawker. So this
guy's an FBI informant. He admits in this book that
he's never sought seeing evidence of any real blackmail operation
that Epstein ran, and he'd be the last guy to
admit that if there was evidence of it. And there
are a few other things. But what I've determined was,

(01:09:24):
if I have one question, I'm going to ask of
it for Judi. Robert Kuffrey, whom Bradley Eppers was representing
all the way through, like from twenty fourteen onwards when
that first salacious motion was filed that named Dershowitz and
Prince Andrew, and he was also representing her along with
David Boys because there was like a legal consortion that
got set up when she recanted the claims against Dershowitz. So,

(01:09:49):
in terms of a narrow, crisp concise question, I just
wanted him to address how we should now why should
why is it that we should think of her as
a credible person in light of that recantation. Because at
this press conference, John, every speaker was hailing this woman
as though she was some truth telling martyr, like she
was a saint. I'm telling you, they're going to beatify

(01:10:11):
her like the Catholic Church. Bradley Edwards declared that she's
an American hero. Everybody, you know, it's like again, it's
it's like she was. You know, she's on the pantheon
of historic heroes now and if nobody does any kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Counteractual let's be clear, almost everybody at that press conference
has made a ton of money because of her. I mean,
right of course, right to them, to them, she is
a saint.

Speaker 4 (01:10:36):
Yeah. Oh that's a good point. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Okay, So you ask what I think is a really
good question.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
I was proud of you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
I was a little surprised you were able to be
as focused as you were, because focus.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
Really isn't your forte.

Speaker 5 (01:10:49):
And well, in that kind of context, I can focus, John,
Come on, I'm not that much an idiot.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
All right. Well, you asked a good question, and the
response to me.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Was incredibly telling because they didn't even try to respond.
In fact, they mocked your question. There was an immediate
response from the people in the podium, don't answer, don't answer, like,
oh my, a freak out of Oh my god, we
can't even possibly dignify this very sensible question with a

(01:11:20):
response this we have a blestphemer here, a blasphemer.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
That's what it felt like. It felt like a scene
Fron from Mondy Python.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
Crucify him, crucify him.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Right, crucify him a bass black, get the blasphemer. And
so you don't get an answer now before we get
to what happens to you next, what is your analysis
of the way they responded to your question.

Speaker 5 (01:11:43):
And just for your information, I was not trespassing at
the SPRITS conference. I was expressly invited to attend by
Rocanna's staff, so I was duly admitted as a member
of the press, so they couldn't like try to claim
that I was some kind of interloper or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:11:56):
I was away to be there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
If you're probably Michael as you're probably aware, and I
know the listeners of this podcast are where.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
I was once literally arrested.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
And charged when I had a ticket in my own
name to go to an event for a Sandusky accuser.
Oh absolutely, I didn't even ask a question. So I've
been treated way, way, way worse than what you're about
to describe in a very similar situation. But tell me
your your analysis, or give me your analysis of the
way they responded and did not respond to your very

(01:12:26):
reasonable question.

Speaker 5 (01:12:27):
Well, let me give you some background context as to
why they reacted to the way they did.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
No, this is relevant, John, don't you have relaxed? All right?
We're all good.

Speaker 5 (01:12:35):
There was a what they called like some kind of
survivor's rally in the same little area in front of
the capital that preceded the official press conference with Rocanna,
Thomas Massey, and Edwards. Right, So other survivors had already
spoken at this event, and I had gone around interviewing
a bunch of them, or attempting to, and quickly many
of them determined that they did not want to answer
my questions. Like Annie Farmer, who testified at the Maxwell

(01:12:58):
trial in twenty twenty one as advocating on behalf of
her lunatic sister Maria, who's basically just a hallucinatory, crazed
person who's now suing the FBI for six hundred million dollars.
I tried to interview this woman, Teresa Helm. I'm not
sure if he was actually at the later press conference,
but I know I definitely tried. I definitely interviewed Hailey Robson,

(01:13:18):
who was identified by Julie K. Brown, the author of
that Miami Herald series in twenty eighteen that reef new
life of Epstein story and harnessed the power and culturally
politically of me too and everything, and she claims that
it catalyzed federal prosecutors to reprosecute Epstein federally. In Julie
Kate Craig Brown's book, she says, this woman, Hailey Robson

(01:13:40):
was basically the top recruiter for Epstein in the Palm
Beach area of teenage girls and would tell them to
lie about their ages of meaning, tell girls who might
not have been eighteen to lie to Epstein and say
they were eighteen. And the girls then did that at
Hailey Robson's direction, and she was there just has some
kind of generic survivor. Now right, she's recast herself where
of course she wants to get a piece of the

(01:14:01):
settlement money. So now she's just a victim or a survivor.
Where she didn't realize that for years and years and
years until until she did like come up some kind
of intense therapy or something, and so I had talked
to her.

Speaker 4 (01:14:11):
I was respectful with her. I tried to be respectful
with all these people.

Speaker 5 (01:14:14):
I'm not trying to necessarily be overly egregious or pratuitous
and how I.

Speaker 4 (01:14:17):
Questioned them, But she knew she didn't like me.

Speaker 5 (01:14:20):
She spotted me any farmer who's also behind the podium.
She recognized me, and that's why they didn't even let
me get a word in an edgewise.

Speaker 4 (01:14:28):
Right. They immediately sort of like stoked a frenzy.

Speaker 5 (01:14:31):
If you'll see the video, They kind of like start
whispering at Bradley Edward saying, don't answer that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:36):
I'm answer that he obliges.

Speaker 5 (01:14:39):
And then they brushed me off, right, and then Rocanna
that actually who I know, intercedes and attempts to answer
my question. I asked him a follow up question. At
that point, the police escort me out. But just because
we can get in more detail on that, But my
reaction is, I think I kind of finally sort of
blew a hole through some of the consensus here. Not

(01:15:02):
that that was like my conscious motive, like I was
just I was constantly motivated to do what I would
do in any other context, but just like applying basic
journalistic scrutiny to the story, and then seeing how that
was received in such an irrational way, where like a
mob was ginned up, Marjorie Taylor Green commanding the police,
Capitol Police over whom she has jurisdiction as a member
of Congress, to expel me for simply because she didn't

(01:15:23):
like the content of the question. I mean, even people
who like might have been inclined to disagree with me
or to be skeptical of my roughly speaking take on
all this, they then they had to kind of at
least recognize that there was something amiss here, right so,
and that that's like basically the reaction I've seen from
people who have publicly commented on this since since last week.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
If we lived in irrational world, your very rational question
and the irrational response to it would have had all
the other media members that were there turn on a
dime and be.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa?

Speaker 7 (01:16:01):
Wait not for some solidarity solidarity among journalists, right you think.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
There would have been There would have been questions following
up on why you won't respond to that question? There
would have there would have been an extreme amount of
skepticism among the media that would have been immediately created
and would have been acted on. But of course we
don't live in that world anymore, especially when it comes
to this kind of a topic. The news media is

(01:16:27):
just a bunch of lap dogs for this ridiculous and
absurd narrative that they have bought into, where you are
the one fly in the ointment, You're the one contrarian
willing and able to be there to ask a legitimate question.
And instead of the scenario that I outlined that would
have occurred in a rational world, we live in this

(01:16:48):
upside down world where as you've already implied, a Republican
member of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Green orders the Capitol police.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
To have you escorted away.

Speaker 7 (01:17:00):
Tell me about that, and the mainstream media otherwise despises
Marjorie Marjorie Tayler Green, Right, she's like the biggest MAGA
flunky to them, who they always want to show as
doing something stupid or discrediting because it will refrect badly
on Trump and Maga, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
But here she would literally she's on video, it's not disputable.

Speaker 5 (01:17:23):
You could see her pointing to the Capitol Police and
directing them to forcibly remove me from the press conference
because she did not like the content of the question.
And she's got no very little pushback at all for
this from what I've seen. I mean, I think people
just accepted and move on because there's still such an
overwhelming consensus around this issue that it's assumed I must be.

Speaker 4 (01:17:45):
Wicked for having even asked the question that I did, because.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Even members of the news media. Let's be clear, there's
two things going on here. Number One, the vast majority
of not all, of the news media is catastrophically IgG
ignorant about the basic facts of the case.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
That's number one.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
And number two, they all either love the current narrative
or see no self interest in debunking the current narrative.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Am I correct on those two points?

Speaker 5 (01:18:15):
More or less they see it as something they can
use for fodder against Trump. So that's what dominated the
questions at the press conference. Naturally, basically, let's just like
get our our daily Trump cheap shot quota. And look,
I'm not against getting in some cheap shots against Trump
necessarily where it's warranted, but it was just way disproportionate
in terms of the emphasis.

Speaker 4 (01:18:35):
And there's an.

Speaker 5 (01:18:35):
Interesting dynamic here where in the modern media environment. Sometimes
there could be pushback or dissension that the media will
eventually recognize or at least be able to become conscious of.
Among the alternative media, like the podcast social media, et
cetera crowd who will criticize if the media is doing

(01:18:56):
something that they find to be disreputable. But here the
podcast all media social media crowd are essentially in line
with the mainstream media. So like CNN is Jeffrey Epsteen
in Central twenty four to seven, where they have total
credulity towards these purported victims, and the same is true
in much of the podcast sphere and the podcast Fear.

(01:19:17):
They tend to emphasize more of like oh, this must
be some kind of intelligence agency thing, or it involves
Israel or whatever is that they have a limit maybe
slightly different emphasies, but they're essentially united on the core elements.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Everybody has their own self interest. In this case it's different,
but everyone has a self interest in maintaining this ridiculous
conspiracy narrative. And I want to circle back to that,
but let's just finish your part of this story. So
you get escorted away, you don't fight at all, You
go ahead and walk away.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Did you think about fighting?

Speaker 5 (01:19:51):
You know what, John, I've learned. If I was nineteen,
I probably would have fought. But as I've matured emotionally,
I've realized that once al police officer issues a command
and tells me I will be arrested if I do
not comply, I will comply and then deal with it afterwards.

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
Right, I'm not really a.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Smart way to do it. I did not fully comply.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
I didn't resist, but I just I was basically dead
weight and I was abused by police. I was charged
with resisting arrest, which was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
I was charged with all sorts of different things.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
I could have spent nineteen years in prison, cost me
about six thousand dollars to get it all thrown away
because it was the most ridiculous charges of all time.

Speaker 4 (01:20:38):
Where was this?

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
This was in Pennsylvania at a Matt Sandusky speaking engagement
where I had a ticket in my own name to
attend this event and sat where I was told to sit,
just sitting there, and Matt Sandusky refused to start the
event because he knew I was there and was terrified
of me. And I guarantee what happened was that Matt said,

(01:21:02):
I'm not speaking if Ziggler is there and the people
that were in.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
Charge of the event panicked and had police.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
This pulled me out of my chair and drag me
literally out of the place, and so you probably made
the right decision, even though instinctually I probably would have
fought for my right to be there and to ask
questions and to make a little bit more of a stake.

Speaker 5 (01:21:25):
I wasn't gonna physically fight, like if they're introducing physical force,
meaning you have to like they put their hands on
may not violently, but they were like escorting me out right,
So I'm not going to resist their physical force that
they've applied to me. Yeah, if they're just like very
very early on, I have the audio that I posted this,
they say, hey, you got to go or whatever, and
that's that's the point at which I would I was

(01:21:45):
trying to question them as to what grounds they could
have for trying to haul me out, But once they
enter into a physical sort of phase and are using
force to remove me, then I'm just gonna comply, because
I don't even want to get into a situation where
we have to like granularly analyze like who took what
physical act. You know, it's just not worth it. It's

(01:22:07):
not what I want to focus on.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
So you were just escorted away and you were not
charged with anything, not arrested.

Speaker 5 (01:22:14):
They just they just escorted me out, you know, beyond
just beyond the perimeter that had kind of been sort
of gated off in the I don't want to leave
this because this is absolutely outrageous.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
This is a press conference that you have been invited
to by one of the people, a congress person, yea
Democratic congress person, who has helped running this event, helped
organize this event. You are invited to be there. All
you did was ask a very rational question. You didn't curse,
you didn't you didn't even say anything negative about anybody
on the podium. You did nothing wrong, and a maga

(01:22:47):
member of Congress orders the Capitol police have you escorted
out now.

Speaker 5 (01:22:53):
And then and then everybody cheers, The survivors all cheer,
I mean, the survival like the quote to quote survivors
were also calling for me to be thrown out, and
Marjorie Taylor Green kind of like joins in with them
and says, yeah, throw them out, But like the Capitol
police take orders from her, right the co members of
Congress are the ones who have jurisdiction over the Capitol Police.

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
Now, and if you look at the video Rocanna.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
Who knows I've been invited, at his sort of behest,
you could see him trying to like motion to the
coup police, No, you don't have to throw him out,
but he gets overwhelmed by the mob that's been riled
up by Marjorie Taylor Green and like the rabid survivors.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
Now, because of all the perverse self interests in this
situation where MAGA world is invested and liberal media is
invested because of the they think this is bad for Trump,
you have no support in remotely rational word as usual. Well,
believe me, I've been there many times myself, maybe even

(01:23:48):
a worse situations than this. You have no support because
there's no one who has incentivized.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
A rally to your cause.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
Like, for instance, had you been a MAGA reporter and
a clarly liberally biased event and had been taken out,
you would have been on every right wing you know,
podcast and independent media program that there is, because you
would have been.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
Hailed as a hero.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
But because everybody is incentivized, much like you know, children
with Santa Claus in believing in this mythology, there's no
one who has a self interest to come to your support,
and of course therefore no one did.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
You did one short interview on News Nation.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
I know that you've apparently been invited on the Piers
Morgan Show, but that's been postponed as of this taping
and scheduled for later this week. But by and large,
my guess is you have received virtually no support in
the very media that in a remotely rational world would
see this event as threatening the very institution of journalism

(01:24:55):
by throwing out a reporter by Capitol police asking a
legitimate question, Have you gotten.

Speaker 5 (01:25:01):
Any You know, there's been some I don't want to
say that there's been zero support. Like Megan Kelly and
Glenn Greenwald the day after, we're doing a sort of
a segment together, and they were very much supporting me
or defensive or they supported the legitimacy of the question,
they criticized the expulsion, et cetera. So that was good,
and I had. You know, Megan Kelly got angry with

(01:25:23):
me a few weeks ago for something related to Jeffer Epstein.
I thought that she was saying stuff that wasn't really
properly actually predicated. So I guess she that wouldn't have
necessarily been inclined to leap to my defense, but she did.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
Hear you know, sometimes gets it right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
Oftentimes when she has a direct self interest in thing,
she will not.

Speaker 4 (01:25:42):
Get Yeah, you know, I did some. I actually did
some conservative talk radio. The next day.

Speaker 5 (01:25:47):
I did a Big Reason podcast that actually was pre scheduled,
but I think it's supposed to be coming out today.

Speaker 4 (01:25:51):
I did Glenn Greenwald Show, who.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
I contribute to the show anyway, By and large, were
near the same kind of level of support that you
should get in a remotely world, because this is an
attack on journalism that happened here.

Speaker 4 (01:26:03):
When you have tokay, oh, I'll give you another one.

Speaker 5 (01:26:05):
Actually, somebody from this organization called Freedom I think it's
Freedom of the Press Foundation or something like that, some
journalist rights group who I actually had another incident of
five years ago that they called me and had the
document and then they didn't do anything with it. It
was when I was covering the George Floyd protests in
Portland and at night, these like Antifa super soldier like
black clad people come out and like just tyrannize everyone

(01:26:28):
who doesn't necessarily recite their mantras, and like they you know,
they stole my phone, they gave it back eventually, they
threatened to curb stop me.

Speaker 4 (01:26:37):
They threw stuff at me, basically chase to be away.
And you know I wrote about it.

Speaker 5 (01:26:42):
I was you know, I was writing about it for
the Wall Street Journal at the time, and so like
I had like a much a legitimate media affiliation to
to site and I gave like a and then this
same organization contacted me, had me to describe what happened,
and then like they didn't add it.

Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
They never added it to they're like their tracker or whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:26:58):
I like press free and freedom violations, and like that
same organization did contact me on I think it was
Friday of last week, and I described the situation here,
so we'll see what comes of it. And I have
I have other media that I'm doing. You know, you know,
I don't care. I mean, I don't need everybody to
rush and like defend Michael Tracy. I'm not like I
don't need to.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Be like you're missing you're missing the point, but I
got the point. I'm glad that you have gotten.

Speaker 4 (01:27:22):
And also I have.

Speaker 5 (01:27:24):
I have gotten a lot of good you know, my
substack has been doing really well. So there's a minority
of people who appreciate what I've been doing. And you know,
on a personally even financially, that's been good, well.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
Good, And I'm glad you're getting a lot more support,
even though it's not as much as it should than
I did in very similar situations, especially in the Sandusky case.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
But let's talk about the specifics of.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Who were who were who was speaking, for instance, at
this press event where you were thrown out. There are
a lot of different speakers, but one that I want
you to to talk about is a woman by the
name of Lisa Phillips.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
And Lisa Phillips.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):
Is an attractive woman of color, and as someone who
is educated on this case but doesn't know, like, for instance,
until this event, who Lisa Phillips is or was and
who is just evaluating things based upon my interpretation of
the way human beings react. I mean, I think I

(01:28:25):
have a pretty good sense of who's sincere, who's not,
who's a.

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):
Good guy, who's a bad guy. I got a very
bad sense from Lisa Phillips just by watching her.

Speaker 9 (01:28:36):
I felt like she was really enjoying being there, and
that is always one of to me, the biggest red
flags when it comes to victims.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
Of especially horrific sexual abuse.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
If you are enjoying being there, if you are enjoying
the spotlight, if you are happy.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
For the world to know who you are and your role.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
In this situation and describing yourself as a survivor of
Jeffrey Epstein, that doesn't mean you're lying, that doesn't mean
that you're a bad person.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
But that's a red flag to.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Me, and this person very clearly was enjoying being up there.
Tell us about Lisa Phillips's story and why there are
substantive reasons to be skeptical of her role in this.

Speaker 5 (01:29:25):
Right, So I'll get to Lisa Phillips, But just so
you know the way that they john come on, I'm sorry,
I always I always circle back.

Speaker 4 (01:29:32):
I'm not going on some wild tangent. You calm down,
all right.

Speaker 5 (01:29:38):
In the weeks leading up to this press conference, they
were advertising it like they're big hook to get everybody
interested was that they claimed that they were going to be
debuting brand new Epstein victims, that brand new, never before seen,
never before heard from victims of Epstein and Maxwell, so
you could see that with why that would generate media interest, right,

(01:29:58):
and that they were and they were keeping these supposed
new victims. Their identity is concealed until the day of
the press conference, is what I was told.

Speaker 4 (01:30:05):
Anyway by Rocanna staff several weeks ago.

Speaker 5 (01:30:08):
And so I had never I had only been dimly
familiar with Lisa Phillips. I had sort of heard of her,
but I thought she was just always she's kind of
like too peripheral to even really dig into that much,
like she had launched some kind of podcast last year
where she was talking about trauma and all this stuff
and like women's empowerment issues and whatever. But it turns

(01:30:29):
out she's one of these, I guess, not technically a
new victim, but she's like one of the people who
the organizers organizers decided to feature. So at the pre
press conference sort of survivor rally, that's where she got
on stage and said, I have an announcement to make everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):
We survivors have.

Speaker 5 (01:30:45):
To have been talking amongst ourselves and we've decided we're
going to produce our own Jeffrey Epstein client lists, Right,
so we're.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
Gonna name names.

Speaker 5 (01:30:54):
We're gonna confidentially, they said, name names of all the
prominent power, powerful people who were implicated in Epstein's sex
trafficking ring. And people would assume she means child sex
trafficking ring, right, because that's why the story is so
emotionally sort of resonant, and the you know, the crowd
went wild.

Speaker 4 (01:31:14):
Like Gloria Alred also spoke with that rally.

Speaker 5 (01:31:16):
I guess they didn't want to necessarily bring her in
to have to stand alongside Marjorie Diller Green, although that
would have been pretty funny.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
Just by the just for the record, anytime the Glory
Allred is involved in a story, I automatically know there
is bullshit involved.

Speaker 4 (01:31:30):
Yeah, I interviewed her. Actually I'm still going to view
something with that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
I don't care if you interviewed her, doesn't matter. Her
presence automatically brings with it to me an extreme level
of skepticism because she is full of shit, So go ahead.

Speaker 5 (01:31:46):
But anyway, she was at that sort of pre press
conference rally where Lisa Phillips introduced this claim that like
she clearly calculated was going to draw headlines and it did,
because wow, that means there's still this entire universe of
unnamed co conspirators of Epstein, right, who the government refuses
to prosecute, and that's why they're covering up the quote
unquote Epstein files.

Speaker 4 (01:32:06):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:32:06):
So now the survivors, led by Lisa Phillips, are take
it upon themselves to produce their own lists and show
how deficient to and derelict the government really was.

Speaker 4 (01:32:16):
And so she spoke, and she.

Speaker 5 (01:32:18):
Spoke at the main press conference, and Thomas Massey announced
that he and Marjorie Taylor Green would be willing to
take this supposedly newly created Epstein clientlest from Lisa Phillips
and go to the floor of the House of Representatives
and enter it into the congressional record.

Speaker 4 (01:32:38):
I mean read off the names of people that she's
accusing me.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
Because you're forgetting in a very important part of this
whole equation. And that the reason for why Massey believes
that he needs to do this is that he would
be exempted from any sort of legal ramifications.

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):
He cannot be sued for something that he.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
Says on the floor Lord of the House, and that
the explanation, this is the important part that we're missing here,
which I found to be a smoking gun. One of
many smoking guns in this ridiculous event of absurdity is
that the organizers were claiming. One of the organizers claimed
that they can't provide their list publicly because the Epstein

(01:33:22):
survivors will be sued into homelessness, right, sued into homelessness.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
Well, Massy said that MASSI said that whoever.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
I don't remember who did, but that was the explanation
given for why there haven't been public names listed.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
By the way, no, I assume that's what is.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
That also the explanation for there haven't been any lawsuits
against these rich, powerful, prominent people, which is to me
one of the biggest red flags of this entire mythologist.

Speaker 5 (01:33:50):
On that point, John, you'll be interested in this because
you've raised that point before. Bradley Edwards has said that
there are like, you know, to me, around thirty prominent
people whom he sort of extracted potentially settlements from secretly.

Speaker 4 (01:34:07):
So, uh, that's what he says.

Speaker 5 (01:34:10):
And so there have been and there has so there
has been like legal action potentially against some people who
might have wanted to, like, you know, watch the hand.

Speaker 9 (01:34:17):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:34:18):
I don't have any reason to believe that unless and
Here's why I don't believe it, because somebody wouldn't have settled.
Somebody would have fought it right, and therefore we would
have learned it well.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
Derswitz fought it. Let's d Dershowitz did fight.

Speaker 2 (01:34:35):
It and right well and he won.

Speaker 4 (01:34:37):
And Prince Andrew fought it initially.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Right and well because he had no control over what
the royal family did with their massive amounts of money.
They just wanted to go away. And there's a whole
backstory of.

Speaker 4 (01:34:48):
The and others have thought it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:49):
Actually John, there was a recent lawsuit against somebody who
was it was it's a man now and Is I
think nineties who was an associate of Epstein. He was
a psychologist. He got sued by uh, I'm pretty sure Edwards.
It might have been David Boyce on like totally spurious grounds.
This was only in the past two years and they
ended up dismissing the lawsuit because the claims were ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
Okay, well, that doesn't surprise me at all. But I
have no reason to believe that there have been thirty
settlements with people who were involved in the massive Epstein conspiracy,
especially when there's no evidence for that. But once again, Michael,
you claimed when I asked you the question, you would
circle back, and you got upset when I got exasperated
because you started down in another path.

Speaker 2 (01:35:29):
Guess what's happened over the last five years?

Speaker 4 (01:35:31):
Right, You're right?

Speaker 5 (01:35:31):
Didn't hey and tell me about Lisa Phillips?

Speaker 4 (01:35:36):
Okay, okay?

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
Why we should be skeptical of her credibility? Right?

Speaker 4 (01:35:40):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:35:41):
So MASSI says, these people are going to be student
to homelessness if they publicly name these supposedly uh if
they publicly named names. Right, So I thought to myself, huh, okay,
if we're if we're to believe that Lisa Phillips would
be student to oblivion and rendered homeless if she were
to publicly divult these names of powerful people implicated in

(01:36:02):
Epstein and sex trafficking. Grand that she claims that she's
in possession of what do we know about her finances? Well,
thankfully I was able to interview her briefly. This was
pre press conference, right, this is a so called survivor's rally,
and so I first wanted to know if she could
confirm that she claims that she was groomed as an

(01:36:24):
adult by Jeffrey Epstein. Because she claims that she was
twenty one when she first encountered Epstein. Right, She was
a model in New York. She says that she was
offered by her agent to fly down to the British
Version Islands for a photo shoot for a magazine in
two thousand and then a friend she was with invited
her to sail over to Epstein's Island on their off

(01:36:48):
day in the US Virgin Islands, and she went, and
she claims she initially really liked Jeffrey Epstein, like she
was almost enamored of him.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
There are photographs of her having a grand old rime
on these trips.

Speaker 4 (01:37:02):
Right, it looks awesome.

Speaker 5 (01:37:03):
I mean, I wish somebody invited me to go to
that island sometimes, because right, I mean that she's on
a boat, she's swimming in the ocean.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
It's it's like paradise, right.

Speaker 5 (01:37:13):
And and but she she you know, just last year
she handed over these photos to Fox News, who for
some reason was interviewing her about this, and like it
was supposed to like a substantiate that she actually was
on Epstein's island.

Speaker 4 (01:37:25):
But she looks like she's having a ball. And yet
we're now supposed to have it sort of recast in.

Speaker 5 (01:37:31):
Our minds as this is evidence of her being and
stared in some kind of like sex trafficking.

Speaker 4 (01:37:35):
Bring it makes zero sense.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
So she had most important part, the most important part
of this Philip's story is that there is zero doubt
whatsoever that her story is that she had sex.

Speaker 2 (01:37:47):
Whether it was consensual or not. Who the hell knows
at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
At twenty one and older, which is irrelevant to the
narrative of this entire story. Prior story, it's supposed to
be underaged girls.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
And so how has she glombed on? And presumably I
believe you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Didn't you get information that she has gotten a settlement,
didn't she? She told me right, she said that she
has gotten a settlement. So these years later, all these
years later, she engages. So here's what I think likely happened.
She is a model slash escort that gets hired to
go have a grand old time with Jeffrey Epstein. They

(01:38:32):
engage in a sexual relationship. Years later, the whole Epstein
thing blows up in a completely separate, different narrative. He
of course, is dead. The media is obsessed with the story.
There's money to be had, and she rewrites history, making
herself into a sex abuse victim, and everyone buys it,

(01:38:53):
partially because no one wants to push back on any accuser,
and partially because maybe because she's a woman of color.
Whatever it is is, no one wants to.

Speaker 5 (01:39:02):
Let's leave the racial stuff out of this, John, because
it's kind of irrelevant, because like, it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:39:06):
Irrelevant, she's the only white color.

Speaker 1 (01:39:09):
Here's why it's not irrelevant, because when you are an
accuser of anything in this in this world, in this country,
you are evaluated based upon your attributes and how much
force field protection you have against attack. And if you
are a young woman, that means you cannot be attacked.

(01:39:29):
But if you're a young woman of color, forget about it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
You cannot be attacked, you cannot be criticized.

Speaker 4 (01:39:35):
Okay, gotcha.

Speaker 5 (01:39:36):
I'm just saying I think every other accuser, including the
most insane ones, are white women, And so you know,
there's not a really racial through line here. You completely
I got you, I got you, I got got Yeah,
that's basically what happened.

Speaker 4 (01:39:51):
I think she actually was based on what I think.

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
You agree with me?

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
Do you agree with me that you think that that
that that's what happened with regard.

Speaker 5 (01:39:57):
To Phillips more more or less, yes, I think she
was based on what I could tell, Like she gave
Fox News this magazine cover that she says was she
took the photoshoot for when during this trip to the
Virgin Islands, and it says September of two thousand.

Speaker 7 (01:40:13):
If you look at her look up her birthdate, she
would have been twenty three at the time.

Speaker 5 (01:40:16):
Actually, so I think she actually revised down her age
because she wanted to, as much as possible get herself
conflated with the actual alleged child sex crime victims.

Speaker 4 (01:40:27):
And she claims that it was.

Speaker 5 (01:40:29):
Only after she met some quote unquote survivors like this
sisterhood of drama bonding survivors, like they actually talked that
way about one another, that she realized, oh, she too
was a victim, just like the actual children allegedly because
they were all girls, like from the eighteen to twenty
five year old she realized were also girls who were victimized.

Speaker 4 (01:40:50):
And yeah, that's basically her. But like, what does the casual.

Speaker 5 (01:40:55):
News consumer assume if they they're watching this press conference
and they see this woman speaking. She doesn't say, Hey, everybody,
I was twenty one or twenty three when I met
Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 4 (01:41:04):
She doesn't specify.

Speaker 7 (01:41:06):
It just all gets conflated with this whole notion of
a pedo.

Speaker 5 (01:41:10):
Ring, which has no bearing on anything. This woman even
claimed that she experienced. It's all about illusion and conflation,
and the media, of course thinks it would be somehow
evil to provide this any kind of clarifying information and
distinguish the literal adults who admit that there were adults,
of which there were many who spoke at this press conference,
from the ones who at least purport that they were

(01:41:30):
miners when they were victimized.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
Well, if you're remember of the media, you might get
escorted out by Capitol police if you ask the wrong question.
So of course they're all gonna sit on their hands.
So that's Part one of the Michael Tracy interview. Part
two is, in my opinion, much better, far more compelling,
and it's clearly way more heated for reasons that I've

(01:41:53):
already alluded to, and we will play that next week
in episode two hundred and fifty nine of the Death
of Journalism podcast. But my basic takeaway from that press
conference is that it is the perfect proof of everything
I ever say about this case in particular, and sex

(01:42:13):
abuse cases in general. The vast majority of the news
media doesn't even want basic questions to be asked. They
would much rather go along with the narrative that has
already been created because there's nothing in it for them
to go against the narrative. I've said that one hundred
and one times when it came to the Penn State

(01:42:35):
Joe Paterno Jerry Sandowsky scandal, which is different than Epstein
because Epstein was guilty and Sandusky was not, But there
are some similarities when it comes to the moral panic
and the general consensus by the news media that there's
only one narrative here and anything that goes against that
narrative must be destroyed and cannot be taken seriously at all.

(01:42:59):
You're if you go against that narrative, and because they've
just got too much invested in it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
And let's be clear, both sides, right and left are.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
Deeply invested now in this massive grand Epstein conspiracy theory
for which there.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
Is no evidence or logic, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:43:22):
Think we will further explain that reality in part two
of this interview on next week's episode of The podcast.
Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show.
If you're interested in listening to the entire show, you
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Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
Please go to Patreon. That's p A T R e
O N dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:43:45):
Patreon dot com slash the Death.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
Of Journalism with John Ziggler. My name is jhn z
I E G L e R. That's patreon dot com.
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