"OCCULT!" - Epstein Investigator UNLOADS on Craziest Elite Global Network | Henry Abbott • 406

0:09 [music]

0:10 All right, Henry, I need you to take a trip down memory lane with me right now.

0:13 I need you to picture this.

0:15 Okay.

0:15 I'm in my parents' house.

0:17 Okay.

0:17 It's towards the end of 2021.

0:20 I've been doing this for a year and a half,

0:21 7 days a week, looking into the Epstein case like crazy.

0:26 And I find out that this guy whose blog on ESPN that I read growing up as a kid,

0:32 great blog by the way.

0:33 Thank you.

0:33 Had done this investigation into Apollo Global

0:37 and the connections to Jeffrey Epstein because I believe there

0:40 were two or three NBA teams at the time

0:42 that had ownership structure that was tied to Apollo.

0:45 And I go and I look at this.

0:48 And basically you would you had like an intro

0:50 before all the links to the different chapters cuz you

0:52 would just finished pretty much all of them at that time

0:54 or maybe there were still two more to come,

0:56 but there were like 19 or 20 on there.

0:58 And your intro was like, "Yo, so look,

1:01 Okay.

1:00 going to do [laughter] a quick like two-parter on this and got crazy, fam.

1:05 So here it is.

1:07 And I'm looking at this and there's like

1:09 10 likes on it and I'm like, "All right.

1:11 I mean, was were people looking at this or did they just

1:15 write it off cuz the basketball guy wrote it?" I'm like, "All right,

1:17 I'm going to give this a look." And I would

1:19 literally like read a chapter like this on my phone like

1:22 in the one room and it would take me like

1:24 an hour and then I'd like get up and I'm Oh god.

1:27 Oh god.

1:28 I'm [laughter] like walking around like, "No!

1:30 No!

1:31 I'm like, "This guy went back to like the Treaty of Versailles.

1:36 We did do that, yeah.

1:38 And where on what happened?

1:41 Please walk me through this.

1:42 It's so great to finally have you here.

1:44 I have shouted this out for years and people need to know

1:46 about your work cuz you're getting back in the game with it now,

1:49 but what what happened?

1:52 [laughter] All right, so I was writing about the NBA for years and I

1:55 I just have an oddity that I do not like to be lied to.

1:58 We can psych analyze me about that if you want,

2:01 but like I just it's just it's not it doesn't sit well with me.

2:05 And so I always was a little tripped up in the like

2:07 the NBA was kind of a front door for me to see

2:11 like billionaires and how they behave cuz if essentially the associate

2:15 the the the league offices work at the behest of 30 billionaires.

2:18 And so there were just kind of a bunch of stories I was involved in.

2:21 I ran a big team that was like investigative and stuff and and we kept running

2:24 into this like kind of just poor And so I got a little annoyed at like,

2:28 "What are these billionaires doing?" You know?

2:30 And so then at the time we were relaunching TrueHoop post-ESPN,

2:34 I did a big investigation into the oligarch

2:36 Mikhail Prokhorov who owned the Brooklyn Nets.

2:39 Yes.

2:39 And that was hairy.

2:42 That was crazy.

2:43 Um I went to one of the things I did was go to this like

2:47 secret meeting invite-only called PutinCon which was

2:50 like 200 ft below the surface of Manhattan.

2:52 And like when everyone there was like,

2:54 "The like the FSB has already hacked all of our phones." And like,

2:57 you know, and then but these people talking about how Putin works, right?

3:00 And and the system and like I learned so much at PutinCon and in that whole

3:03 investigation and like one of the things became

3:06 like to like what what Putin generally does, right?

3:10 And his oligarchs is like they have

3:12 a public game of like patriotism and rah-rah,

3:16 but privately they are taking I forget the number,

3:18 but it's like 5 to 10 billion dollars

3:20 a month for 20-plus years just out of Russia.

3:24 And then they want to park it somewhere

3:25 where it can't be seized if Putin loses power.

3:28 Don't worry about it.

3:29 Yeah.

3:30 So they were parking it basically with blue-chip American companies.

3:32 They're buying like Citibank stock and stuff, right?

3:34 But through a network that's hard to follow, right?

3:37 And so and for reasons that are complicated,

3:41 you really can't move that amount of money

3:44 out of Russia unless without the mob participating.

3:47 The Russian mob.

3:48 Yeah.

3:49 So you get in this like if you have

3:50 a business that's going at all well in Russia,

3:53 you're going to hear from your local mobster.

3:54 You're going to cut them in and you're going to cut

3:56 the intelligence agencies in and like

3:58 together they have this beautiful thing going.

4:00 And like but so that's fine.

4:02 But their money ends up at places like Apollo Global, right?

4:05 And so like like our financial system,

4:07 the global financial system used to be 1% offshore money

4:10 and now it's 10% of all money is offshore money.

4:14 That almost seems low, but yeah, it's crazy.

4:17 It's a crazy number.

4:18 But if you're raising money, if you're like a raising a fund, right?

4:21 Like you can't ignore this money, right?

4:22 This is where the big easy money is.

4:24 This is where law firms get their money.

4:26 Like this is important money.

4:28 And then, you know, as I'm kind of going

4:29 through this like Putin learning process, I was like,

4:33 "Huh, it seems like that whole story this once

4:36 you get this offshore money in big amounts,

4:38 it kind of overlaps a lot with arms trade and with the drug

4:41 trade and with BCCI and with like all this stuff you've been talking about.

4:45 Once you get to that, you're like, "Oh my god,

4:47 like this is this system kind of is our system." Yes.

4:51 And so then I was like, "All right, well." And then the Epstein story started

4:55 popping up more and more interesting ways

4:57 and I just like I I got to like I got to figure this out, right?

5:00 I got to figure out how this ties to the NBA.

5:02 Yeah, I actually saw I was looking at a date stamp right before you came here.

5:05 The initial like first story you did on it before you

5:09 went and did your series was two days after he was arrested.

5:11 So you were on it Yeah.

5:12 right away.

5:13 I remember the day that he I mean I I said to him a friend of mine,

5:17 I And by the way, at that time everyone in my life was like,

5:20 "What are you doing?" [laughter]

5:21 You know, like like like like what You write about basketball.

5:26 what are you doing?

5:27 And um and also just like I mean a a bunch of people were like,

5:30 "Are you going to get killed?" And I'm like, "I don't I don't think so.

5:32 I think I would be like seventh on the list at the highest,

5:34 you know, maybe much lower." Yeah.

5:36 Um so uh but I was like, you know,

5:38 if this is like if the world is as up as I think it might be,

5:42 then Epstein's just going to die in custody, right?

5:45 I said that to a friend.

5:47 And then like I was waiting.

5:48 My daughter was in a theatrical thing um Riverside Church in in Harlem.

5:54 Mhm.

5:54 And uh and I was double-parked outside the church waiting to pick her up.

5:58 And um and then my friend calls me.

6:00 He's like, [snorts] "They killed him in prison." And I'm like, "What?"

6:06 [laughter] You know, like like Like I kind of just said that.

6:09 You know what I mean?

6:09 Like I didn't really believe that, you know, but I said that.

6:12 I did say that.

6:13 And then I was like, "Oh." That that day I was definitely like like we

6:16 need to understand what the[ __] is going on here.

6:19 Like we do.

6:19 We just do as humans.

6:20 Like we just need to we got to get a handle on this.

6:23 Hey guys, three quick things.

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6:44 Can I actually go back a step to what you were saying at the beginning

6:47 there though before we even get to Epstein

6:49 cuz we're going to run through your investigation.

6:51 We'll probably have to have Henry back

6:53 cuz we ain't fitting this into three hours.

6:55 But you know, when you talk about the leaps, correct leaps I might add,

7:01 and that it's been proven that you made when

7:03 you started looking at Prokhorov when he owned the Nets

7:05 and getting around some of these other groups that you

7:08 didn't even know existed to where you said money's going offshore,

7:12 it's being laundered through the mob, intelligence agencies,

7:16 and then goes to like legitimate places like Apollo Global and stuff like that.

7:21 But you then tied it directly to these people who are

7:24 doing arms deals and some of the things that, you know,

7:26 people could get their their heads going like, "Oh my god, is this like the

7:30 sound like the crazy ones.

7:31 We do.

7:31 Yeah.

7:31 But it's it's it's now been exposed in the emails that there's

7:35 things I would have previously thought were a little crazy that it's like,

7:37 "Well, this this isn't so crazy." But the guy Pro Prokhorov, Yeah.

7:43 that was so cuz he was like a flash in the pan.

7:46 It's funny you bring him up.

7:48 Now you have I believe a Chinese billionaire who owns the Nets.

7:51 So he sold to him a few years ago.

7:53 But I remember this dude like coming up and he's like, "I met with Carmelo.

7:58 We I looked in his eyes and said,

8:00 'Come play for the Nets.'" And then he went to the Knicks.

8:03 But like he was this flashbang like hand

8:06 grenade into the NBA and then he was gone.

8:08 Was there something behind the scenes there to where he got pushed out and did

8:14 that have anything to do with some of these groups you were looking at?

8:17 There's so much behind the scenes with every oligarch, I think, really.

8:22 Um yeah.

8:23 I mean, there's so much.

8:24 I I There was the one thing that really

8:27 blew my mind about how he exited the NBA,

8:30 which was there was an executive from associated with him who was traveling

8:36 China like looking to drum up I heard a deal to sell the Nets.

8:42 Mhm.

8:42 I was like, "Well, why do you care?

8:43 Like what do you why do you care where the owners from, right?"

8:46 But the deal is like China's the country that Russia's scared of.

8:50 So like all the everyone in Putin's sphere is worried

8:52 about having all their assets just taken by Putin, right?

8:55 Like he'll just he can he can un-oligarch you anytime he wants, right?

8:59 But the idea is like basically you you cut

9:01 a deal with someone who's holding it it in China, then he can't touch it.

9:05 It's safe there, right?

9:06 Putin has no sway in this giant militarized country

9:09 that he has like a 2,000-mile border with, right?

9:12 So the idea is like have someone who's ultimately protected

9:15 by the Chinese government purchase it so that your purchase is secure.

9:18 And then do you bank it in China?

9:20 really understand what happens after that.

9:21 But so I saw that report Interesting.

9:23 and then I talked to everybody I knew involved and I was like,

9:26 "Wait, did they like seek out a Chinese buyer?" And I was like, "No.

9:28 No, I don't know why you'd say that." I'm like, "Are you sure?

9:30 Like cuz he found a Chinese buyer." [laughter] You know,

9:33 like but I don't That was interesting to me.

9:35 I never really got to the bottom of it,

9:36 but there's so much like cuz there's a guy

9:40 um Prokhorov before all of this um Prokhorov's like

9:45 oligarch buddy who kind of like navigated the early

9:49 the early days of oligarchy were like very dangerous, right?

9:52 And and he was in the most dangerous businesses, right?

9:55 Aluminum and nickel and stuff.

9:57 And and he had a a Harvard-educated

10:00 kind of Russian-American partner um who maybe

10:05 got a little big for his britches and started cutting some big aggressive deals.

10:08 And ideally you're supposed to kind of get permission

10:10 from like the higher-ups before you go making these big deals,

10:13 but he was kind of a Western mindset businessman and he started cutting

10:17 these big deals and then just found his body in his vacation house.

10:21 Like dude was murdered.

10:22 Yeah.

10:23 And um That's probably for Adam Silver.

10:26 Well, that was before.

10:28 And then let's not forget Prokhorov first made news

10:31 um not for anything to do with the NBA,

10:33 but he was in the international headlines because he

10:35 was accused by French authorities of trafficking a whole plane

10:40 full of women that he was like bringing to the Alps

10:43 to have a sex with all of his friends.

10:45 And then you know, and Prokhorov was like, "That's absurd.

10:48 We are just partying together." Like you know, but like he you know,

10:51 they and they somehow got an apology or whatever,

10:53 but like but you know Oh my god, are they all just sex traffickers, dude?

10:59 Like what Like how hard is it?

11:00 You're a billionaire.

11:01 You got to traffic with Like that's what I mean.

11:03 It just seems like cowardly, you know,

11:05 that so many of them are doing this stuff.

11:08 I My take it so um Do you know Catherine Belton is?

11:13 Doesn't ring a bell.

11:14 get her on this show.

11:14 Okay.

11:15 Catherine Belton is an absolute genius wizard hero.

11:19 Like she wrote this book called Putin's people

11:21 that's like she's at face-to-face with the oligarchs

11:24 and like grilled them and she like knows her stuff and she didn't back down.

11:27 Then they sued her in London because one part of her book they said was wrong.

11:32 And her publisher had her back and they had a big

11:34 thing and they had they changed like the most minor wording,

11:37 but I'm like, "Okay,

11:38 you guys, the oligarchs met and tried to figure out how to shut up

11:41 Catherine and their biggest weak point in her book was like this page, right?

11:47 Meanwhile, other page of the book says Putin was involved

11:49 in the cocaine trade." Like but they left that one alone.

11:53 Yeah, they're like that that is okay.

11:57 [laughter] The CIA deal cocaine, too.

11:58 Yeah, yeah.

11:59 But her like in the end of her book there's a little

12:00 part about like oligarchy has changed and like how the new oligarchs work.

12:04 And her her thing is basically just compromat on everyone.

12:07 Like you would don't get to be senior if

12:09 you don't if you're not on video doing something terrible.

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13:47 So to me this is probably why I don't even

13:50 think like this sex trafficking I think is part of it.

13:52 Just like look, if you want to you're trying to raise money for your business?

13:55 Like great, come party with me in the Alps.

13:58 And if we end up with you on video, we might give you a loan.

14:01 Right?

14:01 But if we don't get you on video we can't have you.

14:04 you a loan.

14:04 We can't [laughter] We can't have you on your We're not interested in you

14:07 in our portfolio if we don't have total control of you, right?

14:10 We have to be able to end your career.

14:11 Like those are the conditions.

14:12 That is the most ass-backwards thing ever.

14:14 It's like [laughter] be a horrible person and you win.

14:17 Don't do it, you lose.

14:18 So John Kiriakou was in this chair or was he in that chair?

14:21 This chair?

14:22 And he was like, "Oh, I can't believe that they didn't notice this." I'm like,

14:24 "No, I think you have to do that.

14:27 It's not that like This wasn't a screw-up.

14:30 You know what I mean?

14:31 Like this is how you get in the club.

14:33 It's a criminal organization and you don't get in by being like, "Oh,

14:36 I'm good at business." You know, like you get in by getting on video.

14:41 And that's the other thing.

14:42 I I you know, these intelligence organizations,

14:44 one thing that seems to be pretty clear is they are extremely good

14:47 at psychological profiling and I mean that for like their own people as well.

14:52 And knowing John for a long time and knowing his stories

14:55 and talking with him so much on air off air you know,

14:58 he he got high up over there.

15:00 Yeah.

15:01 But it is so clear to me that they would have pegged him as, "Hey,

15:09 he's he's a serious dude and he can accomplish serious missions,

15:13 but there it we cannot bring his way cuz he'll never stand for it." That's

15:17 why I've I was always surprised that they

15:20 tried to bring the enhanced interrogation to him.

15:22 And of course he famously said off Yeah.

15:25 right away, but like that's the lightest of what we're talking about here.

15:29 Some of the other stuff I genuinely think he never

15:31 saw cuz they wouldn't have brought a guy in like that.

15:34 But the reality is all these intelligence organizations around the world,

15:38 they have what are the definition of dark alliances.

15:42 It's very, very strange.

15:44 It's not okay.

15:45 Like I mean well I look,

15:46 I'm not going to say I know how to run an intelligence organization.

15:50 I'm just saying that like the stuff that we

15:52 don't know is the stuff that you'd be like,

15:53 "Oh yeah, that checks out." You know, like the stuff you'd be like,

15:55 "Holy I mean these stories like I This is definitely

15:59 the part of the story I know the least about,

16:00 but these like kind of increasingly convincing reports about like

16:03 satanic rituals and ritual murders and stuff like Like what I know.

16:09 It's the darkest It's like if you put it in a movie they'd be like,

16:11 "It's not believable." Exactly, it's too dark.

16:13 Yeah, there's stuff that I have had since

16:15 the January 30th drop and really going through those emails.

16:19 There's some stuff that is still not proven,

16:21 but the fact that now it's a possibility.

16:23 Yeah.

16:24 Number one, I have to say that's a possibility.

16:26 And number two, you got to apologize to some people who were like, "Yo,

16:29 some of it's real." And I'd be like,

16:31 "Do we have evidence?" Well, now we got evidence.

16:33 Yeah.

16:33 You know, if there wasn't some before that I missed.

16:36 And it's just I don't know like what do you think it is

16:40 that gets a fellow human being who most these people are obviously wealthy,

16:46 had access to education, you know,

16:49 obviously like intelligent individuals that way.

16:52 Not that has anything to do with good or evil,

16:54 but you would think there's some level of like, "Well,

16:56 this seems crazy." Like what do you think it is

16:58 that gets someone to push themselves over that cliff to do

17:03 not even necessarily the worst like that, but some

17:06 of this stuff be it the sex trafficking or you know,

17:09 just total manipulation of and and abuse of minors and stuff.

17:14 There's a lot.

17:15 I think a lot goes into it.

17:16 One I A long time ago whole 'nother life basically I taught sex ed.

17:21 I taught like a Don't even get me wrong.

17:23 I had to read a bunch of stuff on this, right?

17:25 And like one of the things is that like pedophilia Apparently there are not

17:28 a tremendous number of people who have like fantasies about sex with a child.

17:33 Instead what happens is a lot of people find adults troublesome.

17:36 Right?

17:37 Like you're in a equal power relationship and you have to kind of negotiate.

17:40 It's a little bit of a dance.

17:41 Like do we get to have sex or not or do we

17:43 get to do what I want to do or you want to do.

17:45 But the people who end up with children are that power hungry, right?

17:49 They're the ones who like can't stand guff, right?

17:52 And this is exactly how the stories are, right?

17:54 Like the anecdotes in the reports are like, you know,

17:57 I said give [snorts] me a[ __] and you

17:58 didn't and so I'm going to slap you, right?

17:59 Like um so to me I think a lot

18:01 of it is like these are blatantly power hungry people, right?

18:04 They just can't fathom any any any sort of slowing

18:08 down on the road from here to what they want, right?

18:10 Whether that's sex or a certain meal

18:12 or to be on this vacation or whatever, right?

18:14 They're just like private jets everywhere.

18:15 We're just going no delays.

18:18 And so I think that's a big part of it, but then also like a a huge huge factor

18:23 in who's a pedophile is people who were victimized as children.

18:27 And so in some of these cases I think it's just there's like these This is

18:32 where it's kind of the European part of the story I think where there's

18:35 like I do think there are these like you know um did Where did I

18:39 see somebody rolled through just like all

18:41 of the pedophiles who were around the royal family?

18:43 Like it's just the ones that we know about is a lot.

18:46 lot.

18:47 So what's going on there?

18:47 Like I think what's going on there is

18:49 that it's absolutely the furthest thing from meritocracy.

18:52 Your greatest fear in the world is that you would just

18:55 like open the doors and everyone compete for the job, right?

18:59 So you have to have, you know,

19:01 somebody won the right to run the monarchy a gazillion years ago

19:05 and they're trying to pass that down through generations that have no business.

19:08 Like they're just not worthy.

19:10 So like how do you keep that thing that power structure together?

19:13 And I think they've been using pedophilia as like a repeated generational tool

19:18 and it works because if you abuse this one then that one becomes an abuser.

19:22 It's like it's so sick,

19:25 but I think that and some of these people I think are coming from that, right?

19:29 There's just so many stories of f'd up childhoods among these people.

19:34 And then I guess there's I mean we know the CIA's

19:36 done a lot of research and for every intel on, you know,

19:40 how to get people to do what you want.

19:41 And this is one of the tools that they know about, right?

19:44 So presumably that's another driver.

19:48 Yeah.

19:49 No, I I I think everything you say there is is not crazy, unfortunately.

19:55 And I I I think there's something to it and you know,

19:58 we have to now open our minds

20:01 to some of these possibilities within power structures.

20:04 And it's not to say therefore everyone who's

20:07 associated with this, this, or that is therefore guilty,

20:10 but the air of suspicion around how things work needs to be very,

20:14 very strong moving forward from society because now

20:17 we we've seen some sort of lens into it.

20:20 But the the other part with with with the oligarchs that you

20:25 were talking about with how they would get the money offshore.

20:28 I'm just knowing the investigation you ended up doing with Epstein

20:32 that we're going to talk about in a few minutes.

20:34 Obviously, you were able to tie a lot of this together.

20:37 And my my guy Alessio Alemanno who Dief was telling

20:41 you about earlier who did the documentaries like, you know,

20:45 I turned him on to your work like 3 4

20:47 years ago and that's what he was blown away with.

20:49 He's like, "Henry just was able to tie

20:51 these different institutions and where the money's flowing

20:54 and all that." So obviously you got

20:55 a baseline of that from working these other stories.

20:59 Can you give me, you know, without I guess the confidential details or whatever,

21:03 can you give me some examples of like how that would happen when you describe

21:07 the money would be moved from the oligarchs

21:11 through the Russian mob through intelligence agencies,

21:16 through like Apollo?

21:18 Can you just give like an example of that so we have a baseline?

21:21 Yeah.

21:22 Um Well, what I really well-documented version of this is

21:28 like Panama in the heyday of like cocaine, right?

21:32 So they would literally collect money.

21:34 They had a system of like you know,

21:36 they'd sell cocaine all over North America and there'd be like

21:39 a married couple that lives in a house with a fence.

21:42 And like and then, you know, all the people would drop off their money

21:45 at that house and they'd accrue it in the garage.

21:47 And then they purchased I forget the name of it,

21:50 but like one of these like freight [snorts] companies.

21:53 Um they purchased a the the drug

21:55 dealers owned one of America's big freight companies.

21:59 And they would like load up all this money.

22:00 They take it to some airline that I think they also invested in.

22:04 Like I it was like Eastern Airlines is one

22:06 of them and and then fly it all to Panama.

22:08 And then when the money lands at Panama there's like a a branch

22:12 of practically every major global bank right there near the airport.

22:19 So the Panamanian army protects the money so

22:21 it goes right to like whichever bank you prefer.

22:24 And then it's like, "Boom, now it's in Citibank." Right?

22:26 Now it's in like whatever major institution, right?

22:29 And then later we learned that the CIA like, you know,

22:32 where they were meeting with the people involved all the time, right?

22:36 So I had someone sitting in the chair who did that.

22:39 Yeah, see there you go.

22:40 There you go.

22:41 Um so there's that version of it.

22:43 Okay, and then in Russia it's a little different where, you know,

22:46 basically you're um you're an oligarch and you've

22:50 given given the right to purchase like

22:52 in Prokhorov's case a giant I think it's

22:54 like the biggest nickel company in the world,

22:56 Norilsk Nickel for a fraction of what it's worth.

22:59 Then you take it over, you start running it,

23:00 and you just start throwing off all these profits.

23:03 And then I don't know what his banking habit was.

23:06 I mean he ran a bank before, so he probably had pretty good bank ties.

23:08 But you could go to Deutsche Bank.

23:11 Certainly, you could walk into the Moscow office and say, "Hey man,

23:13 I got like quite a lot of money that I'd rather have in another

23:17 country." There are all these rules preventing this, but you could do They got

23:20 in trouble for this thing called mirror trades where um basically you'd go

23:25 in, let's say you you go into the Deutsche I think I have this right.

23:28 You go into the Deutsche Bank office and say, "I own, you know,

23:31 500,000 shares of this Russian company um that trades on uh

23:37 this stock exchange in um I'm I'm all these facts are probably wrong.

23:41 Trades in on a stock exchange somewhere else in Europe."

23:43 And say say say you'd like sell them um in Moscow.

23:48 Meanwhile in in another city uh another person from the same

23:53 bank would purchase an equivalent amount of stock at the same price.

23:56 And so like because the bank trust each other,

24:00 like you really have just moved a whole crap ton of money out of Russia.

24:04 And like people went to prison for this.

24:06 Like this was like a known thing that these global banks were facilitating.

24:10 There's a million others.

24:11 Actually this book uh Money Land by Oliver Bullough is like Money,

24:15 I haven't heard of that one.

24:15 Oh, it's good, man.

24:17 It's good.

24:18 Basically you move the money into money land.

24:19 It's not in a country anymore.

24:21 It just goes to money land.

24:24 [laughter] Yeah.

24:24 There it is.

24:25 Yeah, that's a really good one.

24:26 Shout out Oliver Bullough, you said?

24:28 I think it's Bullough.

24:29 I think it's a He lives in Brussels.

24:30 He's a great guy.

24:31 The inside story of the crooks and kleptocrats who rule the world.

24:37 And he wrote this in 2019.

24:38 Something tells me this is going to be like

24:40 a harbinger of what was to come in a way.

24:44 Wow.

24:45 He was a big like there's several others,

24:46 but like he was one of the people who

24:48 was like really like made me kind of understand better.

24:52 Like I I dare anyone to read that book

24:54 and say that he's like a crazy person makes stuff up.

24:56 Like he's like very sober and evidence-based.

24:59 what I liked about you, too, because when I was reading this you it was funny.

25:04 Like you'd be writing this amazing thing,

25:06 but then you'd be having a conversation with the reader like,

25:09 "I know this sounds crazy, but please look at this source here.

25:12 Look at this source here.

25:13 Look at this source and then I back so and I

25:14 and I'd go look at I'm like, "God damn, no.

25:16 He He [laughter] ain't[ __] kidding, bro." It's backed up like four layers.

25:22 Damn.

25:22 Well, thank you for being a careful reader.

25:23 I feel like most a lot of people are just like, "I don't know.

25:26 I don't know, man.

25:26 That sounds crazy." Like, you know, I just it does.

25:28 It just sounds crazy.

25:30 Like and mostly I I'm an anti-conspiracy theorist.

25:33 Like I am.

25:34 Like I most of my career I'm just like people would call me with like,

25:37 "You're not going to believe." Well, I'm like, "Guess what?

25:39 I don't think so." Like I just don't buy it.

25:41 Like this is the only story I've ever encountered where it's like,

25:43 "No, the crazy version is the true version." Like what Yeah,

25:47 all of all of us classically trained conspiracy theorists,

25:51 as my friend Mark Gagno says, Yeah.

25:53 start as full anti-conspiracy theorists and then

25:55 something happens and we're like, "Wait a minute.

25:57 Wait.

25:58 Wait.

25:58 Wait, where's that going?

26:00 Holy shit."

26:01 Yeah.

26:01 But you actually might my friend David Satter,

26:04 I had him in for episodes 92 and 133.

26:07 He is he became the chief the bureau chief

26:11 for the Financial Times in the Soviet Union in 1976.

26:16 He did?

26:17 Yeah.

26:17 Okay, so you're familiar.

26:19 Oh, with the the apartment bombings?

26:21 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:22 Oh, all yeah.

26:23 Yeah, that's an eye-opener.

26:24 Yes, so he that talk about an eye-opener.

26:27 But he actually there was a connection to you with him because when I had him

26:33 in I was reading one of his books afterwards

26:36 and he casually mentions this one-day war that happened.

26:41 It was I I I keep forgetting I've told this on camera like three four times.

26:44 I keep forgetting to go re-look this up to make sure I get it all right,

26:46 but it's it happened in like Dagestan or something like

26:50 that in I want to say 1999 when Putin was consolidating power.

26:54 And basically some version of the Russian army or something flew in for an hour,

27:00 shot a few things, dropped a few bombs, and then flew out.

27:03 And they were going to come back,

27:05 but there was this negotiation that was yeah, I think Dief's on it right here.

27:09 The August-September 1999 invasion of Dagestan by Chechen-based militants led

27:14 by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab triggered the Second Chechen War.

27:19 So that might not be the same one because

27:22 this one like they were able to pull it back,

27:24 whereas the Chechen Wars lasted a while, but it was Dagestan.

27:27 And essentially the way that this one was

27:30 cooled down was once they pulled out there was

27:33 some sort of meeting that was negotiated with Russian

27:35 leadership and then the other factions as well.

27:38 Where they went to I believe it was Nice, France.

27:41 And he very casually put to attend

27:45 a meeting of the minds at Adnan Khashoggi's house.

27:48 And I was like it was like the Leo meme.

27:50 I'm like, "WAIT A MINUTE.

27:51 WAIT, THAT'S THE GUY.

27:53 THAT'S THE GUY." AND I FOUND OUT about him from your report.

27:57 So let's get into it now.

27:59 Let's let's do it cuz like you were revolutionizing some of these people

28:03 that now everyone talks about that they weren't back in the day.

28:06 So you, as we said, start this with I'm

28:10 going to find a connection between Epstein and Apollo.

28:12 And then it goes kaboom.

28:14 So what just take me to day one after you mentioned where you were when

28:18 Epstein died and you really started going

28:20 after this, but like when did you realize,

28:21 "Oh my god, this is way more than I was looking at"?

28:24 I mean definitely an early concern of mine was this guy AB Krongard.

28:31 Mhm.

28:32 Buzzy.

28:32 Buzzy.

28:33 And I'm still blown away.

28:34 Like I feel like his name should be

28:35 in everybody's coverage of the Epstein story all the time.

28:39 Agreed.

28:39 And I can't even um probably remember off top of my head all of the ties here,

28:44 but let's just to the best of our ability, um 100% this guy is a CIA guy.

28:51 Mhm.

28:51 And we know that he became um later in his career he was appointed

28:55 as the number three like the executive director

28:57 of the CIA and oversaw like the rendition program.

29:01 And um and then he was the person who like gave all the deals to Blackwater.

29:06 And then Blackwater put him on the board.

29:07 Then he was got in trouble with Congress cuz like the inspector

29:10 general who investigated to see if it was crooked was his brother.

29:15 His Buzzy's brother's nickname is Cookie.

29:18 And like they put Cookie on the stand to like

29:20 testify that his brother had nothing to do with Blackwater.

29:22 And then they figured out during the course of the meeting

29:24 his brother had been at Blackwater's annual meeting as a board member.

29:29 Anyway, You know, Erik Prince has sat in that chair.

29:31 Oh my god.

29:32 Yeah.

29:34 [laughter] He's one of the He didn't he didn't know any of this stuff,

29:36 but he's one of the scariest out there.

29:39 He Well, don't get me started.

29:40 [laughter] Um So um but this guy Buzzy, who is definitely in the CIA,

29:47 um and later was on the Apollo board,

29:50 before all that, was the banker who took Microsoft public.

29:54 Like, he's literally the man who like made Bill Gates rich,

29:58 who made Steve Ballmer rich,

30:00 who made Paul Allen rich, and a bunch of other companies,

30:03 too, or went other IPOs through his company.

30:07 So, and there's another banker who was like, "Hey,

30:09 during that period, he tried to recruit me to the CIA." So,

30:13 I'm like Okay, so I I have to believe the most

30:15 likely thing is that this guy's been in the CIA since college.

30:19 There's some evidence of that.

30:21 Um He kind of had some Nixon ties and stuff early,

30:24 but so that means Microsoft went public via CIA.

30:32 And it also means that when Apollo Global um when Leon Black was paying Epstein,

30:38 Apollo Global had a CIA person on the board, right?

30:43 Um and later they had Jay Clayton who

30:45 um had been a partner at at Sullivan& Cromwell,

30:48 which is kind of like notoriously the CIA's law firm.

30:51 the old the Dulles's old law firm.

30:53 Exactly right.

30:54 Yep.

30:54 Um Remember when I had Mike Yegley in here for episodes 343 and 351?

30:59 And remember what he said that he used to do,

31:02 allegedly used to do and doesn't still do in some ways,

31:04 but he definitely probably still does,

31:06 about collecting your data and using it without you realizing it?

31:09 And remember how he said that there are data

31:11 brokers who make up one of the largest unseen

31:14 industries on Earth who are constantly doing this every

31:18 day with your data that you don't even know about?

31:20 Well, yeah, that's kind of a problem.

31:21 In Mike's case, he was looking at it from a national security perspective.

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31:27 which is why you need to be using protectmydata.com.

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32:26 So, to me, I'm like, well,

32:27 this is like kind of a big like there's no

32:30 way to just tell myself there's nothing going on here.

32:33 When like this guy is in the middle of it all.

32:35 So, then I tried to like figure out like, "Okay, what in the middle of what?"

32:39 [laughter] Yeah.

32:40 That's we're still doing that, you know,

32:42 so I'm not totally didn't nail that [laughter] yet.

32:43 You never get it fully untangled.

32:45 No.

32:46 You never get it fully untangled.

32:48 But so you were you were essentially, again,

32:52 starting with the ownership and then almost

32:54 I'm trying to picture you doing this.

32:56 You're like, "Okay, let's draw Apollo Global here in the middle,

33:00 Epstein right here in the middle with them.

33:01 We'll leave Epstein right there." And you're like,

33:03 "Okay, who are the people on their board?

33:05 Ooh, Buzzy Krongard, who's he?" And then you're going like this Yeah.

33:08 and creating all these new decision trees of like, "Oh,

33:10 he's connected to this guy and that guy." How do you then

33:14 how do you put that all together and bring that back to Epstein?

33:17 Well, so pretty quickly, I'm trying to remember this time, too.

33:21 Um it got to Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert.

33:24 Oh, please explain this to people.

33:26 [laughter] Okay.

33:28 So, everybody at Apollo like Apollo was born

33:32 out of the explosion of Drexel Burnham Lambert.

33:35 So, it's like it's not you don't have to take

33:37 my word for it that this is a continuation of that.

33:40 Um So, Michael Milken was a trader at a big you know,

33:45 Drexel Burnham Lambert is a big New York City-based uh investment bank, I guess.

33:49 And but some for some reason he convinced them

33:52 that he should move his operation to Beverly Hills.

33:57 Weird.

33:58 Um And then they brought in like a bunch

34:02 of billionaires who had felt rejected by the other banks, right?

34:07 So, they had like questionable money.

34:10 Some of them kind of blatantly had mob ties.

34:12 Some of them were, you know, um Uh we should talk about Ivan Boesky.

34:18 Let's not forget that.

34:19 Ivan Boesky is very important.

34:20 Um We'll pull up his Wikipedia.

34:22 Uh we'll do that right now.

34:23 Ivan Boesky is a great example.

34:24 Ivan Boesky talked to Michael Milken every day.

34:27 They would get up Michael Milken got up early and they talked every day.

34:31 Um

34:32 also kind of quick By the way,

34:33 like you say the Beverly Hills thing is nuts, like why would you do that?

34:36 It's also not to say there aren't some big asset management firms like I

34:40 believe PIMCO and some other ones that are based out of the West Coast,

34:43 but you got to remember market opens here

34:45 [snorts] in the in the US at 9:30 Eastern.

34:47 So, these guys, you know,

34:49 you're 3 hours behind out there and you're in an industry that's

34:52 like you're supposed to be getting ready for the market at 7:00 a.m.

34:55 They're getting ready at 4:00 a.m.

34:56 You know, it's it doesn't make sense.

34:58 But there are the headquarters of giant arms

35:00 companies and there are lots of beautiful women.

35:02 Well, And they had they would have these parties at the took a header last year?

35:08 Yeah, he did.

35:09 Yeah.

35:10 All right.

35:10 So, okay.

35:12 This guy this is every single rocky turnover has like more interesting things.

35:16 But okay, so Ivan Boesky was about as close as anyone got to Michael

35:19 Milken and he was a funnel he had a bunch of money from before,

35:22 which was very very eyebrow-raising how he got rich,

35:27 but he was from I don't think it would be

35:30 a stretch to say possibly a mob family in the Midwest.

35:33 His dad owned like strip clubs.

35:35 Right.

35:36 Then he went to college and he um

35:38 I don't think I think it's This is interesting.

35:41 I think it's been removed from Wikipedia,

35:44 but after college he went to Iran because he

35:47 had a great Iranian friend um from from high school.

35:52 I think from high school.

35:53 And he lived in

35:54 the '60s?

35:55 Yeah, I think so.

35:56 Um he lived in Iran for a while.

35:58 And then he came back and then um he got

36:03 a a pretty nice job in New York for the Rothschilds.

36:08 Yeah, LF Rothschild, [laughter] there it is.

36:10 I don't think he ever graduated from college,

36:13 but the Rothschilds were like, "Oh,

36:14 he seems like a good guy." Listen,

36:15 they're really good at spotting talent that's overlooked.

36:18 [laughter] So then he has all this money

36:23 um that from all these crazy investments he makes.

36:26 Oh, did you see this by the way, Henry?

36:27 Like you're spot on.

36:29 Although he lacked an undergraduate degree,

36:31 he was admitted to Detroit College of Law,

36:34 now Michigan State University of Law, and graduated from what How do you Yeah.

36:38 You don't get a law Maybe you do and I'm like[ __] up right now, but

36:42 aware of anybody else doing that, yeah.

36:43 And I understand he also maybe it's his here,

36:45 but he would get he gave a bunch of money to Harvard

36:47 later and so they kind of like They knew how to pick them.

36:51 He had the ability to say something that Harvardy that sounded like maybe he

36:54 went to Harvard when he like he didn't go to any of those schools.

36:56 Um But so then he like Well, so he has all this Iranian connections,

37:04 Iranian and it's a ton of unexplained money.

37:07 Okay, then I've not looked into this, but Whitney Webb,

37:09 who I think I think as far as I can tell she's a genius.

37:13 Like maybe there's a I haven't gone I

37:14 haven't It's hard to verify almost anything she says,

37:17 but I think she's dead on.

37:18 But she's like, "Oh, well, the CIA was moving all this money through Iran,

37:20 especially after Iran contra." There's also a bunch of like That's later,

37:23 but reports of like Ari Ben-Menashe like was saying that basically like

37:27 the Israelis made all this money and they had to bring it through Iran.

37:29 So, like Anyway, a whole bunch of money came from Iran

37:33 from this guy into Michael Milken's big pot of investor money.

37:37 Um Interesting.

37:40 Um so then [laughter]

37:41 But then they started this thing Leon Black was a young employee there.

37:45 He was kind of seen as a ne'er-do-well ne'er-do-well.

37:47 Well, he would party, you know, they'd yell at him, he'd come in late.

37:51 Um there were the prostitutes in the office and stuff.

37:54 And um But his dad had friends who were all investors in Drexel Burnham Lambert.

38:02 His dad, Eli Black, had purchased United Fruit,

38:07 which was like famously the CIA company,

38:09 and then jumped or was pushed from the I think the 44th

38:13 floor of what was then called the Pan Pan Am building.

38:16 What is it now?

38:16 It's called

38:17 he did jump.

38:18 I think he had really[ __] up.

38:19 That's when I actually think he committed I mean, maybe he was pushed.

38:23 Maybe.

38:23 You can't rule it out.

38:25 He's not Well, it didn't it didn't turn out well.

38:26 It did not turn out well.

38:28 It's MetLife It's the MetLife

38:29 Well, now it's MetLife, but it was the Pan Am building at the time.

38:32 Yeah.

38:34 Um [laughter]

38:35 He's like, "Well, I walked there every day." Well, look up, you know.

38:43 So, Black I didn't know that though Leon Black was

38:46 a ne'er-do-well considered like a little bit of a[ __] Yeah,

38:49 he was a little bit of a[ __] And somehow

38:51 like that guy I think his name is Jesse Kornbluth,

38:53 the journalist who was really good.

38:55 Jesse Kornbluth wrote this thing that I think everyone should think about more,

38:58 which is that according to him, Epstein targeted Leon Black like back then.

39:03 He was like courting Leon Black.

39:04 There was something about Leon Black

39:05 that was especially attractive to Epstein back then.

39:09 I think

39:09 this would be the '80s.

39:10 Yeah, I got to guess.

39:11 Um So, then Milken was He was like the junk bonds guy, right?

39:20 Well, that's what they say, he's a junk bonds guy,

39:21 but like it's to people on Wall Street that wasn't really his defining thing.

39:24 His defining thing was that they pulled together these like rogue billionaires

39:29 or and and then Leon Black invented

39:32 this thing called the highly confident letter.

39:35 So, basically they would they would write a letter to like Pan Am and say,

39:38 "Hey, you know, we have enough money to take over like,

39:41 you know they would purchase however

39:44 corporate raider stuff yeah corporate raider stuff

39:46 and Pan Am be like well I don't think you have that much money.

39:48 So they would get rather than some

39:50 laborious process of like putting all the money

39:52 into an account they would Leon Black admitted like

39:54 well we just we have a bunch of billionaires

39:56 and we might be able to get it from any one of them and so we're just

39:59 going to write a letter that we're highly

40:00 confident we can get the money and it worked.

40:04 So then they started writing these highly confident letters

40:06 and like taking over a whole bunch of big businesses right?

40:09 robbing a bank with a note.

40:10 It's like robbing a bank with a note.

40:12 And then you once you get control I think this is an important

40:15 part of the story is like it's one thing to be an investor.

40:17 Let's say you're you got some you know let's say you are Israeli intelligence

40:23 and you really do have some money

40:24 that you're worried someone's going to take from you.

40:26 So you're going to give it to somebody maybe Hambroski and he's going

40:30 to give it to Michael Milken and then he's going to invest it

40:32 in something that has a CEO and like you might feel like you

40:36 don't have a lot of control over that money at that point right?

40:39 But two ways that can get way better for you.

40:41 One is if you get control of the end company cuz you

40:44 didn't just buy 20% of it but you bought 51% of it.

40:47 Now you're in a lot stronger position but two is if

40:50 all those people along the way are on video doing terrible things.

40:57 Right?

40:58 Like there's another way to make sure that no

40:59 one's going to steal your money in the end right?

41:01 Just like hey guys are we all good here?

41:03 Are we all no one's going to you know

41:05 So I think something like that you know I'm not

41:08 sure I described it chain of custody perfect but I

41:11 think like roughly those elements seem to be together

41:14 and then once you have that group of people

41:15 with a lot of money and all on video doing

41:18 terrible things well now we don't just have to limit

41:22 ourselves to buying like publicly traded American stock right?

41:26 Like that same crew is ready to go like

41:28 you can get into any industry in the world

41:31 and you're kind of advantaged in that you're

41:34 like kind of locked together in this way.

41:36 I might be overthinking this but in the process of basically like schlossing

41:41 the money around are they also creating

41:44 effectively like shell companies to do this?

41:47 tons yeah yeah yeah for sure yeah.

41:50 Hey guys if you haven't already subscribed please

41:52 hit that subscribe button it's a huge huge help.

41:54 Thank you.

41:56 And I'll tell you okay this is Larry you know so

41:58 like well why wouldn't you have drug money in this mix right?

42:02 Right.

42:02 It's one of the biggest industries in the world.

42:04 And drug dealers very much would like to get their money in and like

42:07 and that was another that's another big moment for me was like

42:10 the Church Committee John Kerry when he was like a young newly elected

42:14 official ran this committee that Wait John Kerry was on the Church Committee?

42:20 I think I'm totally lying.

42:21 I think that the Church Committee was before

42:24 I think that John Kerry ran the committee that looked into the cocaine trade

42:27 in the early 80s [clears throat] and they like himself.

42:32 [laughter]

42:34 Um but he had this guy Millian Rodriguez who was

42:36 an accountant for the mob who got busted and Millian Rodriguez

42:39 like sat in that chair you can read all the testimony

42:41 online and they just like he's like here's how it

42:42 works and you know and and you know we we

42:44 he's like we have we have invested in like every blue

42:47 chip thing you can imagine it's like you know the most

42:49 mom and pop apple pie American stuff like we own right?

42:53 And he's like you guys think you busted somebody and like you know you got

42:56 a guy whose Spanish is his first language and you think you got it cleaned up.

42:58 Now he's like let me tell you the people

42:59 coming after me like they all went to Harvard.

43:01 And they're like you know super buttoned

43:03 up and like this money's not stopping right?

43:05 So I think you kind of that's what happened right?

43:08 Well at least they're putting it back into the American economy.

43:10 There you go that's the win.

43:14 [laughter] What was the guy's name the accountant?

43:15 Millian Rodriguez.

43:16 Millian Rodriguez.

43:18 So yeah you mentioned it though the Church

43:20 Committee was in the 70s so I guess what

43:23 you're talking about is like the early 80s

43:25 or something with with Kerry but it's it's similar.

43:28 It's interesting though with the Church Committee Frank Church I want to say

43:32 his first name was Frank he put that together and then he was primary.

43:36 Yeah that's how that goes.

43:37 Yeah nobody likes that guy.

43:38 Very very fascinating [laughter] Nobody likes that guy.

43:41 find something deep with this dude?

43:44 Yeah it was Frank Church.

43:45 I'm trying to find Millian.

43:47 It's it's like m i l i a n And maybe John Kerry.

43:51 I think you can find it on Truehoop probably.

43:53 But you said he was an accountant for the mob?

43:56 Yeah.

43:56 So they obviously had him and he like flipped as a witness kind of.

43:59 He like I think that he was like getting into his plane he

44:03 he liked to fly around he lived in South Florida and he was getting

44:06 in his plane and they like arrested him and there was like pounds

44:08 of cocaine on the plane so they So they did like this Frank Pentangeli thing.

44:12 Got you.

44:14 Okay.

44:14 I haven't heard of that one.

44:16 That's interesting.

44:17 We'll see if we can find it.

44:18 That's a little bit of a I want to make it hard for Deef you know.

44:21 A what?

44:22 to make it hard for Deef.

44:23 I want him to work.

44:24 Listen he's if if it's [laughter] out there he'll find it.

44:26 Okay good good good.

44:27 The first podcast we got already[ __] unreal.

44:30 The first podcast we went to do where Deef was taking over the seat we had

44:35 Mike Benz in here who's like a document

44:38 dump kind of guy and before we start Benz go like like looks at me and and I'm

44:45 explaining what I explained to you where I'm

44:46 like I Deef can pull up anything and you

44:47 know on the screen he's like okay great.

44:49 And then and then he literally goes like this and he goes turns

44:52 to Deef he's like oh my god I just want to apologize before we start.

44:56 Um when I was on Joe Rogan last month you know they were like

45:00 dude you asked for too many links so just if it's too much whatever.

45:04 And Deef's like no [snorts] we're we're good we got it and I'm

45:06 like we are so[ __] This first podcast [laughter] every[ __] I

45:10 was like half the time I'm like looking over here and then

45:13 the podcast finish up and Mike Benz went over and shook his hand first.

45:17 Nice.

45:18 That's got to be a good day for [laughter] you.

45:21 But all right we got it so this is

45:23 from July 22nd 1987 drug trafficker testifies before Senate

45:29 Committee on what was that title Deef sorry go

45:32 on CIA Nicaraguan contra involvement and and drug trade.

45:36 Oh so Henry this might have been maybe I'm[ __] up the timeline

45:41 but this might have been when they

45:42 did the official special prosecutor related to contra.

45:46 Remember that cuz some of that overlapped with when Reagan

45:49 had left office I just don't know how long it went.

45:51 There was like a podcast hangover yeah.

45:54 Yeah there was a podcast done by what oh

45:57 my god what's it Serial or something like that like one

46:00 of those where they do the series I listened to a few

46:02 years ago and they were explaining this whole thing but yeah

46:05 in late June the Senate Foreign Relations Committee went

46:07 into a secret two-day session to take testimony from Cuban-American Ramon Milan

46:11 Rodriguez he's currently serving a 35 year sentence in a federal

46:15 prison reportedly in North Carolina and it goes through who's interviewed.

46:20 Milan Rodriguez said he was one of the supervisors of money laundering

46:23 for the Ochoa Escobar cocaine cartel in Colombia

46:27 handling up to 200 million a month.

46:30 On camera he stated that he had been asked to launder

46:33 through a Miami company cocaine money destined for the contras.

46:38 Wow.

46:40 Wow later Milan Rodriguez told the Senate

46:43 Committee that the contact was Felix Rodriguez.

46:47 Why does he always come up he's he comes up on every podcast.

46:51 Rodriguez Bay of Bay of Pigs veteran had

46:54 long been associated with CIA counterinsurgency projects most recently

46:58 he was assigned to the Ilopango airbase in El

47:01 Salvador to supervise air supply drops to the contras.

47:04 Wow.

47:05 So they're just it's all tied together.

47:08 I mean yeah.

47:10 It's crazy.

47:11 So Drexel Burnham Lambert you hinted at this earlier it blew up.

47:16 Blew up.

47:16 On Black Monday effectively and then like thereafter because

47:20 now that had to do with the junk bonds right?

47:23 Yeah it was Giuliani.

47:26 Giuliani went after Michael Milken and I

47:31 don't remember exactly even what they got

47:33 him on but the part that interested me was there's a thing I haven't really

47:36 written about it's too confusing but so they owned you know Drexel owned tons

47:44 of bonds and tons of different things and a lot of it really was garbage.

47:48 But some of it was super valuable and so

47:52 you know they were forced to liquidate all this stuff

47:54 and Milken goes to prison and everyone's out

47:55 of a job and then this French bank Credit Lyonnais

48:00 which super associated with Robert Maxwell probably it seems

48:03 to be one of the places that like this you

48:06 know this big ball of offshore untrackable money was

48:08 like an early beachhead of it was Credit Lyonnais.

48:11 Um according to the video that used to be on the Apollo Global website

48:15 it's Leon Black saying like I just got a call out of the blue

48:18 from these guys in France they wanted to give us $4 billion and so

48:21 I flew over there and said no you have to give me $8 billion.

48:23 Like and that's how that call.

48:24 Yeah.

48:25 I want that call.

48:26 That's how Apollo was founded and then what they

48:29 don't put on the video on the Apollo website

48:31 is that in the aftermath they basically snapped up

48:36 a lot of the assets that Milken used to own.

48:41 Because Leon Black knew kind of which ones were the good ones.

48:44 Right so he bought them low.

48:45 But but then they got there was like

48:47 a massive investigation of whatever happened there and like

48:51 and he was maybe going to get in real trouble and I can find it I

48:55 have some notes on somewhere but like

48:56 but the people who were in the investigators

48:58 of that and this is back at the founding

48:59 of Apollo were like like they're they're livid still.

49:04 Right like they were like like they got they found bad evidence

49:08 of bad stuff happening they did not get to seek justice for it.

49:12 getting at like some sort of insider trading type stuff or worse?

49:16 even know.

49:17 It was more just like there's all

49:18 these arcane rules around like you know what you

49:22 have to disclose in the investment community and all

49:24 my eyes like gloss over at that part.

49:27 That's where the part I'm like I'm a basketball writer.

49:29 [laughter] I don't know what you guys are

49:33 talking about but boy these people sure are mad.

49:39 [laughter] That's awesome.

49:41 Yeah, I wonder what it could be cuz bonds get weird because it's,

49:45 you know, there's all different types of them,

49:47 but a lot of times you're buying like local bonds for counties and cities

49:52 and stuff where you're buying federal bonds

49:55 for governments and I don't I don't know.

49:59 I was never cuz I worked on Wall Street for 4 years and I

50:02 I knew about insider trader cases and things

50:05 like that that were happening with equities,

50:07 but I never did bonds was such a weird world cuz

50:11 it's so boring to your point that most people are just like,

50:14 all right, what are we doing here?

50:16 And that I can imagine there's all kinds of shady[ __]

50:19 I think honestly think this is where this is the worst.

50:21 This is my memory from years ago on a topic about which I'm a complete buffoon,

50:26 but I sort of have a feeling it might

50:27 have been something like as they liquidated um Drexel,

50:33 they said that these things were worth nothing.

50:35 Mhm.

50:36 And then they went and bought them up cuz Leon knew they weren't worth nothing.

50:40 I think it might have been something like that.

50:41 Right.

50:43 Almost like he had a source.

50:45 Yeah.

50:45 Yeah.

50:46 Someone that knew something.

50:47 I I do wonder about that because Milken is still a billionaire today.

50:51 He did like three or four years in prison,

50:53 you know, does worldwide speaking tours and everything.

50:55 So it worked out for him,

50:57 but I do wonder about the whole sacrificial lamb aspect to where it's like,

51:01 ooh, we got a lot of things that we can work with here,

51:04 but there's too much attention on this.

51:07 So this is the guy everyone knows.

51:09 Let's give him up.

51:11 You get too hot and then you no longer useful.

51:13 Yeah.

51:13 Almost like they did Epstein, by the way.

51:15 Yeah.

51:16 Yeah.

51:16 there it's like, okay, so who are the who are the breadcrumbs behind that?

51:20 So you correctly point out that Credit Lyonnais Lyonnais,

51:25 is that how you say it?

51:26 I think the S is silent at the end of the French word.

51:28 Yeah.

51:29 Very I don't have a good ear for French,

51:30 but Credit Lyonnais, correct me in the comments.

51:33 They call him up out of the blue and say,

51:35 we'll give you $4 billion or something like that.

51:38 And you mentioned that they were

51:39 connected to Max Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father.

51:42 So he had been doing his banking there for his companies for years.

51:48 So it's very confusing what he was doing,

51:50 but I think it that started to make sense for me when um I read,

51:55 I want to say Craig Unger.

51:57 Have you read any Craig Unger?

51:59 Craig Unger is a baller.

52:00 Like he's a no joke journalist who's written about

52:03 a lot of stuff that's in your own story, but I think it was Craig Unger who

52:07 had a story about Robert Maxwell helping Russian,

52:14 like the KGB basically was like, the Soviet Union's going to break up Mhm.

52:18 and we don't like we might lose the nation, but we don't want to lose the KGB.

52:22 So we're going to offshore all this money, put it aside, keep it safe,

52:26 and then Russia can do whatever it does, and then we'll bring the money back.

52:30 And Robert Maxwell apparently created like 600 companies

52:33 to like hold all this money outside of Russia,

52:36 outside of the Soviet Union, right?

52:38 And so I think about that.

52:40 Um And now during the same period when Credit Lyonnais was

52:44 lending out all this money in a crazy way to Apollo,

52:47 they were also lending it to other companies.

52:50 Um Adidas was one.

52:53 Um but the biggest creditor was was Robert Maxwell.

52:58 And another one was Steve[ __] Bannon.

53:00 Steve Bannon got Credit Lyonnais money and moved

53:03 his investment operation to Beverly Hills during the same period.

53:07 And Imagine that.

53:09 I know.

53:09 And then, you know, finally the investigator took a while,

53:12 but the investigators were like,

53:13 you know, we got to look into this Credit Lyonnais thing,

53:15 and then the beautiful giant old like revered building

53:20 in the middle of Paris that was the headquarters

53:21 of Credit Lyonnais that just burned to the ground right

53:23 before the investigators were going to knock on the door.

53:26 And so we'll never going to know what happened to Credit Lyonnais.

53:31 Was there a good investigation into that burning?

53:34 I don't think there was.

53:35 There were people did go to prison.

53:37 Like not for the burning, but for running Credit Lyonnais in a fraudulent way.

53:40 Like people that the executives did get in trouble,

53:43 but $20 billion never found it.

53:47 Just went missing.

53:48 Woah.

53:48 Yeah.

53:49 Fire ravages French bank headquarters May 5th, 1996.

53:55 Remember, remember the 1996 [laughter]

54:01 Fire swept through the headquarters of France's beleaguered Credit Lyonnais.

54:05 It was already beleaguered, too.

54:07 Funny.

54:07 Credit Lyonnais bank sat Sunday injuring at least 23 people,

54:11 most of them firefighters.

54:13 The blaze began in a computer room at around 8:30.

54:16 Hard drives do burn very effectively.

54:19 I've heard that.

54:20 Okay.

54:20 8:30 a.m.

54:21 and about 300 firefighters had it under control 9 hours later.

54:26 Wow.

54:26 And so did this end the bank?

54:29 Were they done after that?

54:30 I think so.

54:31 We should double check that, but Yeah, let's check that.

54:34 I I should uh Credit Lyonnais history cuz they still had even with the fire,

54:41 I imagine they still had assets.

54:43 So someone had to buy them up like

54:44 they bought up like Barclays bought up Bear Stearns.

54:48 Was that it?

54:49 No, JP Morgan bought up Bear Stearns.

54:50 JP Morgan bought up Bear Stearns.

54:52 Barclays bought up Lehman Brothers.

54:54 They left just like you said.

54:55 Yep.

54:56 Credit Lyonnais did not technically go out of business,

54:58 but was acquired and absorbed by Credit Agricole

55:02 in 2003 following severe financial distress in the early '90s.

55:07 The bank was rebranded as LCL in 2005,

55:10 which continues to operate a subsidiary of Credit Agricole Group.

55:14 This is another way that things get lost to history and rewritten.

55:18 It's so simple, but just name changes.

55:20 Totally.

55:21 You know, like people don't think about where stuff comes from.

55:24 Like you can follow the Rockefellers back and realize like, oh, JP Morgan Chase.

55:28 It's got JP Morgan in there, but it doesn't have Rockefeller in there.

55:31 Totally.

55:32 You know what I mean?

55:32 But they David Rockefeller was like a guy who made them

55:35 a powerhouse when it was I forget what it was called,

55:39 but it was called something else in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and '70s.

55:42 So when Buzzy, our CA guy,

55:44 was running a bank that the one that took Microsoft public,

55:47 it was called Alex Brown.

55:48 Weird name.

55:49 It was like Alex dot space Brown.

55:51 I don't know why it's that way, but that's how it is.

55:53 And um and then things got real confusing and kind of involved Russia,

55:58 but then they sold it to Bankers Trust.

56:01 Um and then Bankers Trust immediately became like

56:04 a giant scandal that is not well told, but that involved Russia for sure.

56:09 And then Bankers Trust quickly became Deutsche Bank.

56:13 Um which created this um acronym DBAB, which is Deutsche Um what is it?

56:20 DB Uh That doesn't make sense.

56:26 Um it made a little acronym of like the new This is

56:28 the new part of Deutsche Bank that used to be Bankers Trust.

56:32 And um if you search that in Epstein files, like that's where Epstein banked.

56:37 Like that's that's that's like that's

56:40 on files of Epstein banking transactions right now.

56:45 Like this is where they banked.

56:47 So part of me is like, I don't know what does that mean?

56:49 I don't know.

56:49 Does that mean the money we know about?

56:52 Yeah.

56:52 Yeah.

56:52 Yeah.

56:53 But definitely like those bankers were the ones that he had emailed with a lot

56:57 and that's where he got uh power of attorney over Leon Black's accounts.

57:02 Right?

57:02 Is in like this little Wait, he got power of attorney over those?

57:07 I don't remember that.

57:08 So he had, you know, kind of blanket power of attorney for Leslie Wexner.

57:13 Only from this most recent file dump did we learn that there's like

57:16 emails from these Deutsche Bank bankers

57:20 and they're basically saying like you know, the paperwork is in like, you know,

57:24 so that Jeffrey Epstein now has authority to trade on behalf of Leon Black.

57:29 Through Deutsche Bank.

57:31 I I think you're spot on with what you said earlier.

57:34 It's the compromatted.

57:38 Look for the compromat on the compromatee.

57:42 [laughter]

57:41 And they just create a line and Jeffrey Epstein's like, he looks like a diddler.

57:46 All right.

57:47 [laughter] Got him.

57:48 That toupee ain't passing in 1979.

57:52 I do want to play with Leon Black's toupee,

57:54 like toss it around, but that's uh Wow.

57:58 a scandalous thing today that seems like something I should have known before,

58:01 but apparently the redactions are not so great in some of the horrible picture,

58:05 which I thankfully haven't looked up very much.

58:07 But um but apparently the Leon Black's penis is in is unredacted.

58:11 I didn't want to know that.

58:12 Those are the facts, man.

58:13 I don't I don't want to see that.

58:16 [laughter] He is accused, and I have to say accused, of some heinous things.

58:21 I mean stuff that like just awful awful things, man.

58:29 He's the proof that the the justice system is not working.

58:34 Yes.

58:35 Right?

58:35 Like the fact that he hasn't been touched.

58:38 I mean, he paid like 61 and a half

58:39 million dollars to the Virgin Islands for something.

58:43 For something.

58:44 You know, they investigated a bunch, hauled them in, and settled.

58:47 Um but yeah, I mean, he's got all the He checks every box of badness, right?

58:52 Yeah.

58:53 Um funding Epstein's operation, credibly accused by multiple accusers.

58:59 How about paying him a hundred seventy

59:03 million dollars over five years for estate planning.

59:09 Now, Leon Black today is worth 13.3 billion.

59:12 So he's worth a lot of money.

59:14 There is no one on Earth,

59:15 maybe with the exception of Saudi oil guys, Vladimir Putin,

59:19 and Elon Musk, who should ever be paying

59:22 someone a hundred seventy million dollars for estate planning.

59:25 Not There's no one on Earth.

59:27 I don't care how rich you are, right?

59:29 Like what the[ __] is that?

59:31 Have we ever traced what that really is?

59:35 Um Oh, it's this one.

59:39 What'd you pull up, Dave?

59:40 You want to pull your mic in?

59:43 Dave's just[ __] rolling over here.

59:45 Yeah, yeah, he's doing a whole investigation.

59:46 I wanted to look up those Deutsche Bank emails to see if I could find them,

59:50 but instead I found this.

59:51 This is a list of companies that they're requesting to close on July 8th, 2019.

59:58 And you got some Epstein shells in there.

1:00:02 Wait a second.

1:00:03 Who's request Go up.

1:00:05 Who's requesting Kimberly Hart.

1:00:07 Kimberly Hart to Stuart Oldfield to Stuart Oldfield is a Deutsche Bank banker.

1:00:12 Okay.

1:00:13 There you go.

1:00:14 You're on it.

1:00:15 So, CC'd Andrew Gallavin, Don Forbes, Daphne Keils,

1:00:19 who may be their Deutsche Bank dude.

1:00:21 I don't know.

1:00:22 And then So, Darren Indyke was his attorney, I believe.

1:00:26 And is urgent need to close accounts ASAP.

1:00:29 Please pri- And that's a day after he's arrested, right?

1:00:32 Can we check that?

1:00:33 He was arrested, I want to say like July 7th.

1:00:38 I hope I'm not making that up.

1:00:40 What day was he Well, this is a fast July 6th, 2019.

1:00:43 July 6th, so 2 days after a fast So, this is this is probably like

1:00:46 Deutsche Bank PR coming along with like you guys.

1:00:50 Get [laughter] this[ __] off the balance sheet.

1:00:52 What are these JSC Interiors?

1:00:55 That's what I would name a shell company.

1:00:58 [laughter]

1:01:01 LSJELLC.

1:00:59 Wait.

1:00:59 LSJE.

1:01:01 JE, Jeffrey Epstein.

1:01:05 LS Short for Leslie?

1:01:10 Seems like it's got to be someone with an S last name, you know, right?

1:01:13 Well, or it could be like LS, like Leslie.

1:01:15 I don't know.

1:01:16 I'm just speculating, people.

1:01:17 with you.

1:01:18 Mort Inc., Neptune LLC, NES LLC, there it is.

1:01:22 Zoro Management, Zoro Management LLC, referring to Zoro Ranch.

1:01:28 Wow.

1:01:29 That's That's a hot find there.

1:01:31 J.

1:01:31 Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation.

1:01:34 Okay, I was just asking about someone about Black.

1:01:37 Have we ever figured out what the[ __] that 170 million is for?

1:01:44 For real.

1:01:45 Well, Okay, so I think we I think just the most rational,

1:01:49 sober version of events here is that Epstein was running

1:01:52 a comp mat operation on behalf of a bigger group, right?

1:01:55 It wasn't just for him.

1:01:57 Yep.

1:01:57 To me this was like Of course this is This is for them, right?

1:02:01 Like it seems like you know,

1:02:03 that's it's not even in dispute that this was to fund his operation.

1:02:07 It did fund his operation.

1:02:08 Right?

1:02:09 So, I don't know who ultimately controls that process,

1:02:12 but it seems to me pretty clear that there was

1:02:15 some very bad people who were in business with Leon Black,

1:02:17 and he's the guy who ends up holding the bag sometimes, right?

1:02:20 Um Steve Hoffenberg, before he died,

1:02:23 was an important source for me and um Oh, you talked with him a bunch.

1:02:26 Like a[ __] ton.

1:02:27 Yeah.

1:02:28 So, he was the Towers Financial thing with Jeff

1:02:30 Can you explain that for people who aren't familiar?

1:02:32 Apparently it was the biggest Ponzi scheme of [laughter] all time.

1:02:35 And you know, they were bad people.

1:02:38 I mean, they Steve Hoffenberg, no choir boy,

1:02:41 but they were running this giant Ponzi scheme,

1:02:43 and he met Epstein through Douglas Leese, I believe.

1:02:47 And British arms British arms dealer.

1:02:49 And And Leese is basically this guy's a financial wizard with no moral compass,

1:02:53 and Hoffenberg's like, "Great, I could use a guy like that." And [laughter]

1:02:57 And Hoffenberg had this weird like honor among

1:03:00 thieves thing where he just wouldn't rat him out.

1:03:02 But uh from Hoffenberg's point of view,

1:03:04 like Epstein did something that Hoffenberg didn't well understand in real time,

1:03:08 and Hoffenberg did I think 18, 20 years, something like that.

1:03:11 And uh and got out a little ticked, right?

1:03:14 He was a little like like, you know,

1:03:16 his view is that their scam enriched Epstein tremendously,

1:03:21 and like, you know, got him on it, started on his way.

1:03:24 And Hoffenberg did all the time, right?

1:03:27 I think Hoffenberg was a mark.

1:03:29 I think that's another one of those like when I've I

1:03:31 I don't know that, but when I've looked at that case,

1:03:33 it's like he was such a mark.

1:03:34 And he bought the New York Post right before he went away, too.

1:03:36 That's the game That's the game plan.

1:03:38 Okay, let me tell you this.

1:03:38 There's a crazy No one in the world except you, Julian, and you,

1:03:41 Dave, you care about this, but like there's a letter in Epstein files,

1:03:45 which is Hoffenberg in like, you know, I think it might have been 2019,

1:03:49 writing a letter to like some authority somewhere, basically saying like, "Hey,

1:03:53 if you guys remove Jeffrey Epstein from this business operation,

1:03:58 we have a guy ready to take his job,

1:04:00 and that guy's name is Don Engel." Like Don Engel is

1:04:03 the man who supplied the women at the parties at Drexel Burnham Lambert.

1:04:08 What?

1:04:09 All right.

1:04:09 [laughter] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

1:04:12 When was that sent?

1:04:13 Let's Let's get look it up.

1:04:15 It was Is this in JMail?

1:04:16 Like this is from the find it.

1:04:17 Like E N G E L is the guy's last name.

1:04:20 E N G E L.

1:04:21 So, when did he When was that letter written?

1:04:24 I I Roughly?

1:04:25 it was 2019-ish.

1:04:27 Something like that.

1:04:28 Oh, so it was a throwback TBT.

1:04:30 Yeah, it was a throwback.

1:04:31 I remember I remember those parties.

1:04:33 Somewhere Bill Clinton's like, "Oh, they were great." Yeah.

1:04:35 I don't think Engel at that age would

1:04:37 have been the guy you'd want running that party.

1:04:42 [laughter] All right, who'll keep Oh, we got some?

1:04:44 No, I'm trying to find That's the spelling you want?

1:04:48 Yeah, E N G E L.

1:04:49 Mm.

1:04:50 Um There's 2019 right here, but property screwed out of market candidates.

1:04:56 Oh, let's look at that if we want to buy something, Dave.

1:04:58 What's going on in Cannes?

1:05:00 We can dream, right?

1:05:02 Or look up Hoffenberg, I guess.

1:05:03 It's probably the easiest thing to look up.

1:05:05 That's probably what I did.

1:05:06 you spell it, right?

1:05:07 Yeah, Steve Hoffenberg.

1:05:09 So, he was still coordinating with Epstein in 2015?

1:05:12 No, not with Epstein.

1:05:14 He was Why is he on emails with with Leslie Groff?

1:05:17 Can we hit that Leslie Groff one?

1:05:18 January 22nd, 2015.

1:05:21 Steve Hoffenberg left me a 2-minute message.

1:05:23 Go[ __] yourself, Jeff.

1:05:26 He is going on and on about how he can help you.

1:05:29 Has feds lined up, your banks lined up,

1:05:32 Brad Edwards lined up, Brad Edwards being the victims attorney.

1:05:37 He says I should be careful as well.

1:05:40 I saved the message if you Wow, what a find.

1:05:44 That's a wild email.

1:05:46 Hoffenberg is an interesting guy, man.

1:05:48 Like he he he really got super excited about what I was doing,

1:05:52 and he was like really wanted to cuz he was like he's like,

1:05:54 "It's a fine It's like it's the biggest financial crime of all time,

1:05:57 and everyone's talking about sex." He's like,

1:05:59 "But it's just a It's a mistake." Right?

1:06:00 And so he was trying to help me,

1:06:01 but he was very But he like every third call he was like,

1:06:05 "You know I need you to do is like go raise like $4 million,

1:06:08 and we'll split it." And then we'll like make a documentary,

1:06:10 and I'm like, "Dude, I'm not like [laughter] Well, he's dead now.

1:06:14 Quote quote Bill Gates, "Well,

1:06:16 he's dead." That's not happening, so that didn't work out.

1:06:20 Yeah.

1:06:20 That's great.

1:06:21 All right, I I want to come back to Hoffenberg with you,

1:06:23 but the way he put that, that's so interesting because I don't know.

1:06:29 Like I'm I've been trying to make sense of this like everyone else,

1:06:32 and what it seems to me is that sex trafficking was the doorway to compromat,

1:06:37 which was then the doorway to dirty money and funneling money altogether,

1:06:42 which was then the door And this goes back

1:06:44 to what you were saying at the beginning with the oligarchs,

1:06:45 which was then the doorway to like,

1:06:48 I don't know, secret societies, if you will, arms dealing.

1:06:51 Yeah.

1:06:51 That's kind of the funnel up.

1:06:53 And then you have the guys like Khashoggi and Doug Leese,

1:06:57 I can't speak to like the sex trafficking,

1:06:58 but Khashoggi was involved with all the above.

1:07:01 Jeffrey Epstein was clearly involved with all the above.

1:07:03 And so, you know, they use a mark like Hoffenberg Yeah.

1:07:08 to get there, to get to the money.

1:07:09 And this is something I was thinking about the other day.

1:07:11 I don't know if you ever came across this in any of your work, Henry,

1:07:14 but Bernie Madoff had an office on the Lipstick Building,

1:07:20 153rd, like 53rd and 5th, something like that.

1:07:23 Don't quote me on that.

1:07:24 Third Yeah, between 2nd and 3rd, something like that.

1:07:27 So, there's no connections between Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein.

1:07:33 I've never been able to find one yet.

1:07:35 They ran in the same elite New York City

1:07:39 circles for the better part of at least 2 decades.

1:07:43 Mhm.

1:07:44 That's very interesting to me that you

1:07:46 can't find anything connecting the two of them.

1:07:49 Or like it was managed?

1:07:50 Is that what you're saying?

1:07:51 I'm not saying that they worked together.

1:07:53 I'm saying that there could have been some sort

1:07:55 of like They both have a job to do.

1:07:59 Yeah.

1:08:01 Yeah.

1:08:03 Yeah, that's There There's I'm also interested

1:08:05 in these like just super audacious criminals, right?

1:08:10 Like Um you mentioned Erik Prince, right?

1:08:13 Erik Prince went to the Senate Intelligence Committee

1:08:15 and basically just told them to[ __] off.

1:08:18 Like I mean, he it was like scoffing

1:08:20 that he would have to answer their questions.

1:08:21 You know why?

1:08:22 Go I would like to know why.

1:08:24 Because they um I'll take his side on this.

1:08:27 They They committed a crime, and they didn't pay for it.

1:08:30 They outed him as a NOC.

1:08:32 Okay.

1:08:32 So, the head of CIA, Leon Panetta,

1:08:35 went to the same Senate Intelligence Committee.

1:08:39 I believe it was the same Senate Intelligence Committee, and outed him as a NOC,

1:08:43 and if I'm remembering the story correctly, then they went public with it.

1:08:47 It was reported that way.

1:08:48 A NOC is a non-official cover.

1:08:50 It's like the deepest form of a CIA spy.

1:08:53 And you know, that put contracts on his head.

1:08:55 He already had some, but that that made things extremely difficult for him,

1:08:59 and that was his uh I actually understand that one.

1:09:01 That was his[ __] you moment, and that was also in the same era where

1:09:07 they[ __] over the Blackwater Four with that whole case,

1:09:11 which was if you actually look into that case and what that was,

1:09:14 I'm not saying those guys were like the best trained guys ever, Yeah.

1:09:17 but it was such total[ __] Yeah.

1:09:21 And that's why that's why they were eventually pardoned.

1:09:22 They should have never been in prison.

1:09:24 So, he had both of those things happen at that time.

1:09:27 And obviously like Eric's been around.

1:09:28 There's no doubt he's been around a lot of interesting

1:09:31 things for sure involved with intelligence and all that.

1:09:34 So I can't speak to all those things,

1:09:35 but on those two issues, he's very much like[ __] you.

1:09:38 And he was in special forces with Buzzy's son.

1:09:41 Was he really?

1:09:42 yeah.

1:09:43 Mhm.

1:09:43 Um That's where the I'm going to have to ask him about that next time.

1:09:46 Yeah.

1:09:46 So okay, but like maybe he's not a good example, but [snorts]

1:09:51 like let's say that the Senate Intelligence Committee was unfair to me.

1:09:55 Mhm.

1:09:55 Right?

1:09:55 I would still have to be a little bit differential

1:09:58 to them in the lest they punish me further, right?

1:10:03 To me, Eric Prince took this tone that was

1:10:05 like what are you going to do about it?

1:10:07 Right?

1:10:07 And and maybe it's cuz he's mad,

1:10:09 but also I think it's because he's he felt safe doing that, right?

1:10:13 Which to me a little bit like these, you know,

1:10:15 Hoffenberg buying the New York Post,

1:10:17 like you are full-on Ponzi schemer and you're getting like millions from like

1:10:21 people's insurance funds or whatever that you're never going to get back,

1:10:24 but you're just like holding press conferences.

1:10:26 Right.

1:10:26 Right?

1:10:27 Like there's like a It's kind of brazen, right?

1:10:28 And and that like I'm starting to think that that's a little

1:10:33 bit of a tell that you're like What does this word mean?

1:10:37 Like connected.

1:10:39 Connected.

1:10:40 [laughter] Right?

1:10:40 Like Like if you feel good being like like yeah, I[ __][ __] you.

1:10:44 All this stuff like and I'm also yeah,

1:10:46 let's get my makeup right, you know, let's get this perfect.

1:10:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:10:48 Like that's a weird that's a very strange position to take.

1:10:52 Like it's a next level criminality of like do it on TV.

1:10:56 Oh, I agree.

1:10:57 I mean?

1:10:58 the the word you use is right, brazenness of it.

1:11:00 Yeah.

1:11:01 Yeah.

1:11:02 Those people interest me.

1:11:02 That's like It's like what?

1:11:05 Like where do you get off doing that, you know?

1:11:07 Did Did Hoffenberg he first contacted you, you said, versus you contacting him?

1:11:12 I don't remember, but I maybe I emailed him.

1:11:18 I think I might have emailed him.

1:11:20 I found an email address somewhere, I think is what it was.

1:11:21 And then he read The first time I talked to him,

1:11:24 he was like a mile a minute with just like

1:11:27 he was a huge fan of what I was doing.

1:11:28 He really was.

1:11:29 And like he really wanted I think he felt

1:11:31 just so ripped off by Epstein and I would too.

1:11:34 you know, he kept he he was always like this is the you know,

1:11:36 this is the biggest crime of all time

1:11:38 and it's a it's Epstein and his large group.

1:11:40 Like he would never he always said Epstein and his large group.

1:11:43 And at one point I um was looking at these SEC filings of like

1:11:47 the Apollo the three Apollo founders have had

1:11:50 accounts that when they were principals of Apollo,

1:11:54 their personal accounts have to be disclosed publicly, right?

1:11:57 Black, Harris, and who's the third?

1:11:59 Rowan, who runs Apollo now, Mark Rowan.

1:12:01 Um and it's BRH Holdings.

1:12:05 Epstein is in the files emailing Leon Black

1:12:09 saying this is by far your biggest asset.

1:12:12 Uh the what is the BRH agreement.

1:12:14 So the agreement has many parts, but like one of the accounts you could see

1:12:18 in SEC filings really clearly was in the Caribbean, I forget what country.

1:12:21 Um and it's 10 billion Mhm.

1:12:23 just sitting in an account.

1:12:25 And I mentioned this I had a lot of questions for Steve Hoffenberg,

1:12:28 some of which were about like crime,

1:12:29 some of which were just about like Wall Street, you know,

1:12:31 cuz I just like didn't know how all these things work,

1:12:33 but he knows a lot about it.

1:12:35 But uh but he was he's basically he was like yeah, that's the that's the bag.

1:12:39 Mhm.

1:12:40 You know, he's like this is not they didn't start this.

1:12:42 Right?

1:12:42 This has been this has been going on this is a this is

1:12:45 a decades-old crime and just like that's where the money is now.

1:12:50 You know, but it like didn't start with them.

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1:14:32 Now, I I there's one thing I keep forgetting to bring up,

1:14:35 but I feel like this should be brought up.

1:14:36 It's a little bit of a tangent point, but it's related to what you're saying.

1:14:39 You mentioned those three founders Yeah.

1:14:41 of Apollo, so Black, Rowan, and Harris.

1:14:45 Obviously Harris has owned my Sixers for the last[ __] 15 years,

1:14:50 which is 14 and a half years too many.

1:14:51 So please sell the team, but uh he is in these files, which is a bad look,

1:14:56 and he knows Jeffrey Epstein and he's meeting with him and met

1:15:00 with him at his at his Manhattan townhouse and all that.

1:15:05 The thing about Harris I do have to give him and maybe

1:15:08 there's more to this story and I won't have to give him anything,

1:15:10 but he co-founded the company and he was Leon Black was the CEO.

1:15:16 He was always viewed as the heir apparent.

1:15:18 Like he would take over as CEO when Leon stepped

1:15:21 aside and obviously he became a billionaire in this process,

1:15:23 Josh Harris, and it was his lifelong dream

1:15:26 to run that company that he helped build and found.

1:15:31 And after the Epstein stuff started coming out in 2019 internally at Apollo,

1:15:37 he took a stand and told Leon Black, you got to[ __] step down.

1:15:42 This is[ __] And as a result was pushed out of the company,

1:15:47 which he aspired and dreamed to always lead.

1:15:50 And you don't hear that.

1:15:52 I I will give him that.

1:15:54 You don't hear that from a lot of people in that are

1:15:56 anywhere around this guy around this case actually taking some

1:15:59 sort of moral stand where there's some line in the sand

1:16:03 where they're like this is[ __] and losing something in the process.

1:16:07 Not you know, he's got $8 billion to cry into, but still like you know,

1:16:11 is there more to that?

1:16:12 Am I missing something there or is that effectively what you heard happened?

1:16:15 So I don't Did he use the Epstein news

1:16:21 to bump off the king so he could be the king?

1:16:23 Possible.

1:16:24 he use it cuz he was upset about it, right?

1:16:25 Like I don't know, but my problem here is like when they

1:16:29 swear you in, they say do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, right?

1:16:33 And this is where like we're failing on all fronts.

1:16:35 Like right now when people are getting grilled about this whether

1:16:38 in the media or in front of the congressional committee or whatever,

1:16:42 uh the game is can I catch you?

1:16:44 Mhm.

1:16:45 And so you have to deflect and deflect.

1:16:46 Like no, no, no.

1:16:47 Like like we're never going to get those we're never going to paint

1:16:50 this picture through these little dumb sparring matches the last 5 minutes.

1:16:53 We need people I need Josh Harris Josh Harris is

1:16:57 a dirtbag unless he can just tell me what happened.

1:17:00 Make it make sense.

1:17:01 And there is there are two things in the files

1:17:04 that I think he needs to really explain.

1:17:05 One is there was a multi-hour breakfast

1:17:09 with Bill Gates at Jeffrey Epstein's house,

1:17:11 after which Jeffrey Epstein emailed did you have fun?

1:17:15 Like I don't like that.

1:17:17 I don't like that either.

1:17:18 Like explain that, right?

1:17:19 Um and there are there's an email with Jeffrey Epstein

1:17:24 emailing uh Leon Black's assistant Melanie Spinella saying, you know,

1:17:29 I've been in touch with these like this lawyer

1:17:31 and this banker to arrange uh I forget the amount,

1:17:34 but something like $2.4 million payment from Josh Harris to you.

1:17:39 Woah, can we pull that up?

1:17:40 $2.4 million?

1:17:42 It's some amount like that.

1:17:43 Uh it's more than a million.

1:17:44 Um If you look up Melanie Spinella,

1:17:48 you're going to get a lot of Josh Yeah, there you go.

1:17:52 It's an email from Epstein.

1:17:57 You want to just hit the search and then we'll scroll that way.

1:18:00 There's I saw that that was the breakfast one.

1:18:02 It doesn't work like that.

1:18:04 Oh, cuz they Cuz it's not really Yeah.

1:18:07 Shout out to the guys who built this though.

1:18:09 I'll say that.

1:18:10 It's unbelievable what they pulled off, so I'm not I'm not complaining,

1:18:13 but when when roughly what what year was that?

1:18:19 Uh hold on.

1:18:20 I'm going to It's on True People.

1:18:21 Let me find it really fast.

1:18:21 It's long after his conviction, obviously.

1:18:24 Uh let's see what we got here.

1:18:29 See, there I am giving credit to someone.

1:18:34 Mhm.

1:18:35 Someone else I don't want to give credit to.

1:18:38 Terrible owner.

1:18:40 You found it, Dief?

1:18:41 Can you just look up 2.4?

1:18:43 It's uh 2014.

1:18:46 June 10th, 2014.

1:18:47 Okay.

1:18:49 There it is.

1:18:49 All right, so this is from Your True Hoops Substack,

1:18:53 which by the way, we're going to have Henry blog link down below.

1:18:56 Everyone go join.

1:18:58 It's great.

1:18:59 You're going to get all this information and basically

1:19:01 like Yeah.

1:19:02 like like young Julian Yeah,

1:19:04 it's basically the original 21-chapter report and that is

1:19:07 what it is is effectively like a 400-page book.

1:19:10 It's it's incredible.

1:19:12 All right, so Melanie Spinella, Tuesday, June 10th, 2014.

1:19:16 I remember where I was that day.

1:19:17 That's crazy.

1:19:18 You did?

1:19:19 Do you have one of those memories?

1:19:20 Yeah.

1:19:21 I've asked Rich Jasculin to follow up with Brad

1:19:24 Oakman on Josh Harris' payment to you for 2.4 million.

1:19:29 Oh, that's bad.

1:19:33 [laughter]

1:19:35 Now, do you think that is it maybe I'm

1:19:38 cuz I don't know much about what you mentioned,

1:19:40 but the BRH thing was he hired as an advisor for that?

1:19:45 Cuz that's Black, Harris, and Rowan together for their personal fund.

1:19:51 like uh he definitely had this like

1:19:52 involved relationship with Leon Black and Epstein did.

1:19:56 And honestly, to Epstein's credit, like well,

1:19:58 I think that the tax advisor explanation makes no sense at that price.

1:20:03 But like I from the files,

1:20:04 I'm also impressed that like Epstein did a lot of tax work for Leon Black.

1:20:08 Like he really did.

1:20:09 And maybe it was worth a lot.

1:20:11 Um doesn't mean that no one else could

1:20:14 have done that for a fraction of the price,

1:20:15 but and then it definitely looks like

1:20:18 Epstein tried to get the other two partners

1:20:20 in on the similar He he tried to get

1:20:22 billionaires to sign over their stuff to him, right?

1:20:24 He definitely did that.

1:20:26 And to Josh Harris' credit, it looks like Epstein really pushed hard and Harris

1:20:33 like I mean I think rebuffed him mostly,

1:20:38 but there's still some emails that are a little I mean they went

1:20:42 they went through a lot of emailing

1:20:45 about things that might have been investments.

1:20:46 It's hard to tell.

1:20:47 So, anyway, I I think it's this this text is

1:20:53 outside of any sense of like the rest of the chain.

1:20:58 Like maybe it's an Epstein move to just have like like

1:21:05 this is going to sound speculative as hell cuz it is.

1:21:08 But like let's say Leon Black needed to pay her 2.4 million dollars.

1:21:11 Like that's a bad bank record to have.

1:21:15 Wait, let's say Leon Black what?

1:21:17 I missed the part of that Well, let's say for some reason Leon

1:21:19 Black needed to up his assistant's salary significantly.

1:21:24 Mhm.

1:21:24 I don't know why.

1:21:25 Um like you can't you know,

1:21:28 you you can't have an Apollo Global check or Leon You know what I mean?

1:21:31 Like maybe it's maybe Epstein's the kind of guy who can facilitate.

1:21:33 Like hey, why don't we just have it come from Josh, you know?

1:21:35 And Harris is a he's a good mark, too,

1:21:38 cuz he's got a face that could stop a clock.

1:21:40 So, you can [laughter] Sorry, he just does.

1:21:43 But like Well, the one guy told me that like I

1:21:45 don't know I don't know who to believe on this, but one

1:21:47 guy who knows everyone involved was like the reason that Josh didn't

1:21:50 get to lead Apollo is because the clients of Apollo were like,

1:21:54 "We don't like him." Mhm.

1:21:55 "We don't want to hang out with him.

1:21:56 He's unpleasant.

1:21:57 Mark Rowan's a pleasant guy." Mhm.

1:22:00 He's very Harris and that that's just it he's so distant, too.

1:22:06 That's why like in Philly, they kind of hated him right away.

1:22:08 Like he just he didn't have any basic understanding of like what it's about.

1:22:13 I mean you've covered the NBA a long time,

1:22:14 so you know how like Philadelphia fans are.

1:22:16 It is like we live for that[ __] We live for our teams and everything.

1:22:20 And when you're the guy who still lives up in New York,

1:22:24 the Ivy Leaguer coming down and running it like a business

1:22:27 purely and let He would land his helicopter in the middle

1:22:31 of like some kids' soccer field to make it

1:22:33 to a game and they'd have to like clear the game.

1:22:36 It's just the like optically not not the best, you know?

1:22:42 But that doesn't surprise me cuz he's very standoffish is he's awkward.

1:22:50 He's awkward.

1:22:50 He's very awkward.

1:22:51 Have you talked with him?

1:22:53 Not really.

1:22:53 I mean I've been to like So, I think when he was a new owner,

1:22:57 he came to the NBA draft lottery and which is

1:22:59 like a big swirl of people It's just off Times Square.

1:23:03 And um talked briefly.

1:23:07 Um and I've and I know a bunch of people who know him.

1:23:10 And I don't know.

1:23:12 I I I find him to be uh just

1:23:18 all of these people actually just transactional as hell.

1:23:20 Yes.

1:23:21 And

1:23:22 Absolutely, yes.

1:23:23 That used to seem like it kind of came with the territory,

1:23:25 but now I'm like, "Oh, that is that's that's a a problematic personality trait

1:23:29 that leads you open to all kinds of corruption." Yep.

1:23:32 Right?

1:23:32 Like it just does.

1:23:33 Like this is the Back to the Future version where Biff wins and like

1:23:37 it's like all casinos and like people getting tossed out in the street.

1:23:40 Like that's what a transactional culture looks like, right?

1:23:43 So, I don't think it's bad to have transactional people.

1:23:46 I mean like transac- like I go to the grocery store, I'm transactional, right?

1:23:49 But same time like when you think

1:23:51 that everything that isn't transactional isn't real, you're an[ __] right?

1:23:55 You're that's sociopathy [clears throat] of a kind, right?

1:23:57 And and so I always got that vibe from him.

1:23:59 I just And um and actually this is going to sound really crazy,

1:24:03 but if the point of what you and I are talking about today is you know,

1:24:08 kind of bad people have too much power in the world,

1:24:11 uh one of the things that I think has the biggest impact

1:24:13 I learned about from listening to Josh

1:24:15 Harris getting interviewed by Steve Forbes.

1:24:18 I'm I've told this story a few times.

1:24:19 Nobody thinks it's a big deal except for me, but to me it was like,

1:24:22 "What the fuck?" I've always wondered why we don't why

1:24:25 the real reason we don't have health care here, right?

1:24:27 Like our health care system is just such

1:24:29 a horrible It's just so it's just ridiculous setup.

1:24:31 Like even if you're just like competent, you wouldn't like it.

1:24:33 Like let alone um I'm not going to make

1:24:36 my liberal like cry for me speech right now, but like it's just a bad system.

1:24:40 I know at one time like we actually pay as much

1:24:42 per user as places that do have nationalized health care,

1:24:46 but we just pay it through like the [snorts] ER, right?

1:24:49 Like So, like what is what a stupid system.

1:24:51 Why is it like this?

1:24:52 It's It's hard to see who benefits from this setup.

1:24:56 But then Steve Forbes had Josh Harris on and he's like

1:25:00 on what is some show that Steve Forbes hosts or something.

1:25:02 And and Steve Forbes is like, "Well, Joshua, you know,

1:25:05 there's many kinds of investments and you know, investment types.

1:25:08 And why would we need what you do?

1:25:10 Like why wouldn't we just Why couldn't you just go to a bank

1:25:12 or go to a Wall Street firm and have them invest

1:25:14 your money?" And Josh Harris' answer was that the health care costs

1:25:19 escalate too quickly for like the teachers' pension fund to keep up.

1:25:24 So, like they [snorts] got to insure all

1:25:26 the teachers of California for infinity amount of years.

1:25:29 And when the costs go up 4% a year, they can invest traditionally.

1:25:34 When the costs go up 11% a year, like they have to bring their money to Apollo.

1:25:38 Numbers, numbers, numbers.

1:25:39 And so I'm like, "Oh my god." And meanwhile,

1:25:41 I've I had noticed at one point I went through

1:25:43 just like public filings of where like Leon Black donates.

1:25:46 And the answer is every politician.

1:25:49 Like all of Congress.

1:25:51 Everyone, right?

1:25:52 And and like this is so much He's a nice guy, you know.

1:25:55 He's a nice guy, very generous.

1:25:57 Um I was like, "Oh, that's like they don't

1:26:00 This their worst nightmare that we would have decent health care, right?

1:26:05 It ruins private equity specifically would be ruined by that.

1:26:07 Yeah, you're cooking right now.

1:26:11 [laughter] No, it because it relates to exactly what

1:26:13 you're saying with a guy like Josh Harris.

1:26:15 I completely agree he's a transactional individual.

1:26:18 And there's something that happens in people

1:26:20 who I guess are just motivated by having

1:26:23 a bigger number today than they did yesterday and that's all they care about.

1:26:27 Where people before you even get to some of the[ __]

1:26:31 horrible crimes that some of these people then end up doing.

1:26:33 Assume they don't for a second.

1:26:35 I'm saying just people that are purely transactional.

1:26:38 They start to view people as not people.

1:26:40 And that's another thing.

1:26:41 Like Michael Rubin when he was on the ownership team with the Sixers,

1:26:45 he you know, he at least was like a public guy and whatever.

1:26:48 And there's a lot of people who don't like Michael

1:26:50 Rubin cuz they think he's like kind of weird or whatever.

1:26:52 But like he knew how to talk to the people.

1:26:55 And he always had to clean up He was like the 10% owner of the Sixers.

1:26:59 He always had to clean up Josh Harris' messes.

1:27:01 Beginning of the pandemic,

1:27:02 he was like the first owner to like cut all the staff Yeah.

1:27:06 of the Sixers.

1:27:06 And then Michael Rubin and Joel Embiid

1:27:09 came in and they're like, "All right, yeah.

1:27:12 [laughter]

1:27:12 We'll let the the employees of the[ __] company pay the other employees

1:27:15 cuz the owner's not doing it." It's just It's kind of[ __] man.

1:27:19 It's really[ __] It's extraordinary.

1:27:21 I mean like it's I mean I mean it's it's a kind of mental disease, right?

1:27:25 It's like I don't hate you for having mental,

1:27:27 but I don't think you should be in charge.

1:27:29 Yes.

1:27:29 You know, like I don't think politicians should answer to you.

1:27:33 Yep.

1:27:33 Dave Chappelle had a great bit on one of his Saturday

1:27:37 Night Live stand-ups like when he was doing the the opener.

1:27:41 Maybe it was a couple years ago, two, three years ago, something like that.

1:27:44 But he was talking about the phenomenon of like why Trump rose up.

1:27:49 And I'll get it wrong.

1:27:50 He delivered it so perfectly.

1:27:52 But he was like, you know,

1:27:54 regardless of what you think his actual motivations are,

1:27:57 whether he's just completely full of[ __] or whatever, when he was coming up,

1:28:01 he was the billionaire in the suit who was

1:28:04 in the room that you're not allowed into with all

1:28:07 these people and was the only one to walk out

1:28:09 the front door and look you in the eyes and say,

1:28:12 "Yo, I've been in that room the whole time.

1:28:13 You're not allowed in, but there's some crazy[ __] in there,

1:28:16 bro." And everyone was like,

1:28:18 "This[ __] at least he's talking." Like it doesn't seem out of line.

1:28:22 Right?

1:28:22 Yeah.

1:28:22 Like it's not that these people they

1:28:24 just don't under When they get transactional,

1:28:26 they don't understand basic humanity.

1:28:28 And if you guys wanted to manipulate people,

1:28:31 all you got to do is walk out and pretend to care.

1:28:33 Pretend to talk to them.

1:28:34 And these guys don't even do that, you know?

1:28:36 Have you heard of this face hubris syndrome?

1:28:39 Hubris Like the word hubris like the pride?

1:28:41 No?

1:28:42 So, uh what's the name There Okay,

1:28:45 there's a book called The Hour Between Dog and Wolf.

1:28:48 Oh, actually this is you're going to like this.

1:28:50 I know about this book.

1:28:52 Okay, so Between Dog and Wolf?

1:28:54 Yeah, this is really Yeah, John Coates, that's the guy.

1:28:56 Oh.

1:28:59 Well, I I Maybe he doesn't want me to say who it is,

1:29:01 but I learned about this from a Sixers front office employee.

1:29:04 [laughter] But anyway, Uh Scott O'Neil?

1:29:08 No.

1:29:08 Um but uh So, this guy I know I know who.

1:29:14 I won't say.

1:29:14 Go ahead.

1:29:15 So, this guy worked on Wall Street and he during

1:29:19 the dot com boom and he noticed that they have like super

1:29:21 smart trader on Monday would make like a bazillion dollars

1:29:24 on some trade and by Friday the guy's like drunk at work,

1:29:27 you know, he smells like a prostitute and he's making stupid trades.

1:29:30 And he's like what like this guy stopped being smart, right?

1:29:33 Like what happened to him?

1:29:34 Just cuz he made a bunch of money on Monday.

1:29:36 And so he's he went back to England and he did

1:29:38 it he I think he has like a PhD or beyond now

1:29:41 and he started this whole Institute studying like this particular syndrome

1:29:45 where basically if you're in leadership or in power for 10 years,

1:29:49 I'm paraphrasing his work you should read the real book he wrote on it,

1:29:52 then your mirror neurons stop working.

1:29:54 Like you lose empathy.

1:29:56 Wow.

1:29:57 And so like you know,

1:29:57 when we all watch a movie and see somebody like cut their hand,

1:29:59 your hand hurts a little, right?

1:30:00 Like not if you've been in Trump's position for 10 years, right?

1:30:04 You're just like whatever man,

1:30:06 I told people they're going to get hurt, you know,

1:30:07 like like and I feel like I'm seeing that right and left in the NBA, right?

1:30:12 And in this Epstein story, right?

1:30:14 All of that yeah.

1:30:15 I know.

1:30:15 That's wow.

1:30:16 That's what he called it the hour between dog and wolf?

1:30:21 [laughter] That's sick.

1:30:23 God, what a title.

1:30:25 There's a follow up book.

1:30:27 So this book is the before version and then he went and did a bunch of research

1:30:30 and wrote another book that I forget the name

1:30:32 of but um Did Did his name rhyme with Schminky?

1:30:36 I mean that's a really good guess and Sam Hinkie and I

1:30:39 are friends but in fact I did not learn about this book from

1:30:42 to get Sam Hinkie on the podcast.

1:30:44 He's a redicent my guy.

1:30:46 little guy.

1:30:47 I know he is but he's a genius.

1:30:49 Yeah, he is a genius.

1:30:50 Yeah.

1:30:51 Yeah, he's a very smart guy.

1:30:52 Okay, hour but the hour between dog and wolf, I'm going to read that.

1:30:55 great book.

1:30:56 That makes a ton of sense because it's your it

1:30:58 human nature gets used to things no matter what it is.

1:31:01 Negative Yeah.

1:31:02 supposedly positive and everywhere in between but like

1:31:04 you get used to I've seen it.

1:31:07 You know, it's it's like complacency in a way.

1:31:09 It's the same psychology.

1:31:10 So it makes sense because you get it far enough removed

1:31:13 in your ivory tower or whatever that then below you is just grass.

1:31:18 And there's a weird, you know,

1:31:18 there's something that's going on with these like You [snorts] know,

1:31:23 I I went to a snobby British boarding school

1:31:25 for a short amount a very short like less than a semester.

1:31:29 Where you said you were born in Britain?

1:31:30 born in England um Moved here though as an infant?

1:31:32 here and then my parents got divorced and then my dad

1:31:35 became like really excited that we should that we coming

1:31:37 to America was a mistake and we should move back and so

1:31:39 we're like they were kind of like efforts, you know, like [laughter]

1:31:43 efforts to move back.

1:31:45 They didn't really take um but for a while I mean I was in this ritzy

1:31:50 boarding school and and you just have this feeling

1:31:52 of like oh like like there's a portion

1:31:56 of this hubris hubris syndrome that's part of like

1:32:00 England's rigid class structure a little bit of a let

1:32:03 them eat cake kind of thing where it's

1:32:04 like well we can't fix everything for everybody, right?

1:32:08 Yeah, and there's a little bit of like

1:32:09 it's ingrained and like why would you want that?

1:32:12 It's like well I think you want that cuz you you you need everyone to feel

1:32:16 okay with the fact that like it's going to suck for a bunch of people.

1:32:18 Yes.

1:32:19 Right?

1:32:19 And but we do have these carriages and we

1:32:21 do have these like beautiful shiny you know,

1:32:24 people [snorts] on horseback and everything and it's all wonderful.

1:32:26 Don't don't get confused but like yeah,

1:32:28 Jeffrey Epstein is invited to the Buckingham Palace a bunch of times

1:32:31 like He was landing he was landing on active military bases as well.

1:32:37 They're finding that out.

1:32:38 That's not a good sign.

1:32:39 Like cleared to land on active British military bases like they did private jet?

1:32:45 Wow.

1:32:47 That's not good.

1:32:47 Like what?

1:32:49 You guys know?

1:32:50 [laughter] You guys Who do you know?

1:32:53 We're going to need some better explanations than we've had so far.

1:32:57 This is where to me like I just take this it's like okay,

1:32:59 just take one landing, right?

1:33:01 One landing of a Jeffrey Epstein jet and it's like I think it

1:33:05 would be really useful for a journalist to like just go talk to everybody.

1:33:09 Yes.

1:33:10 Like like just make a make a huge thing

1:33:13 out of a small thing but really do the homework.

1:33:15 Don't give it away.

1:33:16 Go do it.

1:33:17 But there's a[ __] 10,000 of them.

1:33:20 Like I I just I'm some journalist there's a there's

1:33:23 an airfield in what's going to be like Surrey or something, right?

1:33:26 Like like just go do it.

1:33:28 Just go talk to everybody who was working

1:33:29 that day that probably they were still around.

1:33:31 Like and just figure out what happened.

1:33:33 Go right here.

1:33:34 You know what I mean?

1:33:35 Like Yeah.

1:33:36 We haven't really had that level yet.

1:33:37 We haven't had time for those stories to come out but I think those are

1:33:41 like there's there are we have evidence of I don't know a million crimes.

1:33:45 Like just tell me one.

1:33:47 Yeah.

1:33:47 Get the get it narrated.

1:33:48 None of them are narrated really now other than like the victims.

1:33:52 Yes.

1:33:52 So like we're putting them in this weird spot of like well I don't know.

1:33:56 Right?

1:33:56 Like if it's true, it's like no, let's figure it out.

1:33:59 Let's stitch the whole quilt together, you know,

1:34:01 like like what happened on this day at this place.

1:34:04 It's like a this is like a dystopian uh I'll

1:34:10 just invent a stupid term right now like black fairy tale.

1:34:13 So like the opposite of a fairy tale where there's this whole

1:34:18 Sims world and you could just like put a blindfold on and hold

1:34:22 your finger and land right here and open it up and then be

1:34:25 like all right so I landed on 1997 Surrey Airport Jeffrey Epstein lands.

1:34:31 Let's go there and you can write a book about it.

1:34:33 You write a book about the next day.

1:34:35 Absolutely.

1:34:35 Absolutely.

1:34:36 And this guy was operating probably since the late

1:34:40 70s in a way at Bear Stearns at least.

1:34:43 Yeah.

1:34:43 Yeah.

1:34:45 Have you been Have you heard at all of like there's a there's a like a DJ

1:34:48 guy like a local radio guy in New

1:34:50 Mexico who's been investigating Epstein since like forever?

1:34:54 No, let's shout this guy Yeah, no, I don't know his name unfortunately but I

1:34:58 I I I um New Mexico like radio DJ you said?

1:35:02 Yeah.

1:35:03 Yeah, you'll see you'll see it.

1:35:04 Um he's he's he's given a bunch of interviews and stuff but he basically

1:35:06 just he has he's like he's like why did you why are you doing this?

1:35:10 And he's like cuz I don't have a call screener.

1:35:12 Like Yeah, that's the guy.

1:35:14 screener?

1:35:15 Yeah, so so people would call his show and they'd be like yo,

1:35:19 some crazy stuff's happening at this ranch.

1:35:24 [laughter] And Imagine being that guy like you're

1:35:28 holding this insane secret and you're like man,

1:35:31 what do I I'm going to call the radio guy.

1:35:35 [laughter]

1:35:34 That's it.

1:35:35 Hey, Steve from Long Island friend of the show like But he's pretty locked

1:35:42 in to like like he would be the perfect person to write one of these books.

1:35:45 He looks like he investigates Epstein.

1:35:47 Wait, let's scroll down Dief.

1:35:49 You got it.

1:35:49 So like pretty deep he basically was like I know everybody who worked there.

1:35:55 At Zorro?

1:35:55 Yeah.

1:35:56 He's like I know which ones were allowed in the house,

1:35:57 which ones were allowed in the barn.

1:35:58 I know like what their shifts were.

1:36:00 Like he knows like all the stuff.

1:36:02 I'm like okay, well this is a good starting point

1:36:04 for the narrative the fun to consume not fun to consume but like

1:36:07 the the well told version as opposed to just like this litigious

1:36:12 kind of like just dropping a bunch of facts and documents, right?

1:36:16 People aren't going to get it that way.

1:36:17 Zorro's the one I'm starting to deep dive

1:36:19 on behind the scenes a little [snorts] bit.

1:36:22 I think say uh Sergie on Twitter got me into this.

1:36:27 He's doing some great work.

1:36:28 I hope I'm saying that right.

1:36:29 I've been talk with him.

1:36:30 He's going to come on the show.

1:36:31 Guy's doing amazing stuff but he's digging on a lot of stuff.

1:36:34 I think initially when I saw one of his threads

1:36:37 I want to say I was like all right, it's time.

1:36:39 But that do you see who owns that now?

1:36:44 It's like some friend of Epstein's, right?

1:36:46 Don Huff well, indirectly.

1:36:48 Okay.

1:36:49 Don Huffines or something.

1:36:50 Okay.

1:36:51 Who's this is New Mexico.

1:36:53 He bought it.

1:36:54 By the way, who the[ __] wants

1:36:55 to buy something like this after it's all exposed?

1:36:57 Like that's just crazy.

1:36:58 So it's this like very Bible thumping kind of guy and I

1:37:01 say it that way cuz it's like why are you buying this?

1:37:04 Who's running for maybe solicitor general or something

1:37:07 in Texas right now backed by Steve Bannon.

1:37:13 So I to the extent that this is a big thing, right?

1:37:17 Like people keep seem to doing things

1:37:19 that don't seem to be in their best interests.

1:37:21 Mhm.

1:37:21 So like don't you think Leslie Wexner really wanted to give

1:37:24 power of attorney to somebody over all of his money, right?

1:37:27 I don't think Leon Black wanted to give

1:37:29 power of attorney something over his money, right?

1:37:30 Like um or all of these properties I mean

1:37:34 or like two townhouses in Manhattan transact for like $10

1:37:40 each or whatever they did and like the like like

1:37:43 like this is somebody telling someone to do something, right?

1:37:46 This is not like why wouldn't you sell at market rates?

1:37:48 And one of them is standing next to the president right now.

1:37:51 It just like there's no like it just doesn't make any sense.

1:37:53 Like to me like like we don't know who the boss is, right?

1:37:57 Like I don't think we know who the boss is or bosses.

1:37:59 Like that's [snorts] kind of crazy when I said that like that.

1:38:04 [laughter] But but to me I'm like like I don't know man,

1:38:06 Leon Black was someone told him to give all his money to Jeffrey Epstein.

1:38:10 Yeah, I I again your early point about the compromat thing

1:38:14 being the right of passage makes a lot of sense cuz Wexner

1:38:21 like you see they've always asked Wexner about if he had

1:38:24 a gay relationship with Jeffrey Epstein which actually for all the sick[ __]

1:38:28 Jeffrey Epstein did like this is the one like him using

1:38:33 compromat of like a gay relationship with another guy is the one

1:38:37 I would actually think he didn't do because every piece of evidence

1:38:40 we've ever looked at it was always girls or young women, right?

1:38:43 So he had a type and it wasn't guys.

1:38:46 What I do wonder though is if part of the compromat of Wexner

1:38:50 was that he was gay or something and then maybe was also

1:38:53 doing some really bad stuff that's beyond like being gay and maybe abusing

1:38:58 boys and stuff like that and maybe that's how they got in because

1:39:02 there's a thread I've talked about it a few times before and someone

1:39:06 more talented than me and who knows more about this stuff and following

1:39:09 the money should really pull on it but what I can't get

1:39:13 out of my head is if Tara Reade married did a great podcast.

1:39:19 I'm sorry for people who have heard me say this before,

1:39:21 but I got to repeat this friend.

1:39:22 He did a great podcast or she did a great podcast back in 2020, two of them.

1:39:27 One was like the Maxwell's and one was Epstein.

1:39:30 Mhm.

1:39:30 And with Epstein she went around with that one

1:39:33 she went around with Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

1:39:35 And it's like a documentary.

1:39:36 She did eight episodes where she's recording like an edited documentary.

1:39:40 And what they would do is they would go to the usually gated communities

1:39:44 of people connected to Epstein who Virginia had known from her time around him

1:39:48 Mhm.

1:39:48 and try to talk to them.

1:39:49 So they went to Adam Perry Lang,

1:39:51 the famous chef who knew Virginia and he was like,

1:39:53 "Oh, I remember you." and said,

1:39:54 "You can't come meet with me." But when they went to Juan Alessi's mansion,

1:40:00 I guess, in in his community he let them in.

1:40:02 Juan Alessi was the house manager for Epstein.

1:40:05 Immigrant.

1:40:06 Had to sign a crazy NDA, all this stuff.

1:40:08 And to his credit, he allowed Tara to put

1:40:10 the recorder out and record all of them talking.

1:40:14 And he said a lot of interesting things in there,

1:40:16 but among them was he talked about how in 1992 he's like,

1:40:22 "Epstein had money in the '80s and I worked with him

1:40:25 and he lived on the Upper East Side and everything,

1:40:26 but 1992[ __] went crazy, right?

1:40:29 He started flying in private jets everywhere.

1:40:33 I think he started looking at buying his own jet at the time.

1:40:36 He wasn't I'd said this earlier, but he wasn't in the mansion yet.

1:40:39 I know that now, but I I have to run

1:40:42 back to that podcast and see exactly what Juan Alessi said,

1:40:44 but basically he said he went from whoa to whoa, like out of nowhere.

1:40:50 [snorts] And it's very fascinating to me because Robert

1:40:51 Maxwell was pushed off that boat in November 1991.

1:40:57 Mhm.

1:40:57 His body was immediately taken to Israel to the Mount of Olives,

1:41:00 the most sacred place you could be buried, funeral attended by heads of state.

1:41:03 We can all do the math there.

1:41:05 And buried with honors, but leaves behind a $400 million plus pension

1:41:10 scam at his company and was supposedly worth nothing.

1:41:14 Robert Maxwell was a very bad guy.

1:41:16 Never made sense to me that he was worth nothing,

1:41:18 especially when his sons were then put on trial for that and found not guilty.

1:41:21 Mhm.

1:41:22 When are scions ever found not guilty when they bilked the[ __]

1:41:26 public or a bunch of regular Joes from what they did.

1:41:29 And so Epstein getting all that money at the same

1:41:32 time and also cozying up to Wexner at the same

1:41:35 time who is a money bag man when you look

1:41:38 at a lot of the evidence surrounding like the case.

1:41:41 Very that's an that has never squared up to me.

1:41:46 And but I can't speculative.

1:41:49 But it's it's interesting because like you said

1:41:52 for him to be granting all that power,

1:41:54 including power of attorney, giving him that place for 10 bucks.

1:41:58 Yeah.

1:41:59 Something.

1:42:00 Yeah.

1:42:00 Something ain't right.

1:42:01 And I think if I'm right that before

1:42:03 that Epstein before he lived in that townhouse,

1:42:05 Epstein lived in a building owned by Iran.

1:42:11 I'm pretty sure.

1:42:12 Check me on this.

1:42:13 Either he had an office or he lived

1:42:14 in a place Epstein all right, let's look this up.

1:42:17 Jeffy stepped out for a second.

1:42:19 Epstein building owned by Iran.

1:42:22 Like And that would have been post-revolution Iran?

1:42:26 Yeah, I think I think Do you see that?

1:42:28 Did I think I'm up?

1:42:29 All right, let's see.

1:42:30 The State Department once rented a townhouse seized from Iran.

1:42:34 So they seized it from Iran to Jeffrey Epstein then sued him for subletting it.

1:42:42 [laughter] Classic.

1:42:41 He makes a profit on it.

1:42:44 That's classic.

1:42:46 A weird and forgotten case from the '90s

1:42:48 shows how connected Epstein was to power.

1:42:52 So his Upper East Side mansion has become This is

1:42:55 from BuzzFeed News has become notorious

1:42:57 for its reportedly macabre interior decor, immense size, and monetary value.

1:43:02 And as the site of some of his lurid alleged crimes, but Epstein,

1:43:05 the financier who has been charged with sex

1:43:07 trafficking and accused of sexually abusing young

1:43:09 girls used to live in a different Upper

1:43:11 East Side mansion only a few blocks away.

1:43:13 It's mansion It's a mansion that's embroiled him in a dispute

1:43:17 involving a lawyer for French Connection heroin ring suspects,

1:43:20 the State Department and transitively the government of Iran.

1:43:25 The now forgotten case laid out in newspaper clips from the time and extensive

1:43:29 court documents offers a glimpse into the strange

1:43:32 facet of Epstein's life at the time.

1:43:34 Beginning in February 1992,

1:43:36 Epstein rented a former Iranian government building that had been taken over

1:43:40 by the State Department during the Iranian Revolution at 34 East 69th Street.

1:43:44 So that's literally like two blocks away.

1:43:47 In one of Manhattan's most expensive neighborhoods at a rate of $15,000 a month.

1:43:52 But things went sour when By the way,

1:43:55 $15,000 a month in February 1992 is a lot of money.

1:43:58 It's clocking.

1:43:59 And he got it in February '92.

1:44:01 What I just said with Juan Alessi, it's clocking.

1:44:04 So but things went sour when the government sued Epstein in the Southern

1:44:07 District of New York alleging that he had at one point failed to pay

1:44:10 the rent on time and had violated the lease by moving out

1:44:13 in early 1996 and subletting the place

1:44:16 the place without the State Department's submission.

1:44:18 His subtenant was Ivan Fisher, a New York City criminal defense

1:44:22 lawyer who had famously defending defended members

1:44:26 of the French Connection and the Pizza

1:44:29 Connection Italian Sicilian mob drug rings.

1:44:32 The government also sued Fisher.

1:44:34 Jesus Christ, man.

1:44:36 And then I you know, I mentioned Ivan Boesky earlier,

1:44:38 but I'm like he we should look this up,

1:44:42 but I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that after So he

1:44:49 There's a thing called so the CIA installed the Shah of Iran.

1:44:54 Yes.

1:44:54 Not even controversial, right?

1:44:55 Not even controversial.

1:44:55 That was Kermit Roosevelt, right?

1:44:57 Yeah.

1:44:58 Yeah, like Teddy Roosevelt's nephew or something.

1:45:00 Yeah, something like that.

1:45:03 And with MI6 and then like cuz Mosaddegh had

1:45:05 been elected and was going to nationalize the oil.

1:45:07 Yep.

1:45:08 Can't have that.

1:45:09 Yeah, and so now it's like I think of BP mostly or whatever after that.

1:45:12 So So the Shah was like not a good ruler, right?

1:45:17 He was in the Pahlavi family.

1:45:19 Mhm.

1:45:19 Then there's the Pahlavi Foundation owned a skyscraper in Manhattan,

1:45:23 which I think later was seized

1:45:25 to and like distributed to um victims of terrorism.

1:45:30 But I'm pretty sure that in between uh Ivan Boesky had an office in there.

1:45:37 [laughter] Which is like what the[ __] So look, I don't It would make sense.

1:45:41 Um

1:45:44 [snorts]

1:45:43 when you told me that what you just read

1:45:45 out loud that kind of stuff makes me think like,

1:45:48 well the unseen part almost has to be intelligence.

1:45:55 Do you know what I mean?

1:45:56 Like like I just Who else could pull this kind of thing

1:45:59 off where like you're kind of keeping this guy in these houses.

1:46:04 And you're and they're you know,

1:46:05 he definitely got a sweetheart deal on the next townhouse up.

1:46:09 But like Got a sweetheart deal on this one, too.

1:46:12 And the guy, you know,

1:46:13 um you know when he was at Bear Stearns, Bill Casey was there.

1:46:16 Um I forgot about that.

1:46:18 Tell people who Bill Casey was.

1:46:20 So Bill Casey ended up running the CIA,

1:46:22 but he Another one who could stop a clock.

1:46:25 Oof.

1:46:26 Yeah.

1:46:27 But he Bill Casey I I I'll just tell you that and if

1:46:31 you read all the books I've read and all the freaking research,

1:46:35 like his name just comes up 10 million times associated with like some

1:46:41 of the shadiest stuff you've ever heard of the CIA the CIA being accused of.

1:46:44 Um a lot of Noriega meetings, you know, this kind of stuff.

1:46:48 Um So and you know, and all and Iran-Contra.

1:46:52 Um So yeah.

1:46:54 He was like the architect of that if I remember correctly.

1:46:57 Yeah.

1:46:58 And then um while Epstein had somewhere in these years Epstein has

1:47:03 an office maybe in that building that he shares with Stanley Pottinger.

1:47:08 Who was he again?

1:47:09 Stanley Pottinger was like a a major figure in Iran-Contra who later became like

1:47:20 a popular novelist and I think his son is in the Trump administration right now.

1:47:23 But Stanley Pottinger um many people believe was

1:47:28 like working on behalf of the CIA in Iran-Contra.

1:47:32 Feels like all you got to do is be connected

1:47:34 to Jeffrey Epstein and you get a job in the government.

1:47:37 Every government, Democratic and Republican.

1:47:40 It's just Leon Black son has a job.

1:47:42 And that's what I'm saying.

1:47:43 Yeah.

1:47:44 So you know, just on the surface sons

1:47:47 are you're not guilty of what your father did.

1:47:49 I love Woody Harrelson, he's a great actor.

1:47:51 You know what I mean?

1:47:52 Like his dad was a serial killer.

1:47:55 That said That was a crazy podcast.

1:47:58 [laughter] I forget what was it called?

1:47:59 The Was that another serial one?

1:48:02 I don't think so.

1:48:02 I think it was an independent one, but anyway.

1:48:04 Nuts story, but you know, that said, when you're running a White House,

1:48:09 especially, there's no place where optics matter more.

1:48:14 Yeah.

1:48:15 And to hire this[ __] guy, his son,

1:48:18 into the White House after all this[ __] was out, what are you doing?

1:48:23 What are you doing?

1:48:25 I I've always felt like Trump was kind

1:48:27 of like an errand boy for bigger forces, you know?

1:48:30 And to me it's like, well, this they just told him to do it.

1:48:32 You know?

1:48:33 That's why.

1:48:34 They told him to do it.

1:48:34 Yeah, you know what he's There's something that really sticks out with me.

1:48:37 When he did that podcast with Joe Rogan shortly before the election,

1:48:42 one of the things Joe asked him about was all the turnover

1:48:46 of people from his first administration

1:48:48 and I forget ex- I'm going to paraphrase.

1:48:51 People can go check it out and see what he said,

1:48:53 but in a very un-Trump-like way he actually admitted you know,

1:49:00 it Maybe Joe asked him like some mistakes.

1:49:03 Maybe that was how he asked it.

1:49:04 Are there there's mistakes from your first

1:49:06 administration that you wouldn't want to do again.

1:49:09 And Trump was like he said some of the people

1:49:13 I hired and some of the people I brought around.

1:49:16 And he brought up John Bolton.

1:49:18 He's like, that guy never saw somebody he didn't want to bomb.

1:49:20 You know, look at us now, right?

1:49:22 And he actually got John Bolton arguing against the Iran war.

1:49:26 That's how ass-backwards we are.

1:49:27 But like there's something to it that maybe

1:49:31 those people are people it's what you're saying.

1:49:33 They were like placed around him and he just agreed to it.

1:49:36 And now maybe he's doing it again despite the fact

1:49:39 that he seemed to have at least some self-awareness.

1:49:43 [snorts] He was doing that last time.

1:49:43 But it is I agree, Henry.

1:49:44 It's hard for me to not see that same pattern

1:49:47 cuz it's like how many of these guys are you going

1:49:49 to put around you that it just is easy for us

1:49:51 on a[ __] podcast to pull up and be like, well, look who he's connected to.

1:49:55 You know.

1:49:56 no way it's the best and brightest.

1:49:57 You know what I mean?

1:49:58 It's they're not the like the people who

1:49:59 I mean just like a Christine Ohm or whatever.

1:50:01 Like she's just a[ __] Like she's she's terrible.

1:50:03 [laughter][ __] But unthreatening, right?

1:50:06 Like she's not going to like no one's going

1:50:08 to say we should make her president to replace Trump.

1:50:10 You know what I mean?

1:50:10 Like Like it's safe for him.

1:50:12 He's lucky he won't 25th me.

1:50:15 Yeah, no chance.

1:50:18 [laughter] No chance.

1:50:19 Oh my god, that's good.

1:50:21 Jesus Christ.

1:50:23 Real quick, Henry, can I just run to the bathroom?

1:50:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:50:25 That's always a good idea.

1:50:26 We'll be right back.

1:50:28 All right.

1:50:28 So we actually just while we were taking a bathroom break,

1:50:31 there's something a little fresh off the press.

1:50:33 I just sent it to you.

1:50:34 Do you have we got it?

1:50:35 Mhm.

1:50:36 So you're going to like this.

1:50:39 New Can you go back No, that's actually good.

1:50:42 Sorry, Deef.

1:50:42 So new Jared Kushner and family and Epstein

1:50:45 were close according to latest Epstein files.

1:50:48 Who's this from, Deef?

1:50:49 At Merlin This is from Mar- just X out for a sec.

1:50:54 Oh, sorry.

1:50:55 So I can give the Twitter account.

1:50:57 Merlin's Capital.

1:50:58 Merlin Capital.

1:51:00 Okay, so there's an email August 24th,

1:51:03 2017 to Michael Wolff, the author where Wolff says, "Great.

1:51:09 I'm in DC on Wednesday with Kushner.

1:51:11 How about Thursday?" And and And after Jeffrey

1:51:16 Epstein said he was in Wednesday to Friday.

1:51:18 And then go to the next one, Deef.

1:51:21 April 9th, 2015 to uh subject Josh Kushner, redacted, writes to Jeffrey Epstein.

1:51:29 Were you the one that introduced him and Steven,

1:51:31 his girlfriend Karlie Kloss, just did a coding thing for girls.

1:51:34 We're about to do something similar at the bank.

1:51:37 So this is someone at a bank.

1:51:39 That's interesting.

1:51:40 We can reach out officially,

1:51:41 but always nicer to have a personal touch when possible.

1:51:44 I wonder if this is just Staley who wrote this.

1:51:46 I'm totally speculating, but And then go to the next one right here.

1:51:50 There you go.

1:51:51 Motherlode.

1:51:52 Friday, May 17th, 2019 from Chris

1:51:55 Delorimier to redacted subject Apollo/Epstein/Kushner connection.

1:52:02 Okay.

1:52:03 Have you this Chris guy,

1:52:04 Chris Delorimier Are you Are you familiar with his name?

1:52:06 No.

1:52:07 So in the Epstein files if you search the stuff that I search Mhm.

1:52:11 uh Chris Delorimier is a disgruntled he's like an engineer

1:52:16 who got ripped off with some startup or something.

1:52:19 And since then he's been emailing the SEC like like he he he has

1:52:23 these just See that big blacked out wall at the bottom of that email?

1:52:26 That's because he's writing to like the entire SEC like one by one.

1:52:30 And he's just like he basically like is is sketching out

1:52:34 massive money laundering fraud of all kinds and he's narrating it

1:52:37 like I he's one of the these people who I'm like

1:52:41 I don't know if he knows what he's talking about or not.

1:52:43 I've no reason to believe he doesn't, but like, you know, it's just Right.

1:52:46 If you read these Chris Delorimier emails,

1:52:48 they're all just like 10,000 crimes are alleged.

1:52:51 It's like, I I probably I don't know.

1:52:53 Like sure.

1:52:54 We have to do a little homework.

1:52:56 But he's an angry plugged-in guy and he's all tuned

1:53:00 into that idea that like all these people are money laundering and Yeah,

1:53:03 and Kushner's a[ __] one, man,

1:53:05 cuz he's had so much power in both administrations.

1:53:08 Not like he's pulling the strings and stuff.

1:53:10 There's some people want to believe that he's not,

1:53:12 but he's had significant power to negotiate deals,

1:53:15 especially in the Middle East.

1:53:17 And it's like you hear him talk, he's not a dummy.

1:53:20 I'll give him that.

1:53:21 Like he he's he's clearly a smart guy,

1:53:23 but came into a lot of money and as a real

1:53:27 estate guy hasn't been the most successful dude ever.

1:53:30 I mean, they had the famous building What was it?

1:53:32 666 in Manhattan or something like that.

1:53:35 Can we look that up, Deef?

1:53:37 They bought it for some outrageous sum and it

1:53:38 was worth half that like a year later.

1:53:42 Is that Is that right?

1:53:42 Yeah, 666 Fifth Avenue.

1:53:44 Interesting number on that one.

1:53:46 But now 660 Fifth Avenue.

1:53:49 It's purchased in 2007 for a record 1.8 billion.

1:53:54 Often troubled real estate dealings before a 2018 bailout.

1:53:59 It was the most expensive building purchase in New York

1:54:02 City history at the time of its acquisition by Kushner companies.

1:54:06 It's just weird.

1:54:07 Like why like you're trying to negotiate no war with Iran,

1:54:13 allegedly, and you're sending Steve Woodcock and Jared Kushner?

1:54:17 Yeah.

1:54:18 Like New York City real estate guys?

1:54:20 Yeah.

1:54:21 No, it's When we're talking about transactions and deal guys, right?

1:54:26 Like to me the whole Trump administration are deal guys.

1:54:29 Yeah.

1:54:30 Right?

1:54:30 Which means like um the opposite of a deal to me is a relationship.

1:54:34 Like a real honest like, you know, like a marriage or a you know, whatever.

1:54:38 Um So like we think of the government as like, "Oh, well,

1:54:41 these are our representatives like for America."

1:54:44 And they're thinking about America's interests.

1:54:46 And it's like I've seen no evidence of a single

1:54:49 scrap of that anywhere in any of the Trump administrations.

1:54:51 Like no, these are deal guys.

1:54:53 Yeah.

1:54:53 And there was a story um really

1:54:56 amazing book by Connie Bruck called Predators' Ball,

1:54:58 which is like the story of Milken and Drexel.

1:55:00 It's like it's great.

1:55:02 Predator You're bringing some great books up, by the way.

1:55:03 Oh, you got to read that book.

1:55:04 Connie Bruck is like a legend she's a New Yorker writer.

1:55:07 She's a legend.

1:55:08 She knows so much.

1:55:09 Uh she was in the room for a lot.

1:55:11 Like it's incredible work.

1:55:12 But um one of the themes of that book

1:55:16 is that Michael Milken had his brother work with him.

1:55:19 And his brother kept another set of books.

1:55:22 Which wasn't It wasn't like fake Drexel books.

1:55:25 It was Milken books, right?

1:55:27 It was like at the time that they're investing on behalf of Drexel,

1:55:30 they're [snorts] also investing on behalf of Milken.

1:55:32 Right.

1:55:33 And so the the his brother's books were very

1:55:37 threatening and felt off to like the other Drexel employees.

1:55:40 Cuz they're like, "Well, what are you guys doing?

1:55:42 Like I know what we're doing, but what are you doing?" And this was

1:55:45 the like And I feel like that's a hallmark.

1:55:48 This second set of books to me is a hallmark of you know, it's never good.

1:55:54 Um and that's where, you know, like Josh Kushner is mentioned there.

1:55:58 So like he's the one who's married to Karlie

1:55:59 Kloss and part owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.

1:56:02 Um Is he really?

1:56:03 I didn't know that.

1:56:04 And so it seems to me like uh family

1:56:09 is particularly good to have this like second accounting, right?

1:56:13 But basically, you know, Jared Kushner in the first administration there

1:56:16 was a New York Times article was flying to like all meet with all these people

1:56:19 on behalf of Trump in like the Middle East.

1:56:22 But Josh Kushner went around the same time and did deals.

1:56:27 Cuz like, well, that's the second set of books happening there, right?

1:56:29 It's like like Jared wants Saudi Arabia to do X,

1:56:32 Y, and Z on behalf of the taxpayers of America.

1:56:34 But then Josh is like, "Uh you know,

1:56:36 wouldn't hurt if you invested in this thing,

1:56:38 that thing, right?" And so Josh has been frequently successful in raising money.

1:56:42 And so I you know.

1:56:45 The fact that like to me a deal person would be God love them.

1:56:50 You know, people got to buy things.

1:56:51 But like the last person you would send to go

1:56:54 and represent you and me in Tehran or whatever, right?

1:56:57 Like of course not.

1:56:59 They're going to do deals cuz that's what deal people do.

1:57:01 Yes.

1:57:02 Um it's like the scorpion and the frog or whatever, right?

1:57:04 Like they're going to the the beneficiary

1:57:06 of the deal is going to be this guy, right?

1:57:08 It's like, "Well, we need someone who's trying

1:57:10 to benefit the hundreds of millions of Americans,

1:57:13 right?" It's like we don't we don't have that.

1:57:14 I think what you're pointing out on a bigger scale is

1:57:17 something that I just think is is the way it is now.

1:57:20 And that is in most cases every accusation is a projection.

1:57:25 You know, when you look at these two parties, the Democrats and Republicans,

1:57:29 they each have their different weak points of like things

1:57:32 that they do wrong or things that it's like objectively like,

1:57:34 "What the[ __] was that?" But the style with which they do it,

1:57:37 the swampy kind of style, is the same.

1:57:40 Yeah.

1:57:40 And that's what's really like removing the politics and everything from it.

1:57:44 That's what's been really disappointing about Trump,

1:57:48 particularly in his second term.

1:57:50 It's like this is the outsider.