The Epstein Documents: What Still Doesn’t Make Sense ft. Mike Benz
54 min
•Feb 6, 20264 months agoSummary
Mike Benz analyzes newly released Epstein documents, arguing that while connections to US and Israeli intelligence are substantial, the popular blackmail narrative lacks evidence. He traces Epstein's financial rise through CIA-adjacent networks including BCCI, Iran-Contra operations, and arms dealers, positioning him as a financial fixer rather than a formal intelligence asset.
Insights
- Epstein's FOIA requests to the CIA in 1999 and 2011 suggest he was aware of potential intelligence adjacency and sought to understand what records existed about him before becoming a public figure
- The distinction between formal intelligence assets and intelligence-adjacent contacts is critical—Epstein likely operated as a financial facilitator in covert operations without being a formal CIA asset
- The blackmail narrative became the default explanation for Epstein's wealth and connections because no alternative framework existed in public discourse to explain intelligence-business relationships
- Epstein's financial success cannot be explained by legitimate finance skills alone; his client roster and deal access suggest he was valuable for reasons beyond portfolio management
- The censorship industrial complex operates through the same peri-intelligence layer that facilitated Epstein's network—outsourcing government actions through private contacts to maintain plausible deniability
Trends
Intelligence agencies increasingly rely on private sector intermediaries and financial networks to execute covert operations while maintaining legal distanceForeign intelligence services (Israeli, Saudi, British) coordinate with US intelligence through private financial fixers rather than formal diplomatic channelsThe gap between classified national security operations and public understanding creates a vacuum filled by sensationalized narratives rather than structural analysisRepublican political movements are now being systematically targeted by the same intelligence-adjacent networks that historically focused on left-wing movementsPrivate equity and hedge funds serve as operational infrastructure for intelligence activities, blurring lines between legitimate finance and covert state actionFOIA requests and declassified documents are becoming primary tools for reverse-engineering intelligence relationships after the factThe absence of evidence for blackmail operations suggests Epstein's primary value was financial facilitation and deal-making rather than kompromat collection
Topics
Epstein Intelligence ConnectionsCIA Financial Operations and BCCIIran-Contra Arms Dealing NetworksIsraeli Military Intelligence CoordinationPrivate Sector Intelligence FacilitationFOIA and Declassification StrategyPeri-Intelligence Layer OperationsCensorship Industrial ComplexForeign Policy and Private FinanceAdnan Khashoggi Arms TradeSouthern Air Transport CIA OperationsState Department Real Estate ArrangementsWest Exec Consulting NetworkEhud Barak Business RelationshipsBlackmail Narrative Debunking
Companies
Bear Stearns
Epstein worked here in late 1970s; it was a major BCCI clearinghouse and CIA money laundering conduit
Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)
CIA's primary bank for laundering gun and drug money; collapsed in 1990; Epstein's early career intersected with its ...
Intercontinental Assets Group
Epstein's company founded in 1981 after SEC investigation; handled transactions for major arms dealers like Adnan Kha...
Southern Air Transport
CIA proprietary airline used in Iran-Contra; Epstein negotiated its relocation to Columbus, Ohio for his business ope...
Facebook
CIA personnel served on its trust and safety team, exemplifying intelligence agency involvement in content moderation
Twitter
CIA and state department personnel embedded in trust and safety operations, influencing content policy
YouTube
Intelligence community involvement in trust and safety team and content moderation decisions
West Exec Consulting
Private consulting group staffed by Biden administration officials; worked closely with Ehud Barak and Israeli intell...
People
Jeffrey Epstein
Central figure; financial fixer with decades-long connections to US, Israeli, Saudi, and British intelligence networks
Mike Benz
Guest analyst; executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online; traces Epstein's intelligence adjacency through d...
Ehud Barak
Israeli military intelligence chief and PM; documented 47+ visits to Epstein's home; secretly recorded by Epstein dur...
Ghislaine Maxwell
Epstein associate; daughter of Robert Maxwell; described Epstein's business model involving cartel asset tracing in D...
Adnan Khashoggi
Saudi arms dealer; Epstein's major client; CIA point person between US and Israel during Iran-Contra operations
Robert Maxwell
Ghislaine Maxwell's father; intelligence connections; threatened Mossad according to documents
Bill Barr
CIA officer turned lawyer and AG; covered up BCCI scandal by pardoning six officials; blocked Iran-Contra investigations
George H.W. Bush
CIA director in 1975; Safari Club network founder; VP during Iran-Contra; president when Barr became AG
Edgar Bronfman
Epstein client at Bear Stearns; head of major Jewish advocacy group; involved in Iran-Contra policy
Stanley Pottinger
CIA operative; lived with Epstein; investigated by FBI for running guns to Iran; case mysteriously dropped
Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli PM; attacked Ehud Barak over Epstein connections; difficult to access according to documents
Doug Leese
British arms dealer involved in Iran-Contra; visited by Epstein during his early career
Avril Haynes
Biden administration official; member of West Exec Consulting; worked with Ehud Barak
Anthony Blinken
Biden administration official; member of West Exec Consulting; worked with Israeli intelligence figures
Jay Beacher
Previous guest on show; investigative journalist; presented alternative analysis of Epstein documents
Joe Rogan
Hosted Benz for three-hour interview about Epstein documents that generated significant public attention
Quotes
"Understanding the character of Epstein helps understand the world around you and the role that he played because there's a little visage of Epstein in almost every industry, every government, every intelligence service, every private investment fund."
Mike Benz
"This is a bad week to be an Epstein intelligence denialist."
Mike Benz
"There is a difference between an asset and a contact. Asset is a technical term that requires the compilation of a 201 personality file. Epstein could have done all of this with intelligence appears to have done it with US and so, but only on an off and on basis."
Mike Benz
"If you blackmail one person offensively, your entire network would crash down in an instant. The moment that rumor is even around that rumor didn't arise about an Epstein blackmail until after he was already arrested and dead in a jail cell somehow."
Mike Benz
"The blackmail narrative became the default explanation because no alternative framework existed in public discourse to explain intelligence-business relationships."
Mike Benz
Full Transcript
My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You've got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a turning point USA college chapter. Go start a turning point USA high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am. Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. The Charlie Kirk show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts, and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers. All right, welcome back. Our two of the Charlie Kirk show is underway. And I am very excited about this conversation with the great Mike Benz. Mike Benz has been, he just had a tour to force on Joe Rogan three hours with the great Joe Rogan all about Epstein. So much to get into. We of course had Jay Beacher on the show yesterday. I love that interview. I actually think it's it was a sobering kind of analysis of six years of investigative investigative journalism. But Mike Benz has different insights. He's seen different things. And I want to make sure that we approximate the truth here by getting Mike Benz's insights in the mix. So without further ado, Mike, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you. Thanks. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah. Well, I was talking to you a bit offline. The reason I want to wanted to have you on is because there is so much to the Epstein dump. There's three million documents. It's impossible for one voice to recent one. Yeah, to get to get the whole scope of what's happening here. And you you've been making headlines here. We've got clips from your Rogan interview that we're going to play. You made a lot of news. In general, just let's start at the beginning. What do you think that we learned from this? Has it added contours to your understanding? The floor is yours. Oh, an unbelievable amount has been turned up in this. It's I guess the way I describe it is it's shocking but not surprising. I don't think there's anything in here that has surprised me, but it still is very shocking to see the details laid out. And it also confirms in my view. Essentially from almost every angle, the way that I've tried to prescribe people or prescribe people to view Epstein in context to sort of understand the Epstein cinematic universe beyond a lot of the kind of simple easy to grasp onto things or the things that he was arrested for in my view, understanding the character of Epstein helps understand the world around you and the role that he played because there's a little visage of Epstein in almost every industry, every government, every intelligence service, every private investment fund. And so what we're getting are to know something for a fact versus to have a constellation of circumstantial evidence is a very different thing. Many of the allegations around Epstein, until this point, involved highly compelling circumstantial evidence. But so much that has turned up in these files has just been what you'd call in an evidentiary proceeding a direct evidence. That is it's not, oh, we think that he was talking to X or Y because he talked to 13 of his associates and there's a rumor going around and someone said that he did. Now, you have a direct email or you have a direct, a direct audio file that says X or Y, we can get in all the specifics of what all those things are because there's frankly three million of them. But I can either turn to that or you guys want to go in a different direction. I'll leave it to you. So I'll be honest, one of the things that I was challenging Jay Beacher, a phenomenal interview. I encourage everybody to go watch it and listen to it. But one of the things that I just couldn't shake was this sense that I've had that he was an Intel asset or he was working with CIA with with Masad, whatever. And he seemed to be thinking that, you know, those claims had been overblown. Yeah, why would he work with Masad if he could just call A-Hood Barak or why, you know, yes, yes, he was involved, but it was it was softer. It was more kind of veiled in business transactions or whatever. I just couldn't shake it. And I kept pushing him on that. And I've seen that you've kind of been going into this, you know, there's this email Robert Maxwell, Galein's Maxwell apparently threatened Masad and you've kind of gone into some of this. But there's so much there and I just want to let you make those connections if they're there, if it's true, because I just I feel that it that there's got to be a there there. Well, I was laughing because when you said I couldn't help shake the feeling. I thought, well, you don't say, I mean, this is a this is a bad week to be a Epstein intelligence denialist. I'll give you some. We'll start with the US side of it. One of the things that turned up in these documents that I again, shocked, but not surprised is Epstein foyered the central intelligence agency twice for records about himself first in 1999 and then again in 2011. Now Andrew Blake, have you guys ever yeah, if you're a foyer of the CIA to see what any any CIA records about yourself, it has that that wouldn't even occur to me to contemplate that as an option. You know, I guess, but I'm also not a billionaire either or sent a millionaire. Sent a millionaire. Okay. Well, would you request for any, uh, quote, open or acknowledged agency affiliations? So that was okay, just so I'm understanding Mike. He this is in 1990. Did you say 1991 or 2001? 1999. 1999. This is two years before he became a public figure. Right. Okay. At that point, he was still a private citizen, not publicly known, not written about in the mainstream news. It wasn't until 2001 and 2002 when he began flying the the most recent president of the United States, Bill Clinton around in Africa on his private jet that the media started to take interest in him. So he was still basically a private operative who basically two years before he became a public figure, first asked the CIA if there were any open or acknowledged links agency affiliations. What's also interesting is the CIA, we we actually don't have exactly what he asked the CIA, even though I think we should and I know that we are entitled to it. And now I'm happy to report that after I made a bit of a crusade about this, multiple people have now filed foyers to the CIA to get Jeffrey Epstein's correspondence with the CIA, which is not classified because foyer requests at the CIA are not. Now the CIA is obviously not allowed to tell you by virtue of it being a spy agency, any classified records that it has. But for example, it can send you declassified records or if the CIA has acknowledged any links to a particular individual, it can send you the records on those. But what's interesting about that CIA letter is it says with respect to your request about open or acknowledged links, we have conducted that we grant the request for documents. We have searched for documents, no documents are responsive to to that with respect to the portion of your foyer request that touched on classified matters. We can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of such documents, which means that Jeffrey Epstein not only asked for open and acknowledged agency links, but also asked something about himself that was classified. Now, for what it's worth, that is the same stock response you get when you ask the CIA for CIA personnel files. So he's not yet a public person and he foies the CIA, the central intelligence agency, asking for what it has on him basically. And we don't know exactly how he stated his question or what he included in that, but we do know that it touched on classified documents because the CIA's response was, you know, regarding that specific line of questioning we can other confirmed or that is really shocking actually. That's a bombshell. And what's very exciting is, is in less and less the law is not followed and the Justice Department does not come down on the agency for not following the law. If it doesn't follow it, we are legally entitled to actually see the correspondence between the, because they left a in the Epstein files. And none of this was known until last week that again, in 1999 and then again, in 2011 sent an identical request. And now this is before again, the 2019 re-arrest, but there's a case reference number. So we know they have the files. All right, Mike Benz, I have a co-host here. Blake Blake was, I could see his mind thinking he went to Dartmouth. He's a very smart guy. I don't like. I can I go away. So Mike, Mike, we've, we've sparrered over, yeah, Blake over his theories on a lot of things. Yeah, Blake takes some of them. Blake was not as all about Blake had an incredulous look on his face. So I'm gonna throw it to Blake. What, what were you thinking? Blake? Well, I guess I'm just thinking I, I just, it strikes me as innately implausible that, like that the reveal that Jeffrey Epstein is an intelligence asset is that he foiled himself at the CIA. I guess I would ask. I would he do that? Like, why would he do that? If the CIA needed to hide anything, why would they get outed by their legalistic response to a FOIA request? I think there's like a lot of ways they could get around me. I just find it highly unlikely. Okay, it's done through the, Blake, it was done through the Privacy Act, meaning there was no public alert. We only know about this because it's in the FBI file. This was, this is a way, if you go through the Privacy Act, you can see what records there that are publicly searchable about you, but without it being revealed to the public, so that you can see what other people would get if they were to do that same FOIA. In theory, anyone could do a FOIA about Jeffrey Epstein. But if you do it through the Privacy Act, you get it, and you get it alone in a private response between you and your lawyer. That's smart, Mike. That's how it's done. So, you know, I learned this yesterday, I know this is public information, but it's one of those pieces of the Epstein saga that people forget that he was arrested, either in the late 80s or early 90s, and his partner went to prison for it. Anyway, I'm just saying like he's skated free. Your time, time of the towers financial collapse. Yes. Yes. Which at the time was the biggest Ponzi scheme, right? Exactly in US history at that time, but the, but Epstein is a, where's Waldo figure? I make, I make the argument that Epstein's intelligence adjacency started in 1978, 1979. I mean, there's kind of a forest gump story around this. When he worked at Bear Stearns, Bear Stearns was one of the top three largest clearinghouses of the BCCI bank. That was the CIA's bank. The, it went down in flames in 1990 when Bill Barr effectively covered it up. He wrote the pardons for the six BCCI officials. That's the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. That was the CIA's bank for laundering, uh, basically gun and drug money to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan. And you have to understand in 1979, Iran, the Iranian revolution happened at the very moment that the CIA was at its weakest because of the church committee hearings in the Halloween massacre. And the CIA was setting up a complex offshore intelligence web, through a network that's called the Safari Club, the Mount Kenya Safari Club, that was run by Adnan Kishoggi, the, the largest arms deal in the world, who was the Saudi middleman between the US and Israel during the Iran Contra affair. Adnan Kishoggi was Jeffrey Epstein's client when he started Intercontinental Assets Group in 1981 after the SEC investigation of him at Bear Stearns for handling Edgar Bronfman's money on a deal involving St. Joe's mineral company that Edgar Bronfman was, you know, played a very senior role in policy. He was the, he was the head of the, um, oh my gosh, I don't know why I'm blank on the name, but it's, uh, he was, he was ahead of a, of a major international, uh, uh, Jewish advocacy group that played an effective kind of shadow state department role in many aspects of the Iran war. The Reagan administration, uh, had this Iran Contra operation that involved effectively the US and, and Brits, uh, getting, getting guns to Iran, defend off Iraq and, and doing it through Israel with Saudi Arabia as the middleman. And it's at this time while Bear Stearns is wandering money effectively in a CIA, uh, gun running operation. This is, you have to keep in mind also there was an international arms embargo on Iran at the time. So that was illegal to do. And, uh, the, I find the Nicaragua side of that, the gun running to the Nicaraguan's with the skim, interesting because Jeffrey Epstein had a very lurid history in South American affairs. For example, when Glein Maxba was, was asked by Todd Blanch in her DOJ interview last year, uh, to give an example of, uh, Jeffrey Epstein's business transactions, she could only think of one example to illustrate it. And that was imagine if the Sinaloa cartel was owed money by the, the Los Zedas cartel, uh, or rival cartel and the, um, they needed a way to trace the assets of the, of the other cartel to get the money back. They would hire some, they would hire Jeffrey and Jeffrey would take a 10% cut, a 5 to 10% cut of the money. I just find that interesting because we're only 13 years removed, uh, uh, 14 years removed or so from the fast and furious operation when the Obama White House greenlit in operation to run guns to the Sinaloa cartel so that they could win a gang war against the Los Zedas who were cutting into effectively US pipeline interests in Mexico. But the fact is, is you need to find, you need to explain how Jeffrey Epstein before the age of 30 had so many high profile clients, uh, stretching from the Middle East to France, to the UK, uh, to these high level contacts in Israel, uh, that makes sense given the fundamental constraints on someone who's 29, 30 years old from handling, uh, being competent enough to handle billionaires money. And, and the fact is, is the fact that he worked on those deals, the fact that he was flying back and forth cross country to visit Doug Lease at that time, who was the main British arms dealer involved in Iran contra, the fact that he was living at the time with Stanley Pottenger, who was the CIA's mop up man, who literally also got, uh, investigated by the FBI for running those same guns to Iran. But then the case was magically dropped when the FBI said the audio recordings that they had on him malfunctioned, um, it's, it's his whole career. Folks, let me tell you something straight up. 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And for an even better deal, sign up for blackout coffee subscription, save money, get free shipping, and are free coffee through their rewards program just for drinking what you already love. Your coffee shows up fresh on schedule and you never run out. That's blackoutcoffee.com slash Charlie. Check it out promo code Charlie. All right, so Mike, summing up, I mean, your mind is like a, it's, you just like have this incredible ability to capture all of these connections. It's truly, truly amazing. And so if I'm going to sum up what you were getting at and I was, I was taking notes, I was trying to track each piece, you only fought for yourself at the CIA if you've got a lot of reason to believe that they've either got stuff on you, they've got personnel files on you, whatever. When you've got all these, the smoke, there's got to be fire with all these connections, all these connections are Ron, Nick Roggle, whatever, all these relationships, it has to mean something. This can't just be pure coincidence. It wasn't just like a good, good party boy that, that like to hang out with Prince Andrew, like there's more going on here. You see, you were touching on the American side. Are there, are there connections that you would draw with Mossad or Israeli intelligence? What about Russia, Russian intelligence? Well, absolutely. And these are all linked. So as I mentioned, Jeffrey Epstein was handling the money for the CIA's point person between the US and Israel in 1983 when Adnan Kishoggi, Epstein's client flies to Washington, DC to meet with Robert McFarlane, the National Security Advisor to plan this operation. And that itself would be something I would think the crucial middleman who's also rumored at the time of the world's richest person and learned more in Adnan Kishoggi. Oh, okay. Yes, of course. But the point is, at that point, that was a coordination between American intelligence and Israeli intelligence. Who was running Israeli military intelligence at that time from 1983 to 1985? It was a Hood Barak. A Hood Barak even before this week's drop had been documented something like 47 times at Jeffrey Epstein's house and were business partners on Carbine 9-1-1 and did business deals together in everywhere from Mongolia to Kote-Divwar to a Hood Barak seeking Jeffrey Epstein's counsel for how do we evade sanctions on Russia after the 2014 Crimea affair. But the fact is, is what these new revelations show is a much, much deeper and complete overlap for many years between Epstein and Barak in a way that is really interesting. I'll give you an example. One of the things that surfaced here and that I blew up, I think it's sitting at about 6.5 million views right now, is Jeffrey Epstein secretly recording a Hood Barak during a three-hour conversation they had while a Hood Barak was the sitting minister of defense. Now, understand, a Hood Barak went from running Israel's most elite covert commando unit to running Israeli military intelligence to becoming the prime minister of Israel who Mossad reports directly to. The Mossad is structured to sit in the prime minister's office effectively, answers directly to and so it's not structured quite the same way as RCA. And then a Hood Barak became effectively the equivalent of the head of our Pentagon, which means constant coordination with Mossad. But it's also more, you know, he's more closely affiliated with Aman, which is Israeli military intelligence. And the fact that he was the head of it while that, and this is also how you see Epstein is so involved in the arms trade, both in the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and always working with these arms dealers. But what I'm getting at is in this conversation, a Hood Barak is one one month before he leaves office as the head of Israel's military and he's looking to make it big in the private sector. So Epstein records under the table, I guess, the FBI has a three-hour recording of this, a three-hour coaching session where Jeffrey Epstein instructs a Hood Barak on how to convert his lifetime of accumulated government power into getting rich on the outside in private business. And what he tells a Hood Barak is stop focusing on your, you know, skills, your military background and the things you've accomplished, that doesn't, that's not going to get you money. That's not why people are going to pay you. What you need to do is compile a list of people who owe you something. I owe you, think, think people who owe you favors. Now is the time to call in those favors. And what, what, what, what I find so fascinating about this is one, you know, on the one hand someone who's worked in these kind of Israeli military intelligence adjacent networks for 40 years is now literally helping that person cash in on the outside. But it also shows a kind of the mercenary aspect of Epstein's operation. He was secretly recording the head of the Israeli military, not the other way around, which I just think is kind of an interesting, you know, it isn't that a point kind of against some of this, I guess it just, it seems like so much of the argument that he's running this masterful blackmail ring or that is part of all this intel stuff is presumably that stuff would be well hidden. And yet so much of this is actually quite public, somewhat glaring. And then once we also start digging out stuff that was originally hidden, it doesn't seem to produce that much of a smoking gun. I mean, you heard Barat. Well, he's, I mean, he gets attacked by the first person to basically bring this to public light us a big deal is Benjamin Netanyahu. He attacks him about it in Israeli politics. In fact, I think they're talking about it right now because they say, I guess some of the conversations they say Epstein was kind of a liberal and he wanted to like make Israel more liberal and all of that. Right. But I mean, every country has got, you know, heterodox political factionalism, the US as well. So I mean, a change in leadership or a change in what faction of our CIA is dominant can determine whether or not a foreign country's government lives or dies. I mean, the fact is is what, you know, when Biden is in control of the CIA, you get things like the government of Brazil turns over, you know, when when Trump becomes head of the government, suddenly the CIA, USA, operations and Hungary stop. And so there is a similar thing in Israel in terms of whether or not you have an adood baroque or a Benjamin Netanyahu government. What's interesting in these files is it describes how hard it was for them to even get a meeting with Netanyahu. And you see a adood baroque actually playing a not insignificant role in the, you know, Biden world. He was closely affiliated with the West exec faction. If you guys remember, that in between period when the Hillary Clinton folks were out of power. But before they Biden got in, basically every major person in the cabinet was a part of a private consulting group called West exec. It had Avril Haynes, Anthony Blinken, you know, pretty much all the people who would populate the cabinet. And they worked very closely with the hood baroque. I believe he even funded them or hired them for, you know, private consulting type things. But, you know, what you see is it is true that a foreign country's, you know, spy apparatus or covert influence apparatus does have an effect on American politics. I don't think it's wrong in a sense to call that out. I think that it is, it has been silly to try to deny any links between Epstein and Israel. It's all over the place for his whole career. But the fact is is this class of person, a outside financial fixer, is, while they are affiliated with governments, there is also a on again, off again, only if it's good for me type relationship that happens. Like I don't think Epstein, I would not be surprised if Epstein sent those foias not because he worked at or for CIA, but that he occasionally worked with CIA when he was profitable for himself and his partner network. And he wanted to know if that adjacency might turn up in a public record search. Same thing with his connections with Israel. He certainly worked with high level Israeli intelligence and military figures. That doesn't mean he gets a paycheck from it necessarily. There are these affinity networks where you yourself can get rich by doing a favor for people in government. I believe that's likely the case with Epstein both in the US and in Israel. And likely, you know, when you look at the UK and French and Saudi webs, it looks like, you know, at a much less involved level, there are, there's a there there too. Well, it makes it, it makes perfect sense to me that he was worried that it would be public information, especially as his, he became more famous. And he kind of probably had an inkling that he was getting more and more high profile that he wanted to check to see what was publicly available. If somebody else could find this out about him about, you know, what the CIA had scooped up on him. I mean, if he's an intel operative, why would he have to make the application himself? Well, because he's probably understood that you do it. Well, let me just correct that. He did it through his lawyer using the Privacy Act, which is the way you do that. If you want to effectively anonymously see what other people would see if they had filed that for you. Okay. But he's also, apparently, he's like an intel asset. I just, I feel like this is kind of a careful code stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no, you got to, you got to be precise with your language. Okay, there is a difference between an asset and a contact. And this is very important. I've done lectures on 20 different figures in recent American history, who were CIA contacts facilitators, logistical support notes, but that do not rise to the level of asset asset is a technical term that requires the compilation of a 201 personality file. That is, if you are a formal asset, but Epstein could have done all of this with intelligence appears to have done it with US and so, but only on an off and on basis, not as a, okay, the CIA told me to do it. Therefore, I have to do it. This is a really important one because a lot of people don't understand the sticky gooey layer, the, the mortar between the bricks when it comes to intelligence work and non intelligence work. There is a vast web of kind of peri intelligence intelligence adjacent, adjacent, adjacencies that is the way in which intelligence work is done. By its very nature, anything that is a covert action cannot be actualized by a overt, I admit, I'm a CIA. There's the hard and fast distinction is, is literally impossible. What you have is a, is a layer of contacts that facilitate that action. And sometimes those are formal assets, often in, in their most significant form, they're actually not. And I can give you a bunch of examples. Yeah, but Mike, you, you did this what you exposed a lot of this with the censorship industrial complex, how the government basically figured out that they could outsource certain actions that were, would be deemed illegal if it was done directly by the government, right? And so it follows that this is the exact same formula that they were using somebody like a Jeffrey Epstein for. I, I, there's so much like explosive stuff. You, you've said on Joe Rogan that you didn't think that he was actually his main motive was blackmailing people. Uh, yes, Sarah. I wanted to give you that it's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is something that, you know, is, because people have gotten so invested in it, I, you know, you're sort of trying to stop a runaway train when you, when you say it, but, but it's just the simple fact. First of all, Epstein wouldn't have enough time in the day to run some sort of, you know, global, you know, pedo ring in an organized and structured fashion. I mean, the guy is, you know, 12 funds and all the, the business and meetings and influence nodes, he's in science, technology, military, gun running, uh, you know, all these different, yeah, to, to be a full-time pimple like that I don't even know is, is technically possible. The main thing is is, I do think it is possible that there could be a blackmail element in the sense that if you compile certain things on, if you have something on, you could sell that to a corporate espionage client or to an intelligence client and there could be some sort of indirect blackmail capacity that other people have. None of that has ever been proven or there's no even open leads to follow, but the second is, is your entire network would, everything you've built would crash down in an instant. The moment that rumor is even around that rumor didn't arise about an Epstein blackmail until after he was already arrested and, uh, you know, dead in a jail cell somehow. Uh, if that, if you blackmail one person offensively, uh, the people tell their wives that they go through a major crisis, a PR in terms of, they may tell their publicist and their wife and no other soul, but wives talk to wives and the moment one person that's friends with Jeffrey Epstein tells another person, hey, don't mess around that guy, that guy threatened me with stuff. Then all the party stopped, all the access stops, all the confonant relationships stopped. Now, I do think it's possible that he could, uh, defensively blackmail someone if you will, which is that if somebody says, I know that the dirt you were involved with, I'm gonna tell the, I'm gonna tell NBC News this happened at your party and he goes, ah, not so fast. You were at that party and look what I have you on tape doing. That's very possible. I mean, you saw, you saw, for example, I remember seeing a clip from a long time ago and not throwing any shade at Milo Unopolis when I say this, but I remember I'm holding up like, uh, you know, like a recording or something of just, uh, just saying listen, when I talk to people, I, you know, I try to have it on tape. Now, I don't think Milo's ever offensively blackmailed someone with that, but it can see when you are a high net worth or high, the influential public figure and like, you know, you, in case anyone comes after you, you have something on them, but that doesn't mean it's like some highly organized, uh, like, I mean, he did that, for example, with the head of Israeli, yeah, the Israeli military. Do you think that, I mean, he was under the table recording him for three hours? So that's the question. Yeah, exactly. So the question is if he wasn't motivated by blackmailing or honeypots or whatever, what was he motivated by? We have three minutes left. Mike, I could talk to you for hours and hours. So I was a million reasons. He could have been, he's gotten in trouble his whole life. I mean, when he was 27 years old, he got in trouble at Bear Stern's, uh, you know, for both on the SEC thing and another intra-office thing. He may have had a bad experience where someone tried to blackmail him and he goes, I wish I had recorded, uh, you know, that thing because they were doing dirty stuff too and then made a practice of it. And then when he, you know, the more property he owned, he just had everything hooked up. We don't, we that's a hard thing to substantiate given that this guy who's got 100,000 high-level people in his rolodex, not a single one after his death, after he couldn't even drop the blackmail, as even as even it made an allegation that Epstein tried to blackmail. So there's no open leads on it and there's an entire cinematic universe that is very useful for understanding the modern day. As you pointed out, the censorship industrial complex is structured the same way the Epstein network is. The same way intelligence work is. These, the data points to mine here in terms of what we can understand about our own government, what we can understand about our relationship with foreign governments, how to understand, uh, New York hedge funds and the role that they exert or, uh, high finance or London banks exert, uh, there's a whole world to see in the Epstein looking glass and, and I think that should be, that's primarily my focus. People are free. Yeah, no, I think you're, I think you're, I think you're right. I think you're super right. Um, I'm, I mean, I'm convinced there's just too much smoke there to not be a little bit of fire, even if it's not as sensational as some would make it. I just, I just, I was pushing back with Jay because I felt like there was something I would close out with my, my closing thought here would be, I feel like for years, I mean, Epstein died almost seven years ago. It's crazy how long it's been, but it, it seems like I know you've pushed back on this, but the widespread assumption is, oh, this had to all be explained as part of a big blackmail ring. And that would justify the intelligence connections. But as you point out, nobody has made a blackmail allegation. Nobody talked about it being blackmail. It, it turns out there kind of is no blackmail because if no one's alleging it and there's no evidence of it, it seems to have not happened. And at that point, you pull on the thread and so many, there's so many interlocking assumptions. Oh, well, he was doing blackmail. What would you do blackmail with? Oh, well, it was these underage girls. So he would get compromised on people, but we don't have examples of that being used. I just, I feel like we can go over a little bit. Yeah, we can go over the question. Go ahead. People lots, people latched onto that. What Blake just said, because they didn't understand all of this. And there was no other way for most normy civilians to even understand the FC and operation. And that's my concern is that all that that momentum was all built up because nobody was saying all of this with a large platform. And so that became the only explanation even though in my view, there's not much of a there there. Hi folks, Andrew Colvet here. I'd like to tell you about my friends over at YRIFI. You've probably been hearing me talk about YRIFI for some time now. We are all in with these guys. If you or someone you know is struggling with private student loan debt, take my advice and give them a call. Maybe you're behind on your payments. Maybe you're even in default. You don't have to live in this nightmare anymore. YRIFI will provide you a custom payment based on your ability to pay. They tailor each loan individually. They can save you thousands of dollars and you can get your life back. We go to campuses all over America and we see student after student who's drowning in private student loan debt. Many of them don't even know how much they owe. YRIFI can help. Just go to YRIFI.com. That's the letter Y then RIFI.com. And remember, YRIFI doesn't care what your credit score is. Just go to YRIFI.com and tell them your friend Andrews, hadn't you? I think that's a really interesting point because it at you guys actually do sort of agree on this because I've talked to you about it off air. How because there isn't sort of a rational explanation for stuff that creates a vacuum and the most sensationalized version of events fills that because that's what's flies on the internet or whatever. Sensational versions and also things that aren't proven become fact. A thing I mentioned if you want to comment on this mic, but a thing I mentioned with our guest yesterday that stood out to me was how I heard over and over. It was kind of taken as an article of truth. I saw it repeated in many articles that the prosecutor in Epstein's Florida case had told the Trump administration, oh well Epstein belonged to, I was told he belonged to intelligence so I didn't pursue it. And I heard that over and over again. And then it turned out I was reminded that was an anonymous source providing hearsay that they set someone told I think the Washington Post that they'd heard this or then he's denied it and then he denied it. Not even publicly he denied it in a statement to the Trump administration that we then surfaced with these files. And that made just got me thinking that was such a core part of what people used to argue for this. And it was a kind of runaway hearsay statement that if anything has direct evidence against it. Right, right. And I saw that that was in the OPR report that during the Justice Department investigation. But I have my own questions about that. I don't know how to feel about that allegation. I agree with you that it is not the core receipt so to speak to base any of this on because it's contested. And I do think that the way the question was phrased in terms of the OPR. This is the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Justice Department. I think the way it was phrased and the lack of any follow-up questions beyond just you know, did you have knowledge that he was an asset sort of thing? Leaves the door open. But I think that there's so many other layers of it that speak to it. And again, I'm very curious to see now that the FOIAs have been fired what the CIA comes back and says because they are legally required to give us that correspondence. One of the things that I pointed out earlier today on X was we have because we have the file reference numbers for the whole back and forth of the FOIAs. Now while through the Privacy Act, it's not you know publicly searchable that you sent that there is a it is not inherently classified communication between the CIA and Epstein's for Epstein records, which means if you have the reference number, the they're required to send it to you unless they classified that correspondence after the fact. And if the CIA drags its feet on this FOIA, if it obstructs, if it says you can't have it for one of two reasons, one we classified it, that says something pretty damning or two we lost it. We are record somehow deleted it between 2011 and 2019. I would demand a Justice Department investigation into that in terms of who at CIA may have deleted it or how it may have when exactly the files were no longer retained. If it turns out that the CIA says we don't have it and then an FBI investigation into the forensics of why they don't have it says well it got to lead in our system in a fluke malfunction on July 10th, 2019, I think that tells you something as well. But the fact is is from the CIA's work through BCCI, while Bear Stearns was handling the clearing of those CIA transactions through the Adnan Kishoggi Iran Contra affair. Here's another one. The CIA's proprietary airline Southern Air Transport used an Iran Contra that Jeffrey Epstein was handling the CIA main point man's main operatives transactions for that very gun running CIA proprietary airline Southern Air Transport Epstein negotiated its move to Columbus, Ohio where Jeffrey Epstein was running the limited out of when he got durable power of attorney. I mean Blake Andrew, can you guys negotiate the move of a CIA proprietary airline to serve your business? Now at that time Southern Air Transport just two years earlier had divested so it was no longer owned by the CIA and operated by the CIA. It was owned to a CIA, a retired CIA agent who had been who had been part of its management team while it was CIA. So it was technically a private business but then it goes to serve Jeffrey Epstein's company. By the way just two years after that the State Department leased one of the largest residential buildings in New York City to Jeffrey Epstein right after it seized it from the government of Iran. So Jeffrey Epstein had his the State Department as his personal landlord after season. I mean can you go on Zilla or Airbnb or has the State Department ever been your personal landlord? And by the way the only reason that that arrangement ended up expiring was because Jeffrey Epstein violated the terms of his agreement with the State Department by sub leasing it out to two of the lawyers for both the French connection and pizza connection scandals which were both CIA drug running scandals from the prior decade. The French connection was the CIA's role in facilitating illegal narcotics from Lebanon to France and the pizza connection scandal was when there was a basically a CIA protected a trans shipment of drugs to Italian Amatheat organizations in New York and New Jersey that was law into the pizza shops. So I mean the whole thing up and down you can trace it to the kind of CIA earthquake of the Carter administration giving way to this kind of US Israel Iran Saudi Iran centric foreign policy web and then it just metastasized from there as all these things require money hedge funds and private equity funds get in on the action Epstein makes his way from the you know finance world to the you know kind of fixer world financial bounty hunter hunter world into the high finance world and you can trace US Israeli British into some degree you know French and Saudi foreign policy so my decades to the figure of Jeffrey Epstein. Mike I had to ask you about this and I know we're going along here so thank you for your time the there was like now all of a sudden there's like a there's like George W Bush is in the in these emails and so is Macron from France like I yeah go ahead. George HW Bush was the CIA director in 1975 and the Safari Club grew out of his network on the the Kishog the Kishoghi yet to understand I mean George HW Bush was the CIA director and then you know played this very interesting role in the October surprise around Iran and then was the vice president of the Reagan administration during Iran Contra and was effectively the blocker to protect Reagan on it a lot of people think he was kind of the main progenitor of the whole Iran Contra affair it was it was when he became president his attorney general was Bill Barr who not only was the cover up he who started his career in the CIA for the first seven years of his career he only became a lawyer and then the attorney general because he went to law school at night while he was in the CIA the the Democrat media in the early 1980s blamed him for the CIA blocking the congressional investigations into Iran Contra and then while he picked Bill Barr as his AG Bill Barr wrote the partens for the six BCC I officials who were cleared of any wrongdoing in the CIA bank's disaster there's a lot of men's getting started I know man there's so much smoke there has to be fire that's where I that's where I'm at I listen I think I just want to kind of synthesize this for our audience it's listen to day one with J. Beacher and day two with Mike Benz I think so much of this has been sensationalized oh like especially a lot of the sex stuff you know you know apparently you find out he was deformed and he had erectile dysfunction and he wasn't even able to like perform I hate to you know I'm trying to be sensitive for our 11 year olds it might be listening but but the point is some of that stuff I think has been really sensationalized the underage girl thing I think Jay had a lot of really interesting intel on Virginia Guffrey was apparently recruiting them and they were presenting themselves as over 18 whether he knew or not I don't know that's a big question mark he liked them young there's no doubt 18 to 25 is it was his presumption the point I'm making is there's been a lot of sensationalism around that a lot of sensationalism around the black male but one of the questions that I go back to is what JD Vance said why did was this man able to make so much money when basically everybody with a brain and finance brain says that he was like subpar mediocre at finance at best some say he was good at avoiding taxes okay but some of the video that we have him talking finance people are not impressed people that should be impressed or not impressed so the question is how did he make all his money what you present as a theory or connections that seem to believe make me believe that their smoke there could be fire seems like a lot of fire in this area and so it's like kind of like both of these angles feel like they have truth in them and then in the in the void of where there's details the internet runs in and sensationalizes you know to the max is that is that a fair summation kind of yeah I think so I think I think one of the reasons that I think people's intuition about the immensity of what's hidden about the Epstein story is completely true but the the rush to fill the vacuum of that is is filled with things they can understand and the fact is yes when I'm talking about all these networks America does not yet have the language to put these things into words because they don't these things are hidden from them in part because we have a national security state we have all of our state craft is classified under you know as a you know foreign policy and and sense and and and the fact is is you know this is this is something that makes our politics co-compensate the fact that these networks are not talked about on network news the fact is is they can only really be shared through social media networks and the like which is why I think that that the collective understanding on this particularly on the right because the right you know there's kind of a universal thumb goes around a moment here and so far as the left was actually quite wise to this in the 1960s and 70s after they were run through the mill by the national security state during the during the Cold War when there was a war on communism and so a lot of socialist or socialist light folks were target and they had to they went through this same sort of collective wow this is the CIS relationship with private business and this is how the military connection comes into this and there was a very robust scholarship for about 20 years in the democrat party around that and there has really never been on the republican party until now because the republican party's base of support in American politics for the past century has come from basically three places the military industrial complex itself which which was largely set up by Eisenhower the big oil industry you know which is tightly connected with the military industrial complex and the Chamber of Commerce for just general big business who like low tax free enterprise policies and and there was never like that they were always on the giving and rather than on the receiving end so republicans by and large were kept dumb unless you were in the business that this entire cinemac universe exists and now that republicans or half of the republican party has been systematically targeted by this apparatus and this is part of my frustration for many years and trying to explain the censorship industrial complex is that you to to even know that the CIS people saw the CIA on the board of Facebook I'm sorry on the trust and safety team on Facebook and the trust and safety team of at of Twitter and the trust and safety team of YouTube and the and couldn't understand how this could be possible or us aides role in this or the state departments role in this or their funded grantees and so you need to explain essentially how US foreign policy works how domestic sentiment is a the you know they call this the driver the domestic drivers of foreign policy is critical to our international business our multinational business and private equity and and US foreign policy focused things depend on what people vote for here because if you vote for the wrong president those businesses that make money abroad go kaput or the foreign policy initiatives can radically change and so they targeted the trump movement you'll regard this of whether what you voted for him for if you are a trump supporter and trump wanted to go a different way on Ukraine a different way on Russia a different way on China a different way on Syria a different way on Iraq well then you have to target the whole movement to make sure that guy doesn't get elected right and you target it through these this peri intelligence layer yeah no that's well said I think that's a Blake I mean you and me are probably just a little bit on different wavelengths on the on the see norm here yeah no I mean listen I I think uh Mike that was a really good summation I think there's just too much smoke there's got to be some fire there but I think some of the sex stuff maybe has been sensationalized some of the black male stuff I'm kind of I'm with you on that uh Mike you've you've made a lot of time for us at the drop of a hat thank you uh so much for giving us as much of these connections you're going to us a lot to think about and I think a really important other side of this uh Epstein saga Mike Benz the executive director for the foundation for freedom online and so much so much else former state department you're crushing it out there congratulations on all the success thanks you guys too we well all right take care for more on many of these stories and news you can trust go to charliekirk.com