The Exchanges

Q me just, let me ask you about that. You're obsessed with it in the sense that you think this is a modern day Salem witch trial, which is fascinating. Yeah. So you're fascinated from like a sociological standpoint, which is have humans evolved beyond, you know, where they were hundreds of years ago, engaging in witch hunts and things like that. Or do you think it's interesting? It's other ways.

A I think it's interesting in other ways, definitely in that way as well, but there are other ways in which it's interesting. I think it's almost interesting as an anthropological survey of sorts among, you know, elites, movers, and shakers, you could say, where Epstein did have this extraordinary ability to network and to convene people who probably otherwise would never have been convened. So I've been saying that I think Jeffrey Epstein is the only man On earth who could have brought together for a friendly social powwow, Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon. Like I'm almost jealous of that. I mean, I'm sure that would have been a very fascinating discussion to listen in on. Right. And there are other examples. And so I think it's interesting from that perspective. I mean, I think everything that every little piece of information that can be uncovered about Jeffrey Epstein's life is now almost intrinsically interesting. Just given The salience of the story, right? So I guess I'm interested just from that perspective. Cause like, obviously he's now a historic or world historic even figure. And so, yeah, I'm always, I'm always down to find out something new about what Jeffrey was up to. So sure. I think it's interesting politically, just in terms of how this can be Leveraged into some sort of political battering ram against enemies, and you know, this is like the number one oppositiona…

AI assessment note: “I think it's interesting in other ways, definitely in that way as well”

Q How big are those settlement funds? Those two?

A So JP Morgan was ended up totaling around two hundred ninety million. And the lawyers end up convincing the judge who presided over this agreement in New York, the federal judge Rakoff to grant them 30% in legal fees or attorney's fees that they claimed. Um, and Deutsche Bank was around ninety million or eighty million maybe. Um, so it's just to add those up now. So the Epstein estate was around, if I'm remembering, one hundred and twenty one million, and that's gone up actually since even more litigation's been filed. Separated apart from the class action settlement. JP Morgan, 290. Deutsche Bank around 80 or 90. So we're already at like a half a billion dollar industry. And there's plenty of other lawsuits and settlements that have been spawned from this thing. And so I just have never understood, or I do understand it. So I should correct myself. I've always found it perversely amazing that this whole aspect of this story is never mentioned because it's led to such things as this gross inflation of the total number of victims where you have adults. You're saying that there's financial incentives.

AI assessment note: “JP Morgan was ended up totaling around two hundred ninety million”

Q 19 eighties. We know that Wexner sold him the townhouse. I guess one of the details that came out the other day, as Wexner said, it was that what he was told was fair market value and Epstein obtained his plane from Wexner. So I mean, is that the explanation that somehow he got his start because Wexner was extraordinarily generous towards him? Like, I'm just curious, like, not quite.

A Um, so I mean, there were, there was a huge New York Times article that was one of the few helpful contributions to the popular knowledge around Jeffrey Epstein recently in December, where they go through, I mean, they, they basically set out to answer the question that everybody always asks with like a wink and a nod as though they think that the asking of the question is supposed to prove that the answer would be fundamentally sinister. Meaning how did Jeffrey Epstein make his money? Because the idea is that he must've made his money By dint of his orchestration of this pedophilic sex trafficking ring that he enforced by blackmail at the direction of the Mossad or something like that. And the New York Times goes into fairly forensic detail about how he ended up accumulating money over the course of the. 19 eighties. So people could go read that if they'd like. I mean, I do think that it's fair to say, and saying this does not mean that you have to have to condone everything that Jeffrey Epstein ever did over the course of his entire life. But I do think that he was definitely very high intelligence. I do think that he was Um, highly proficient in mathematics as a young man, which is why he, part of why he became a math teacher at the Dalton school, a pretty prestigious private school in Manhattan, then ends up getting recruited to Bear Stearns, and ends up innovating some nov…

AI assessment note: “ends up getting recruited to Bear Stearns, and ends up innovating some novel financial maneuvers”

Q Michael, I don't want to get off on that yet, but just go back to my original question of what is your 30,000 foot take on what this story is about? Who was this guy in your view?

A I will answer that. However, I do want to just stipulate up front that I think this reflex to have to offer some kind of totalistic Assessment of who Jeffrey Epstein was at his very essence has fed into so much of the constant churn of algorithmic slop that has generated this hysterical frenzy around this issue and has led to people being totally deluded by what we're even talking about. What do most people, I, I, I have some surmises about Jeffrey Epstein. He definitely was a money manager who, as you mentioned, was sort of like this Z-Lake character who did have an extraordinary cross-section of connections with people from across fields, and you know, I just was looking through some of these records in the new Epstein Files productions, and I was looking for something else, but there are, there's an archive of these old message pads that he had at his Palm Beach house, and I'm scrolling through, and it turns out Holly Berry left him a couple of messages. I had no idea that Holly Berry was ever in contact with Jeffrey Epstein, so you can always find somebody new and novel who apparently had an One dealing or another with him. But why are we talking about Jeffrey Epstein right now in February of 2026? Because he is believed to have been the most prolific child sex trafficker in American or perhaps world history, which is why this issue might now take down the British governmen…

AI assessment note: “He definitely was a money manager who, as you mentioned, was sort of like this Z-Lake character”

Q No. Um, okay. So, and even the Deutsche Bank settlement, I don't think I'd heard of that. What, what was that?

A So when Epstein dies August, 1020 19, right? The, a feeding frenzy breaks out in terms of litigation that is brought against his estate. Because at that point, Epstein is obviously no longer available to contest any claims that are made against him, and libel laws cease to apply. People are aware, obviously, that he was very wealthy. He wasn't like a multi-multi-billionaire, as a lot of people suspected at the time, but according to his, um, Disclosure of assets when he was arrested, his net worth was like six, uh, six hundred and fifty million. So still a pretty big estate. And so because of this flood of lawsuits against the estate, the executors of the estate Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn decide to agree to coordinate with the victim's lawyers, Bradley Edwards, David Boies et al., to set up a, basically a mediation program that they call the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund, which is a holistic Settlement process that victims or alleged victims could submit claims to. And then there would be a mediator brought in to evaluate the claims and decide what amount of money to give out. So there wouldn't have to just be like a flood of individual lawsuits. They could kind of consolidate it. And so they set up a settlement model basically for the Epstein estate, which was expressly non-adversarial, meaning there'd be no adversarial scrutinization of the Claims that were made to ju…

AI assessment note: “they set up a settlement model basically for the Epstein estate”

Q When did she come forward with her, her story? Because I, she was the basis of that Netflix movie or documentary. It's called filthy rich about, about Epstein. You're saying that that happened after the whole 2008 Palm beach.

A Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll explain it by the way, filthy rich, which, uh, over this past summer, when the Epstein Fuhrer kind of got reignited, it like skyrocketed to like the, one of the, you know, the top of the charts on Netflix once again. So that little piece of commercial, commercial propaganda has been very determinative in terms of how people have had their perception shaped of this issue. And it is like literal propaganda, I would argue in the sense that it was concocted as a PR vehicle for the victim, quote unquote victims, and especially their lawyers to create like a public clamor for some kind of remedial action to be taken against, um, Epstein's co-conspirators or more, more, more relevantly his estate. It was, it was a maneuver. It was a PR maneuver by a legal team who worked alongside the producers of that documentary as it has, has had been so much of the mass market entertainment products that have been produced around the Epstein affair. It's only taken from that one perspective of the purportive victims. And that perspective is shaped very Carefully by their lawyers to create this sanitized survivor narrative that is now the predominant one. But in terms of her origins, yes, she, um, she initially filed some civil litigation around, I want to say, oh nine, 2010, maybe oh eight as a Jane Doe. Um, maybe, maybe 20 11, somewhere in that range, as first as a Jane Doe…

AI assessment note: “she initially filed some civil litigation around, I want to say, oh nine, 2010”