Corporate Media Ignores the Real Epstein Story

Amid an intensifying Capitol Hill fight over Jeffrey Epstein disclosures—led by Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, Ro Khanna, and others—House Democrats last week published three email exchanges involving the disgraced financier, and then House Republicans released 20,000 additional documents.

The selectively released emails from House Democrats, like the corporate media’s own reporting around the Epstein files, has focused almost exclusively on salacious aspects of Epstein’s life, with pundits attempting to determine whether and to what degree President Donald Trump knew about or engaged in sex crimes with Epstein. 

Very much like corporate media attention around the Monica Lewinsky scandal and subsequent Ken Starr investigation, which nearly derailed the Clinton presidency, outlets like The New York Times focus almost exclusively on the tabloid aspects of Epstein’s life, a search Democrats and their corporate media allies believe will finally deliver “the goods” on Trump, implicating him the ultimate presidential sex scandal. None of the emails released this past week outright confirm their hypothesis. 

An email dated April 2012, in which Epstein wrote that “the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him,” was immediately seized on by online liberals as supposed proof that Trump had engaged in sex crimes. Yet X users quickly noted that the redacted victim was Virginia Giuffre, who later recanted some of her allegations, raising serious questions about her credibility relative to Epstein’s many other victims, which may be why House Democrats chose to redact her name from the email release.

Epstein was someone whose sexual behavior was proven in court to be criminal. It is entirely possible that powerful elites, including Trump, engaged in those crimes with him. But if evidence of Trump’s crimes really does exist in those files, one wonders, why haven’t Democrats already released it? 

That Trump abruptly on Sunday encouraged House Republicans to back further Epstein disclosures suggests he is confident nothing in those materials implicates him—or, at least, that whatever emerges will prove more damaging to prominent Democrats than to himself, and less damaging than perceptions of a White House cover-up. 

However, a provision in the disclosure bill likely to pass this week, as journalist Michael Tracey notes, grants Attorney General Pam Bondi sweeping discretion to redact any content she deems invasive of victims “privacy.” It is not difficult to imagine such unilateral power being abused to protect administration officials from scrutiny.

Many of the most important Epstein revelations have come not from the files released by House representatives just last week—and extensively covered by corporate press—but from independent media.

For starters, investigations into Epstein’s operations in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the political network that enabled and protected them have been systematically ignored or suppressed by corporate media. Documents uncovered by independent journalist Lee Fang showing that Albert Bryan Jr., the current governor of the Virgin Islands, used his office to advance Epstein’s interests for several years, lobbying for tax exemptions for Epstein’s businesses and pushed for waivers that allowed the convicted sex criminal to evade local sex offender laws.

Other recent reporting from Fang exposes U.S. Virgin Island’s non-voting delegate in Congress and MSNBC darling Stacey Plaskett’s deep ties to Epstein (and reveals her previous denials about those ties to be complete lies). Epstein not only raised money for Plaskett’s campaigns, but also introduced her to key Democratic donors in New York, helping secure early funding that jump-started her political career. More than that, from 2013–2014 Plaskett worked for Erika Kellerhals, Epstein’s tax attorney and personal adviser.

Plaskett’s close political relationship with Epstein was further exposed by the Washington Post, which published video and text messages showing Epstein coaching the delegate in real time during a congressional hearing for Michael Cohen—instructing Plaskett on what to ask Trump’s former lawyer.

What these new emails do not address are the questions with geopolitical implications: Was Jeffrey Epstein some sort of intelligence agent and, if so, which government or governments was he working for?

A recent investigative series from Drop Site News journalists Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain provide the clearest answers to those questions so far. Together, they extensively document Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to the Israeli government and its intelligence sphere, confirming his long-suspected key role as an international political fixer, often in service of Israeli interests.

For example, the outlet reveals how Epstein worked on behalf of Israel with Ehud Barak and the Mossad to open a covert backchannel to the Kremlin during the Syrian civil war, with the ultimate goal of removing Israel’s enemy Bashar al-Assad from power. Using his contacts, such as oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, Epstein secured a private audience for Barak to meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in order to push for that outcome.

Additional reporting from Grim and Hussain exposes how Epstein and Barak operated as emissaries for Israel’s intelligence services in Cote d’Ivoire, using Epstein’s private network and Barak’s political status to broker meetings with foreign leaders to advance Israeli interests. 

Prior to his West Africa trip, Barak commissioned an intelligence-style dossier from the private firm Ergo—a link I and journalist Jack Poulson exposed this summer—on Cote d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara’s inner circle and his country’s security apparatus. Barak later arranged a “non-security” pretext through his son-in-law’s medical-equipment company to mask the operation’s true purpose. After meeting Ouattara and senior officials in West Africa using that cover, Barak received a Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) blueprint from former Israeli intelligence chiefs to construct a nationwide cell phone and internet interception apparatus; that plan became the basis for a 2014 Israel–Cote d’Ivoire security and surveillance agreement.

Drop Site’s reporting demonstrates the operational role Epstein served in securing that deal for Israel, coordinating Barak’s meetings during the UN General Assembly that fall and connecting him directly to the Cote d’Ivoire president’s chief of staff. 

Their investigations reveal how Epstein, working with Barak, routinely played that sort of operational role on behalf of Israel—for example, by helping it construct a similar security agreement with Mongolia.

Most recently, Grim and Hussain documented how Jeffrey Epstein hosted an Israeli military intelligence officer, Yoni Koren, at his East 71st Street estate on multiple occasions: once in February 2013, while Koren was serving as a senior aide to Barak, who was then Israel’s minister of defense; a second time, for two weeks, in October 2014; and again for ten days in September 2015. 

As late as January 2013, Israeli media still described Koren as the Ministry of Defense’s bureau chief, and even after Barak’s retirement he continued acting as an informal conduit between Israeli and American intelligence circles—relaying messages to Israeli military intelligence (Aman), scouting cybersecurity firms for Epstein and Barak to invest in, and arranging high-level meetings through security officials such as former CIA and DOD chief of staff under Obama, Jeremy Bash. 

Emails published by Drop Site reveal Epstein’s possible role in war profiteering. In one from 2014, Epstein wrote to Barak: “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you,” to which Barak responded, “not simple to transform it into a cash flow.”

And yet, notably, not a single mainstream U.S. corporate media outlet has reported on Drop Site’s revelations and the definitive proof it provides that Epstein acted as an intelligence agent or asset for Israel. Their omission is unsurprising; even the House Democrat’s own selective window into Epstein’s world reveals the indispensable role those same corporate media institutions served shielding Epstein from scrutiny. 

In an email from September 27, 2017, journalist Landon Thomas, at the time an international finance writer for The New York Times, tipped Epstein off about an investigation by former NYPD detective John Connolly. “He is digging around again,” Thomas wrote.

Emails also expose how author Michael Wolff helped Epstein coordinate his media strategy, advising him on how to best pressure Trump and exert leverage over him. In December 2015, Wolff warned Epstein that CNN planned to ask Trump about their relationship, suggesting to Epstein how he could best use the moment for “valuable PR and political currency.”

Wolff had also recorded hours of interviews with Epstein, most of which have never been made public. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who features heavily in the latest Epstein emails released by House Democrats, likewise recorded more than 15 hours of interviews with Epstein—footage which, like Wolff’s, is in the public interest yet remains unreleased.

The revelations unearthed by Fang and Drop Site News—not the curated and redacted releases from congressional Democrats—have done more to expose Epstein’s real role in global affairs than any official investigation. If the Epstein files released this week prove anything, it is that independent media has rapidly emerged as the only institution capable of an honest analysis of power.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/corporate-media-ignores-the-real-epstein-story/