Inside the New Epstein Files: What the Unredacted Names Reveal About America’s Ruling Class”

Hi, this is Robert Shear and uh with another edition of Sheer Intelligence uh uh runs on SharePost and Apple, Spotify, blah blah blah, it's all there. And but I'm thrilled to be doing here number two. in my weekly discussion about the Epstein affair with the I think the the sharpest observer of the whole thing, Nolan Higdon, Professor Nolan Higdon, Doctor Nolan Higdon, teaches at UC Santa Cruz.

Uh has a great website. He does the Gaslight Gazette. You can check him out. We'll promote it a few times during this discussion. But the reason we're getting together and w every Wednesday morning to talk about and he's being very generous with his time is the devil is in the detail. And the details keep piling on as more stuff gets redacted, but then other stuff gets sealed. I'm not gonna go on and on. Some people think that

They criticized me last time for interrupting. Uh so I'm I'm really gonna try to restrain my self and uh where are we now in the Epstein file? Uh well it's really interesting we chose to do this on uh Wednesday'cause just in the last twenty four hours, uh there's been a lot of blockbuster news.

Um I think when I was on the show last time I mentioned that Uh there's a couple of documents that were redacted that indicated there were uh at least the FBI thought there were ten co conspirators with Epstein and then uh Glene Maxwell had claimed there were actually at least twenty five co conspirators who she claimed got uh deals from the federal government.

Um Thomas Massey and Rokana really did some work to pressure the DOJ to release some of those names and we were able to get eight names uh released in the last twenty four hours. of who the government's investigation thought were co conspirators. Um, some were not that revelatory, like um Les Wexner, for example.

who uh oversaw the Victoria Secret Empire. Uh he's long been associated with Epstein. He gave Epstein millions of dollars. He also gave Epstein the Manhattan residence uh where a lot of these crimes took place. Um, another co conspirator was Jean-Luc Brunel, who um actually has a very kind of similar story to Epstein. He was uh involved in beauty pageants, accused of sex trafficking, and died of uh what was ruled a suicide in jail.

Um, the other co-conspirators were Glene Maxwell, who that's well known, she was um convicted for being part of Epstein's uh sex trafficking operation. Um and then Leslie Goff, who was Epstein's longtime um secretary. The kind of um biggest like I said, a lot of those folks were known or suspected, but another name that be the DOJ underedacted was Sultan Ahmed bin Salam and this is an Emirati billionaire and CEO of DP World.

Um, we now know that he sent some very interesting emails. One in September of twenty fifteen to Epstein. uh where he wrote, quote, She got engaged, but now she back with me. Uh the best sex I ever had, amazing body. And in another one, he apparently sent a video to Epstein that Epstein responded, Quote, I love the torture video. Um so those names were were unredacted.

Now, as I said, there are many other redacted names. Um what happened is basically Congress can go in and see some of the non-redacted documents, but they can't take photos. Uh all they can do is basically take notes. And they threatened to read the names on congressional floor if more weren't released and uh not they didn't even wait twenty four hours. Rokano went down and named four others. um who were uh Nokola Capetu, Salvadore, Nuara, Zerob, Mikliades, and Lenick Lenoff.

And um those are the names we have at least that the federal government at one point or another thought were co-conspirators. And now folks are trying to learn all they can about these individuals.

So b but in all of this stuff, uh w what we're learning is there's almost a ruling class Of the corrupt. But they're in the rule uh but the notion of the ruling class is pr is is bipartisan certainly. A lot of Democrats were but unfortunately it includes people n not uh some from the f right. who consider themselves principal right wingers and pro so presumably have some puritanical values and so forth. But uh shockingly, I know in ShearPost we ran Chris Hedge's

column on on Noam Chomsky. It's it's sad, but it it is deeply concerning. What in the world, you know, and could could the person that so many of us revere been thinking when he when you keep attacking ruling class culture through your whole life and now you descend into the pit of its of its ugliness. uh exploitation and the crass of way. I mean, I don't know, did you have you looked into that at all? Yeah, I looked heavily into Chomsky, you know uh even so yeah.

Epstein is connected to a lot of different sectors of power. Um the financial sector, intelligence community, political class, uh, legal profession, and academia. But even in academia, Chomsky stands out and this is why. It it seems like a lot of academics came into contact with Epstein largely because they needed funding for like research they were doing. And that's sort of how he got into their lives. And then from there developed a relationship with them.

It it's not really clear that at the point in Ep S in uh Chomsky's career when he came into contact with Epstein that he was looking for any funding for research. Uh Chomsky was mostly kind of on his way out of academia. Um, but the the files reveal that he certainly uh served a lot of purposes for Epstein. Epstein asked Chomsky for advice on how to.

uh resuscitate his public image following the sex crime charges and Chomsky, you know, being an expert in studying and a scholar of media, uh gave him advice. Um but it wasn't just that sort of professional advantage. It was say nothing, conceal it it was Nixonian advice, wasn't it? It wasn't tell the truth or what is the truth or questioning him or show uh you know, integrity.

It it was the exact same. I mean, that's what struck me and uh I thought Hedges really nailed it, but what struck me And and and that was the the very thing that Chomsky is m important for intellectually, exposing manipulation of truth by people of power. He actually told Epstein to do that, to get the right PR person and manipulate uh concealing, right? Manufacture consent Manufacture consent for Epstein. Isn't that what Noam Chomsky

Told told him? Essentially it and it gets even worse than that because Chomsky s before he even gives the advice in the email exchange. basically kind of talks about Epstein like he's a victim, like this is a witch hunt against Epstein. Um Chomsky seems uh very defensive over Epstein's reputation and in subsequent emails

Chomsky talks about how excited he is to go to uh the Caribbean with Epstein. Uh so this isn't just someone again he works with. This is someone he's excited to to spend time with. This is much different than how Chomsky described his relationship with Epstein a few years ago where he said we had one meeting about estate planning after his um previous wife died. That's total BS, uh, clearly from the the emails and communication exchanges we found.

His his wife, his current wife, who Chomsky's had I guess a stroke. a few years ago and and so but his current wife res responded and uh you know, and and uh Hedges took her to task, but she's actually responded further.

trying to defend all this is somehow and yet in the files she is quoted as saying or supposed to be saying she would like to go to the island. Why in the world I mean, uh if they know what goes on at the island How how do you uh uh I don't know, it it just uh I mean that that's where we get into to speculation and this becomes another issue with the the so called files is um

There's still three million more we don't have. There's tons of redactions. Uh there there's tons of other financial files on top of that. There's Epstein Estate files on top of that we don't have. So we can only really kind of speculate what Chomsky wanted to do or did do, if anything, on that island.

Well let me just take the question of you mentioned the academic community. that he was involved in and yet, you know, was that they just wanted contracts or well, that'd be deplorable, but of course you go to a lot of bad people to get funding for your legitimate research. That's what the name of the game is. After all, the Nobel Prize is uh named after an arms merchant, right?

So, you know, we look the other way when rich people, Carnegie or anyone else, can give money. But, you know, I look at that list It was at the center of American education and Harvard MIT, right there at the heart of it. And I think like I I think I mentioned this the first time we talked uh Henry Rosovsky, who was one of his you know, was the dean of Harvard, one of his skeletons I think he died a few years ago, but he had been the economics department chairman when I was at Berkeley.

you know, a highly revered person and I I I respected him enormously. Uh you uh someone I don't respect is Lauren Summers, though, was the head of Harvard and he certainly facilitated a lot of what Epstein and it wasn't just over specific contracts. He went to'em for personal advice and you know, and uh guidance in his love life.

and what have you. So l let's talk a little bit about the academic world because I don't think we should give them a pass like they're starving intellectuals or artists. The starving artist needs a grant. These are people that embrace the lifestyle. And certainly Dershowitz and another Harvard big name, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, yeah. Uh to to be clear, I I think um the opportunity to get funding for research was sort of his way in the door with these folks.

But it went dramatically beyond that um in in the subsequent years. Um Epstein, you know, he he would do favors for them sometimes, like um, you know, some of these folks There was like a psychology professor who was accused of um sex crimes on campus. He would try and help him uh manage his public image. Uh or Kenneth Starr got busted as a chancellor at uh Baylor University.

uh for not taking sex crimes on campus seriously. So Epstein would would work with him Um but there's also another really kind of um deranged part of this and you know the Chomsky's in some of these emails as well. where Epstein seemed to be a big believer in eugenics. He he was interested in this idea of gene editing.

Um, this was also connected to some plan he had about like this DNA farm he wanted to create in his New Mexico residence, which hasn't gotten a lot of media attention. Um, but in the emails, you know, he's uh openly, you know, talking about ways in which he thinks that through gene editing, you know, they can quote make black people smarter

um uh how we can um you know change change human characteristics through this DNA editing. He also uh seems to really believe that blonde hair blue eyes are a sign of like the um most uh uh what's the word? Like elite or supremacist genes, um, in his estimation.

And again, Chomsky's in like some of these conversations. Chomsky's not backing up that theory, but he's talking to a person who's just, you know, essentially saying like a nineteenth century eugenics argument uh to him via email, um, as are others. And um, you know, what ex uh what extent that is with like his other connections? Like where's he you know, we just still don't know where Epstein got his money. How is he getting the money to kind of finance this relationship with these academics or

propose this research or the New Mexico farm. Um, how does this connect to his relationships with folks in big tech, which have always had a close relationship um with academia as well. So I think a lot of those questions really come out of academia. And I think that's why you're right to point out that it it's not just about like the poor academic, it it's part of a a larger question and and form of connection we see in the Epstein story.

Yeah, and let's explore that a little bit because people who don't know about the eugenics movement, it it uh really is the uh godfather of na uh fascism, of Nazism. uh and the idea that uh there's a chosen people, not chosen by a higher power, but by their skill, their knowledge, their skin color by i inference. And so forth so

and uh you want more of them and you want to prevent the others from being born. Uh un unfortunately that got associated with Barbara Sanger and the birth control movement real let's aggressively do family planning so the right people meaning rich white people have more children and the rest of the people uh stop it, you know. Uh and uh China went very far in that direction unfortunately in the name of communism and now it's had to work its way back.

uh, you know, why why they embraced that notion of extreme birth control, uh, you know, but it was quite conventional wisdom. Uh, you know, oh China can't develop. I remember I was in the Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley. You can't do all too many people now. Wait, wait a minute. We need more people. And not just to exploit them in factories, but to send them to universities to learn science.

and so forth. And you have even with Lauren Summers, this whole idea when he and at Harvard, women can't learn the sciences, just get used to it. Learn something else. So I would like to explore that a little bit, you know, the uh uh uh notion that and that connects with Silicon Valley,'cause you get a lot of that out of Silicon Valley, like

Well, let's have robots. We don't need people to do the works, and we don't have to have'em around. They won't disturb our cities, right? They you know, uh and it's easier than running off to Mars, you know, that might not be good in my lifetime as a truth. So y you know, uh I'm going on a bit, but I think there's a big idea here. Epstein was attractive to these people'cause they thought he was on the right track. That's what's disturbing about the Trumps, you think.

Chomsky uh you know, I've met Chomsky, you know Inn wasn't a friend or anything. I certainly respected his work. But I found, you know, he he didn't uh just jump around, you know, say, Oh yeah, it's great to meet you and you're wonderful and everything. Not not getting personal here. But we had a kind of almost a frosty I interviewed him l uh uh late in in life and you know, the w he was

Stern and you know, maybe you don't understand this and don't understand that. So I'm that that that's fine. People can have that attitude. But then I to keep thinking, why did he get along so well with Epstein? And I think the eugenics, the idea of m merit, the smartness, other ways, aside from any corruption of money and anything else Th Epstein w was an attractive package to Bill Gates.

Right go through the names of people. You know, it's it's one thing if okay you hold your nose and you're with somebody to get the money for your research or your good project in the community, but They no, they w like this guy. They thought he was enlightened. That's what's being left out of the story. What was enlightened?

about Epstein Yeah, I think that that's a c a critically important part because and I read about this my my new piece, the Epstein class of the gaslight gazette that Uh a lot of the media narratives around Epstein were like, well, he was just this wealthy guy and he just had these connections. As you look through the files, he didn't just have these connections with wealthy people.

Um, he had very friendly relationships with them. He could do services for them and at times when he wanted things, if they wouldn't give it, he could be quite shrewd, um, demanding millions of dollars sometimes from from folks, um, like um I think there's one exchange with like Leon Black, for example, in there about about exchanging money. Um and then you've got folks like who Leon Black is Oh, a a fa famous uh investor whose uh son actually now is in the the Trump administration as well.

Um but you can like you said, there's there's Bill Gates um is friendly with him. Richard Branson is. Richard Branson encourages Epstein to come visit him. Um Branson says he can't wait to see. um Epstein's harem um when he comes to visit. Uh you know, th there's there's a lot of these these folks um all throughout Silicon Valley, all throughout the financial world, and also a lot of the the legal offices.

And this also begs questions about, you know, right now across the world we're seeing the Epstein files rock other countries that are that are going and doing investigations, like into Lord Mendelssohn, um, and the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew for insider trading via Epstein. We're not seeing that here in the United States. Um, we are not seeing investigations being launched, even though there's tons of evidence and even the the DOJ files.

indicates uh that they thought there were there were crimes being committed. And some of this stuff, I mean, is is really obvious. And in one of the exchanges, So like sometimes the the exchanges directly talk about girls. They use that word, girls getting traded or I um one email is like, you know, I had um a nice night with one of your littlest girls, she was naughty and that's from a redacted person.

But other times they order girls or women through code. So sometimes they order'em like pizzas. They say like a shiny pizza or like an ice pizza. Other times they call'em sharks or shrimp, um, when they're when they're seemingly ordering these girls. So the a lot of the information is right there in the files. Yet we haven't had

Um a serious investigation about that. Um there's a lot of indications of um financial or insider trading. We're not getting investigations into that. And it's very clear that Epstein both had close connections to intelligence and was believed to have close and connections to intelligence by very powerful people, including like the head of the Rothschild Bank.

Um, as well as folks like Steve Bannon, uh well as t uh Thomas Landon it from the New York Times. All these folks thought Epstein had like that insider intelligence knowledge, and you can see that in the emails as well. So I think there's at least plenty here to open investigations. We haven't seen that in the United States. But why are we seeing more of this and and I talk about

'Cause there's a lot of it's you know, publicity about it, a lot of names. Let's talk about the reporting. Let's talk about uh the government investigations. Um and I uh is this a case where you're part of the class? I mean even, you know, successful journalists and so forth, they get to schmooze with these people, they get the benefit and so forth, you know. Uh w uh and and I'm just wondering, uh i is it you know

too good to check or is it too intimate to your life to check? Uh but talk about what we are not getting. What are we not getting? Well one is I think and this is why I try and write these pieces at Substack, I try and put all the reporting that's out there and then I'm not sure.

Oh how do we get your pieces? Uh and and so forth. Yes. That's yeah, if you go to the Nolanhigdon.substack dot com, you can um put your email in for free. The gaslight gazette'll come right to your email every time it's published and What I've tried to do with these Epstein documents is take all the reporting um and put it in one place'cause

The news media covers a lot of these stories, but they don't give any context or connections to the other type of reporting. And so I think that's one problem is the public is struggling to to see how all these things connect together. Um another reason though, um, I think is a lot of people who are in positions of power control

whether or not these investigations take place. Um remember what I said. He had contacts in news media, he had contacts in uh law firms, he has uh contacts in government, including Donald Trump. Um some of the documents reveal that Epstein may have actually been in contact with Trump or the Trump administration through his first year in office during his first term, which is a decade later than than Trump had had previously claimed.

But to to your point about class allegiance, um, I think that's something that that's really serious that we kind of don't take as serious. So Like a lot of people in um our profession who are academics, especially people who study media, communication, journalism, you you could almost kind of see them sigh. They they were upset that they had to to admit that Chomsky uh was in these documents. Imagine if like the majority of your friend base uh was that.

Um that's all the for elites, that's all these people in the files. Those are their friends, those are their associates, those are the people they work with, they know their families, they know their children. Um, you know, in some cases they've, you know, collaborated together. So I think it's a very hard nut to crack, and I don't have a lot of faith in this administration because of its deep ties to the Trump administration, which goes beyond Donald Trump.

You know, Leon Black was connected to Epstein and his son is in the administration. Howard Lutnick is in the administration. He had um deep ties. Uh uh Secretary of the Navy Phelan also had ties to Epstein in the files as well.

So I think there's just uh this administration is far too tied to Epstein to really do anything serious. Um, it would have to take a new generation of Congress people who think this is important enough to spend a lot of their political capital on if if we hope to make any traction.

So to get to the question of why it's important, because one way you can as as Chomsky Still can't get over it. The the words catch in my throat. That Chomsky advised Epstein to ignore it, it'll blow over, you know just uh uh don't exce concede anything. Tell us why you and I you more so'cause you're leading this whole fight. I'm just trying to get what you know.

why you think it's so important, why it shouldn't go away, and why, by the way, the whole world has to be involved. And I I guess the one question I put to you quite forthrightly, i is this um an important or maybe even the most important face. of American democratic capitalism at this stage of world history. Because after all when we talk about the decline of Rome or we talk about what happened in France in this period or that, you always look what is the dominant culture?

And if it's a dominant culture of male supremacy, of eugenics ruling out others, if it's uh, you know, wealth can gives you license to do anything. you know, if lying and deceit and blackmailing, is this the key or or an important key to understanding what American civilization is about, uh, on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

'Cause it's a historic moment. This has been going on for two hundred and fifty years. There are great claims made for it in terms of human freedom, the way to govern, the way to be responsible, the way to control power. Separation of powers and so forth, and do we now find that we are in one of the most decadent, corrupting atmospheres that any society has ever created?

I I think th I think there's a lot there, and I guess I would sort of position it th this way, that you know, in in the academic sense we talk about the kind of late seventies up through the present is the the so-called neoliberal era, and and some folks have called it the second Gilded Age. And and I think that's a fair assessment. It it's an era marred by massive inequality, uh runaway destructive capitalism, uh declining power of a government of by for the people and democracy.

These documents help us understand who was behind that transformation and who managed that era. Epstein is not the entire story, but Epstein's contacts are a major part of the story, and because he's central to um, their culture, their communication. The documents reveal a lot about what we now know about how depraved a lot of these folks are. Um, you know, the way in which they see

Um, you know, humans, uh, particularly young girls and women, as traffic just to be traded. Um, the way they see the working class, there's there's a line in there. I forget who uh says this, but he essentially comments to Epstein about how Um, you know, he talked about the artist Jay Z and basically how people are home watching sports and listening to Jay Z andstead of being out in the streets being angry at the rich.

Um, you know, we've co-opted them off the streets and got them into their homes where they enjoy like capitalist entertainment instead of protest. Um, there's a real disparaging of working people, women, people of color, all throughout these documents.

And uh a lot the the part for me that I find kind of the biggest kicker is these were the people who sort of ran the cultural vanguard. They were the first ones to wag their finger at, you know, working people or working class movements to say, you're like racist, you're sexist, you just don't understand.

Now we look behind the scenes, these folks were the ones perpetuating a lot of the racism and sexism, and they were kind of virtue signaling uh to conceal that. And I think that becomes very clear throughout the documents. Um, to your question about where it says America is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, yeah, I think it's it's a it's a dark picture. Um, what the second gilded age really represents.

is the United States and its people being uh bamboozled into believing that government was the problem and free market capitalism would deliver uh, you know, the things that Marxism could only promise. Fifty or so years later, uh, we've seen that really what it's done is engendered a powerful class of depraved individuals committing what would be criminal acts, but they're excused due to the the powers that be.

And it's left really the the country and a lot of its people in in terrible shape as we hit the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.

Well to wrap up this second segment, I hope we can keep doing this as you keep pouring through these documents. I think this is a very big idea, and I think the figure of Lawrence Summers looms large in this idea because first of all Epstein is a product of Wall Street. стев'я. And it's I'm sure he and Summers didn't just talk about how he can manage Summers' personal life or service Summers needs. But Lawrence Summers is probably um not probably I would argue The clearest architects.

of the end of any accountability of Wall Street, the Financial Services Modernization Act, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, these Two pieces of legislation that Summers was absolutely critical and became Treasury Secretary and and the uh Clinton administration. This is what unleashed.

And you have good movies made about it show the drugs and the sex on Wall Street, right? The decadence of that life. You know, these people were quite often stoned and out of their mind. But what they constructed were financial devices, uh liars loans, uh you know, and uh backed by phony credit default swaps and everything else. that permitted this enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of these people who turn out to be loud. And are using this money in the most decadent, corrupt.

you know, uh, way of of a of a d of a dying em empire. I I I just wonder whether that isn't really The big takeaway here. uh that they this has all got financed because money no really no longer matters. It wasn't because you were

better at making these different products and more effective in selling. First of all, when you were, it was because you were guaranteed a monopoly or cartel position. We did away with Adam Smith's notion of of the invisible hand. But in the main What it what it really do it had to be financed. And it was financed by laws of

That permitted this incredible corruption. As a result, you mentioned black people, brown people, black People college graduate black people uh lost sixty percent of their wealth, not their income. wealth, everything that they manage, uh brown people I think you know, it was closer to seventy percent. This is a Federal Reserve of of Saint Louis. Uh brown people lost sixty percent. So the people hit hard. by the whole housing meltdown, the financial scams, right? Wall Street mania with were

The the people that are now being despised by the elite that says we don't need'em anymore. We'll go for AI and robots. Uh so l m why don't you take a little time to spell that out? Because you have actually this time defined the beginning of I think a very big theory. And and what you've said about the second gilded age. And and maybe I mean this is really something we should explore going forward, but why don't we end with your giving as full an explanation as you can of that?

Yeah, I would I would agree. And next time we should talk a little bit about kind of the the origins of Epstein and his connections to to Maxwell and the intelligence community'cause I think it helps launch this this story we're we're talking about here. But To your to your point about me just to stop you there, I don't care about time. We can go longer. So do the first thing I asked and then let's at least

Set that up for the next time. Okay. Okay. Um yeah, I think uh we the these ideas we are c we're clearly ruminating about how to get them um, into policy where the financial elite would be able to to maximize their wealth, take more for themselves and less for everyone else.

But you you needed a a network. It couldn't be one politician. Um, it had to be uh somewhat of a movement. And I I agree with you. I think Larry Summers plays a critical role in there. Um, because let's not forget that a lot of these um folks in the neoliberal era They had strong faith in elite institutions and elite academics, and Summers was considered that um because of his association with Harvard and elsewhere. Of course, Bill Clinton, the Rhodes Scholar, um was a part of that as well.

And um they listen to folks in that network, folks from Harvard. Well, that's where like the Dershowitz are, um, and these folks connected to uh Epstein all throughout the documents. So it it becomes almost this really like small club um that that creates this these ideas where they germinate. And then it's really comes to selling them to the American public. And I think that's where the media element comes in.

Um the folks in media often come from these same elite institutions. Uh you can see, you know, Epstein also developing relationships with them to kinda sell these ideas to the American public and You brought up the housing crisis. That was kind of the the coming to fruition of how this economic system was was failing. Even folks at the time like former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan

Admitted um that the the way the market had been designed um had bugs in it. If you recall back in like 2009, 2010, he was saying that. But You know, um Barack Obama kind of came in as a salesman, um, really shifting the story. He had a lot of Populist rhetoric uh that seemed to indicate he was gonna deal with um the financial issues, but in practice Really didn't. Um he packed his cabinet with a lot of these same people from the Clinton era.

tried a couple of years of of spending, but most of that money went to big business and industry, whether it be like the airlines or the auto industry or the financial sector. Well working people didn't get bailed out.

And that rage, of course, was picked up by the Trump administration, um, into this this populist anger where Trump even though he was a billionaire, positioned himself who was gonna be like the rocket that the working class wanted to go after the establishment, and of course, uh maintained his commitment to the establishment as well. But at least Trump had to build hotels or something. I don't know. You know, right? Take over a failing hotel on forty second street and make it come to life.

These guys manufactured money. That's the whole thing about the Wall Street ending glass Steagle. separating the private investment banks, you know, that could be pirates, but they would be re using their own money from publicly accountable institutions that had to be bailed out. That's right. Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street.

their life savings, their wealth, their family wealth. And and he said, No, but we're gonna bail out, you know, AIG, we're gonna bail which had phony insurance policies that were supposed to be banking this crap there. still around. You know, they got uh uh uh Goldman Sachs was allowed to become a a public bank, you know, instead of a private investment and uh available for this money to be bailed out.

And and th that I mean, I wanna connect the decadence of the fall of Rome with the s you know, uh that story with what these guys did to damage capitalism. I mean capitalism, you know, you you you you think of uh Uh general lectures, for instance, was once a very good capitalist country. It became GE capital and everything, you know, doing mostly banking and not forgetting about making better light bulbs, you know, uh uh better progress through industry. So these guys contrived a fake economy.

Right, with with the deregulation of Wall Street things p they said and afterwards Warren Buffett who very clearly said these are financial mean weapons of mass destruction. You have destroy you are destroying the world economy and s now it's still paying an enormous price for this.

So the decadence again I would remind people of the Wall Wall Street of the Wolf of Wall Street, all the movies that were made, Oliver Stone's uh excellent movie and so forth, all the the use of drugs, the use of sex. That was built into it. The the cultural Hollywood critics or artists got it right about that. The decadence was necessary to the gaming of Wall Street.

And and the decadence then carries over into this whole thing. They are part one and uh and the same. Yeah, and it it's important to remember too, a lot of these folks are coming out of the sexual revolution, but rather than take it as a form of liberation, it's a form of like hedonistic behavior, like you're describing. Um, that that full on decadence.

And it is it is built into the system and that's where the the government angle comes in, like the deregulation you talked about, um, with the Commodities Futures Trading Act or the the removal of Glass Steagall.

Um the financial sector became the economy. Um increasingly when the financial sector went up, the you know, macro worth of the economy went up. So people would say the economy was doing well, even if you looked at it at the micro scale, the average working person was doing worse every year, you know, since the late nineteen seventies, essentially.

Um, and that has continued to the present. I mean, our our biggest growth in the economy right now is AI speculation, which looks like it's about to collapse. gambling, which, you know, is is not gonna is not a long term plan. Um, and even things like the internet and AI

They always give you this list of like the top websites. Those are all lies. The top things that generate on the internet are sex and pornography. That's what's driving internet traffic as well. So it's it's a whole economy built on kind of the hedonistic speculation that you're talking about there as we sit to this very day. For all of Rome. And you know, the sad thing is, you don't you mentioned the sexual revolution. Obviously we don't wanna go on a you know, do what you know

has been done in China and Russia. Putin now the the non communists or the anti commun you know, he's re embracing the Russian Orthodox Church. But also under communism, uh Russia and China uh under communism have been uh quite controlling of sex and personal behavior. And one would like to think there's an area of human freedom that is healthy somewhere in between the these two models.

But the the w I w I would say for in the eyes of the world now, what the Epstein file represents is is a compelling picture of the corruption of capitalism. You know, I mean I I can't think of any w the way you got into the club is having enormous amounts of money that you only got because the game was rigged, including the whole internet economy after all.

under Bill Clinton, they made the decision not to use antitrust against companies like Google and others emerging in this industry. Yeah, and that's an interesting part about the um emails as well. So Uh, the other excuse that like folks in media give is that like, well, Epstein was just a smart investor. There's no tips in any of the emails, but he's getting millions of dollars for like financial services.

And this is what a lot of people think is insider trading. Like if we get more of these documents or if we unredact more of these documents. probably what we're gonna see is insider trading because again the guy is treated like he has inside knowledge, like he knows things ahead of time of like when people are gonna get indicted, for example, or um he's trying to work with like um different countries

and people in the financial sector of how to get frozen assets out of Libya. I mean, those are all kinds of like government um uh intelligence connections that Epstein seems to have and people are paying him big dollars for that kind of knowledge and there's nothing in there where he's just like a genius at picking like the right stock or the right investment portfolio. Yet he's getting millions of dollars from these very wealthy people.

And that's what the investigation in the United Kingdom is doing right now to look at the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew. And that investigation may un if where the US fails, that investigation may actually uh reveal some of the things uh that folks want to know in per in particular about the insider training allegations against Epstein and his associates. Well, that's why we're doing this because uh we we know there's a there there.

And we know very powerful people in all those worlds, academia, the business world, uh traditional journalism that remains of it, although they buy it up so fast there is no traditional journalists and they own everything. They own the universities too, of course. Uh so we'll stay on it. Uh we'll we'll do this next Wednesday and uh you know it's um in terms of

Providing knowledge is a gift that won't stop giving because it you know, uh the reason things are redacted is that there are things you need to know, the public needs to know, but powerful people don't want you to know. That's why you need whistleblowers. And that's why you need transparency and so forth. It's it was built into the fibric of our constitution, but of course

easily forgotten that obligation of accountability. Thank you and uh Nolan Hingdon. Uh uh and and people will give me the site again'cause I want people to go and see your work in in its own um basis. We we print everything we can on SurePost, but I mean that's very kind of you, but still let's go to the original source. Yeah, go to nolanhigdon.substack dot com and you can subscribe there, get it right to your email. It's for free. Um subscribe at nolanhigdon.com or nolenhigdon.com.

It's the Gaslight Gazette. And you can also tune into my disinfo detox podcast where I break down some of this stuff as well. And it's help me here now, Nolan. Uh uh N-O-L-A-N, I make that mistake, I'm gonna H I G D O N. Yeah at Substack. I I myself in my effort to follow your work keep blowing that. N O L A N H I G D O N. But then again, I'm an old guy who makes those mistakes. See you guys next week.