Gaslit Nation Transcript “Trump Let Putin Kill US Soldiers” July 08 2020 Audrey Strauss: In addition to allegedly enabling and participating in the sexual abuse of young victims, Maxwell compounded her crimes by repeatedly lying in 2016 when she was questioned under oath. Maxwell lied because the truth as alleged was almost unspeakable. Maxwell enticed minor girls, got them to trust her, then delivered them into the trap that she and Epstein had set for them. She pretended to be a woman they could trust, all the while she was setting them up to be sexually abused by Epstein and in some cases by Maxwell herself. Audrey Strauss: Today, after many years, Ghislaine Maxwell finally stands charged for her role in these crimes. My office and the FBI remained committed to doing all within our ability to bring justice to individuals who enabled, facilitated, and participated in the acts of abuse. Combating the exploitation of children is a priority of our office. We are committed to pursuing and prosecuting those who exploit and abuse minors. Sarah Kendzior: I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestselling books, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight. Andrea Chalupa: I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, available now where you stream your films. It's so crazy I can say that now, finally. Sarah Kendzior: And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world. And so we are back during the week where there is a sense of collective breakdown in the United States. We are now only four months from the presidential election and are facing a nationwide pandemic whose numbers won't stop rising, the worst economy that anyone alive has ever seen, mass protests against racism, which the media has largely stopped covering, Neo-Nazi speeches by Trump, which the media never stops covering, and the continual consolidation of a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government, which is exploiting all of the aforementioned crises for personal and financial gain. Sarah Kendzior: So we have a lot to talk about today, but we're going to start off with a topic that we have been discussing on Gaslit Nation since we launched in 2018, which is the sex trafficking operation of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. So there is a new development there. On July 2nd, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's partner, was finally arrested for her role in procuring underage girls for Epstein and forcing them into sexual slavery where they were raped by some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world. Though the indictment only covers the years 1994 through 1997, Maxwell was involved in Epstein's operation for several decades and this arrest was long overdue. Sarah Kendzior: Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein are the subjects of one of the chapters of my book, Hiding in Plain Sight, and to my knowledge this is the only book that connects Epstein and Maxwell, not only to international espionage and organized crime plots in which her father–UK publishing tycoon and Mossad agent Robert Maxwell–participated, and also to the Russian mafia, but to the contemporary world of Donald Trump, Bill Barr and other enablers currently running the U.S. federal government. Sarah Kendzior: This is an extremely complicated story so I recommend you either read the book or listen to the Gaslit Nation episode we did on Hiding in Plain Sight a few months ago. And I also recommend reading the works I cited in that chapter by other authors who've approached different angles of this story. Sarah Kendzior: For those who haven't read it, I'm going to summarize some of the key conclusions before moving on to the new arrest. So Ghislaine's father, Robert, as I mentioned, was a UK publishing tycoon and secret Mossad operative. His role in Mossad was not revealed until 1986 when a former employee of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate identified him as an agent. The accusation came to public light after Maxwell played a role in Mossad's kidnapping of Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who was trying to alert the West that Israel had nuclear weapons. Sarah Kendzior: Vanunu was taken back to Israel and given 18 years in prison. In November 1991, Maxwell's status in Israel was again confirmed after he died under mysterious circumstances. Officially, he fell off his yacht. Researchers and his own family members say he was murdered. He was given an elaborate hero's funeral in Jerusalem where Israeli state officials praised him for his contributions to Israel while not naming what they were. Sarah Kendzior: Israel was not Maxwell's only secret foreign tie, in the late 1980s, he had become a partner of Semion Mogilevich, the head of the Russian mafia, allegedly in search of money to keep his businesses afloat. We've discussed Mogilevich numerous times on Gaslit Nation. He was the subject of Robert Mueller's 2011 speech on the threat of new forms of organized crime, and he was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for years before James Comey abruptly removed him with no justification in December 2015. Sarah Kendzior: Robert Maxwell made Mogilevich's international operation possible by getting him an Israeli passport, which allowed Mogilevich to travel outside the Soviet Union to Israel, and then to Hungary, and then to Western Europe, and then to the United States where he set up an elaborate criminal operation that overlapped with Wall Street and the rise of white-collar crime. Sarah Kendzior: When Maxwell died, his finances mystified analysts due to millions of dollars of unidentified transactions. These were later assumed to be evidence of mafia activity. Among the activities Mogilevich participated in, very likely with Maxwell's help, were money laundering, arms trading and sex trafficking. Sarah Kendzior: After Maxwell died in 1991, his daughter, Ghislaine moved to New York City, set herself up as a socialite and began partnering with Jeffrey Epstein in a massive sex trafficking operation aimed at providing high profile men with underage girls, and then very likely blackmailing those men on behalf of multiple countries and private interests. Alex Acosta, the Trump former Secretary of Labor who prosecuted the Epstein case said, "Epstein belonged to intelligence," but would not specify to which country's intelligence he belonged. Sarah Kendzior: The answer is likely many, including the U.S., Israel and Russia, and the same is true of Ghislaine Maxwell. Some of the famous men who used Epstein's child rape services have been sued by their victims. Among them are Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump. Trump was sued by a victim who says he raped her when she was 13 years old in 1994. As noted, the Maxwell indictment covers the years 1994 to 1997. Sarah Kendzior: Another famous person associated with the Epstein case is Bill Clinton, who flew on Epstein's plane–nicknamed the Lolita Express–numerous times. Clinton was of course president during the time of the trafficking described in this indictment. I'm bringing both Trump and Clinton up because of speculation regarding those dates. But what's so horrific about this indictment is that it could allude to a number of powerful people due to the sheer volume of participants and witnesses. Sarah Kendzior: This all went on in plain sight for decades. The media and the government conspired to cover it up and the victims have never seen justice. And so that's the general background. Again, I highly recommend reading my book as well as other books that are willing to point to the international connections surrounding this crime. It's often framed as a, I don't want to say a regular sex trafficking operation, but this is America, so I suppose I can. But there are deeper connections at play, including ties to members of the Trump administration. Sarah Kendzior: And so on that note, we had a little prelude that this was coming. Some strange things happened. There was a statue of Epstein erected in Albuquerque, New Mexico the day before Ghislaine's arrest. Epstein of course, had a ranch in New Mexico where he wanted to conduct scientific experiments on human beings, including impregnating captured women with his sperm to create some sort of super race. Sarah Kendzior: There's all sorts of horrific, awful stuff that we're not even getting to in this episode and in general, so I encourage you to research that. So, that happened. And another precursor was that on June 20th, SDNY attorney, Jeff Berman, was abruptly fired by Bill Barr in what seems like an effort to cover up the case. Much as Barr attempted to control the Epstein case when Epstein was arrested last summer, it's important to remind everyone that it was Bill Barr's father, Donald Barr, who brought Epstein to prominence by hiring him to teach at the Dalton school, despite Epstein's lack of qualifications, in the early 1970s. Sarah Kendzior: After which, Epstein partnered with Les Wexner, partnered with other people in Wall Street, in New York high society and this operation took off. So I've been chattering on for a while about espionage-based sex traffickers. Andrea, do you have any thoughts on that around... What do you think about the Berman firing? Is it related? Andrea Chalupa: Oh, I think absolutely. In fact, we could play old audio from episodes from a while back of this show where we warned you.