Epstein Files Special: Prince Andrew Arrested, Global Network, Mythology, Reid Hoffman Files

Summary

David Sacks hosts a special solo episode of the All-In Podcast dedicated entirely to the Epstein story, featuring three guests with distinctly different perspectives. Saagar Enjeti from Breaking Points argues that the Epstein files reveal a global “Epstein class” that operates above the law, focusing on Epstein’s financial networks, money laundering expertise, and intelligence connections. He discusses Prince Andrew’s arrest in the UK for mishandling public documents, the Leslie Wexner deposition, and Epstein’s early interest in Bitcoin as evidence of his role as a financial mastermind connected to multiple intelligence agencies.

Michael Tracey provides a sharply contrarian view, arguing that much of the Epstein narrative constitutes “Epstein mythology” comparable to the satanic panic of the 1980s. He challenges the credibility of key accusers including Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Sarah Ransom, and Maria Farmer, pointing to recantations, fictionalized manuscripts, and what he characterizes as a billion-dollar legal industry built around Epstein settlements from JP Morgan ($290M), Deutsche Bank ($80-90M), and the Epstein estate ($121M). He argues there has never been a credible allegation of rape on Epstein’s island and that the term “trafficking” is being applied far too loosely.

Kevin Bass, a citizen journalist who used AI tools to analyze the Epstein files, presents his research on the “Reid Hoffman Files,” documenting roughly 400 initiations of contact from Hoffman to Epstein, approximately 42 documented meetings, and an extensive personal and business relationship that contradicts Hoffman’s public claims that his interactions were limited to MIT Media Lab fundraising mediated by Joi Ito. Sacks concludes by noting that while he is keeping an open mind, Reid Hoffman’s aggressive lying about the relationship while pointing the finger at others is what made this a legitimate topic for the show.

Highlights

”An Epstein class that operates above law and accountability”

yt-dlp --download-sections "*1:38-2:40" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQq3Ocm98sY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "CQq3Ocm98sY-1m38s.mp4"

“It is pretty clear-cut that they did violate their official duties. This is about Prince Andrew serving as a UK trade adviser and forwarding non-public information to Jeffrey Epstein… and the tip off that he gave to Jeffrey Epstein about an upcoming bailout.” — Saagar Enjeti, 1:38

”The worst story of my adult lifetime in terms of media coverage”

yt-dlp --download-sections "*34:10-35:10" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQq3Ocm98sY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "CQq3Ocm98sY-34m10s.mp4"

“I think this is the worst story of my adult lifetime in terms of the media coverage and it implicates the alternative media, the mainstream media, and everybody in between. It’s actually shocking. I will predict here and now that if we revisit this issue in two or three years, people will come to realize that they were bamboozled on a mass scale.” — Michael Tracey, 34:10

”A billion-dollar Epstein industry”

yt-dlp --download-sections "*36:40-37:40" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQq3Ocm98sY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "CQq3Ocm98sY-36m40s.mp4"

“We’re not supposed to ever consider the massive financial incentives where the Epstein industry is now something like I’ve estimated a billion dollars in terms of the payouts that have been given to purported victims who are allowed to just reimagine things that happened to them 20 years before.” — Michael Tracey, 36:40

”It almost looks like best friends”

yt-dlp --download-sections "*76:10-77:10" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQq3Ocm98sY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "CQq3Ocm98sY-76m10s.mp4"

“The extent of the relationship between Epstein and Reed Hoffman, it almost looks like best friends. My best friends I don’t interact with anywhere near as much as Reed Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein did between 2013 and 2019. There are something around 400 initiations by Hoffman to Epstein.” — Kevin Bass, 1:16:10

”He kind of put himself in play”

yt-dlp --download-sections "*92:00-93:00" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQq3Ocm98sY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "CQq3Ocm98sY-92m00s.mp4"

“If he had just kept his mouth shut and not accused other people, I’m not even sure this would be a topic on the show. But he kind of put himself in play by saying all of these things and I do think it’s appropriate to examine the record and assess his credibility on that basis.” — David Sacks on Reid Hoffman, 1:32:00

Key Points

• Prince Andrew Arrested (1:08) - Prince Andrew arrested in UK not for Epstein-related misconduct but for mishandling trade secrets and public documents as UK trade adviser; timing clearly connected to Epstein files
• Non-Public Information to Epstein (1:38) - Prince Andrew forwarded non-public information to Epstein as UK trade adviser; Lord Mandelson also implicated in tipping off Epstein about an upcoming bailout
• Epstein’s Bitcoin Interest in 2011 (3:11) - Saagar highlights that Epstein was contacting Jason Calacanis about Bitcoin in 2011 when it was worth about $1, showing Epstein was at the forefront of new money-moving technology
• Sacks Defends Jason (4:15) - Sacks clarifies that Jason merely exchanged emails with Epstein for a Bitcoin introduction in 2011 and defends his co-host’s reputation
• Who Was Epstein? (5:50) - Saagar describes Epstein as someone who arose under suspicious conditions in the 1980s involving Iran-Contra, arms trafficking, and money laundering expertise useful to CIA, Israel, and other intelligence networks
• Epstein Mythology Thesis (11:24) - Michael Tracey argues the mythology developed around 2014 with Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s claims and was primarily driven by three “profoundly mentally ill” women: VRG, Sarah Ransom, and Maria Farmer
• VRG Recantations (17:30) - Tracey details how Virginia Roberts Giuffre recanted sworn allegations against Dershowitz, Steven Pinker, and Jean-Luc Brunel; her lawyers had to admit her memoir manuscript was fictionalized
• Bill Clinton Island Claim Debunked (20:00) - Tracey argues there is no evidence Bill Clinton ever went to Epstein’s island; this widespread claim came from VRG’s manuscript that was ultimately admitted to be fiction
• Settlement Industry (25:00) - JP Morgan settled for $290M, Deutsche Bank for $80-90M, Epstein estate for $121M; lawyers secured 30% in fees; non-adversarial process with no scrutinization of claims
• No Rape on the Island (15:30) - Tracey makes the controversial claim that there has never been a credible allegation of rape discovered that took place on Epstein’s private island
• Wexner Deposition (8:30) - Leslie Wexner testified he was never questioned by FBI or DOJ; claims Epstein was a con man who stole from him; had power of attorney signed over in 1991
• Over 1,000 Victims Figure Disputed (28:00) - Tracey argues the FBI’s claim of “over 1,000 victims” is fraudulent, based on FBI memoranda showing the majority were adults at the time and the number includes family members
• Reid Hoffman’s False Statements (1:14:23) - Hoffman’s 2019 claim that his “few interactions” with Epstein were all through Joi Ito for MIT fundraising is contradicted by approximately 400 documented contact initiations
• 42 Documented Meetings (1:16:10) - Kevin Bass found roughly 42 different meetings documented between Hoffman and Epstein, with about 20 absolutely confirmed, including breakfasts, overnight stays, and family introductions
• Island Visits (1:17:00) - Though Hoffman claims one night on the island, Bass found documentation of a two-night stay plus almost certainly two other island visits
• Deception Book (1:18:00) - One of the first interactions between Hoffman and Epstein was bonding over a book called “Deception” that appears to justify the use of deception in certain circumstances
• Tracey’s Defense of Moral Sanity (1:20:00) - Tracey argues Epstein was never accused of illicit sexual acts against anyone under 18 after 2005, making it unreasonable to condemn post-2005 associates as pedophile enablers
• Partisan Weaponization (1:30:00) - Sacks argues Hoffman pointed fingers at Trump and Elon to drive people into partisan tribes and seek protection from the Democratic establishment
• International Scandal (1:35:00) - The Epstein story is currently ravaging Norway, Slovakia, UK, France, UAE, and other countries; Tracey notes this makes it fascinating but warns of real-world ramifications from mass hysteria

Mentions

Companies

• Bear Stearns (6:20) - Where Epstein started his career, rose quickly, was fired after a few years
• JP Morgan (25:00) - Settled for $290 million with Epstein victims; banked Epstein from late 1990s to 2013
• Deutsche Bank (26:00) - Settled for $80-90 million; banked Epstein from 2013 to 2019
• Bank of America (27:00) - Being sued in class action lawsuit by victim lawyers for additional hundreds of millions
• Apollo (8:45) - Leon Black’s firm mentioned in context of payments to Epstein
• Victoria’s Secret (33:00) - Wexner’s company; Epstein restructured finances for Wexner’s business holdings
• LinkedIn (1:14:23) - Reid Hoffman’s company, context of his tech prominence and Epstein relationship
• MIT Media Lab (1:14:23) - Hoffman falsely claimed all Epstein interactions were about MIT Media Lab fundraising through Joi Ito
• Netflix (19:00) - Produced “Filthy Rich” documentary about Epstein which Tracey calls “literal propaganda”

Products & Technologies

• Bitcoin (3:11) - Epstein was interested in Bitcoin in 2011 when it was worth about $1, contacted Jason for introductions
• AI Tools (1:15:00) - Kevin Bass used vectorized SQL databases and MCP agents to analyze the Epstein files

People

• David Sacks (0:00) - Solo host for this special episode while other besties are on ski week
• Saagar Enjeti (1:04) - Breaking Points host; believes Epstein files reveal an “Epstein class” above accountability
• Michael Tracey (0:28) - Journalist and Epstein skeptic who coined the term “Epstein mythology”
• Kevin Bass (0:41) - Citizen journalist tracking Reid Hoffman’s ties to Epstein through file analysis
• Prince Andrew (1:08) - Arrested in UK for mishandling documents as trade adviser, connected to Epstein files
• Lord Mandelson (1:42) - Former UK ambassador implicated in tipping off Epstein about upcoming bailout
• Gordon Brown (2:13) - Shared new information with Scotland Yard about Prince Andrew
• Reid Hoffman (1:14:23) - LinkedIn founder; ~400 contact initiations with Epstein; publicly lied about extent of relationship
• Jeffrey Epstein (0:04) - Central subject of entire episode
• Leslie Wexner (8:30) - Epstein’s most important client; gave power of attorney in 1991; deposed by House Oversight Committee
• Virginia Roberts Giuffre (14:30) - Key accuser whose recantations and fictionalized manuscript are central to Tracey’s mythology thesis
• Leon Black (8:45) - Paid Epstein significant sums; hedge fund manager and Epstein client
• Alan Dershowitz (17:30) - Subject of recanted sexual misconduct allegations by VRG
• Ghislaine Maxwell (14:30) - Gave first proper interview to deputy AG Todd Blanch in July 2025
• Bradley Edwards (16:00) - Victim lawyer who Tracey characterizes as an “extortionist” making huge fees
• David Boies (16:00) - High-profile lawyer representing Epstein accusers
• Joi Ito (1:14:23) - Former MIT Media Lab director; Epstein’s gateway into academia per Bass
• Jason Calacanis (3:11) - Exchanged emails with Epstein in 2011 about Bitcoin introduction
• Elon Musk (1:15:30) - Hoffman wildly accused him of Epstein involvement; has strong opinions about Hoffman’s ties
• Donald Trump (1:28:00) - Hoffman accused him of Epstein coverup; Sacks notes no credible allegations against him
• Bill Clinton (20:00) - Flew on Epstein’s jet in 2002-2003 but island visit claim debunked per Tracey
• Pam Bondi (28:30) - Criticized for signing off on inflated victim number memo
• Thomas Massie (28:00) - Congressman who co-crafted Epstein Files Transparency Act; called it a “global pedophile ring”
• Ehud Barak (7:30) - Former Israeli PM; Wexner Foundation money funneled to him; photographed with Epstein
• Noam Chomsky (1:22:00) - Mentioned as someone whose reputation was dragged through Epstein association
• Steve Bannon (1:22:00) - Also mentioned as someone dragged through Epstein association
• Hillary Clinton (1:30:30) - Said on BBC that Clintons had “no real connections” while accusing Trump of coverup

Surprising Quotes

“I will predict here and now that if we revisit this issue in two or three years, people will come to realize that they were bamboozled on a mass scale.” — Michael Tracey, 34:10

“Despite everybody and their mother declaring that the Epstein property in the US Virgin Islands is ‘rape island’ or ‘pedophile island,’ there’s never been a credible allegation of rape ever discovered that took place on that island.” — Michael Tracey, 15:30

“Jeffrey Epstein is the only man on earth who could have brought together for a friendly social pow-wow Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon.” — Michael Tracey, 1:33:30

“When Hollywood dramatizes this, it’s Henry Fonda in the Oxbow Incident or Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. You’ve got a mob and this one lone figure standing up to the mob. In real life, it’s not Gregory Peck. It’s a guy in a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey.” — David Sacks to Michael Tracey, 1:40:00

“My best friends I don’t interact with anywhere near as much as Reed Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein did over between 2013 and 2019.” — Kevin Bass, 1:16:10

Transcript

0:00 Okay, everyone. By popular demand, we’re doing an all Epstein show today. My besties are all on vacation for ski week, so I’m taking this on solo. We have three different guests on who all have very different interpretations and opinions of the Epstein story. Saagar Enjeti from Breaking Points believes that the Epstein files show that there is a quote unquote Epstein class that operates above law and accountability. He views the story as an indictment of our ruling elites. Michael Tracey is skeptical about many of the most salacious claims about Epstein and questions whether they meet any kind of evidentiary standard. He has criticized the media feeding frenzy over what he has called Epstein mythology. And finally, Kevin Bass, a citizen journalist who’s been tracking the release files and posting his findings on X, specifically in regards to Reed Hoffman, perhaps the figure in tech most closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

0:52 Some of it gets heated, but hopefully you’ll come away with new perspectives and great information. I felt like it was important to showcase a range of viewpoints on this issue. I’m trying to keep an open mind and I’ll describe my own point of view at the end of the show. And with that, here we go.

1:08 Saagar, let me start with you. What is the import of the arrest of Prince Andrew in the UK this morning? I mean, is this a case of show us the man and we’ll tell you the crime? It obviously seems kind of coincidental that he’s not being arrested for misconduct in the Epstein affair. He’s being arrested on mishandling, I guess, trade secrets or public documents. So, obviously, the timing of this is not coincidental.

1:38 No, it’s certainly not coincidental, but I do believe that the facts do matter in this case. And unfortunately, for Prince Andrew, for Lord Mandelson, the former ambassador to the United States from the UK as well, it is pretty clear-cut that they did violate their official duties. We should remember that the crux of this case involving Andrew is not just about some of the accusations that were made, although that is the genesis of the investigation and of the interest. This is about Prince Andrew serving as a UK trade adviser and forwarding non-public information to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of it is involving scheduling. However, Gordon Brown this morning said that he had actually shared some new information with Scotland Yard. So it’s not exactly just what’s in the file, but it could potentially be other material that Gordon Brown and the chancellery were able to investigate as to what Prince Andrew was sharing as part of a broader probe into Lord Mandelson and the tip off that he gave to Jeffrey Epstein about an upcoming bailout.

2:38 And I do think that this does reveal quite a lot about Jeffrey Epstein. The genesis of his rise to power, his wealth, and his influence. Something that involved let’s say even some of the co-hosts on this very podcast which is a deep financial knowledge of money laundering networks, of trying to be at the very forefront of moving money across the globe which I believe is his real power and his influence which is what enabled much of the behavior that much of the public is now horrified by.

3:07 Okay wait, I can’t let that just go by. What do you mean by involving co-hosts of this podcast? I’m talking about Jason. I actually thought that the Jason email was very interesting. So you’ll see that in 2011 that Jeffrey Epstein is contacting Jason about Bitcoin. I’m not implicating him in any crime. I’m saying if you watch and look at that email very closely, you are watching Jeffrey Epstein, a master money launderer and financial mastermind himself, be at the forefront of the Bitcoin technology and wondering about it in 2011, which as Jason even pointed out in the last episode when Bitcoin was some $1 and some sort of open-source project. Like to me that shows how at the forefront he was of new technology and new ways to move money surreptitiously across the globe, which is what I believe was his real strength and his raison d’etre for being so useful to all of these different foreign governments and intelligence assets including ours, Russia, Israel, various different intelligence networks across the globe.

4:15 Yeah, let me just for viewers of this episode who didn’t see that episode, let me just summarize what exactly happened there because I want to just make sure that Jason’s reputation is not unfairly impugned. And I don’t think you’re doing that, but just to be absolutely clear about it, what happened was that Jason hosted an episode of This Week in Startups roughly in 2011 with a couple of the Bitcoin core founders and then Epstein reached out to him for an introduction to those people. One of my takeaways from that was like you said Saagar that Epstein was extraordinarily early to Bitcoin. He clearly had a nose for putting himself in the middle of things. It was almost comical the way that Jason was trying to warn Epstein about the Bitcoin guys rather than vice versa. But I don’t really think people knew at that point in time what Epstein was involved in.

5:15 Do you disagree with that? Do you think people should have known by 2011? Well, David, I mean, I will say there is a Wayback Machine and we can go back and look at what the Google results were and we do have somebody who pled guilty for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor. That was literally a matter of public record. I can only speak for myself. That’s not really somebody I would involve myself with, even at a professional level. But it wasn’t widely publicized at the time. You can find coverage in the New York Times in July of 2008 after Epstein pleaded guilty to the two state level prostitution charges. We didn’t have the full scope of the information obviously about what he was accused of, but a Google search would have yielded that at that time.

5:50 Yeah, it’s hard for me to judge. I certainly in that time period had never even heard of Jeffrey Epstein and I don’t think most people had. When did this become sort of a cause celebre? I think we should probably judge each person who interacted with Epstein or visited his island individually in terms of what they actually did, what they actually knew. Saagar, I just think you’re being a little bit unfair to Jason because all he did was exchange emails with Epstein in the 2011 time period.

6:20 Well, what I was trying to point out was Jeffrey Epstein’s knowledge or interest of Bitcoin in 2011. And that links to a broader Epstein involvement with money laundering and tax fraud and so-called involvement with Leon Black and many of these other multi-billionaires who paid him lots of money. I’m putting that as part of a broader scheme. Yes, and I think that exchange was noteworthy for the reason you just said, which is that Epstein somehow was putting himself in the middle of all sorts of things. He’s almost like a Zelig-like figure who pops up in many different newsworthy stories over the last few decades.

7:00 I think maybe a question for each of you is who do you think this guy ultimately was? Let’s say maybe the Epstein maximalist position would be that he was an intelligence asset or intelligence agent who was running a vast compromat operation on his island and thereby was corrupting and blackmailing the world’s elite. Saagar, let me start with you. Who do you think this guy was? And ultimately, at a 30,000 ft level, what do you think is going on here?

7:30 Yeah, sure. I think Jeffrey Epstein was somebody who arose under very suspicious conditions in the 1980s potentially involving Iran-Contra knowledge specifically with arms traffickers like Adnan Khashoggi and Douglas Leese, Steven Hoffenberg as well, and that these black market money laundering tax evasion strategies were honed over a period which eventually inspired various people like Leslie Wexner and many other multi-billionaires. At the very same time he also had his sexual proclivities which became and became useful. His money laundering specific duties and knowledge and usefulness to the CIA, to various other intelligence assets became a very useful part of the nexus in the post-Cold War environment. To say that he was running a vast compromat operation, I think ascribes too much intention to what’s really happening here.

8:30 He clearly was recruiting and running this vast massage scheme also involving Ghislaine Maxwell all across the world, Russian and Eastern European women, but also that this behavior was tolerated and in some cases seen by a vast number of the global elite. I don’t think Michael would even deny that his access to wealth, power, and money did eventually allow him to get off with the 2007 nonprosecution agreement. Oh, sure. His vast wealth enables him to secure very high-powered legal representation. Michael, I don’t want to get off on that yet, but just go back to my original question of what is your 30,000 ft take on what this story is about?

9:30 I will answer that. However, I do want to just stipulate upfront that I think this reflex to have to offer some kind of totalistic assessment of who Jeffrey Epstein was at his very essence has fed into so much of the constant churn of algorithmic slop that has generated this hysterical frenzy around this issue and has led to people being totally deluded about what we’re even talking about. He definitely was a money manager who was sort of like this Zelig character who did have an extraordinary cross-section of connections with people from across fields. I was just looking through some of these records in the new Epstein Files Productions, and I was looking for something else, but there’s an archive of old message pads that he had at his Palm Beach house and it turns out Holly Berry left him a couple of messages.

10:30 But why are we talking about Jeffrey Epstein right now in February of 2026? Because he is believed to have been the most prolific child sex trafficker in American or perhaps world history which is why this issue might now take down the British government. It’s embroiling Norway. A minister in Slovakia had to resign over it. There’s a new criminal investigation that was just launched in France. That’s what people conceive Jeffrey Epstein to have been. And that whole notion is based on just an onslaught of mythological nonsense that’s pumped out daily by these YouTube shows, podcasts, social media personalities who are driven by these perverse algorithmic incentives to be totally divorced from the facts.

11:24 They presuppose a conclusion that’s just been floating out there in the ether thanks to all this horrendous media coverage. I think this is the worst story of my adult lifetime in terms of the media coverage and it implicates the alternative media, the mainstream media, and everybody in between. It’s actually shocking. I will predict here and now that if we revisit this issue in two or three years, people will come to realize that they were bamboozled on a mass scale. There’s genuine fraud that has been rampant in terms of the journalistic malfeasance. We’re not supposed to ever consider the massive financial incentives where the Epstein industry is now something like I’ve estimated a billion dollars in terms of the payouts.

12:30 You know why people are so upset about these redactions in the Epstein files? The DOJ was authorized to redact or withhold or conceal any information that could be the most tangentially tied to anything that’s quote victim identifying. They’ve been arguing frantically in federal court for the past few months that they’re opposed to the disclosure of Epstein files because it’s going to terrorize all these beleaguered women. Maybe if we did get full transparency, it might disrupt this sanitized survivor narrative that everybody pushes so credulously.

14:00 For months, people, politicians across the media, the political spectrum have unthinkingly regurgitated this figure that there were over a thousand victims of Jeffrey Epstein. This is based on the July 6th, 2025 FBI DOJ memo which claimed that after a review of the evidence they found that over 1,000 victims were quote harmed by Epstein. Turns out, this number is a fraud. It’s bogus. They admit in FBI memoranda that this number is based on a total of purported victims, the majority of whom would have been adults at the time of their claimed victimization. It includes the family members of alleged victims in that total number.

15:30 Saagar, I do think your core contention that at the end of the day he was a pedophile is definitely legitimate. But I also don’t necessarily want to get dragged into the victim stuff. When you’re saying why are people talking about this? It confirms a general suspicion of the way that people act with impunity at the highest levels of American or global society. I would love for you to grapple with some of the facts where the Israeli government was installing surveillance equipment in Epstein-owned apartments, where we have Ehud Barak and Epstein joking about Mossad, where Epstein is FOIAing in 1999 the CIA for any mention of himself, where he had a false Austrian passport at the age of 29.

17:00 All right, guys. Let me just get control of this again. I think we should probably judge each person who interacted with Epstein individually in terms of what they actually did. Let me go to the Wexner deposition the other day. What did we learn specifically about how Epstein got his start?

17:30 No, David, it wasn’t resolved. Unfortunately, the entire transcript is not public. What we do know from the House Oversight Committee is Leslie Wexner said he was never questioned ever once by the FBI or the Department of Justice involving this case. He claims that Epstein was a con man who stole his money for decades. In 1991, we had the power of attorney that was signed over to him. He claims that Epstein was a financial genius and a wizard. We have the transferring of the townhouse. An incredible amount of control that Jeffrey Epstein had over Leslie Wexner’s finances, over the Wexner Foundation which he used to funnel money to Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel, and support many Zionist causes under the Wexner Foundation.

18:30 Previous Epstein associates have testified that in 1992, shortly after power of attorney was acquired, much of Epstein’s lifestyle exploded. Wexner does not even dispute that Epstein had vast control over his finances and even claims that he was stolen from. Their relationship is bizarre, goes back decades. Wexner maintains he was conned and stolen from. I don’t really believe much of that story. Michael, you and I have now read thousands of Epstein emails. There’s no sophisticated financial instruments going on.

19:30 So he began his career at Bear Stearns. He met Ace Greenberg through the Dalton School. Greenberg’s child was there and then he went to Bear Stearns. He’s fired from Bear Stearns after a couple of years and that’s when his descent into what I call like the darkness, his expertise in money laundering. I believe that’s when it was honed as reflected in the record and the testimony of the people who dealt with him there at the time including the false passport, Iran-Contra, arm smuggling. Unfortunately, I have to take my child to a doctor’s appointment. I do think you’d be operating in good faith as well, Saagar. Thank you, David, for the invitation.

20:30 All right. So Michael, let me kind of reset here. I’m not sure you’ve had a chance to lay out your case for what you called Epstein mythology. I want to give you a chance to kind of just lay out your thesis here that what’s happening is actually a type of moral panic or feeding frenzy. You’ve compared it to the Salem witch trials. There was also the case in the 1980s of the satanic panic where people went to jail for child abuse that turned out to be fabricated.

21:30 In terms of the satanic panic parallel, that’s not one that I would have necessarily been most inclined to bring up until recently just because there’s now this new layer of the mythology around coded messaging, cannibalism, or grotesque child sacrifice. The satanic panic frenzy was ultimately concluded to have originated with one woman who was straightforwardly mentally ill, delusional. She would make claims about child sex abuse that the authorities gave credence to. And there’s a similar thing going on with the Epstein mythology.

22:30 The mythology developed later, mostly around 2014 with the introduction of new claims by Virginia Roberts Giuffre and her lawyers Bradley Edwards, Paul Cassell, later David Boies, in which she alleged that she had been child sex trafficked around the world and that Epstein enforced this operation via blackmail. She made specific allegations against Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, Jean-Luc Brunel, and then accused a generic category of other high-profile persons.

23:30 Virginia Roberts Giuffre was a profoundly disturbed mentally unwell person who was validated and legitimized and now continues to be celebrated as some kind of martyr for truth. Maria Farmer is one of these other mentally ill persons who was integral in introducing this idea that Epstein had cameras set up in all his bedrooms and bathrooms and was surreptitiously recording prominent people for blackmail. And Sarah Ransom spurred the mythology around the island. She described what was effectively a consensual minor sexual encounter with Epstein but dramatized it radically.

24:30 Despite everybody declaring that the Epstein property in the US Virgin Islands is rape island or pedophile island, there’s never been a credible allegation of rape ever discovered that took place on that island. Sarah Ransom did go. Maria Farmer, no. Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s claims — she ended up having to retract her claims against Dershowitz, Steven Pinker, and Jean-Luc Brunel.

26:00 Her lawyers had to admit that this memoir manuscript which had been presented as non-fiction, which was shopped around to potential book publishers as non-fiction, was actually a fictionalized account of her purported experiences. For example, Bill Clinton was on the island, she claimed. No evidence Bill Clinton was ever on the island. He did fly around in Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003 but no evidence he ever went to the island. That probably is one of the most repeated claims in respect to Epstein which is that Clinton was on the island. And you’re saying that’s completely untrue.

28:00 So then they take that model that had been set up for the Epstein estate and then they start going after major multinational banking institutions that David Boies and Bradley Edwards decide to very creatively allege were complicit in Jeffrey Epstein’s world-spanning child sex trafficking operation. Epstein banked at those institutions. JP Morgan from the late 90s to 2013, then Deutsche Bank from 2013 to 2019. The argument was that they should have stopped his activities through KYC monitoring provisions.

30:00 JP Morgan was around 290 million and the lawyers end up getting 30% in legal fees. Deutsche Bank was around 90 million. The Epstein estate was around 121 million. So we’re already at like a half a billion dollar industry and there’s plenty of other lawsuits and settlements. These are contingency fee plaintiffs lawyers. The judge approved a 30% earmark of the resulting settlement funds for attorneys fees.

32:00 This woman Lisa Phillips who was an adult model never made any claim about anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein that was wrongful for like 20 years. Said on a podcast publicly in 2020 that she had no idea what these girls were talking about. By 2023, she’s getting probably around 2 million at least. They also get free healthcare from yet another settlement between the US Virgin Islands government and JP Morgan until 2028 for any alleged Epstein victim.

34:00 If the most conservative Congress in the United States has not done much, then as Friedberg said it’ll only get worse. What do I say? I always say if people want to be mad at Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, be mad at them for signing off on that ridiculous memo from last July where they include that figure of over a thousand victims. People on the internet do a variation saying let’s just talk about the intel ties. Well, the intel ties are interesting, right?

35:00 Sure. The whole story is interesting. It’s interesting that Epstein apparently met Michael Jackson in his Palm Beach house. It’s interesting that he connected with everyone from Donald Trump to Bill Clinton. Let me bring up one sort of criticism of you and then I want to give Kevin a chance to get in here. I think you’re playing an extremely important role by bringing rigor and accountability to a lot of these claims. At the same time, you’re not really offering an explanation of so many fascinating aspects of Epstein.

36:00 Do you have a theory of how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars? Some people like Mike Benz have said it all goes back to Bear Stearns where one of his accounts was BCCI, this notorious international bank involved in money laundering. I feel like there’s a fallacy in attempting to say it’s incumbent on me to proffer some kind of ultimate totalizing theory. One of the reasons why the coverage has been so horribly bad is that speculation has replaced fact.

38:00 There was a huge New York Times article that went into fairly forensic detail about how he accumulated money over the course of the 1980s. He was definitely very high intelligence, highly proficient in mathematics. He rose to the ranks of Bear Stearns pretty quickly. He started up his own boutique financial advisory firm tailored specifically to very high net worth individuals such as ultimately Leslie Wexner. They had a handful of other very high net worth clients like Elizabeth Johnson who was an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, Leon Black. You don’t need that many extremely high net worth clients to eventually build up a pretty nice-sized fortune.

40:00 All right. Well, it is kind of unusual that a money manager in that position would obtain that much money so quickly. But let me put a pin in that because I want to let Kevin Bass get in here. I’ve been following your feed quite a bit. You are basically a startup entrepreneur who got interested in the Epstein files. You used AI to analyze them. In particular, you’ve been looking at Reed Hoffman’s story about Epstein, and you’ve put together what you’ve called the Reed Hoffman Files.

41:00 Yeah. Originally, I just saw there was a conflict on social media about Reed Hoffman. I built some really sophisticated AI tools, mostly using vectorized SQL databases and some of the MCP stuff with the new agents. Elon had some very strong opinions about Hoffman’s involvements with Epstein. They came out January 30th, the big drop. I started going through the Reed Hoffman part in particular. I’ve organized most of my analyses around some core claims that Hoffman made about his involvement with Epstein. Are these claims true? Overwhelmingly, absolutely overwhelmingly, they appear to be contradicted relentlessly by the drop.

42:30 Reed Hoffman’s statement in 2019 to Axios: “My few interactions with Jeffrey Epstein came at the request of Joi Ito for the purposes of fundraising for the MIT Media Lab. My last interaction with Epstein was in 2015.” He even reiterated this on February 4th this year on X. None of that’s at all true. There’s very few mentions of even fundraising with MIT. The extent of the relationship between Epstein and Reed Hoffman, it almost looks like best friends. There are something around 400 initiations by Hoffman to Epstein. Their assistants were in constant contact. They had extensive financial relationships. There’s something like 42 different meetings documented. Around 20 are absolutely confirmed.

44:00 They met in person for breakfast. They would spend time at each other’s houses overnight. Epstein met his wife. It is claimed by Hoffman that he only was there for one night. Even the one time we have absolutely documented, he was there for two nights and almost certainly there were two other island visits as well. It’s an extraordinarily extensive personal and business relationship. Joi Ito was Epstein’s gateway into academia, Cambridge, Harvard science. Reed Hoffman was his gateway into Silicon Valley, into tech.

45:00 So Reed claimed he only had a few interactions with Epstein. That’s false. You’re saying he had hundreds. Yes, including dozens of in-person meetings and stays at the island. There was the stay at the townhouse. And one of the first interactions, they bonded over a book called Deception which appears to justify the use of deception in certain circumstances.

46:00 Michael Tracey responds: I have to just reject the whole premise of this discussion that anybody who so much as exchanged a shortling email with Jeffrey Epstein now has something that they have to issue these mealy-mouthed melodramatic statements of profound apology for. What are they guilty of? Do people know that Jeffrey Epstein was never even accused of committing any illicit sexual acts against any person under the age of 18 after the year 2005? This idea that he was like looking the other way while all these preteens were being raped is just nonsense. But the media never clarifies it.

48:00 I think you’re making some really interesting points. There are two different issues here. One is whether or not there’s this global pedophile ring. On the other hand, there are Reed Hoffman’s public statements dramatically minimizing the relationship. There’s an obvious explanation where we don’t have to necessarily impugn to Reed Hoffman being a pedophile. The alternative explanation is just that this is such a hot potato. There is a hysteria. So people lie about their relationship with Epstein even though they’re not guilty of something terrible.

49:00 If somebody lies, then they can be condemned for the lie. Howard Lutnick made up a ridiculous lie that was totally pointless. The lie itself can be condemnable, but not necessarily because he’s covering up any kind of pedophilic sex criminality, just because of the moral hysteria that’s been unleashed around this stuff.

50:00 Let me tell you my point of view on this. I think you’re correct that there’s a lot of guilt by association happening and there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy. Just because someone emailed Epstein doesn’t mean they were involved with him in some nefarious way. Now, in the case of Reed, there are a couple of things that are interesting. Number one is when the new Epstein files dropped, Reed came out on X and very aggressively started pointing the finger at other people, wildly accusing both Elon Musk and Donald Trump of somehow being involved in Epstein’s purported crimes. This is just a classic case of someone throwing stones while living in a glass house.

51:00 You look at his own statements from 2019 all the way up to weeks ago and they don’t hold water at all. He lies about the extent of his relationship with Epstein, how many times they met, what the subject matter was, how many times he visited the island. Just one lie after another while again wildly accusing other people. You do have to just ask what is going on here.

52:00 That just goes to show how weaponizable this whole thing is. If Reed Hoffman and Elon Musk don’t like each other, then they could accuse each other of having a closer connection to Epstein. It’s just a slugfest. I’m still struggling to understand what the underlying accusation of wrongdoing is supposed to be above and beyond how Reed Hoffman might have misrepresented the relationship.

53:00 My theory on this is kind of obvious. By pointing the finger at Trump or Elon, he’s driving everyone into their partisan tribes to seek protection of the Democrat tribe to which he’s contributed hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think it’s worked. The New York Times wrote an article about Epstein’s ties to Silicon Valley. Other people who had far less extensive relationships got paragraphs. Reed Hoffman was only mentioned in one sentence along with three other people. He seems to be getting a pass.

54:00 My point has not been to accuse Reed of crimes because I don’t think we have any basis for that whatsoever. Let me just state that clearly. My point has just been that the media needs to cover this in a fair and even-handed way as opposed to weaponizing it. Hillary Clinton just came out this week and said we the Clintons had no real connections with Epstein, but Donald Trump, we can just assume he’s orchestrating a cover up. Then Trump will toggle back and forth between Clinton and Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman.

55:00 What evidence is there that people were being trafficked on the island? It’s impossible to know what people even mean by trafficking anymore. Trafficking is an incredibly nebulous concept. If adult women consensually flew on an airplane to go visit a luxury island in the Caribbean and over the course of that visit maybe they engage in some consensual sex act and then 20 years later they can retroactively classify it as trafficking and that will entitle them to millions of dollars in tax-free settlement money, are we going to take at face value that that constitutes trafficking?

56:00 Let me get you to react to this tweet. Present Witness says: Here’s the evidence. $160 million from Leon Black, $50 million townhouse and power of attorney over Wexner’s estate, cameras in his residence wired by Israeli government, compromising photos of Prince Andrew, confirmed sex trafficking, teaching job with William Barr’s father at the CIA, Kosogi was a client of Epstein, adviser to Ehud Barak and the Rothschilds, Rumler who was chief legal officer of Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel under Obama was a key adviser. There are millions of files still redacted.

57:30 First of all, I don’t know what that guy is even arguing all that stuff is supposed to be evidence of. That’s what’s so strange about this story. Nobody can really ever articulate what the ultimate contention is. I’ve never said there’s nothing to see here. I’m pretty much as obsessed, if not more obsessed with this story than anyone at this point.

58:30 I think it’s interesting as an anthropological survey of sorts among elites. Epstein did have this extraordinary ability to network and convene people who probably otherwise would never have been convened. Jeffrey Epstein is the only man on earth who could have brought together for a friendly social pow-wow Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon. I’m almost jealous of that.

1:00:00 I just don’t accept that in order to be fascinated by this, we must buy into this weird epistemology where we can just collect all these discrepant little pieces of information, blast them out on the internet, and then just think we’ve done the argumentative and logical work necessary to establish how that proves our ultimate notions about what the story is supposed to signify, which is pedophilic sex trafficking enforced by blackmail at the direction of some intelligence agency. That’s the crux of the Epstein mythology and it’s been systematically unraveled.

1:02:00 I’ll just continue releasing some of this stuff. I tend to agree with Michael, but telling the truth is important in both directions as well. I actually do think it’s very disturbing that so many people around the world are being told that it’s been proven that there is a massive child rape ring and that they were allowed by the highest levels of government. It’s very easy to imagine how people with a predisposition toward mental illness who hear this stuff might be driven to do something homicidally crazy.

1:04:00 This is the number one scandal right now ravaging Norway, Slovakia, obviously Great Britain today, France, UAE, name your country. It’s been internationalized. Didn’t they burn an effigy of Jeffrey Epstein in Iran? I mean it just never ends. I think both of you have performed very valuable services for the public.

1:06:00 Michael, you are asking really important questions about evidentiary standards. You’re one of the only people doing it. It does seem like there is a vibe shift a little bit around what you’re doing. Most people who have their brains wired in a normal way would probably have a negative emotional reaction to being inundated day in and day out with accusations of personally being a pedophile. But I can withstand it because I’m used to the torrent of vitriol.

1:07:00 When Hollywood dramatizes this, it’s Henry Fonda in The Oxbow Incident or maybe Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. You’ve got a mob and this one lone figure standing up to the mob trying to talk sense into them. In real life, it’s not Gregory Peck. It’s a guy in a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey. For all the money I’m told I’m surreptitiously receiving from Leslie Wexner and the Mossad, I wish I could get some better digs.

1:08:00 Kevin, I do think what you’re doing is really important. The citizen journalism sifting through the Epstein files is turning up really interesting things. I do not think it’s appropriate for Reed to be wildly pointing the finger at other people while the evidence shows he’s been bold-faced lying about every aspect of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. If he had just kept his mouth shut and not accused other people, I’m not even sure this would be a topic on the show. He kind of put himself in play.

1:10:00 I just want to make one final point. Even when years ago this was a cause celebre on the right with right-wing podcasts pointing the finger at Bill Clinton, I never weighed in on this. I wasn’t sure what to think. I still am not completely sure what to think about it. I don’t want to get over my skis. It would not surprise me at all if Michael Tracey turned out to be correct but also it wouldn’t completely surprise me if some version of Saagar’s version proved to be correct assuming more evidence comes out. So I’m keeping an open mind. I look forward to seeing what comes next and we’ll address it then.

1:11:00 I try to be rigorously evidence-based as well. I think that’s a healthy epistemological habit to always be open to the possibility of something in contravention of your prior assumptions being presented to you. Absolutely. Fully agreed. Okay, we’ll leave it there. Thanks, guys.