Are the MAGA podcasters right about Epstein?

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This episode is about Jeffrey Epstein and discusses suicide and child sexual assault.

We're not going to go into any detail on either of those things, but we just thought that you should know.

So there's this staircase, right?

I've been thinking about this staircase for a week.

It has eight steps.

It has a black banister on both sides.

It is narrow, about the width of a standard doorway.

Two people could squeeze past each other, but not comfortably.

This staircase is the only access point to the jail cell where billionaire, financier, pedophile, sex trafficker, and alleged spy Jeffrey Epstein died on the night of August 9th, 2019.

And I've been trying to figure out whether someone could go up those stairs without being seen by the one working security camera in the cell block.

This has consumed my entire brain.

I'm struggling to think about anything else.

And it's all because of a man named Dan Vongino.

Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.

He's a former Secret Service agent who became a prominent Trump-supporting TV and podcast host.

This is what I'm talking about by this global cabal of people.

They trade in access and info.

Those are the two things people like you and I don't have.

For most of the six years since Epstein's death, Bongino has been stoking conspiracy theories about it based on his various sources.

Bill Clinton was on the plane with some women who, according to my source, looked underage.

Was Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, working for Intel sources?

And who were they?

A lot of people who are likely on these tapes, who are probably being subjected to blackmail.

And a number of my sources have said as well, of people with underage girls.

pushed by Epstein to have sex with these people.

They're on tape.

Who has the tapes?

Bongino's theory from his sources was that Epstein was at the center of a blackmail operation and that one or more of the victims of that blackmail operation may have had him killed in his cell.

It's unbelievable.

The guy killed himself and now nobody's going to know.

By the way, he did a big inverted commas gesture around killed himself when he said that.

Anyway, cut to this year and Dan Bongino has undergone a career shift from fringe MAGA conspiracy podcaster to deputy director of the FBI.

And the guy who once spent hours spreading Epstein conspiracies is now saying Epstein wasn't blackmailing people.

There's no evidence in Epstein's files of anyone else committing crimes.

And

he killed himself.

Again, you want me to get?

I've seen the whole file.

He killed himself.

No inverted commas that time.

Dan Bongino says that he is entirely convinced of it because video evidence shows nobody could have gone near Epstein's cell that night.

Nobody could have gone up those stairs without being seen.

There's video that when you look at the video, you're going to see there's no one there but him.

But here's the thing: that's not what the video shows at all.

I'm Matt Bevan, and this is if you're listening.

Okay just turn that off.

We need to get back to this staircase.

So this staircase I'm obsessed with.

In the video Bongino released you can only see the left hand banister as you're walking up the stairs and a little sliver of the steps themselves.

The whole video is very low resolution and zoom in and enhance isn't a real thing, so so this is the best we've got.

You might have heard about a missing minute on this video, but I actually don't think that's the important thing about this at all.

The important thing happens 80 minutes before the missing minute, and it involves one of the guards on duty that night.

The guards who were supposed to be guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night that he apparently killed himself falsified logs to make it appear that they had checked on him when in fact they had not.

Taped to one of the computers on their desk was a sign that read in all caps, mandatory rounds must be conducted every 30 minutes on Epstein as per God.

But the last check either of them did was at around 10.40 p.m.

Epstein was alive at that time.

According to the guards, nobody went near his cell until they brought him his breakfast the next morning and...

Disgraced American financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his prison cell.

If the video confirms that nobody went near the cell all night, then the mystery is solved.

Epstein must have killed himself.

The question is, could someone have got to Epstein's cell without being seen by the camera?

Here's what Dan Bongino says.

You'll see no one really comes out in that bay in that area, then him.

There's no one in there.

On the video, you can see Officer Tova Noel walk from her desk out of shot at 10.38 p.m.

One minute later, you can see an orange shape go up the stairs towards Epstein's wing of the cell block.

Now, government investigators say that this orange shape is Officer Noel carrying orange bed sheets and jumpsuits up the stairs, which checks out the bed sheets and the jumpsuits are indeed orange.

Then, two minutes later at 10:41 p.m., you see Officer Noel walk back across the floor.

To recap, you see the orange shape, presumably her, go up the stairs, and then you see her back on the ground floor.

You never see her come back down the stairs.

So,

this means someone can walk up and down these stairs undetected by the camera.

And yet, Dan Bongino said.

There's video that when you look at the video, you're going to see there's no one there but him.

But there could have been somebody there.

The entry to the cell block is off-screen.

The entirety of SEAL Team 6 could have gone in and out of Epstein's cell without the camera seeing them.

as long as they hugged the right-hand banister.

I can't possibly tell you how irritated this information has made me.

See, when it comes to conspiracy theories, my approach is always this.

There's the old saying that if it comes down to conspiracy or incompetence, in general it's incompetence rather than conspiracy.

I think it is much more likely that Epstein took advantage of an incredibly incompetent staff in a famously dysfunctional jail and killed himself.

That's certainly what the Justice Department's official investigation found.

The combination of negligence, misconduct, and outright job performance failures all contributed to an environment in which arguably one of the most notorious inmates in the BOP's custody was left unmonitored and alone in his cell with an excess of prison limits, thereby providing him with the opportunity to take his own life.

While that is by far the most likely scenario, I was hoping that I would be able to tell you that it was impossible that Epstein was murdered.

But I can't.

Someone with enormous resources, a very strong motivation to silence Epstein, and an unbelievable appetite for risk could theoretically have paid off enough prison staff to make this happen and then paid off enough investigators to cover it up.

This is one of the reasons that hardcore Trump supporters are coming after Dan Bongino and his boss, FBI director Cash Patel.

Dan Bongino and Cash Patel are cover-up artists, and they're working for the very same puppet masters that they claim to oppose.

It's time for my favorite game show: Mind Control or Blackmail?

Yeah, Bongino's Mind Control, Cash Patel's Blackmail.

That's my bet.

Now, does that satisfy my curiosity about end, the demise of Jeffrey Epstein?

No, it doesn't.

I mean, they're sweating profusely.

They look like they're starring in a hostage video or like they snuck into the FBI headquarters evidence room and ran off with and ingested all of its meth.

Dan and Cash are intelligent enough to know that people like myself are intelligent enough to know that you're bullshitting.

So why might someone out there be willing to do this incredibly risky thing?

Well, it has a lot to do with what's in these so-called Epstein files and how they might be weaponized.

And that's why the other thing that these podcasters do not believe is the Patel-Bongino FBI claim that there was no blackmail operation.

I mean, this is clearly obviously a sexual blackmail.

Epstein was involved with intelligence, whether it's US, whether it's Mossad, it's somebody.

His island was a honeypot.

So, do I think he was killed?

A hundred percent.

Yes, I do.

Because you want to, he made his whole living blackmailing people.

So, is there any public evidence at all that Epstein ever blackmailed anyone?

Well, yes, sort of.

It involves this guy.

I love Bridge.

Bridge helps you think.

It's a game you can play your entire life and keep getting better and better.

To my surprise, Microsoft founder Bill Gates' favorite game isn't Minesweeper or Solitaire.

It's Bridge.

I think anybody who's good at bridge is going to be great at a lot of things.

Bill Gates was introduced to Bridge in the 1990s by fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

If I'm playing Bridge and a naked woman walks by, I don't even see her.

Bridge players seem to reach for raunchy metaphors when talking about their game.

So here is my favorite quote by very famous American actress.

Her name is Mae West.

And what she said is, Bridge likes sex.

If you don't have a good partner, you better have a good hand.

Oi, oi this is a young russian bridge player named mila antonova giving a speech about bridge in 2010.

in the speech she talks about meeting bill gates last year i played against him at the same table at the national bridge tournament in washington dc i didn't beat him but i tried to kick him with my leg it's hard to believe but mila antonova may actually be more into bridge than even bill gates According to the Wall Street Journal, Gates subsequently had an extramarital affair with Antonova.

Allegedly, they took the connection between sex and bridge out of the land of the figurative and into the land of the literal.

Now, it was around this time that Bill Gates started to have dinners with a charismatic financier/slash convicted sex criminal named Jeffrey Epstein, where they discussed business and philanthropy.

In 2013, entirely separate of Bill Gates, Mila Antonova was introduced to Epstein as someone who might be interested in investing in a bridge-related business venture that she was setting up.

I

organizing teaching after-school teachers in Harlem, and they teaching this cute kid, so I want to create something great.

Epstein responded by paying for Antonova to get training in software engineering.

Antonova told the journal that Epstein wanted nothing in return and just said that he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.

But Epstein's philanthropic demeanor faded in 2017 when Bill Gates refused to donate money to one of Epstein's charitable programs.

Epstein told Gates he knew about the affair with Antonova and wanted reimbursement for her software training.

Gates felt threatened and thought that Epstein was trying to blackmail him.

He later told the Wall Street Journal, Well, Jeffrey,

in retrospect, I was foolish to spend any time with him.

Do you think maybe the widely reported child sex sex-related criminal conviction, which predated your relationship with him, might have been a hint that Epstein wasn't a stand-up guy, Bill?

So, yes, I think I was quite stupid.

You know, I

thought it would help me with global health philanthropy.

In fact, it failed to do that, and

just a huge mistake.

Has it made you more wary of connections?

Definitely.

I mean, are you kidding?

Now, to many people in MAGA podcast land, this story was what they were after.

Bill Gates was being blackmailed by Epstein to try and get money out of him, which is but a keyhole into the whole Epstein conspiracy, but basically confirms what we all believed is likely true.

Epstein was blackmailing powerful individuals and trying to control them.

This is the beginning of a two-hour podcast titled Epstein Conspiracy Confirmed, which came out back in 2023 when the Bill Gates blackmail story broke.

I think it's fair to say, in all likelihood, this is how he was doing everything he was doing.

Oh, yeah.

And Dan Bongino was a guest on this episode back when he was just a regular conspiracy podcast guy.

Don't you find it weird too that nobody seems to know what Epstein really did?

We know what's going on.

It's like, oh, they said he was a hedge fund guy.

Really?

What's the fun?

Like the Joey Bagadonas hedge fund?

Back then, Bongino seemed sold on the idea that Epstein was really getting his money through blackmail.

Was that what was happening?

Was it some circular like, hey, it'd be a shame if this got out?

Oh, look, a donation to your little thing.

But the thing about this Bill Gates story is it's the only public evidence we have of Jeffrey Epstein ever trying to blackmail anyone.

That's despite the fact that many people have said Epstein had a large trove of videos and photos of people who'd visited his properties.

Epstein's victims have said that he showed them videos.

One said that Epstein told her, I have tapes of every person who has ever been on my properties.

The writer Michael Wolfe recently told the Legal AF podcast that he interviewed Epstein for more than 100 hours while writing a book about Donald Trump.

And while he was at Epstein's house, Epstein showed him one of these secret photos.

There are three that I specifically remember.

Two of Trump, topless girls sitting on Trump's lap, one with Trump, a stain on the front of his pants, and the girls

and three or four girls, five girls,

pointing at this and laughing.

And

I assume Epstein kept those photographs in his safe.

Jeffrey Epstein's brother, Mark Epstein, told the BBC that his brother kept dirt on some very powerful people.

We were talking about the election and Jeffrey told me that if he said what he knew about the candidates, they would have to cancel the election.

That's a quote.

Despite this, nobody has ever come out and claimed that Epstein tried to blackmail them with any of this video or photographic evidence.

Since becoming the deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino has done a complete 180 on these allegations.

The FBI says there is no evidence in the files they seize from Epstein's properties that he was involved in any blackmail.

Plus, they say that nothing in the files shows anyone committing any crimes apart from Epstein and presumably his accomplice, Ghulane Maxwell.

And Dan Bongino says you can trust him.

I know this is a hot potato for folks.

I totally understand.

My comments were clear.

I'm not paid for my opinions anymore.

I work for the taxpayer now.

I'm paid on evidence.

That's it.

Cool.

So before this, you were just spouting things off with no evidence.

Anyway, the FBI and Department of Justice recently said in a statement they don't expect to disclose any more information apart from what's already been disclosed, which, I guess, means case closed, at least as far as they're concerned.

So there is a reasonable chance that this is all that me and the MAGA conspiracy podcasters are ever going to get on Epstein.

So how do we rationalize all of this?

Well, here's what we know for certain.

Epstein and Ghelaine Maxwell were sex traffickers.

Epstein was a sexual abuser of women and teenage girls.

He had hundreds of victims.

Epstein had cameras on his properties.

He had many parties where wealthy men socialized with beautiful young women.

In 2019, the FBI acquired thousands of videos and photos from Epstein's private files, including child abuse material.

The FBI says none of this material shows anyone else else committing a crime and that it cannot release the material.

We have decades of flight logs with passenger lists from Epstein's plane, and we have his entire contact book.

More than 150 individuals are named in the files, including former presidents and royals.

But there is still something in these unreleased files seized from Epstein's properties.

Back in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi apparently told Trump that his name was in the Epstein files, along with many other high-profile figures.

And we also have that gross thing that Michael Wolf just told us about those photos.

There are three that I specifically remember: two of Trump, of topless girls sitting on Trump's lap.

Can all of this simultaneously be true?

Well,

maybe.

And that's because it's kind of happened before.

Have you ever heard of Hugh Hefner?

I'm a playboy with a love that's true, so get ready, get ready.

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner exploited women too, but he did it out in the open.

In fact, he had a whole brand based on it and made a fortune.

I feel that

sexuality is a part of what it means to be a human being rather than something that gets in the way of it.

I think that more emphasis on

the more attractive aspects of sexuality in both men and women is a positive addition.

Hefner's home base wasn't an island, but a mansion.

I had the pleasure of going to the mansion only once in my life, and I found it to be really mind-boggling.

I mean, it was quite something to be in that space.

Now, Hefner had the good sense to die before any of the most serious allegations were made about him.

He sold that fantasy, and he lived the fantasy.

I think he had a very happy life.

Good on him.

Since his death in 2017, he has been accused of almost everything that Jeffrey Epstein has been accused of.

Sex trafficking, sexual assault, even publishing child abuse material in his magazine.

The 2022 documentary series Secrets of Playboy says that the Playboy Mansion was full of cameras filming everything that happened there.

and that Hefner would boast of having compromising material on people.

He had an infamous private jet.

Several of the people who appear on the flight flight logs of Epstein's jet also appear in photos at the Playboy Mansion, including, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump.

Maybe Epstein was just following in Hefner's unbelievably creepy footsteps.

The Epstein files, which so many people want to see, may just be the records of a sex criminal who threw parties and filmed what happened there there for his own personal gratification.

The videos in the FBI's possession may just be creepy videos of Epstein's guests doing things which are apparently

not illegal.

If that's the case, we probably will never see those videos.

I think a lot of people want this to be a spy story or a story of a blackmail ring.

That would be a lot more satisfying than the more likely story that a well-connected man was able to do terrible things for decades, and the American justice system was too incompetent to bring the powerful to account.

Now, is it just me, or does that story sound much more likely?

If you're listening, is written by me, Matt Buffett.

Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon.

Audio production is by Adair Shepherd.

Next week, taking a break from heavy topics, No More Epstein, let's talk about Gaza.

With so much discussion about recognizing the state of Palestine, we're going to take a look at where the two-state solution came from and how it came off the rails.

I'll see you then.