If Epstein Were Murdered In His Cell, Who Would Benefit?

Last week's plea deal for the jail guards who were asleep while Epstein hanged himself in his cell has revived interest in whether he was murdered or a suicide. I've already weighed in, it was suicide. But if it was a hit, it would be a potentially explosive development, a scandal with wide-ranging repercussions. What would be the benefit of a move with such a huge downside risk? More than a few people wouls have to be involved, and the chances they'd all keep quiet would be slim.

So let's say the initiative for such a conspiracy came from someone with so much to lose that the downside if the conspiracy came to light would be less than the downside if some much bigger secret came out -- a secret that only Epstein could know about, and so big that he had to be eliminated to keep it. So who might that person be, and what might the secret be?

The best we know of Epstein's scam from the mid-1990s until his 2008 guilty plea was that he ran a blackmail operation that laundered payments through philanthropic fronts. The best guess we have about his marks, from his known associates and the flight manifests of the Lolita Express, is that they were mostly corporate B-listers and fading celebrities, figures like Les Wexner, Jes Staley, and Kevin Spacey. The philanthropic fronts were things like the Clinton Foundation and projects at Harvard and MIT. The best-known passengers on the Lolita Express were Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton.

Andrew is a royal also-ran with no especially good reputation pre Epstein, while as best we can tell, Clinton associated with Epstein after he'd left office -- but given Monica Lewinsky, who cares if he fooled around with Epstein while he was still president? So it seems to me that neither of the two most powerful and prominent men in Epstein's circle had so much to lose that they'd risk more to put out a hit on the guy.

Donald Trump is said to have consorted with Epstein in the 1990s, but so far, there have been no credible allegatons that he had something to hide that was so egregious that he'd put out a hit -- and after Stormy Daniels, who cares? Even if Trump as president had the wherewithal to set up such a hit through the federal prison system, some number of people would have to be involved, and given the number of deep staters who'd make scandals up to hurt him, any attempt on Trump's part actually to set up a murder would bring whistelblowers out of the woodwork instantly.

Leaving aside the allegations of sex with underage girls that surround Epstein and his circle, the biggest secrets otherwise would be blackmail payments laundered through philanthropic fronts. While this could potentially mean money laundering charges and tax issues, non-profits like the Clinton Foundation, Harvard, and MIT have so far been protected from investigation and are likely to remain so. No need to whack Epstein to keep things quiet on that front.

In addition, secrets have time value. Businessmen retire, politicians leave office, and everyone passes away. Memories fade. The public grows jaded. One more grope? One more affair? And 20 years ago? Epstein's activities appear to have been restricted after his 2008 guilty plea. He could no longer afford to fly the Lolita Express, Ghislaine cashed out, and people were more reluctant to deal with him. By the time of his 2019 death, his juiciest sercrets were likely at least 11 years old and losing value by the day.

This would also apply to the theory that Epstein was some type of spy, either for the Mossad or the CIA. Those secrets have time value, too. And successful spies keep a low profile, which Epstein never did. One of the biggest ways spies get caught is by conspicuous spending. If anything, Epstein was a cheesy con artist. He might have convinced his marks he was a spy, but I don't think he ever was part of a serious intelligence network.

I just don't think there was enough benefit to anyone to have Epstein murdered in his cell, vis-a-vis the downside of having the conspiracy to do this come to light. This doesn't rule out a murder by a freelance lone prisoner who would do it for the sake of his reputation among other prisoners, but the appeal of an Epstein-was-murdered theory is that it involves a conspiracy by powerful people to keep secrets.

I just don't see that. By 2019, Epstein was old business, which is why they were finally able to arrest him.

The Amazon Nooses And The Folk Devil

I've been saying all along that we've been in a moral panic, and I think it's just about run its course. That doesn't mean we won't continue to see local outbreaks of one sort or another, but I think the country in general is George Floyded out. A current late-phase local outbreak stems from an old, pre-panic device, the noose, or as some accounts now put it, the "apparent noose". These have kept popping up over the past several decades, but they're all almost immediately discredited as hoaxes or misunderstandings.

This latest noose brouhaha is at an Amazon construction site in Windsor, CT. According to the New York Post,

Amazon halted construction at a facility in Windsor, Connecticut for the second time in as many weeks on Wednesday — after an apparent noose was found in the building for the eighth time in recent weeks.

Workers found a red rope “with a noose tied at the end” entangled in yellow electrical cables on the 5th floor of the planned fulfillment center, Windsor Police Chief Donald Melanson said at a press conference.

. . . Investigators believe the rope found Wednesday had been there for at least two weeks, since that area of the site hadn’t been worked on for that period of time.

“This one was clearly a noose,” Melanson told reporters, calling the act “unacceptable” and “a hate crime.”

Police evacuated the facility and called in the FBI, which is also investigating.

Melanson said “in all likelihood, it’s a worker” who is responsible.

The police evacuate a facility because someone finds a two-week-old knotted rope? They used to evacuate facilities for suspected anthrax powder, which always turned out to be hysteria. but at least if the powder was actually anthrax, it would justify evacuating a facility. When I was in grad school, students would call in bomb threats on the day of exams to get the classrooms evacuated, but that was only until the dean figured out that was why they were doing it and just stopped evacuating the buildings. Nobody got blown up.

Somebody needs to say get over it. The Windsor police chief is naturally terrified that if he doesn't evacuate the building and call in the FBI while denouncing the hate crime, the local race hustlers will get him fired.

But every moral panic has a folk devil. Chief Melanson identifies him: in all likelihood, it’s a worker. One of those neanderthal construction workers, of all people, and we know about those, don't we. Probably goes to Klan meetings after work. But by extension, this must clearly be a member of the plebs at large, some of whom are known to work construction.

People are getting tired of being gratuitously insulted. This is becoming manifest in numerous ways, and the smart money is beginning to bet that one way will be in the 2022 elections.

Doesn't the FBI have profilers? Those guys who look at patterns of criminal activity and decide the likely perp is between 25 and 35, male, unemployed, lives with his mother? What do you think an FBI profiler would actually come up with as a likely suspect who surreptitiously left a noose? Doesn't it almost always turn out to be the person who discovered the noose was the one who tied it in the first place? But even if it wasn't, how much money and time will the FBI spend chasing after some guy who tied a knot and left it tangled in some electrical cord?

What's the charge? What's the penalty?

At some point we'll inevitably get over it.

The Morning After Phase Is Well Under Way

One of the first academic postmortems onthe COVID response indicates that masking was ineffective:

The first ecological study of mask mandates in U.S. states released by the University of Louisville finds mask mandates were not effective at slowing the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19), meaning they did not work. The results challenge the prevailing wisdom of pandemic policy that continues to dominate corporate media narrative and policy-makers.

Damian D. Guerra (Biology at University of Louisville) and Daniel J. Guerra (Biochemistry at VerEvMed, Clarkston) hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use would be “associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates” in the U.S. However, after calculating total COVID-19 case growth and mask use, the authors of the study entitled “Mask mandate and use efficacy in state-level COVID-19 containment” stated “case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states at low or high transmission rates, and surges were equivocal.”

“Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID-19 growth surges,” the study concluded. “Containment requires future research and implementation of existing efficacious strategies.”

As a lowly English major, I didn't need a degree in biology to tell me this was the case. All I needed was to google the statistics. At right is the US COVID curve as of this morning. Mask mandates were imposed in most US states in March 2020 and vigorously enforced by tbe most assiduous Karens, as well as by businesses in fear of losing their licenses if they dared to open in defiance of edicts. However, the other ingredient was that states varied in the severity of their mandates, giving the opportunity for statistical comparison on the efficacy of restrictions at different levels.

But the common-sense interpretation of the curve we see here is that no set of restrictions at any practicable level (people need to eat, after all, you can lock down only so far) stopped the late 2020 surge, even though the only measures available had been in force with extensive compliance for many months prior to the surge. The states with the strictest controls in fact had consistently worse results than states with fewer or no restrictions. In addition, by imposing the strictest lockdowns at the start of the crisis, authorities had exhausted their repertory of remedies as the pandemic progressed.

In addition, although Los Angeles County began aggressively vaccinating the most vulnerable population in mid December 2020, the curve there peaked and began a rapid descent in mid January 2021 -- but nobody could be "fully vaccinated", that is two weeks after the second shot, which had to be administered at least four weeks after the first shot -- until late January 2021 at minimum. This suggests that natural immunity played a major role in defeating the pandemic.

The normal definition of herd immunity says that it's a combination of vaccination and the natural immunity of those who've contracted the disease and recovered. Since the case mortality rate was normally 2% or less, 98% of those who contracted COVID recovered and became immune. Los Angeles County's estimate is that by spring 2021, this was about 20% of the population, but this is just among those who were tested. Those who had caught the disease but were asymptomatic would be the least likely to test, so the actual number is likely higher.

Masking and social distancing at best slowed transmission among a population at large that could benefit from the great majority who would contract the disease and become immune, often after mild or no symptoms. Instead, public health authorities spread panic and encouraged measures that were at best superstitious.

I think this is shaping up to be a public policy blunder, led by credentialed Ivy League elites, comparable to the Viet Nam war. The plebs has overwhelmingly responded to the situation with prudence, temperance, and fortitude. This doesn't exempt the authorites who perpetuated this blunder from eventual accountability.

The Moral Panic Continues To Abate

All Right Thinking Opinion has suddednly done a complete 180:

Facebook said Wednesday it would no longer ban posts suggesting COVID-19 is man-made amid mounting calls from President Biden and other officials for further investigation into the pandemic’s origins.

The announcement marked a reversal for the social media giant. In February, Facebook said it would remove posts claiming the virus was man-made or manufactured "following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization" who had "debunked" the claim.

Meanwhile,

A professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has said that there is a general dismissal of the fact that more than half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to the coronavirus and that it constitutes “one of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership.”

Dr. Marty Makary made the comments during a recent interview, noting that “natural immunity works” and it is wrong to vilify those who don’t want the vaccine because they have already recovered from the virus.

Makary criticised “the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history” for not clearly communicating the scientific facts about natural immunity compared to the kind of immunity developed through vaccines.

Even s few months ago, doctors who made public statements outside the received narrative risked professional repercussions, including loss of license. But the high water mark of the panic has clearly fallen short of vaccine passports.

Even Michigan Gov Whitmer, one of the most vocal moral entrepreneurs in the panic, was forced to relax a few of her COVID restrictions when a photo showed her violating them herself:

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration on Monday rescinded a rule that limits restaurant tables to no more than six people, a day after she apologized for ignoring the COVID-19 regulation while gathering with friends at an East Lansing bar.

The Democratic governor has said tables at the Landshark Bar & Grill were pushed together as more people arrived in her party of roughly a dozen fully vaccinated people.

A revised gatherings and face mask order, issued by the state health department, no longer includes the six-patrons-per-table provision, effective June 1. Whitmer had announced last week the planned easing of capacity restrictions on June 1 but had not specified if other changes would be coming in the new order, which was released as expected Monday.

Vaccines continue to be more effective than had been predicted. As of Tuesday, half the US population is "fully vaccinated", COVID statistics continue to drop, and states continue to eliminate all or most restrictions. California will drop nearly all mask and social distance restrictions on June 15, a little over two weedks away.

This amounts to a major readjustment in public attitudes. I think it's becoming more clear that, as public assent in the form of face masks to a particular set of moral panic assumptions disappears, questions about the performance of elites in the crisis will become acceptable. For instance,

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) introduced the Fauci Incompetence Requires Early Dismissal Act around the same time, saying in a statement, “Dr. Fauci represents everything that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address: the scientific-technical elite steering the country toward their own ends.”

The final phase of a moral panic is the morning after.

The Dershowitz Dilemma

Alan Dershowitz's stock as a talking head has been tanking over thed past several years. Its downturn really started when he publishsd a book against impeaching Trump in 2018, at which time he complained

“But that is not good enough for some of my old friends on Martha’s Vineyard,” he wrote. “For them, it is enough that what I have said about the Constitution might help Trump. So they are shunning me and trying to ban me from their social life on Martha’s Vineyard.”

This fairly unremarkable claim ended up spurring a remarkable four New York Times articles with contributions from eight reporters[.]

In the wake of Jeffrey Epstein's 2020 jailhouse death, the run on Dershowitz stock intensified. Via Page Six,

Dershowitz — who in the past has been regarded as a close associate of Epstein — has distanced himself from the convicted sex offender.

“I haven’t seen him in years,” he told us. “We never had a friendship. I have no personal feelings. He was a client and someone who I had academic contact with. We didn’t have a personal relationship.”

But this isn't what he told Vanity Fair. In 2003, before Epstein's 2008 first case, Dershowitz told Vanity Fair:

In the Vanity Fair piece, Dershowitz told the magazine, "I'm on my 20th book. . . The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey."

Contoversies over how involved Dershowitz was in Epstein's sex trafficking have persisted since the 2014-5 lawsuits by Epstein victims. According to Wikipedia,

In a December 30, 2014 Florida court filing, Virginia Giuffre alleged she was sexually trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, who lent her to people for sex, including Dershowitz and Prince Andrew.

. . . Giuffre filed a defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz, in April 2019, alleging he made "false and malicious defamatory statements" against her, such as accusing her of perjury. The lawsuit sought punitive damages and included the previous claims that Giuffre was sex trafficked to Dershowitz by Epstein. Dershowitz stated that he would "prove without any doubt that she is lying about me. She is going to end up in prison." In June 2019, he filed a motion to dismiss Giuffre's suit (which was later denied) and a motion to disqualify David Boies' firm from representing her (which was later approved). Dershowitz accused Boies of pressuring Giuffre to provide false testimony, in response to which Boies sued Dershowitz in November 2019 for defamation. Giuffre repeated her allegations on camera as part of the May 2020 Netflix series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, by stating that Epstein had trafficked her to Dershowitz for sex at least six times. Dershowitz responded by saying he planned to sue Netflix and repeated his denial of Giuffre's account; he also accused Giuffre of selling false allegations to news outlets. As of November 2020, no such lawsuit has been filed.

Dershowitz's appearances as a media talking head, especially on CNN, have greatly diminished since both the Trump and Epstein controversies. Apparedntly unable to stay out of the public eye, he now has his own YouTube channel, The Dershow, which maybe gives an insight into his character, but which I haven't found engaging. We can say with some assurance, though, that he's at least partly yet another victim of Epstein's downfall. Whether he was ever much of anything beyond a smart lawyer who excelled at self-promotion is an open question, but as he ages, he's slowly trailing into obscurity.

If you lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas.

Ghislaine Maxwell Cashed Out Years Ago

Several data points in the Ghislaine Maxwell saga have been ignored by nearly all media, US, UK, left, right, and center. This is probably because the whole story is mainly tabloid clickbait to the professionals, while what it says about our elites is better left unmentioned.

Maxwell's entry in Wikipedia is written mostly in UK English, and it does reflect a greater interest among UK tabloids at least to get the details right than in the US. Among the first neglected data points is this:

Following her personal and professional involvement with Epstein, Maxwell was romantically linked for several years to Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway computers. She attended the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010 as Waitt's guest. Maxwell helped Waitt obtain and renovate a luxury yacht, the Plan B, and used it for travel to France and Croatia before their relationship ended, in late 2010 or early 2011.

So given this timing, Maxwell appears to have distanced herself from Epstein somewhere around the time of Epstein's indictment and guilty plea in 2007-2008. Prior to that time, it's generally acknowledged that she'd been his key enabler, recruiter of young girls, keeper of his schedule, and effectively business administrator of his various households. But at some point, this stopped. We know nothing else about this, at least for now.

Another data point we know is that the Lolita Express Boeing 727 took its final flight on July 11, 2016, deteriorating in a Georgia airport ever since, with parts being seized and removed for non-payment of storage fees.

Although the Epstein estate still has a number of aircraft that will be sold to pay victim claims, this is an indication that as of three years prior to his 2019 arrest, this part of Epstein's accustomed lifestyle had become unsustainable. (The link above says the plane was built in 1969, so Epstein would have needed to replace it in any case, something he had almost certainly become unable to afford.)

The 2010-2011 early meetings with Bill Gates are themselves an intriguing data point. At that time, Epstein openly discussed with Gates the need to rehabilitate his reputation and standing in the wake of his guilty plea. But the enabler who "dropped by" the initial meeting was Eva Dubin, not Maxwell, who may well have checked out of the frammis by that time.

Another intriguing data poimt is Epstein's reported threat to the UK Parliament to induce them to approve Jes Staley's appointment as CEO of Barclay's:

On 2nd Nov 2015, The Times reported that the Daily Mail had been leaked emails from Jeffrey Epstein to Parliament or some connected source to blackmail Parliament into accepting Jes Staley as CEO for Barclays. Subsequently in August 2019 it was reported by Bloomberg that Staley had visited Epstein in prison and also on his island, travelling to the latter on Epstein's yacht.

Ever since hearing about this, my reaction was that people at that level simply do not need to make e-mailed threats of anything. That's for Don Corleone, not David Rockefeller. While in that case, Epstein seems to have got his wish, it strikes me as an indication that his hold was slipping, and he knew it.

It sounds to me as if Ghislaine Maxwell had figured this out well before then. According to Maxwell's Wiikipedia entry,

In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-month jail sentence. Following Epstein's release, although Maxwell continued to attend prominent social functions, she and Epstein were no longer seen together publicly.

By late 2015, Maxwell had largely retreated from attending social functions.

At least by 2015, the civil actions against Maxwell by the various underage Epstein victims had begun. At that point, she began to keep an extremely low public profile, and it appears that she married hedge fund CEO Scott Borgerson in 2016. (The photo at the top shows them attending a philanthropic function.) As part of that deal, she sold her principal asset, a Manhattan townhouse that Epstein had gifted her in 2000, and transferred the proceeds to a trust controlled by Borgerson. Given the legal expenses she's had since 2015, it's likely that this amount, plus much of Borgerson's own fortune, will go to lawyers regardless of the outcome.

The main takeaway I have from all these data points is that Maxwell had become aware at a very early point that Epstein was a fading star, and she cut her ties with him well before many of his other associates like Eva Dubin, Jes Staley, or Larry Summers. Indeed, at a certain point, she was forced to cash out.

What does this mean? I think the most important conclusion is that Epstein, by the time of his arrest, was probably aware that he no longer had the ability to run the operation he was able to run in the 1990s and early 2000s, that all his prior allies and enablers would be cutting their losses (and indeed, everyone was getting older), he wouldn't have an additional chance to dodge legal consequences as he had, and he'd come to the end of his run. That his prior cronies and marks were all aging meant that that the value of anything he could disclose about them was steadily decreasing, which meant that any blackmail leverage he may have held was also worth less and less.

My bet is that he hanged himself in his cell.

Glenn And Eva Dubin

The American noir writer Jim Thompson (1901-1977) portrayed better than anyone else the strange bonds that hold people in orbit around pimps, con artists, and other crooks. Glenn Dubin, a New York hedge fund manager and philanthropist, was among those apparently unable to leave Epstein's orbit. He is married to Eva Andersson, a former Miss Sweden who, like Melanie Walker, dated Jeffrey Epstein and then became an MD. Although she married Dubin in 1994, she remained in Epstein's stable of senior women as a key fixer and enabler for the rest of his life.

The couple's social, financial, and philanthropic ties to Epstein were intricate. Vanity Fair published in September 2019,

One of Epstein’s more puzzling relationships was the one he had with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and his wife, Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin, the founder of the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. Could one of Manhattan’s most prominent power couples know more about the Epstein mystery?

The three were close, after all. Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden, dated Epstein for years before she and Dubin married in 1994. Even after Epstein’s conviction in 2008, the couple stayed in contact with the registered sex offender, inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner at their home in Palm Beach the following year. Andersson-Dubin also wrote an email to Epstein’s probation officer, asserting that she was “100% comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein around my children,” who were then all minors. Multiple sources told me last month that Epstein was the godfather to the Dubins’ three children, although a spokesman for Dubin disputed that assertion. (“The Dubins are Jewish and Jewish people do not typically do godparents,” he said.)

Epstein and Dubin had business ties as well. Epstein introduced Dubin to Jes Staley, then a senior executive at JPMorganChase & Co. and now the CEO of Barclays, the big British bank. After JPMorganChase bought control of Highbridge Capital, Dubin’s hedge fund, in stages, starting in 2004, Epstein reportedly received a $15 million fee. Dubin also directed some of Epstein’s money, for which Epstein was a fiduciary, to at least two hedge fund managers—Dan Zwirn and Joseph Kusnan—who once worked at Highbridge before starting their own firms.

By early 2020, Dubin's Epstein associations may have prompted his retirement as a hedge fund manager. According to Business Insider,

Billionaire Glenn Dubin is retiring from the hedge fund space, he told Reuters on Friday.

He'll relinquish his role and equity in quant fund Engineers Gate, which he founded in 2014, in the next week and focus on direct investing.

Dubin told Reuters the decision had nothing to do with his family's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Last month, Business Insider detailed how the relationship between Epstein and the Dubin family was much more complex than previously known.

The Dubins are best known for helping to rehabilitate Epstein folloing his 2008 guilty plea to felony prostitution charges, providing a character reference to his probation officer and reintroducing him socially. More recently, Eva Dubin is reported to have "dropped by" an initial get-together with Bill Gates and Epstein. at which Gates recounted that he stayed "quite late".

Glenn Dubin's name comes up in a depositions for lawsuits from Epstein's victims, in which there is a strong implication that he participated in sex parties on Little St James Island:

During a 2010 deposition of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator and “sex slave” Nadia Marcinkova, victims’ lawyer Brad Edwards asked various questions, including “Do you know Bill Clinton?” and “Do you know what Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship is with Alan Dershowitz?”

Marcinkova pleaded the Fifth in response to each query.

“Do you know Glenn Dubin?” he asked the young woman.

She pleaded the Fifth.

The allegation in one of the depositions is that Epstein regularly supplied underage women to Dubin. The marriage to Eva has strong echoes of the marriages in Jim Thompson's pulp thrillers.

Melanie Walker

Melanie Walker is among the small group of close Epstein associates who, like Boris Nikolic, haven't been tainted by him and continue in the financial and philanthropic upper crust. Her current official thumbnail reads:

MD clinically specialized in Endovascular Neurosurgery and Vascular Neurology, with post-doctoral studies in computational neuroscience. Formerly: Neurotechnology and brain science adviser to William H Gates III at bgC3; Director, World Bank Group; Deputy Director for Global Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Adviser for Macroeconomics and Health, World Health Organization; practitioner in the developing world. Currently: Rockefeller Fellow and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine. Author of numerous peer reviewed publications. Member, Executive Board, American Medical Association Foundation. Young Global Leader and co-chair for the Global Future Council on Neurotechnology and Brain Science, World Economic Forum.

There's no mentioni of Epstein. Nevertheless, she turns up at several times in the Epstein story, according to numerous sources. The UK Daily Mail says,

Dr Walker is said to have met Epstein in 1992, six months after graduating from the University of Texas. He told her he could get her an audition to model for the lingerie firm Victoria's Secret.

The company was owned by fashion magnate Les Wexner, for whom Epstein acted as financial adviser. Dr Walker moved into one of Epstein's New York apartments. In 1999, she began to appear as a passenger on his pilot's flight logs.

It's worth pointing out that in 1992, Epstein was in fact beginning his relationship with Wexner, but he was also deeply involved in the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme, which turned out to be the biggest in history until Bernie Madoff. Epstein worked behind the scenes at Towers Financial beginning in 1987 and is credited with being the brains behind the fraud. According to the Wikipedia link above,

In February 1993, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged that the company, while fraudulently reporting a profit of $13 million ($25,000,000 in current dollar terms) for the four years ended June 30, 1991, actually lost $137 million ($260,000,000 in current dollar terms). In March 1993, Towers Financial filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

Nevertheless, although Epstein was apparently a co-conspirator with the other organizers, who went to prison for various terms, Epstein escaped any penalty. What did Dr Walker, whom I suspect was no ingenue, know? In any case, she appears to have continued her association with Epstein through her time in medical school. Again from the UK Daily Mail link,

That same year [1999], having graduated from medical school, she took up a new role as Epstein's science adviser.

She would later join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and became an intermediary between Epstein and the Microsoft co-founder.

But at the turn of the century Dr Walker, then 28 years old, seems to have been an important pivot in the tycoon's burgeoning relationship with the Duke [Prince Andrew].

In June 2000, the neurosurgeon attended — according to the guest list — the 'Dance of the Decades' party thrown at Windsor Castle by the Queen to mark a number of royal birthday milestones, including the Duke's 40th and Princess Anne's 50th.

I have several questions. What need did Epstein, a cheesy pimp, con man, embezzler, and blackmailer, have for a "science adviser"? One would think that a qualified science type, hired off the street, would discover fairly quickly that the job was without meaningful duties and move on as quietly and tactfully as could be done. Yet Walker not only stayed with it, but she got on board the Lolita Express. Why on earth would an MD. who of anyone must be familiar with the whole range of sexual infections, step into an environment like that in anything but a hazmat suit? Some science adviser.

But it gets stranger. According to the UK Sun,

[Prince] Andrew first met Texas-born Melanie in New York in 1999 — the same year he met Epstein. The brain and nervous system specialist praised the Duke in a 2003 interview.

Melanie, who lives with ex Microsoft exec Steven Sinofsky, insisted they were just friends who chatted “mostly about science and medicine” and kept in touch via email.

She added: “He calls me Mel and addresses me ‘Hey Dork’ or ‘smarty pants’.” Melanie declined to comment to The Sun.

In November 2000, accordinmg to the UK Daily Mail, Walker spent several days in a guest house with Prince Andrew at Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.

The Duke was accompanied by the same senior Personal Protection Officer (PPO) who was to stay with him at Epstein's mansion in New York the following Easter.

The police inspector — the Duke's bodyguard for 15 years — kept a private Filofax diary in which he recorded his daily duties and observations. He still has that Filofax, sources say.

Using this resource, the PPO recalls that the Duke stayed in one of the guest lodges at Zorro, while he was quartered in a building near the ranch entrance.

'He knew who went in and who went out,' says a source. 'And for most of the time the only person who was there with the Duke, apart from the ranch's domestic staff, was his then girlfriend, Melanie Walker.'

Walker's relationship with Epstein and her membership in his inner circle continued past his 2008 arrest. According to the Seattle Times,

Two members of Gates’ inner circle — Boris Nikolic and Melanie Walker — were close to Epstein and at times functioned as intermediaries between the two men.

. . . Walker later met Steven Sinofsky, a senior executive at Microsoft who became president of its Windows division, and moved to Seattle to be with him. In 2006, she joined the Gates Foundation with the title of senior program officer.

At the foundation, Walker met and befriended Nikolic, a native of what is now Croatia and a former fellow at Harvard Medical School who was the foundation’s science adviser. Nikolic and Gates frequently traveled and socialized together.

Walker, who had remained in close touch with Epstein, introduced him to Nikolic, and the men became friendly.

It's hard to avoid thinking that Walker was, like Ghislaine Maxwell and Eva Andersson Dubin, one of a stable of senior women who continued as part of Epstein's inner circle and did various favors for him over many years.

My main takeaway here is that I would not allow Dr Walker to get anywhere near me with a scalpel. Come to think of it, maybe not without a hazmat suit, either.

What, Precisely, Was The Lolita Express?

According to the New York Post, a Boeing 727 belonging to one of Jeffrey Epstein's companies, which has tail number N908JE, is parked in a long-term storage area at Brunswick Golden Isles Airport in southeastern Georgia. This plane, which was given the nickname Lolita Express, was just one of four helicopters and three planes Epstein owned. Other accounts say it is in derelict condition, with engines and other parts removed.

The photo above is from the UK Sun and is purportedly of this plane, but the tail number has been retouched out.

According to the Post link, "A record of its last flight shows the plane took off from West Palm Beach, then zig-zagged above Florida before touching down at the Georgia airport more than four years ago." This suggests to me that in spite of Epstein's efforts to rehabilitate his reputation via figures like Bill Gates, his prior lifestyle before his 2008 arrest had become at least in part unsustainable. Removal of the engines suggests the airport operator has seized them to cover storage fees.

Names of people who've flown on the plane with Epstein include Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Larry Summers, Alan Dershowitz, Kevin Spacey, Ron Burkle, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Ehud Barak, Ted Kennedy, Alec Baldwin, and Courtney Love. Prosecutors have issed subpoenas for the full flight logs.

Possibly out of delicacy, most accounts of the plane suggest it was nothing but a luxurious corporate jet. However, accounts from the underage girls forced to work on the plane, both in the media and in depositions, indicate that it was used extensively for in-flight orgies. The Post link carries this description of the interior:

James McCloskey, a 53-year-old aviation consultant, told The Post he was given a tour of the jet in March 2020 while doing work for Scroggins Aviation, a Las Vegas-based company that buys planes — and plane parts — for the film industry.

McCloskey snapped more than two dozen photos of the plane’s interior, revealing the VIP jet’s velour-upholstered reclining chairs, love seats and even the pedophile’s notorious on-board bed, where he and his guests allegedly had group sex with girls.

He said the plane felt like a “playground.”

“When you get inside the aircraft, it’s a playground. Everything lays out to be a bed. That was kind of creepy,” McCloskey said.

“It’s not like the aircraft is set up for a business meeting — because it’s not. There’s no chairs for anyone to sit in, except for the lie-flat chairs.”

He added that the interior design looked like something from the Disco Era.

“You get on Epstein’s airplane and it’s decorated from the 1970s. I mean, you would almost think that Elvis flew on this thing because it’s like velour, and bright red colors,” he said.

. . . Ghislaine Maxwell, who is awaiting trial on charges she procured underage girls for Epstein to abuse, allegedly took part in sexual romps aboard his planes, according to a newly unsealed deposition by Giuffre.

In the testimony, Giuffre detailed “constant orgies” at Epstein’s private Caribbean island. She added that she had sex with Maxwell all over the globe — and in the air.

“If we’re going to talk about other countries we’ve got to talk about international travel space or plane space or whatever you want to call it,” Giuffre told an attorney in 2016 when asked where she had sex with Maxwell.

“It happened all the time on the planes,” she said.

Other accounts indicate that the females on the trips included the underage girls forced into the work, older women who were more clearly professional prostitutes, and senior Epstein associates like Maxwell and Melanie Walker. Apparently not all flights were orgies -- Bill Clinton's spokespeople will acknowledge four flights with secret service on board, but flight logs indicate Clinton was on 26.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the plane was stocked with pink lotion, wet wipes, tissues with the plane's tail number on them, and baby powder. It's worth noting that the UK press has been much more explicit and comprehensive in covering the story than the US media.

Thus it's possible that some individuals named as passengers on Epstein's plane may not have participated in sexual activity with women either underage or adults, but the normal use of the plane was for sex parties, not business travel, and it's becoming more clear that Epstein made his money from pimping and blackmail, using philanthropic non-profits to launder the payments.

The plane was just one part of his operation.

Boris Nikolic

One thing I find nore and more puzzling is that, at least on the web, there's no single "who's who" of the ever-widening circle of names surrounding Epstein. (If someone knows of such a thing, I'll be very grateful to hear of it.) Today I want to look at one of the few whose association with the guy hasn't resulted in job loss or similar calamity, Boris Nikolic. He's in the far right of the well-known 2011 photo of Gates with Epstein, Larry Summers, and Jes Staley.

In the famous photo, Nikolic comes off as a thuggish-looking James Bond villain. That he's named Boris doesn't help. But in other photos, he's housebroken and sincere. Which is it? His current position app;ears to be Managing Direcor of Biomatics Capital, where his thumbnail reads,

Dr. Nikolic is a physician and investor who previously served as chief advisor for science and technology to Bill Gates, leading select for-profit and not-for-profit investment activities. His investments spanned the life science, information technology and health care sectors, including companies such as Foundation Medicine, ResearchGate, Schrodinger and Nimbus Therapeutics.

In other words, he's an unassailable member of the tech investor elite, with credentials reaching back to a professorship at Harvard. The only glitch is that, as I noted in an earlier post here, he was inexplicably named in Epstein's will as “successor executor,” the person who would take control of the estate if the two named executors are unable or unwilling to. When this came up, Nikolic simply said he was "shocked" to learn of it, and the whole thing went away. Odd.

The most complete explanation of how Nikolic fit into the Epstein circle is in this story in the UK Daily Mail.

Before ever meeting Gates, Epstein knew of two people who were in his inner circle - Melanie Walker and Boris Nikolic.

Walker met Epstein just after she graduated college in 1992.

. . . Walker, who kept in touch with Epstein, introduced him to Nikolic, and the two became friends.

That eventually led to the first face-to-face meeting between Gates and Epstein, which took place at Epstein's New York City townhouse in January 2011, according to the Times.

The meeting is said to have included other associates of Epstein, including Eva Andersson-Dubin, the former Miss Sweden who is married to hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin.

After the hours-long meeting, Epstein wrote an email to friends saying: 'Bill's great.'

Gates also reportedly had positive things to say about Epstein.

In an email to colleagues obtained by the Times, he wrote: 'A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.'

. . . Soon afterward in May 2011, Gates paid another visit to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, according to the Times.

The Times published a photo showing Epstein, Gates, Nikolic, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and James Staley, who at the time was an executive with JPMorgan.

At the time, the Gates Foundation and JPMorgan began discussions about creating a global charity that would fund health care projects in poor countries.

So what we're seeing is an extended network that includes two Epstein girlfriends who become connected with Nikolic, who acted in this episode as a go-between who could set up meetings with Bill Gates.

He sure seems proud of himself in the photo from the 2011 meeting, huh? But from what we read in the link, Nikolic and Melanie Walker, already friends, had both infiltrated the Gates operation on Epstein's behalf before any of the problem meetings with Ep;stein took place.

Gates Thought Epstein Could Get Him The Nobel Prize

Via The Daily Beast, which broke the story:

Gates hoped the well-connected pervert could help him secure the Nobel Peace Prize, one former Gates Foundation employee told The Daily Beast.

This person said members of the foundation’s communications team were alerted to Gates’ relationship with Epstein and were told it “was a maneuver to try to get himself a Nobel Peace Prize.” They said the tech mogul had even kept some employees on call on prize day in years past just in case he was awarded the distinction.

“We were aware of things that were potential reputational risks for the foundation and the co-chairs, Bill and Melinda,” said the former employee. “Even back then, people knew this guy wasn’t squeaky clean,” the person said, referring to Epstein.

Although much of the dirt on Gates and his ties to Epstein seems to come from Melinda's allies (like the quotes above), other information suggests Melinda was copacetic with Gates's effort to get the prize via Epstein and even complicit, at least insofar as a trip to France was involved:

According to People, Bill and Melinda Gates will continue as co-chairs of their foundation, even as they divide their $130 billion in marital assets, because of their shared ambition for the Nobel Prize. One source told the magazine: “They were really interested in trying to win a Nobel Prize. So one thing that was part of this is, if it gets worse, then it ends that. It seems as if that was on the agenda, and that’s for both of them.”

Bill Gates may have had the prize on his mind in March 2013, when he and Epstein reportedly visited Jagland’s home in Strasbourg, France.

The rendezvous was revealed by Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s largest business newspaper, in an October 2020 report. At the time of the meeting, Jagland was chair of the committee which awards the Peace Prize, and Gates was a potential candidate for the honor.

The meeting also included members of the International Peace Institute (IPI)—a think tank run by former Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen that Epstein’s secret charity lavished with a $375,000 donation in 2017. (Rød-Larsen resigned from the New York-based IPI last October after it was revealed his group received $650,000 in donations from Epstein, who also provided him with a $130,000 personal loan.)

. . . The Strasbourg meeting may not have been Gates’ only visit abroad with Epstein.

In August 2019, the French news outlet Franceinfo reported on a roster of famous visitors to Epstein’s Parisian apartment, which included Bill and Melinda on at least one occasion, according to the financier’s former butler. A spokesperson for Melinda Gates told The Daily Beast that Melinda has never been to Epstein’s Paris home. >/p> The steady stream of revelations suggests the enormous range of people Epstein corrupted via blackmail or other conflict of interest. As the current crop of stories brings up new figures, one consistent feature seems to be the willingness of media worldwide to treat all these post-2019 resignations is discrete episodes that quietly fade awayu after a few stories in local media.

This new episode also raises questions about just what all those meetings between Epstein, Gates, and other members of a so-called "men's club" involved. They are said to have been frequent, and accounts make it fairly clear that they took place between at least 2011 and 2013 -- but when, exactly, did they stop? And were they just the innocent sessions for Bill to bellyache about Melinda? Donations from the Gates foundation were made, according to the Daily Beast story, to the Epstein-connected IPI well after the 2013 visit:

Not long after the Strasbourg gathering, the Gates Foundation granted IPI millions of dollars; records on the foundation’s website show IPI received a $2.5-million grant in October 2013, $5.5 million in March 2014, and $256,968 in June 2019 and July 2020.

The Gates foundation's connection with Epstein, and Gates's friendship with him, likely extended well beyond what's been revealed so far, in my view. All the denials of this, that, and the other from both Bill's and Melinda's flacks strike me as worth not much.

Melinda is a wronged woman, an innocent party. Right. I keep telling my wife that the divorce came about because Melinda started to think Epstein stole a lot more from the Gates fortune than she's been told, and the divorce is the only way to get the money straightened out by a third party, the court. My wife is starting to agree. But this goes way beyond the Gateses.

The Nymphets Are The Least Of It

The real question about Jeffrey Epstein has little to do with the Lolita Express, the private island, and the underage girls, although the prosecutions were over the nymphets alone, and the rest has been the focus of the tabloid news. But a much bigger question is how Epstein got his money in the first place, and, since there's a high likelihood that this involved fraud and blackmail, how much he stole, and maybe more important, from whom.

One potential early source of money was Les Wexner. This story in The New Republic gives details:

The founder and former chairman of L Brands, which includes stores like The Limited and Victoria’s Secret, Wexner was Epstein’s longtime friend and key enabler. A serial liar and cunning manipulator, Epstein sometimes approached women claiming to be a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret. He said he was a money manager for billionaires, but Wexner was his only confirmed client. After meeting Epstein in the mid-1980s, Wexner eventually gave him power of attorney, allowing him full control over Wexner’s billions. The source of most of Epstein’s own fortune, estimated at nearly $600 million at the time of his death, remains mostly unknown, but much of it appears to have come from Wexner himself, including mansions in Ohio and New York that Wexner essentially gifted to Epstein. According to transaction records, it appears that Epstein also used his position as Wexner’s fiduciary to off-load huge chunks of Wexner-owned stock, while skimming millions for himself. (Wexner eventually disavowed Epstein, claiming he stole $46 million from him—a relatively small amount compared to the overall sum Epstein likely earned through the relationship.)

But the Wexner Manhatten mansion alone, which the story and other sources indicate was effectively "gifted" to Epstein, sold at a distress price of $51 million in March. And this leaves out the value of the other real estate Epstein somehow wangled from Wexner, plus an undetermined amount of cash. $46 million is pretty clearly a wildly lowball estimate meant to preserve both Wexner's self-esteem and his public image.

The public figures who've been suddenly named as Epstein cronies, now including Bill Gates, have all scrambled to insist that they only "discussed philanthropy", never went to the island, or whatever. Alan Dershowitz is such another:

Dershowitz admitted to being at the billionaire’s home but noted that he’d never seen an underaged girl at Epstein’s place despite sworn testimony from Epstein’s former butler who claimed that Dershowitz was at the residence at the same time that underaged girls were there. Dershowitz has an easy explanation for that: “Were there young women in another part of the house giving massages while I was around? I have no idea of that!”

Oh, and did Dershowitz ever receive a massage at Epstein’s house? Yep. But Dershowitz claimed that it was from an adult woman and he kept his underwear on.

But in 2003, before Epstein's 2008 first case, Dershowitz told Vanity Fair:

In the Vanity Fair piece, Dershowitz told the magazine, "I'm on my 20th book … The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey." In 2015, however, he relayed to The American Lawyer that he was an Epstein acquaintance, describing the relationship as "entirely professional."

Another prominent figure who's had to backtrack furiously over Epstein ties is Leon Black. According to the Financial Times,

Over two decades, Mr Black confided in Epstein regarding personal matters, leaned on him as an “architect” of, and “strict taskmaster” for, the private office that managed his investments. The men socialised or held meetings at Epstein’s Caribbean island and his other properties in New York, Paris, Florida and New Mexico.

. . .“Let me be clear, there has never been an allegation by anyone that I engaged in any wrongdoing because I did not,” Mr Black said then. “Any suggestion of blackmail or any other connection to Epstein’s reprehensible conduct is categorically untrue.”

The pair last spoke in 2018, after Epstein sent emails that made what Dechert called “unsubstantiated assertions” about the work he had performed and demanded more cash. Mr Black refused to pay anything more.

It sounds, though, as if Epstein was demanding payments over "unsubstantiated assertions". Er, isn't this blackmail?

The nymphets -- or whatever else -- were just a means to an end. We'll likely never get to the bottom of these relationships, Wexner, Dershowtiz, Black, Gates, and surely many others. But we can be fairly sure there's much beyond what they're willing to say publicly. How much Epstein stole may not be anything like the whole picture, either.

You Know What? Nothing In This Gates Narrative Fits.

The big current developmemt in the Bill Gates story, as we're expected to believe it, is that Gates left the Microsoft board as a result of a 20 year old consensual affair with a subordinate that ended amicably. There appears to be no disagreement that this affair took place, and Gates's spokespeople acknowledge it. So let's put on the brakes.

"Consensual" affairs in the workplace between superior and subordinate are common as dirt. Companies may or may not have policies governing them specifically, but in practice, they're handled on a case by case basis, with the organization usually looking the other way until it's absolutely necessary to take some action, which often as not just involves transferring one or both parties to separate them.

A "consensual" affair in and of itself is not "sexual harassment", which strictly speaking is a quid pro quo requirement that the subordinate put out or be subject to adverse action from the superior. If it's "consensual", that's not the issue. Naturally office romances occupy a huge gray area. If it's a party office, and there's a general expectation that everyone has to party to get along, that's a "hostile work environment", but you do have to prove that in court.

I'm also lukewarm at best with the Melinda-as-wronged-woman part of the narrative. She had an MBA and had worked at Microsoft for roughly seven years before she married Gates. She presumably had a clear understanding by that time about how executives act, and in fact how their subordinates sometimes act, which probably included knowing how Gates himself acted. She was 30 and no ingenue. (If I were on the marriage tribunal deciding on her annulment, those are questions I'd ask, but dei gratia, that's someone else's problem.)

The difficulty I have with the whole Gates-consensual-affair story as we hear it is that it's not clear if Gates violated any particular Microsoft policy by having it. It was not "sexual harassment" as normally understood. Whether it created a "hostile work environment" is also completely unclear. It was poor judgment 20 years in the past. But Gates nevertheless left the Microsoft board before the investigation was completed. And not only that, he resigned from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway board the same day. Wha? Is everyone else on the Berkshire Hathaway board such a total boy scout, so Gates is the odd man out and has to leave it, too?

Gates's spokespeople are now saying the affair isn't why he left the Microsoft board. This is one of the few things being said about this that I actually believe.

Let's look at the timing here and what else was going on. Here's the word from Microsoft:

“Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” Microsoft said in a statement. “A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm, to conduct a thorough investigation.

So there was some problem reflecting bad personal judgment, almost certainly not a legal issue in itself nor potentially even a violation of company policy, 20 years in the past, and the Microsoft board sets up a committee and hires an outside law firm for an investigation? How much are all those partners and associates billing? And Gates leaves in the middle of said investigation, eliminating a need for a final report? Yeah, I'll go along with Gates, this had nothing to do with a flippin' consensual affair. Gates was doing that stuff throughout his career, and it was general knowledge.

Er, what else happened in "the latter half of 2019", as the board so delicately put it? Oh, that's right, Epstein was arrested in July and got suicided that August. A lot of stuff came out, much of it probably not public, in conjunmction with those events. And some montbs after that time, during a confidential investigation of something that was likely really serious, not only does our boy Gates leave the Microsoft board, but he leaves the Berkshire Hathaway board as well, the same day, even though there was never any hanky pank at Berkshire Hathaway.

And oh by the way, right about the same time, Melinda, who by all accounts was already thoroughly familiar with Gates's ways but seems to have made her accommodations, suddenly decides to hire a divorce attorney. We may assume this isn't just the divorce-injury-bankruptcy guy down the street, either.

You know what I think? I think Melinda's wondering if the putative $130 billion in the Gates fortune is actually in the bank. That's what I think. I wonder if this has also occurred to Mr Buffett.

More Comes Out On Poor Bill Gates!

I found the photo above, which is pretty well known, in a current Dsily Mail story. The caption to the photo in that story reads,

Bill Gates is pictured at Epstein's Manhattan mansion in 2011, from left: James E. Staley, at the time a senior JPMorgan executive; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; Epstein; Gates and Boris Nikolic, who was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's science adviser

It goes without saying that each of the men in that photo is deeply compromised. For instance, Boris Nikolic, identifed as the Gates foundation science adviser, seems actually to have been Epstein's man:

Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender, signed a will detailing nearly $600 million in assets just two days before he killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell. In the will, he named biotech venture capitalist Boris Nikolic as “successor executor,” the person who would take control of the estate if the two named executors are unable or unwilling to.

Nikolic, 49, said in a statement that he was “shocked” that he was included.

Shocked, shocked. The story goes on to suggest, though, that Nikolic had ongoing ties with JPMorgan, presumably via the Morgan executive in the photo. I looked up James E Staley, identified as Jes Staley on Wikipedia, who has had a career peppered with sudden resignations, questions of scandal, and conflict of interest, especially in the 2010s as he became more closely associated with Epstein. According to Wikipedia,

On October 26, 2015, the Daily Mail published an article exposing that Jeffrey Epstein had threatened the UK Parliament [clarification needed] unless it accepted his pick of Jes Staley for the role of CEO of Barclays. The Times stated that Epstein sent emails to the Treasury Select Committee, which were then leaked to the Daily Mail. Freedom of Information requests were subsequently sent to Parliament. The Treasury Select Committee has declined to put the emails into the public domain.

Staley did become CEO of Barclays, but his tenure there has been clouded. Again accourding to Wikipedia,

In February 2020 the FCA announced an investigation into whether Staley was "fit and proper" to lead Barclays, due to concerns over his previous disclosures of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Staley told Bloomberg TV that "The investigation is actually focused on transparency, and whether I was transparent and open with the bank and with the board with respect to my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein." Staley told colleagues that he expects to leave Barclays by the end of 2021 and could step down at the annual meeting in May 2021.

Recent stories stress that Epstein had already pled guilty to felony charges in connection with his activities in 2008, but he was somehow able to rehabilitate himself with at least some of the elite almost immediately -- though it's hard not to surmise that those would have been among the most corruptible. Current stories suggest the photo above with Epstein, Gates, Nikolic, and Staley was in connection with a pitch by Epstein for some kind of philanthropic fund involving JPMorgan and the Gates foundation -- but Staley left Morgan after 30 years in 2013. Was Epstein involved in Staley's career thereafter? Can't rule it out.

But of course, the most interesting guy in that photo at the moment is Gates. According to the Daily Beast, Gates began meeting with Epstein extensively at Epstein's Manhattan mansion in 2011, around the time of the photo.

Bachelor sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein gave Bill Gates advice on ending his marriage with Melinda after the Microsoft co-founder complained about her during a series of meetings at the money manager’s mansion, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Gates used the gatherings at Epstein’s $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a “toxic” marriage, a topic both men found humorous, a person who attended the meetings told The Daily Beast.

. . . The people familiar with the matter said Gates found freedom in Epstein’s lair, where he met a rotating cast of bold-faced names and discussed worldly issues in between rounds of jokes and gossip—a “men’s club” atmosphere that irritated Melinda.

So it sounds as if the photo above could just as easily have been taken in a break from one of the "men's club" sessions involving Staley and Summers as well as Gates. I would bet that a list of other regulars wouldn't be hard to develop. Clearly this relationship has been problematic for Staley, and the potential problem for Gates is reflected in a statement from Gates's spokesperson farther down in the story:

A representative for Bill Gates told The Daily Beast: “Your characterization of his meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated. Similarly, any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is false.”

The spokesperson disputed the number of times Epstein and Gates met and said the two men never discussed Epstein getting involved with the foundation.

“Bill never received or solicited personal advice of any kind from Epstein— on marriage or anything else. Bill never complained about Melinda or his marriage to Epstein.” A representative for Melinda did not respond to a request for comment for this report.

The normal excuse for prominent figures like Bill Clinton caught hobnobbing with Epstein is that they "discussed philanthropy", and there was nothing involving underage nymphets. But Gates's attorney-flack takes it one step further -- they didn't even discuss philanthropy, and maybe the meetings didn't even take place, sort of.

Sounds to me as though Bill needs to give Melinda every penny of what she wants. But hey, stay tuned!

What's Happening To Poor Bill Gates?

One of the ways the very rich are different from you and me is that they normally hire publicity firms to keep them out of the news, not in it. So why is Bill Gates such a hot topic now? Jeff Bezos, another guy in his league, went through a divorce in 2019 with hardly a blip on the radar. Even Donald Trump's exes kept quiet about the guy (I assume his lawyers put non-disparagement clauses in the settlements, but that's what smart people do).

Other lizard people, like Warren Buffett, maintain a carefuily manicured public image. Laurene Powell Jobs is normally just invisible. How are we all of a sudden finding out that Gates, whom everyone thought was just a shy, retiring nerd, was a party animal with an Epstein problem? This may in part be due to a basically unkempt nature -- I was at an industry presentation in the 1990s where he gave a speech with his tie coming out the wrong side of his button-down collar -- but this in turn may have been not so much nerdiness as figuring he's so rich he can get away with it.

Just months before the messy divorce hit the news, Gates had already got himself into public hot water:

“I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef,” Gates told Technology Review. “You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”

Many readers on Twitter aren’t ready to completely give up their burgers and steaks just yet. So this led to Gates’ trending on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon as critics chewed him out.

It's certainly possible that his wife, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's PR firm, had been able to keep the guy quiet for a couple of decades, but with the marriage crumbling, he no longer gave a flip. Now Melinda is saying she doesn't just want a divorce, she wants a Catholic annulment. We may assume that if Newt Gingrich was able to get two of them, Melinda can surely get just one.

Last night, my wife and I were watching a TV show from 2013 about Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine. It featured a cleaned-up Bill Gates explaining vaccines to the rest of us and mentioning that the Bill and Melinda foundation was doing many good works in the vaccine field. In fact, there were clips in the show of the duo visiting vaccine centers in the Third World, but based on what we now hear, these must have been carefully staged, with the couple doing all they could not to look like they despised each other.

The Bill Gates of 2013 can't reprise that role in 2021. In fact, if he has his own PR flack at all now, he'd probably be told to keep quiet about the flatulent cows from now on as well.

But Melinda is proving not to be a Laurene Powell Jobs either. I would guess that the stories we've been getting about the nude swimming parties and the weekends with his ex-girlfriend are coming from Melinda, or more accurately Melinda's publicist, or maybe even more accurately, Melinda's publicist working closely with her divorce attorney. There was no pre-nup, there were 27 years of marriage with three kids, and Gates is worth somethiong well north of $100 billion. Compared to that, Laurene Powell Jobs is chump change.

What does this do to Gates's standing as a lizard person, which is to say, one of the people who actually run the planet? It's hard to say. It's possible that if he had an Epstein problem, he wasn't taken as seriously as we may have thought, as this sort of thing would presumably have been known among the more influential lizard people -- and after all, nobody's rushing in to rescue Ghislaine Maxwell at this point. There've been no think pieces in the Atlantic on how we shouldn't rush to judgment on Epstein, either, least of all from Alan Dershowitz.

As a lizard person, Gates is suddenly coming off as a phony and a lightweight. My question is how long this was known to the regulars at Davos, though they're largely phonies and lightweights themselves.

Wait: Who's Calling The Shots?

I'm an Aristotelian, and I look for causes. That Chris Cuomo would visibly press, and even berate, Dr Walensky on CNN over not updatimg the mask guidance Wednesday struck me as important, and I posted about it Thursday. But then, the CDC actually went ahead and revised its mask guidance, saying vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks or observe social distancing indoors. Beyond that, Joe Biden himself endorsed the guidance, announcing,

Let me repeat: If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.

But neither President Biden nor Drs Walensky and Fauci are independent actors. Via the New York Times just yesterday, we learn that Biden dithers for weeks over decisions. Dr Walensky took public health advice from the teachers'union, not The Science:

The powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show.

But then, in the wake of the mask relaxation, even the AFT did a 180:

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she is now “pleading” for the full reopening of schools.

“We can and we must reopen schools in the fall for in-person teaching, learning and support. And we must keep them open fully and safely five days a week,” said Weingarten in a speech.

Weingarten’s new advocacy or reopening schools comes just over a week after her teachers union was caught at the center of a scandal for inveigling the Biden CDC in a plot to keep schools closed indefinitely.

It's hard not to think that someone powerful -- someone like, say, Bill Gates -- had his chief gofer make a few calls, to CNN, the White House, the CDC, the AFT -- and justlikethat Biden quit dithering, Walensky saw the light, and everything magically got straightened out with a few public announcements. Well, you might think.

Except Speaker Pelosi said the House will continue to wear masks. The LA County health department, which just the other week had immediately endorsed the prior CDC guidance over wearing masks outdoors, took a very different tack on Thursday:

Masks are still required for anyone entering a business or crowded indoor area in Los Angeles County until further guidance is issued, public health officials said Thursday after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its mandate.

. . . But in L.A. County, public health officials say everyone must still adhere to distancing and masking requirements at workplaces until the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health changes its guidelines.

“Until Cal/OSHA changes these requirements, the county cannot be less restrictive,” Ferrer said.

The state agency’s board is set to vote on new workplace safety standards next Thursday, May 20. If approved, businesses where all employees are fully vaccinated would be exempt from physical distancing requirements starting July 31.

In other words, Dr Ferrer is going to slow-walk this through the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy won't make up its mind until at least July 31, even though Gov Newsom himself said things in California will loosen June 15.

It's possible to argue that the Biden-CDC "loosening" is just a carefully thought out head fake by the lizard people like Bill Gates, intended to distract attention from inflation, gas lines, Hamas, and whatever else. That in fact could be. But what's become even more abundantly clear in just the past few days is that the whole mask-and-social-distancing regime is nothing but a politically driven charade. If The Science says they aren't needed, then screw The Science, keep the masks.

I'll have thoughts about Bill Gates tomorrow.

Somewhere Between Incompetence And Dereliction

When I worked in IT, I was in and out of both the security and contingency planning areas between the early 1980s and early 2000s. I was in at the start of both fields, and I followed them through the transition from IBM mainfrane to Unix and Windows networking. In light of my experience, I've had some big questions about the story we've been getting about the Colonial Pipeline hack. On one hand, a corporation is prudent to minimize the amount of public information it releases about its internal operations. On the other, based on what I read, I've got to think that at some point, the Colonial board of directors will need to clean house thoroughly. You don't pay $5 million ransom just like that, after all.

The broad outlines of the picture so far are all we've been told: somehow, some freelance Russian hackers were able to disable the company's software that controls its pipeline operations, they demanded a ransom to have the system restored, and the company was forced to operate its pipeline manually until it paid the ransom, reportedly $5 million. In the meantime, gasoline and other product distribution was impacted over much of the US.

Here's the first issue. Pipelines are among the industries that are heavily regulated. This is because they're critical. We've just seen what happens when a pipeline goes down. Banks are the same way. If an ATM network were to go down for several days, it would be even more catastrophic, but the pipeline is clearly bad enough. Bank regulators require that banks have comprehensive plans in place, including physical backup facilities, to recover within hours if any such outage were to happen. A bank can be declared insolvent if regulators don't think its backup measures are adequate, and with good reason.

Since the 1980s, public corporations in particular have had to assess the criticality of their business functions, if only to recognize what an outage for x amount of time will cost them -- this includes not just loss of accounts receivable, but secondary costs in terms of lawsuits, loss of reputation, and political fallout. In general, a business subject to external and internal audit should have long since identified the level of outage that would threaten its existence and have plans and physical backup measures in place to recover from any such outage. This would range, depending on the business, from local power outage to civil unreast to hurricane to anything short of the big asteroid hitting the planet.

These measures can be expensive, but the issue is how much more expensive it would be for a bank or public utility to have its system unavailable for days or weeks. This could threaten a company's ability to remain in business, and its board has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to assure it can continue.

As far as I can see, Colonial Pipeline had no such plans in place, or if it did, it didn't have anyone who could implement them. For instance, if the issue was that hackers had locked the system software, there should have been a clean backup copy offsite, and if necessary, a place with a backup system available to download and run the backup software to control the pipeline remotely.

The question isn't just whether the company's managers were incompetent or derelict, the question would be whether the company auditors, both inside and outside, and its regulators were also derelict. Remember that a major impact of the Enron scandal was to destroy the Arthur Andersen audit firm, whose dereliction allowed the scandal.

A secondary question is how the hackers were able to gain access to the computer system that controlled this critical infrastructure. All I can surmise from the information that's been made public is that the hackers were somehow able to lock or disable the operating copy of the system software, but could then either unlock it or provide a clean copy on payment of the ransom.

Someone who wsnts to do this needs both physical and electronic access to the company's computers. Controlling this has been IT Management 101 since the 1970s. The various root or superuser IDs that can change system software are normally carefully controlled and limited. I've read speculation that this was an inside job. Could certainly be, and there should normally be just a few people who'd be the ones to ask. If it were more than a few, the IT director and most of his chain of command should already be on their way out.

Another issue, especially if it were an inside job, is whether drug testing is being done. Pipelines are regulated by the US Department of Transportation, which requires drug testing for employees involved in operations. I've always thought, given my experience in the work environment, that drug testing and alcohol screening would go a long way to solve corporate dysfunction, but maybe because that's the case, it isn't done much, even when it clearly should be.

There really ought to be congressional hearings on this. But then, congress is also stalled somewhere between incompetence and dereliction.