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.