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July 15, 2025 - The Charlie Kirk Show

01:27:23

Solving for Epstein: What the Trump Admin Should Do Next

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	Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
	We dive deep into the news of the day.
	I first talk about how the media has just been lying about us on this program and then we go rather long with Mike Benz on Epstein and we finally get to a summary of where Mike Benz thinks Epstein plays in this entire conversation.
	Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
	Subscribe to our podcast.
	That's the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page.
	Get involved with Turning PointUSA Today at tpusa.com.
	That is tpusa.com.
	Start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com.
	Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
	And again, get involved with turning pointusa today at tpusa.com.
	Buckle up, everybody.
	Here we go.
	Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
	Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
	I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
	Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
	I want to thank Charlie.
	He's an incredible guy.
	His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
	We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
	That's why we are here.
	Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
	Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
	That is noblegoldinvestments.com.
	It's where I buy all of my gold.
	Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.
	You know, we had a great show yesterday.
	By all objector measurements, people loved the show.
	We were covering all sorts of different issues.
	And remember the backdrop.
	Over the weekend, we had an event that was heard around the world and definitely heard throughout Washington, D.C. We had Megan Kelly, we had Donald Trump Jr., we had the great Steve Bannon, we had Christy Noam, we had Tucker Carlson, we had Pete Hegseth.
	And Epstein was brought up a lot over this last weekend.
	And I was doing interviews on Epstein.
	I probably talked about Epstein in, let's just say, 55 different environments.
	One-off podcast interviews, from stage, speeches, question and answer, interviews with reporters.
	It was a lot.
	So on Monday morning, I had a lot of other topics I wanted to cover.
	I wanted to cover Russia-Ukraine.
	I wanted to cover NATO.
	I wanted to cover the potential closure of the Department of Education, the layoffs at the State Department, wanted to cover some of the economic noobs, wanted to cover tariffs.
	There was a lot to cover yesterday, and we covered it all.
	Well, we covered most of it.
	We had phenomenal guests.
	We also did a recap of the Student Action Summit.
	So yesterday, I basically, I'm paraphrasing, I'm going to get down to the essence of it.
	I said, look, guys, back and forth, possession was grassroots this weekend.
	On Monday, July 14th, yesterday, it's going to be possession administration.
	We covered it a lot this last weekend.
	And apparently, the media, who has interestingly not covered the Epstein story at all, the media that has been silent on the Epstein story, they found it so objectionable that even though they won't cover the Epstein story for one two-hour interval after talking about it for 40 hours this last weekend, they find this to be the number one news story.
	These are all the articles about me this yesterday.
	So I'm, yesterday I said, what the heck is going on?
	So I'm going to read you exactly what I said.
	This is a total obsessive hoax.
	And this shows you exactly the power of this program, the power of this show, and also the contradiction of the media.
	Look at all those articles.
	And even some people are emailing me, Charlie, why are you not talking about Epstein?
	Why are you saying to move on?
	I never, ever, ever said move on, ever.
	I didn't whisper it.
	I didn't think it.
	I didn't say it.
	I am going to now read you what was said yesterday.
	MSNBC did an entire seven-minute segment on me this morning.
	And I'm looking at this thing.
	I said, that's not what I said.
	I did a special YouTube video about Epstein yesterday about what Laura Trump said on Benny Johnson's program.
	All we said was that we talked about it a lot over the weekend, and we're going to focus on other stories.
	And we talked about it a lot at the Sudan Action Summit, and your voices were heard.
	Our voices were heard.
	So this is what I said yesterday.
	Plenty was said this last weekend at our event about Epstein.
	Honestly, I'm done about talking about Epstein for the time being.
	Nobody, not a single news outlet said for the time being.
	They did not include that second part of the sentence.
	I'm going to trust my friends of the administration.
	True.
	I'm going to trust Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, J.D. Vance.
	It's their ball.
	It's their possession.
	I'm going to trust my friends of the government to do what needs to be done.
	I've said plenty this weekend and the ball is in their hands.
	So if you guys want to see my commentary on it, that's fine.
	We have escalatory action being taken in Ukraine and Russia.
	We have tons of announcements happening when it comes to NATO.
	But let me say this again.
	You know my opinion about Epstein, the messaging fumble.
	I would love to see this is this, again, no one covered the second part of the statement.
	No one covered it.
	This thing has like 10 million views on social media.
	And unfortunately, too many people on our side fell for this garbage.
	And I get it heightened.
	By the way, part of this is I'm going to have some compassion.
	This is a very hot moment.
	Very hot.
	And let me be clear.
	I'm not trusting the government.
	I'm trusting individuals that you too also trust.
	You guys are all fans of Dan Bongino and Cash Patel.
	We are trusting that they heard you, they heard me, and they are working to fix this.
	Let me finish this.
	But let me say this again.
	I would love to see the GOJ move to unseal the grand jury testimony.
	We're going to talk about that with a guest later this show.
	I think this would be a big win, and I would love to see that.
	I'm going to trust my friends, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, my friend Pam Bondi, all these guys.
	I'm going to trust them to solve it.
	Ball is in their court.
	I think there was, let's say, a lot of speeches that were directed towards this topic.
	That's it.
	And by the way, today we're going to cover it for nearly a full hour.
	But the media went out of its way.
	Let's just put 323 up there on screen again.
	All of these articles, so they won't cover the essence or the story of the Epstein story, but they'll cover the idea that somehow Charlie Kirk is moving on.
	Never was that ever said, nor is that the truth.
	And guys, they heard us.
	Trust me, Student Action Summit was near complete messaging saturation.
	And so looking back, should I have said those five words in the sequence I said?
	Here's what I should have said.
	And what I was saying, and guess what?
	You say thousands of words on a talk radio program.
	Not all of them is as precise as you should have said.
	So this is what I was saying.
	Ball is in your court, guys.
	You are my friends.
	We got your attention overwhelmingly.
	Fix it.
	That is what I was saying.
	And this was a mockingbird media hit from our guests, from a lot of people chose to bring it up all over the weekend.
	And that's fine.
	And to be clear, we think they can fix it.
	So what I want to make an addendum to what was said yesterday is we're going to keep on talking about it when I said for the time being, I was talking yesterday.
	I was telling the audience, guys, I got a whole deck of stories I got to cover here.
	You see, they want to cover MAGA in disarray.
	And there is so much going on right now.
	So excuse me while I have an obligation to you in this program to talk about a rising kinetic conflict between Russia and Ukraine, to talk about ICE agents being fired upon, to be talking about the major issues with Momdani.
	We have a Minneapolis Momdani rising up.
	So excuse me while I'm going to use part of my program to talk about the other issues and say, hey, possession was in the grassroots this weekend.
	And now the possession arrow is in the hands of some of who we all call these people friends.
	The ball's in Cash's court.
	The ball's in Dan's court.
	The ball is in Pam's court.
	And I have over the years known to trust these people to be able to fix it.
	You see, but what's so disappointing, not disappointing, to an extent I get it, is that the MAGA base is so fired up about this.
	And that's why I didn't take a lot of this seriously.
	Is that, you know, people were incoming, Charlie, why are you moving on?
	Why are you this?
	No one's saying that.
	No one is saying that.
	But people are so fired up that if there's even a semblance that this is not going to be prioritized, people get upset.
	And of course, I don't trust the deep state.
	I trust people that I've known for years.
	And what do I trust them to do?
	I trust them that they hurt us because I know that they heard us.
	I know that the message of the Student Action Summit was heard around the world very clearly.
	And if there's one thing I've learned from you guys in the grassroots in this audience, you are not letting this story go.
	I know that.
	And never once did I tell you guys to stop talking about it.
	This is what's so maddening about the media coverage.
	They're so dishonest.
	MSNBC, Charlie Kirk tells audience to stop talking about it.
	When did I ever tell you guys to stop focusing on it?
	When did I ever tell you to keep the pressure off?
	Never.
	So I hope this is a learning lesson for a lot of people that might have gotten a little fired up about this.
	The media lies to you, and you should look at exactly what people are saying.
	And also, guys, look at what was done in a couple days prior.
	If I would have said that and there was no student action summit prior, okay, I think like a medium level of intensity would have been justified.
	But after hosting the radio program for two days and literally over 20 hours of talking, I did 20 hours of talking, half of which went on Epstein this last weekend.
	So excuse me when I say, hey, I want to talk about rising home prices.
	And we're going to get to this story continually throughout the week.
	Hence, for the time being.
	And all of a sudden, people, after all that we've been through and all the trust that we've earned, people think I'm just dropping the story.
	It makes no sense.
	And for those of you that saw through that crap, thank you.
	We appreciate it.
	But we're not going anywhere.
	And we're definitely not losing focus on this story.
	The other part of it is like, oh, well, you know, Donald Trump called Charlie Kirk.
	Yes, he called to say, how's the event going?
	What's the vibe?
	How are people doing?
	This crowd is so big.
	It's not breaking news that President Trump calls us.
	All right.
	For the record, if you are transcribing, we're not moving on.
	Did I say moving on?
	It's like we're moving on to another topic.
	We're not moving on from Epstein.
	And I think this is a very important thing.
	How about this?
	Progressing.
	Next topic.
	And I get it.
	I do.
	I get it.
	Because people are really fired up about this.
	And we here on this program and many of us kind of in the influencer podcast space, you guys are the closest touch point you guys have to the administration.
	And so we become kind of a, let's just say, a vector.
	And I take that so seriously, believe me.
	So when people were emailing me, firing up, fired up, it didn't bother me that much.
	It bothered me when people said I was, you know, moving on or that I wasn't going to talk about the story.
	That was annoying.
	I was like, guys, come on, look at what I actually said.
	Someone says, Lynn says, so outrageous.
	I listened to you yesterday and all weekend.
	It's just sick that the media spinners twisted what you said.
	No one who listened all to all the summit and the Monday show could have believed that you were saying that anyone told you that we should shut up about this.
	Thanks for reiterating today.
	I'm sorry that these sick types are so bent on dividing and conquering.
	God is on our side.
	God bless you, Charlie, your family, and your staff.
	Lynn, you're a great patriot.
	Thank you.
	It's a great, great email.
	And I do want to say, though, that it is an honor and a responsibility.
	And because a lot of people are fired up about this, it's not breaking news.
	I've said that a while.
	People are really animated about this because it involves children getting raped.
	It involves a sex trafficking ring.
	It involves some of the wealthiest, most powerful people out there.
	It very well might involve our intel community, which we're going to talk about Mike Bence with Mike Benz.
	And so the base is really, really animated about this.
	And you guys can't email Donald Trump directly, but you can email me directly.
	And so I see it and I get it.
	So we kind of become a gathering point for the excitement and the positivity, but also the angst and the anger.
	And so over the last 24 hours, we've kind of just been a just a little bit of a dartboard for a lot of people that wanted to blow off some steam.
	And by the way, I have no problem with people blowing off steam.
	Blowing off steam is a big, it is an important part of life.
	Everyone blows off steam differently.
	Sometimes you just write a letter and you don't send it.
	You go for a walk.
	It could be very therapeutic.
	But now it's about fixing it.
	And there was some breaking news yesterday.
	And why else did I say that?
	Maybe because I've been talking and I think that things are going to get fixed.
	Let's play the Laura Trump Benny clip.
	Put all that in context.
	Let's play Laura Trump on the Benny show.
	There needs to be more transparency on this.
	And I think that that will happen.
	I mean, look, I don't know what truly exists there, but I know that this is something that's important to the president as well.
	He does want transparency on all these fronts, but everything we're talking about, because it's frustrated him as well.
	He's going to want to set things right as well.
	So I believe that there will probably be more coming on this.
	And I believe anything that they are able to release that doesn't damage any witnesses or anyone underage or anything like that, I believe they'll probably try to get out sooner rather than later because they hear it and they understand it.
	So hopefully we see that happen sooner than later.
	And that, I guess that would be my advice.
	But to everybody out there who's all worked up about it, there's no great plot to keep this information away that I'm aware of.
	I do just believe that maybe it's been slow rolled for reasons that hopefully we understand down the line.
	Laura Trump says that President Trump hears you and that she thinks that information will be released soon.
	The grassroots pressure on this is enormous and they are hearing your voice.
	Trust me, all throughout the digital world.
	It is enormous.
	And I would love to start to see some material progress on this.
	And again, I know that people knock me for saying this, but when you have friends, don't you give your friends some opportunity to be able to get it right, to fix it, especially once that memo is delivered.
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	Joining us now is a great friend and a great American, Sean Parnell, Assistant to SECDEF for Public Affairs and Sean Parnell, Chief Pentagon Spokesman.
	Sean, you're a great American.
	Congratulations on all you're doing.
	Sean, I'm so excited to have you on the program because our audience is very confused and they want to try to get clarity on what's happening with the recent news with Russia and Ukraine.
	And so I just want to give you an uninterrupted opportunity to make the case and separate fact from fiction.
	Sean Prunnell, Assistant to SecDeaf for Public Affairs.
	Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me, Charlie.
	It's great to be back on the show after a little hiatus.
	You know, look, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been a central focus for President Trump since he was on the campaign trail.
	If you remember back to the very first interview where he's had a town hall with Caitlin Collins and she asked him the ambush question of like, do you want Putin to win this war?
	President Trump responded with something very simple, yet also very profound.
	And he said, I want people to stop dying.
	What we've seen over the last year, hundreds of thousands of people dead in this conflict.
	And a central focus of President Trump's second administration is bringing this war to a peaceful resolution.
	You heard President Trump from the Oval Office yesterday.
	Clearly, he's frustrated with Vladimir Putin stringing along negotiations.
	He doesn't seem like he's being serious.
	And so what we've done at the Department of Defense and at the President's direction and the SECDEF's direction is provide a framework for munitions that we can send to Ukraine to help them defend themselves while the president pursues peace between Russia and Ukraine.
	And that's all we've done.
	And so we're going to continue to do that and give the president robust options as he pursues the peace.
	So the skepticism from the audience, I would say, on the Russia-Ukraine situation is that they do not want to see America embroiled into another quagmire.
	I actually don't share that concern.
	I trust the president.
	I trust you guys.
	I think he demonstrated with Iran that he has incredible wisdom and prudence to be able to navigate this.
	So I don't share that concern.
	I do potentially see, you know, in war, you have to enter things with humility because things can get out of control.
	And all of a sudden, you know, NATO, Article 5 could, I guess, get triggered.
	Also, the audience does not like the idea of giving away money.
	So is this a purchase agreement?
	Can you explain that this is a purchase, not a giveaway?
	Yeah, it's such a great point.
	So, yeah, I mean, basically, these are weapons made in America, purchased by NATO.
	So that's just what this framework provides for.
	And to your point about the base in the audience, I completely understand the skepticism and the fear as someone who fought in Afghanistan for 16 straight months and to watch Afghanistan surrendered in 2021 was horrific.
	It hurts my soul just to think about it.
	And you look at American foreign policy in the 20th and 21st century, whether it's toppling autocrats from Egypt to Libya to Syria to Iraq and Afghanistan, none of that has paid off well for America.
	And especially when you look at wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you ask yourself, what do we have to show for those wars after being embroiled for over a decade in Afghanistan, almost 20 years?
	We have thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands of Americans suffering from the invisible wounds of war, and hundreds of thousands of families who are affected by those conflict.
	And again, what do we have to show for it?
	So the skepticism and the fear from the audience is certainly warranted, but I think you have to think back to what President Trump has said and done in his first term.
	He was a president of peace with the Abraham Accords in his first term, and he's pursuing a path of peace here in a second.
	Look at the Houthi operation in the Red Sea.
	You had a clearly defined mission in an end state.
	Look at the Iran operation with Operation Midnight Hammer.
	You had a clearly defined mission in an end state.
	So for President Trump, peace is his focus, but in order to pursue peace and to give yourself the strongest hand available at the negotiating table, you have to be strong.
	And that is exactly what President Trump is signaling in this Russia-Ukraine fight so that he can set the conditions for peace moving forward.
	And by the way, I fully trust the president.
	He has never once violated the trust of this country or the American people.
	That's why people love this president.
	When he says something on the campaign trail, he makes good on the promise when he's in office.
	And by the way, that's something that has been very different from Republicans and Democrat administrations in the past.
	When the president says something, he actually does it and keeps his promise.
	That is correct, and that is true.
	So, Sean, NATO is purchasing the money.
	And is it fair to say that this is going to be a Europe, European-led purchase?
	Because obviously, we give a lot of money to NATO.
	I know that Europe is giving more and more money to NATO.
	So, is it NATO buying the weapons?
	Will it be mainly Germany?
	So, kind of walk us through just a little bit.
	There might be classified stuff here, but I bet most of this is public.
	Kind of the scope of the deal.
	Well, so first of all, we should give credit where credit's due to the Secretary of Defense, who has made it a focus of his tenure as SECDEF to ask the Europeans to do more.
	Ask the Europeans to step up and spend more on defense between 3.5 and now 5%.
	I would also add that four months ago, people were saying that it was not possible.
	People were throwing shade at the SECDEF and saying that he couldn't get it done, but he did in conjunction with the president.
	So we have our European allies right now committed to spend more on their defense.
	And part of that deal is buying American weapons from America, manufactured in America, as part of this framework to help support Ukraine while it pursues peace.
	And as I understand it, like this deal is very much, it's very much in the early stages, right?
	But you have different NATO countries wholeheartedly on board with committing, with giving their resources, financial resources through UCOM to NATO, which will then in turn be weapons to Ukraine and monies back to the U.S. Treasury.
	So again, this is a good deal for the country.
	It's in keeping with the SECDEF's national defense strategy of asking for our allies to do more while we can shift our focus to the Indo-Pacific where we think it belongs.
	I love that because it's got to be all eyes on the rise of the Chinese Communist Party about their potential military incursion with Taiwan.
	Yeah, and Charlie, you're right.
	It's the most pragmatic thing in the world.
	America first does not mean America alone.
	And if the threats that we face in this world evolve and they evolve quickly, and the threats, we think, you know, a near-peer adversary in China represents what is a very real threat to America and its interests.
	China has said from the very, they've made it part of their strategic calculation to be the world's lone superpower.
	And we want to do everything that we can to stop that and keep America the number one lone superpower in the world.
	Because America, by and large, is a force for good.
	In order to do that, we have to ask our allies to do more, ask our allies to be good friends and good partners while we shift our focus to the Indo-Pacific, which is, again, where we think it belongs.
	Okay, so Sean, now I want to talk about the One Big Beautiful Bill.
	I want to give you an opportunity to make the case for the increase in defense spending.
	Obviously, we're behind the president.
	One Big Beautiful Bill was awesome.
	But one thing, just a little whispers and murmurs, especially amongst some of the younger demo, is they say, do we really need to now go to a trillion dollars on the defense budget?
	Can you talk about where this money will be spent, where it is going, and how you believe this is necessary to fortify national security?
	Well, I mean, look, the things that we're doing in the Department of Defense right now, and I would say in the first six months of the SECDEF's tenure here at the Pentagon, he's done more than most secretaries have done in the last four years.
	The changes that he is making here in the Pentagon will be generational.
	I mean, he's making the Pentagon, I think, our country and the world a better place by some of these changes and removing red tape.
	So when you look at our overall budget, we need to have a budget that supports that unbelievable change, right?
	And so we're investing in historic things like F-47, a sixth-generation fighter.
	We're investing in things that have never been done before with multiple Manhattan projects and Golden Dome for America to protect our homeland.
	We're talking about reinvesting in things or investing in things that we've never invested in before, Charlie.
	And so we've got to give the SECF the resources that he needs to accomplish the president's vision.
	And that's part of the reason why we have the resources that we do in this budget.
	In closing here, Sean, talk about the increase of military recruitment.
	That is, it's one of my favorite things.
	I told Pete this privately and publicly.
	I said, Pete, you guys should be talking about this every day because that right there, it's better than some Rasmussen poll or some sort of morning concert poll.
	The president has said this to me before as well, which Is the best indicator of national morale strengthening, of the ability to see whether or not people believe in America and they want to serve the country is military recruitment.
	Remember, after 9-11, military recruitment went straight up, right?
	We've seen this at different times in American history.
	And also in the midst of Vietnam, voluntary military recruitment went down.
	Voluntary military recruitment started to go down towards the end of the Iraq war.
	It also was at record low levels per percentage under Joe Biden, especially after the Afghanistan withdrawal.
	Where is it now?
	And brag on the success of the increase of the military recruitment.
	So right now I'm co-chairing the recruiting task force here at the Department of Defense force-wide.
	So we could probably do another interview deep dive on all of this because it's an interesting yet complicated topic.
	But you are absolutely right.
	The proof is in the pudding.
	And as it pertains to recruiting, leadership matters.
	So take our, let's go back a year where President Trump was almost assassinated on that stage in Butler under fire.
	You don't know, even people that have all the training in the world don't know how they're going to react under fire.
	President Trump was almost assassinated on that day.
	And within seconds of being shot, the president stood up, pumped his fist, looked out to the crowd, looked out to our country, looked out to the world, and said, fight, fight, fight defiantly.
	So you juxtapose that image with the image of Biden, his predecessor before him, who as an animated corpse had to be dipped in the Lazarus pit every day.
	Every day it was less and less affected, hardly an inspiring figure.
	And by the way, a week after President Trump was almost assassinated, Biden resigns the presidency in a PDF on social media, which is almost the equivalent of writing, I quit on a napkin at work before you leave.
	I mean, Biden embodied weakness.
	President Trump embodies strength.
	Likewise, so too does Secretary Hegseth.
	And when you embody strength, it inspires people to say, hey, I want to serve under that commander-in-chief.
	I want to serve under this Secretary of Defense.
	And that is the reason why our recruiting right now has been historic.
	And I don't think there's going to be any end in sight, Charlie.
	Sean Parnell, great work.
	Thank you so much.
	Talk to you soon.
	You're welcome anytime here.
	And make sure you keep those recruitment numbers up.
	It's very important.
	Thank you so much, Sean Parnell.
	Got it.
	Excellent.
	Great guy.
	Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
	Okay, so last night, we lost a legend.
	John MacArthur passed away last night.
	John MacArthur has been in and out of hospitals and he has been struggling with pneumonia and other health issues.
	He passed away at the age of 84.
	John MacArthur is without a doubt one of the most influential Protestant minds since the Reformation.
	I would put him top 10.
	I have an entire part of my library wall just dedicated to John MacArthur's biblical commentary.
	He was one of the most well-read, researched, wise, and deep thinkers, and an unwavering pastor.
	I actually never met him in person, and I regret that.
	Our schedules never align, but we did many Zoom calls and phone calls together.
	So praise the Lord that we were able to do that.
	John MacArthur goes all the way back to fighting against Gavin Newsom, against same-sex marriage.
	He was putting on a clinic against then, I think, Mayor Newsom or activist Newsom.
	Play Cut 328.
	I'm a practicing Catholic.
	I got married in the church two plus years.
	I don't see what we're doing in terms of advancing the bond of love and monogamy and extending that to families, families of same sex, in any way, shape, or form takes away anything from the church or the sanctity of the union that my wife and I have.
	I would just like to ask the mayor as a practice Catholic, do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?
	Look, Pastor, I'm not going to get in a theological debate with you that.
	Well, that's not a theological debate.
	That's just a straight question.
	Do you believe the Bible is the authoritative word of God?
	Yeah, with respect, I guess I do.
	Now the response.
	Well, then the Bible says when God created man, he said, one man, one woman cleave together for life.
	That's a family.
	Jesus in the New Testament reaffirms that.
	All the writers of the Old and the New Testament affirm it.
	The clip actually keeps on getting better.
	Let's try to get the full one at another time.
	But here's why John MacArthur will go down as a legend in my book.
	It's not his books.
	It's not all of his commentary.
	It's not even his sermons.
	And that is exceptional.
	And I will listen to it.
	It's because when it mattered most, when churches were closing and they were taking Easter and Pentecost and the entire Californian government was coming down on churches and most bent a knee and they refused to open.
	Of course, my pastor and dear friend Rob McCoy did not.
	John MacArthur and all eyes of the nation were on John MacArthur.
	All pastors were watching and see, what is John MacArthur going to do?
	And he openly defied the California government.
	He rejected the lockdowns.
	And John MacArthur did something that is one of the most difficult, one of the most important parts of a Christian walk is he finished well.
	He never bowed to the gods of this age.
	He never apologized for scripture.
	He was a fighter through and through.
	And the last chapter of John MacArthur's legendary career, from fighting homosexual marriage, from fighting against the trans stuff, which he was incredible, the final part of his chapter was, will you resist government tyranny or will you submit to the will of God?
	And he crushed it and he aced it.
	Tragically, so many other Christian pastors, and I will not say their name, they're finishing really poorly right now.
	There's a list of guys, men, that were good, that were strong, and they became weak during COVID and woke.
	John MacArthur, though, fully embodied 2 Timothy 4, 7.
	I have fought the good fight.
	I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith.
	John MacArthur and I have something in common.
	We're both Scots.
	We don't like being told what to do.
	We're lovers of liberty, lovers of freedom, lovers of America.
	John MacArthur is now in heaven with our Lord, and we will continue the fight that he started.
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	As we have said prior, it is time for us to try to put a path forward and to try to figure out a path forward of a way that this administration might solve what is happening with the Epstein situation.
	Joining us now is Mark Caputo, reporter for Axios, that is axios.com.
	Axios has been covering this story throughout all of its different elements.
	So Mark, great to see you.
	So Mark, on this program, obviously I said a lot of my friends are in the administration, but we've really never seen grassroots anger like this.
	We want the administration to succeed.
	We want to see on this program this thing rectified, and we want the truth to come out.
	Mark, what does your reporting show?
	And then please walk us through your excellent piece.
	I'm not sure how much truth can actually come out.
	We can discuss that in depth.
	It's very difficult and complicated to explain legal process.
	People are expecting a lot more than would be available under any administration.
	But for now, Donald Trump has basically said he's done with this and he's moving on.
	And the DOJ memo that got released last Sunday speaking to such is going to control.
	Now, obviously, the blowback has been so severe and so serious that White House advisors, Trump advisors, both in the administration, outside of the administration, are talking about different ideas if they do decide to do a course correction.
	Now, obviously, they're not going to call it a course correction.
	And there's basically three ideas here, as you have on the screen.
	Idea number one is have some sort of special counsel, some sort of special prosecutor or a team, a special master to review the case from top to bottom or to review the criminal elements of it from top to bottom to make sure it was prosecuted properly.
	And that helps get around Trump's discussion or statement that he's sort of done with this.
	There are still things to examine here.
	So that's number one.
	Number two is unredact those things that have been redacted.
	There is on the FBI website something called the Vault.
	You can read a number of Jeffrey Epstein documents there.
	Many are redacted.
	There are other documents that haven't been uploaded to that because it was just a massive investigation, a series of investigations over time.
	And the number three is courts have sealed various records in both the criminal case and in some of the civil cases, is petitioned the courts to unseal those.
	And this would bring more transparency and more stuff to light.
	Now, there's a lot of caveats here.
	Mike Davis with the Article 3 Project has been very forceful about this on Twitter, and he's right, which is grand jury testimony, which, and there is grand jury documentation that has not been released, is kept secret for a reason.
	There are people who are accused in these closed door proceedings of various things.
	There is evidence that's brought against them.
	But in a grand jury, it's not rebutted evidence.
	That is, you don't have the defense counsel saying, wait a minute, what you're showing here is not true.
	It can be rebutted.
	It can be explained.
	It can be expanded or whatnot.
	That's not in there.
	So if you just wind up releasing grand jury testimony, for instance, you could really come up with a warped sense of who is guilty and who isn't.
	And that sort of controls in understanding how the Department of Justice got to the situation.
	And more broadly is the Justice Department since forever has never really disclosed and does not like to disclose and understandably doesn't disclose information about potential suspects unless it's ready to indict.
	One of the reasons you'll read it, say, in an indictment of a conspiracy, if they're indicting Mark Caputo at Axios for some sort of crime.
	And if one of my co-conspirators is Charlie Kirk, but he hasn't been charged yet, they'll just call you co-conspirator one.
	They're not going to say Charlie Kirk until they're ready to indict.
	And the reason for that, again, is you don't want to accuse people before they're charged.
	And then once they're charged, they're still innocent until proven guilty.
	In the court of public opinion, when you just start releasing all of this documentation, you don't have that careful, controlled process by which the truth can be arrived at through our legal system.
	Look, but we have to start to see some credible information to come out, credible information.
	And so the first question I have from your reporting, why is it that there has not been, for nine days now, not a singular press conference?
	I mean, Caroline Levitt tried her best.
	And then also, Mark, why is it that a lot of your colleagues in the Washington Press Corps have not asked the president about this for nearly a week and a half?
	I think there was some questioning that was done outside of Air Force One, but had I been there, I would have certainly asked a little more about it.
	But Donald Trump certainly doesn't want to talk about it.
	As for whether Pam Bondi and to a degree, the deputy DOJ, Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, who's in charge of the criminal division, whether they wind up talking to the press, perhaps you, a podcast is probably a preferred Forum to discuss the case.
	I think that's still an open question.
	But for now, the administration is following the lead, as it does and as it's structured to do, of the president.
	President Trump doesn't want to really talk about this, he wants to move on.
	And so the official position now of the administration is: we've said what we've said.
	And until the president decides to sort of uncork the bottle or decide to do more, we're not going to do more.
	Right.
	Just to one point here, though, I have to elaborate a little bit further, though.
	I know you said the president doesn't want to talk about it, but since when is the Washington Press Corps not asked questions about stuff Trump doesn't want to talk about?
	That's a great question.
	Again, what I'm colleagues, not you, I'm not blaming you.
	But I am curious.
	I'm not blaming you.
	Help the audience understand why your colleagues in the media are so uninterested in this.
	I think there is some interest in this.
	No, they don't ask me a single question.
	I mean, there were 65 questions asked of President Trump in a week and a half.
	And so from us in the grassroots, the reason this is important is that if he's not hearing from it from the Washington Press Corps, then he's like, okay, it's not as big of a deal.
	So it's a little strange that the Washington Press Corps is not asking questions about it.
	Maybe I don't quite, they're only covering one element of it.
	They're covering the, well, you know, MAGA is upset about this.
	Is it that maybe they're intimidated by President Trump?
	I'd say there's a number of factors.
	One, yes, he can be scary for people to ask questions of, and some people don't necessarily do a very good job asking the question of that.
	I'm not going to name names.
	Two, there is the overall perception in the mainstream media that the reality is the reason that sort of the online MAGA base and a number of people who might not even be Trump voters think there's so much more here is that they were spun up by conspiracy theories that wound up either being untrue or unproducible or unverifiable.
	So there's no point asking.
	I, however, am in your boat here that I think more questions should be asked about what the president is thinking and why he arrived at this idea.
	There is that notable Fox interview that resurfaced recently where he was asked about disclosing these records.
	And his response, I thought, was kind of telling and not enough people, I think, had paid attention to it, which is he had mentioned that, and I'm sort of paraphrasing here, the reason he doesn't want to disclose those records is, quote, there's a lot of phony stuff in there.
	And this stuff he doesn't want to get out.
	And I think Donald Trump understands that because he was friends with Epstein for a period of time, he's going to be mentioned in there.
	Now, Julie Brown, who is the Miami Herald reporter, who really was the one responsible for exposing the sweetheart deal that Epstein got and bringing him back to justice in 2018, 2019, she has said she has not really heard that Donald Trump is a major player there.
	However, Trump is aware that once these documents get released, you're going to get those headlines, but there are also just other people who are going to be collateral damage.
	And that's just a controlling concern of his.
	That's something I would like to ask him more about, and I'd like to hear more from him.
	And yeah, sure, if I have an opportunity, you know, you talk to Trump all the time.
	If he wants to sit down with an interview with me or discuss it, I would be more than happy to do it.
	We'll see what happens.
	So, Mark, just really quick, is it's rare, but is it possible is the word I'm looking for to unseal the grand jury testimony?
	I think it's possible.
	But if it's unsealed, I cannot see how there would not be redactions in it that would make people happy.
	Ultimately, part of the problem that the Trump administration has here is this is an article of faith by a number of people that there's an evil cabal of corrupt princes that rule this world and get away with crimes against children and humanity.
	And the Epstein case is a perfect example.
	And so if everything were to somehow come out, that would probably not be enough for some people.
	But I'm not making a false choice here.
	The reality is there's a space between what was released on Sunday and what has been released so far and what can be released.
	So putting on my sort of thinking cap and listening to what folks in and out of the administration have said about these three sort of different ideas to bring more transparency to that.
	One of the ideas, the leading one is to have that special master, a special prosecutor, special counsel to review the case and participate in sort of unredacting various documents and documentation.
	And I think there you could wind up with grand jury information disclosed, but it would be so exceedingly rare and it would take quite an act by the president and by the government, by the Department of Justice to decide to stick by that.
	I'm not going to say never, say never, but there's just such institutional resistance in DOJ regardless of who is there and partly understandably so.
	But to your point, this has reached a, at least online, a crisis point for the administration to respond to.
	And there is a contrast to be drawn between the way the administration is handling the Epstein case and the way it's handling the disclosure of the JFK files.
	JFK was murdered 62 years ago, and we're still receiving documentation now and more evidence in part because the Trump administration has demanded that the United States government finally make good on the 1992 JFK Records Act and disclose everything.
	And we're still learning new stuff.
	And one of the reasons that's a good idea is that when you have information vacuums, false conspiracy theories easily fill it.
	And in the absence of more information, I don't think a lot of people are going to be satisfied with the answers or lack thereof that they've gotten so far.
	So what are the other two ideas then that you would propose to be able to proceed here?
	Well, I wouldn't propose, just in my reporting, what they're discussing, it's understandable and it's rational, which is this special master to not only help disclose records and to issue a final report and to re-examine the case, But also to redact those records that have or unredact those records that have so far been released.
	Some of that can be done relatively easily.
	The government, regardless of agency and administration, always has a tendency to over-redact things.
	And then lastly, to petition the courts to release those things that can be released without harming victims and innocent people who happen to be accused of wrongdoing or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
	So the final point, I suppose, here is that is it your reporting and your contention that the current information that the Department of Justice has, they cannot release or they will not release?
	And what is the reason your reporting bears out as to why they cannot or will not release all the information gathered currently at the Department of Justice?
	I think it's a combination of cannot release and will not release.
	That is, they are sort of, they are still bound.
	The Department of Justice is a group of attorneys, and they're bound by their oath to the court and the U.S. legal system.
	And the U.S. legal system, to put it charitably, frowns on disclosing things like grand jury testimony for the reasons previously stated.
	But where there's a will, there's a way.
	And if President Trump determines that this stuff needs to be done, I assume that it's going to get done in a relatively short period of time, but it's going to take a while.
	Mark, thank you for your time.
	Axios.com.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thanks.
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	Joining us now is Mike Benz.
	Mike does a wonderful job.
	Mike, thank you for taking the time.
	So, Mike, I want to keep our conversation very focused on what can be done.
	A separate time we could talk about all the unanswered questions of which there are a plenty and the messaging fumble and all of that.
	If you were advising the president of the United States, if President Donald Trump called you up and said, Mike, what should I do that is reasonable, what would you tell him to do?
	I would tell him to have Pam Bondi walk down the hallway at Maine Justice to the Office of Professional Responsibility, OPR, and pull all files related to the November 2020 OPR report that evaluated Jeffrey Epstein's 2008 plea deal.
	In the process of that OPR investigation, they interviewed everyone at justice who was involved in that 2008 plea deal, Jeffrey Epstein, and sought to put the story to bed by collecting transcribed interviews, audio, and basically reams of files.
	The report itself took nine months to produce.
	It's 348 pages long, but it leaves out the critical information that's necessary for both the public and the current Justice Department to understand the Epstein issue.
	In particular, they interviewed Alex Acosta, the main Justice Department official who gave Jeffrey Epstein the sweetheart plea deal about Epstein's intelligence ties.
	They have a one-line summary for that conversation buried in a footnote on footnote 244.
	Pull that transcript from DOJ OPR and Alex Acosta and make that transcript public so we know exactly what the Justice Department asked about Epstein's intelligence ties and exactly what Acosta, who cut the plea deal, said.
	Okay, so let me just repeat that.
	So this was an OPR Office of what again?
	Professional Responsibility.
	Postal Responsibility internal report on Jeffrey Epstein.
	Is that correct?
	Well, they produced it for the public.
	This was, so here's the history of this.
	The second indictment for Jeffrey Epstein happened after a, I believe it was the Miami Herald published a kind of blockbuster series in 2018 about the contents of the secret plea deal that the Justice Department cut,
	the fact that it had been offered before the Justice Department even reviewed key evidence, that victims were not included in the talks about the plea deal, that it had been hijacked from, the FBI had been stopped from pursuing prosecution.
	That creates a big scandal.
	And in February 2019, the Justice Department announces that it's going to be conducting this basically special review, this Office of Professional Responsibility review of the Epstein plea deal in response to the giant outrage over the Miami Herald series.
	Now, five months later, Jeffrey Epstein in July 2019 gets arrested on July 6, 2019.
	Three days later, Vicki Ward publishes an article saying Alex Acosta said that Jeffrey Epstein belonged to intelligence, and that's why he cut him the plea deal.
	He was told to back off.
	So here's my question.
	So are you saying that there are transcripts that could get released that were the underlying supportive material of this OPR report?
	Yes.
	Okay, got it.
	So you want the raw data underneath the OPR report, essentially.
	That's the thrust of your focus.
	If the president was asking, hey, what do I do?
	Yes, because the meta question that hangs over this whole thing is, is it true?
	Did he get the plea deal because he, quote, belonged to intelligence?
	And if that's true, that's the question that just has to be answered, or at least Has to be attempted to be answered because that's really the great speculation that you can't answer fully without some sort of confirmation or at least boxes being checked.
	Now, in that process, by the way, Charlie, OPR works with the CIA Office of General Counsel.
	The Office of General Counsel is who coordinates with the Justice Department OPR whenever there's anything sensitive or relating to classified or confidential information.
	Oftentimes, the DOJ and CIA will work together on any sort of classified element.
	And I would like to know, for example, I think the public has a right to know in the production of this November 2020 report, because it's so strange the way it's put together.
	It was supposed to put the intelligence issue to bed, and they buried it in one line on page 169.
	Okay, so let's dive into that.
	So this is a big part of this.
	So the question is, was Jeffrey Epstein an intelligence asset?
	And some people are saying that he was an intelligence asset of Mossad.
	I do have to read this, and I want your response.
	This is from Naftali Bennett, former Israeli prime minister.
	He says yesterday, quote, as former Israeli prime minister, with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I can say with you 100% certainty, quote, the accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.
	Epstein's conduct, both the criminal and merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with Mossad or the state of Israel.
	Epstein never worked for the Mossad.
	This accusation is a lie being peddled by, he mentions Tucker Carlson by name, who's a friend of mine, but he does mention him.
	And they just make things up, say with confidence and lies, this is vicious.
	Lies, we will not take it anymore.
	It's a pretty strong, and this is an X, that is a pretty strong, let's say, response.
	So rebuttal.
	Do you believe that, Mike?
	Pretty strong denial.
	Do you believe that?
	Or number one, number two, could Jeffrey Epstein been MI6, Central Intelligence, Saudi intelligence?
	Mike Bence.
	When I hear that, I hear the same sort of carefully worded statement that I hear from the CIA side.
	I don't believe that Jeffrey Epstein, his intelligence aspects were primarily around blackmail.
	I've never been really interested in the blackmail side of this.
	He was a financier.
	He was a financial fixer.
	The CIA, I can name 10 examples of what do you mean a financial fixer?
	Because obviously he didn't make his money.
	I mean, he didn't earn it through trades or by market brilliance.
	So what do you mean by that?
	Think about figures like Mark Rich and Bruce Rappaport.
	These are people who work with U.S. intelligence, as well as Israeli intelligence, as well as intelligence agencies across the Five Eyes and across the sort of old Safari Club from the 70s and 80s.
	These are figures who have access to huge amounts of capital.
	And when the CIA wants to do something off books in terms of transaction or the State Department wants a pipeline done in the Middle East, but they need guarantees or buy-in from a couple of different governments or arms brokers.
	I mean, this is like the Adnan Khashoggi story, for example, right?
	Adnan Khashoggi, Jeffrey Epstein personally bragged that Adnan Khashoggi was one of his top clients in 1987.
	Well, what was Adnan Khashoggi doing in 1987?
	Adnan Khashoggi was the middleman between the U.S. and Israel on Iran-Contra.
	It was Adnan Khashoggi when he flew to the White House.
	Now, Adnan Khashoggi was a Saudi, the biggest arms dealer in world history.
	He made three times more as a commissions agent for Lockheed Martin than every other arms broker combined.
	Three times more.
	So let me just interrupt you.
	Sorry, Mike, this is breaking news.
	This is 334.
	President Trump was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, saying that anything that is credible should be released.
	It's funny, we said the same thing yesterday, just moments ago, play cut 334.
	A very, very quick briefing.
	Did she tell you, what did she tell you about the review and specifically?
	Didn't she tell you at all that your name appeared in the file?
	No, no, she's given us just a very quick briefing.
	And in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen, and I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey.
	They were made up by Obama.
	They were made up by the Biden, you know.
	And we went through years of that with the Russia-Russia hoax, with all of the different things that we had to go through.
	We've gone through years of it, but she's handled it very well, and it's going to be up to her.
	Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.
	That's the end at the kicker here.
	So Mike, I'm sorry to interrupt because that was very important.
	We're going to go long here, by the way, so we're going to be able to cover this from all dimensions.
	So based on your original point, that OPR Office of General Counsel transcript would be credible, right?
	And then potentially could be released.
	So that would fit within what you're talking about here, Mike Bence.
	Exactly.
	Hard forensic evidence.
	I also believe that on the CIA side, you're not looking for blackmail.
	I'm not saying blackmail didn't happen.
	I don't know if it did or didn't, but I don't see the evidence that it did.
	And it wouldn't be Epstein himself who would be doing it because then you lose all the access and you lose all the deal brokering if you have a reputation as a blackmailer.
	The fact is, is what the CIA needs first and foremost is money.
	Jeffrey Epstein's career started at the time of the creation of a private CIA in the CIA.
	He started his career at Bear Stearns under A. Screenberg in 1976.
	He was there until 1980.
	That's the exact period under Jimmy Carter when the CIA got destroyed in the budget, got all these handcuffs placed on it.
	In 1979, Iran fell.
	And this is what set off a whole private CIA operation through Iran-Contra in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980, 1988.
	And it was this exact network of financiers, primarily around U.S., Israel, but also U.K., France, and Saudi, and their interests in having to deal with Iran.
	And so you have these financial fixers.
	Like, let's just stick with this Khashoggi story for a second here.
	When Khashoggi flew to the White House in 1983 to meet with Ronald Reagan's national security advisor to pitch the idea of arms to Iran to sell the proceeds to Nicaragua, the whole plan was how do you do that despite an arms embargo, the fact that it's illegal.
	So what they did is they used Israel as a middleman to sell the arms and then achieve the goals in Nicaragua.
	But this was a U.S. intelligence operation that needed covert financing through Adnan Khashoggi, who, Jeffrey Epstein client, in order to sell arms to Iran to basically have a proxy war in Nicaragua.
	What I'm saying is, is this is the sort of thing that you need for covert action, you need covert financing.
	Jeffrey Epstein, everyone who talks to him.
	Okay, so he says, let me just be, sorry, Mike.
	But then where do you think is the source of the money then?
	Well, I think the source of the money are the folks in different aspects of the finance world who are principally who have access to the pools of money that Epstein brokered.
	So for example, I think that Jeffrey Epstein got his start of his career serving Bear Starn's.
	Well, I think it started, I mean, with the Edgar Bronfin and the Ace Greenberg Network.
	So Mike, I'm just trying to understand here.
	So basically, your theory is he helped intelligence agencies by providing funds to people they wanted to give to indirectly.
	He was a money man.
	And the sex stuff was a sideshow because he was a creep, pervert, evil person.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, I don't even, I don't, not even thinking about the sex stuff.
	That's not what would be in the intelligence files.
	What I believe you would find if you look for it would be that was would be the different financial transactions, the private financial.
	So the role would not be as an asset.
	This is why I say I don't like when I hear the phrase intelligence asset and whenever I hear Pam Bondi being asked about it or Alex Acosta being asked about intelligence asset, I think, well, that's a limited hangout.
	You know what you're asking there.
	You know that's not the question.
	There is not going to be a human 201 file on Jeffrey Epstein.
	There never is for financial fixers.
	I did a study recently of 10 financial fixers that the CIA used for various covert financing.
	Name financial file one that people would know.
	Bruce Rappaport, Mark Rich.
	Like as I just said, I mean, I have a list on me if you want me to go to the name.
	So a intelligence financial fixer, someone who is given a pool of money and distributes it upon command.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	They're not given a pool of money.
	They have access to money.
	So let me give you an example.
	Okay.
	In 1951, declassified CIA records show the head of intelligence, head of research analysis for the CIA sending a letter to the head of the CIA saying, next time you talk to the Ford Foundation, ask them if they can provide financing to the following universities.
	Now, this is because the CIA doesn't have enough money in the budget to fund 30 different universities.
	They want financing for research done at universities on Sovietology, on what's going on in Africa or Asia.
	They don't have the money for it.
	They can't get it through Congress, but they have friends, friends of the station.
	And so they will speak with outside groups or they'll speak with foundations or hedge fund managers to arrange financing that is not on the CIA's books.
	And that will accomplish the goal.
	It's the same thing with Epstein.
	Epstein is, I don't think, is moving CIA money.
	The CIA has a goal, for example, in the Middle East.
	They want a pipeline constructed or they want some initiative to go through, but it requires juicing the deal by getting buy-in from folks in Saudi Arabia, folks in Egypt, folks in France.
	Somebody has to put that deal together and be responsible for the deal in case it goes wrong.
	And also, sometimes these deals are quite dirty or they inflame other allies of the United States.
	So the U.S. does not want to look like it put the deal together.
	So let's use a specific example.
	I mentioned a couple of names like Bruce Rappaport, Mark Rich, and the like.
	So Bruce Rappaport, there's a scandal that folks would do well to look back at today.
	And that was the pipeline scandal in the 1980s that involved Ronald Reagan's attorney general during the attempted construction of a pipeline through Iraq.
	Now, this was that the Iraq was being, the pipeline was to be built by basically the Bechtel-Halliburton Network, a U.S. company, but there was a lot of tensions because of the Iran-Iraq war.
	And so the U.S. government wanted this pipeline done.
	The CIA wanted this pipeline done.
	They believed that it would advance U.S. interest to do so, but they wanted to make sure that Israel did not attack the pipeline because of its proximity to the conflict zone.
	So what they did is they engaged Bruce Rappaport, a outside, highly controversial financier, Swiss Israeli, who was also basically a very close friend of William Casey, the CIA director.
	They were golfing buddies.
	They were close friends.
	They met very frequently.
	And Bruce Rappaport played the role of not only providing the financing, but ensuring that there would be security guarantees because he was very close with friends in the Israeli government.
	Now, what happened there was there ended up being a special prosecutor investigation into the Attorney General of the United States because of this scandal, because they argued that there was kind of a pay-to-play aspect going on with this.
	And they argued that there were bribes, but what Bruce Rappaport ended up saying later was, no, no, no, according to the, there were no bribes.
	According to this secret deal, the Israeli government was actually going to get a 30% equity stake in it.
	So nobody actually got paid.
	But the fact is, at that point, you need to coordinate four different Middle East governments, as well as U.S. and U.S. contractor interests in this.
	So this is what I believe the girls are in the Epstein story.
	Girls juice deals.
	When you are having to coordinate with all these sort of saudi shakes and high net worth individuals, and you're doing business, you're doing deals, and being around young women for parties and things like that is a way to create an environment where people like hanging out with you and want to do deals with you because these deals last for years.
	They want to be around.
	They may think they can only get access to the deals.
	So you think the girls were a means to the money.
	The money was not a means to the girls.
	I think the girls were a way primarily of juicing deals.
	You're more likely to do business with someone who provides you a currency you can't get elsewhere.
	You have these 60, 70 year old dudes who can't meet an 18-year-old girl at a bar anymore.
	Where do you meet them?
	Well, you meet them at Jeffrey Epstein's place.
	Hey, if I do this deal with Jeffrey Epstein, he can supply me with girls.
	So even though this pipeline might not be in my interest, even if I really don't care about the petroleum market in Kenya, even if I really don't want to sell guns to Antigua, I know if I do this deal, then I had a great time at that last party.
	I'd like to be included at the next one.
	And so that is a very plausible.
	I'm not saying definitively that's what's happening.
	That's what happened here.
	But that explains it, in my view, without even having to go much farther than that.
	Because here's the thing.
	You don't have 201 files.
	You don't have these.
	An intelligence asset is someone who is formally recruited.
	And there needs to be counterintelligence done on that.
	It's a process.
	There's a vast field beyond asset, and it's called cooperative contact or facilitator or liaison.
	And these are the brokers because you need these brokers, these fall guy type figures, but who also are willing to broker make sense.
	No, that's the key word.
	Now it's really hit.
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	Look at Bill Burns, for example.
	As I mentioned, all of these, whether you're talking about Mark Rich, whether you're talking about Adnan Khashoggi, whether you're talking about Bruce Rappaport, they're all personal friends of the Central Intelligence Agency while maintaining close ties with both Israeli intelligence as well as several other partners across the Middle East and Western Europe.
	But what I'm getting at here with the Bill Burns case is Bill Burns, the CIA director, came out earlier this year, met three times with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014, including two times at Jeffrey Epstein's house.
	Now, why would the, now remember, Bill Burns spent his whole year in the U.S. State Department, 35 years there, and ended up not only as Deputy Secretary of State, but as Under Secretary for Political Affairs.
	That's the number three spot.
	That's the CIA spot.
	According to the JFK files, the Arthur Schlesinger memo said that 48% of all political affairs folks at state were actually not at state.
	They were CIA under diplomatic cover of political affairs.
	That's the division Bill Burns ran before he became Deputy Secretary of State and then on to becoming the, obviously, you know, the head of the CIA in 2021.
	But from 2014 to 2021, Bill Burns goes private.
	He leaves running the CIA wing of the State Department to found, to be the head of the Carnegie Endowment, one of the biggest, most influential and oldest think tanks in the United States, who is frequently used as a back channel for shadow diplomacy.
	Now, that 2014, the very year, the first meeting that Bill Burns had with Jeffrey Epstein was while he was at the State Department.
	The next two he had in 2014 were while he was the head of the Carnegie Endowment.
	What he is doing there is he is going to Epstein's financial network behind Epstein to see what those donors want to do about funding the Carnegie Endowment and what kind of deals, what kind of things they can do at Carnegie that the donors will give money for.
	That's why everybody goes to Epstein.
	That's why they go there for the money.
	That's why Bill Gates said he went to for Epstein because of the money.
	That's what Bill Burns will go there for because of the money.
	That's what the CIA will go there for because of the money.
	We want this thing arranged.
	And the other thing is Jeffrey Epstein's, his specialty was in sheltering these things in complicated offshore debt structurings in order to hide them from regulators, in order to hide them from asset collectors and creditors.
	And so he moved this whole thing through a complex Byzantine web of offshore bank accounts and Cayman Island bank accounts while brokering the deals.
	So that way the CIA, Israeli intelligence, Saudi intelligence, everyone gets to be hands-off.
	But he's not formally recruited, I don't believe.
	Got it.
	No, no, no, no.
	Not formally recruited by.
	I'm sorry.
	Yes, you're not going to have a 201 file.
	You're not going to have an asset file.
	But what you will be able to find, I believe, is if you look at the transactions, for example, you look at all the trace requests done for requests of Epstein's name at CIA.
	You go to the Office of General Counsel.
	And for example, like what's actual right now is, did the Office of General Counsel, the Central Intelligence Agency, have any input whatsoever in Alex Acosta's interview with Justice Department about Epstein's intelligence ties.
	What was the traffic between the head of OPR and Bill Barr, as well as Jeffrey Rose and the Deputy Attorney General?
	Did they try to block an investigation into the intelligence ties in 2008?
	Is any of that shown in the 2020 November?
	I just don't think that Pam Bondi's even looked.
	I don't think that they even knew to look there for leads, as well as everything that the CIA Liaison at Justice, as well as the Office of General Counsel of CIA, interfered in or gave input to about the 2020 OPR report.
	Because my suspicion is that you may see some very squirrely things around the CIA Office of General Counsel and the November 2020 OPR report.
	Justice Department should review that and tell us the contents of what they find.
	And then from there, you want to go to the CIA's financial division.
	You want to look at the special economic activities, to look at all the transactions Epstein was involved in, to see what financial interlocutors, what cooperative contacts were pulled in the finance space to put those deals together where Epstein was working.
	And I note among them the Clinton Foundation.
	It was Epstein who put together, he's credited with coming up with the idea of the Clinton Global Initiative, which was a swirling hodgepodge from the Secretary of State of foreign mercenaries and oligarchs and Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Pinchuk and that whole network all funneling money into this nonprofit for it to do various activities around the world that might help their own interests.
	All of this can be matched with CIA files in the special economic activities.
	So just to explain it about, so would it be fair to say that Epstein was a deep state fixer, moving money around to accomplish aims which benefited elite institutions and deep state intelligence goals?
	Is that a fair summary?
	Yes, but I would add part-time.
	And this is the important part of it, as I see the case, is that he's a contact.
	He's someone they can go to on a potential folks in the space, he is a friend of the station.
	He is someone who is there if they need it done.
	But I don't think that he's not talking to them every day.
	It's a periodic thing, yes.
	I'll add to it.
	So it'd be fair to say that Epstein was a part-time deep state fixer, moving money around to accomplish aims which benefited elite institutions and deep state goals.
	So now let's go to the second.
	Let me just go to, you want to chime in really quick?
	The one thing I'd say is, you know, there are deep state things, and you can make a weird argument that if you agree with the underlying foreign policy, that this is not unusual.
	You know, I don't think you even need to go so far as to say deep state, even though obviously there are many deep state things about it.
	I mean, this is just how business is done at CIA.
	He was a financial fixer who could get access to money for covert operations as well as structure them in a way that would conceal the source of those funds, which is something that we used all throughout the Cold War.
	When Jeffrey Epstein started doing this in the 1980s, we were in the middle of the Cold War.
	Is it possible that much of this type of activity is responsible for, I mean, we did this.
	We had financial fixers that we used to fund money of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, which operated in a very similar way in order to fund that union movement.
	And that's dirty work.
	It's money laundering.
	It's using these set up to fail debt instrument banks to do it.
	We gave it to the Solidarity Union Group in Poland, but that's how we kicked the Soviet Union out of Poland and brought it into the Western world.
	So it's a complicated analysis, but that does not excuse, you have to tell us if it's there.
	You have to look yourself first.
	And unless we pressure them to say, hey, here's the exact file we know you have.
	Hey, here's the exact search terms.
	Here's exactly what you should tell the Office of General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency.
	Then I think that because there is a there there, they're not going to want to do it if we don't give them specific asks.
	Okay, so this is helpful to kind of hear your theory of the case.
	To push back on this, though, there were reports that there were lots of cameras of these underage girls on the island or in the facility in New Mexico.
	Do you think that it might have been soft, unspoken blackmail, meaning some of these guys might be more willing to do the deals because they might realize down the road that Jeffrey might have something on them and that even though he could or couldn't, but it could be a little bit of a sword of Damocles over the head of some of these guys?
	Your thoughts, Mike Benz?
	It's very possible.
	Like I said, you know, I've been saying for years that I don't think Epstein would be the person doing the blackmail because the whole purpose of being a financial fixer is getting everyone in your network to love you and having such a good time together and you offering them experiences they can't get anywhere else so that they'll sign a multi-million or billion dollar, you know, financing.
	You sort of spoil the party when you start blackmailing them.
	But to the extent that he's working with intelligence services who have access to the information that he's collecting, that in theory could be used for blackmailing.
	That's a good point.
	Yeah, so I mean, after over a period of time, let's say they have one blowout, disgusting, pedophilic retreat, and they know they're being blackmailed, wouldn't that just be like a hard stop, like don't get near Jeffrey type thing?
	That never happened, right?
	Well, that's the problem is like, you know, they give it to some intelligence agency, the supposed blackmail, and then the intelligence agency, someone says, we know that you were at Jeffrey Epstein's house in November 2011 with a 13-year-old girl.
	And it's like, okay, well, that guy's blown forever.
	And so is everyone that he talks to.
	That person's not going to sign a $10 million financing deal.
	That person's not going to invest in this Latin American operation or this North African pipeline deal.
	You can only get that if it was on Jeffrey Epstein's security cameras, oh crap, Epstein was recording me.
	I'm going to tell my friends, my very powerful, powerful friends, don't be around Jeffrey Epstein.
	He's actually setting us up for blackmail the whole time.
	Now, that doesn't mean that it wasn't covertly collected and used as for whatever purposes it might be used for.
	But there were so many, Charlie, there were thousands of people over 40 years.
	Epstein started doing this in the 1980s.
	There's not a single person in all that time who's publicly come forward and said, I was blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein.
	I mean, you could write, one story like that would sell $5 million in book sales, and nobody's done it.
	That's not to say that it's impossible, but you have a much, much more relevant and trackable issue here, which was the role as a financier.
	How do you always hear Epstein described disgraced financier, financier?
	The whole thing was the money.
	The CIA's main job is finding money for its operations.
	They need to go through fixers, and this is the guy who's tied to the head of the CIA, the head of almost every major figure in Israeli intelligence, the head of every major arms broker in Saudi Arabia, the friends with most of the royal family in the UK, Spain, Egypt.
	This is the guy who does not know much about finance, but he can arrange the deals because he's got powerful friends behind him who are putting up the money, and he makes his own money through commissions in the 1980s and 90s serving these clients.
	And he's a fixer.
	He's a fixer, but he also just, he was a schmoozer.
	People liked being around him.
	He held big parties, and he was a hyper-social person.
	So he found a loophole in society, intelligence community funding, to get really rich.
	And he was just kind of like a super disgusting pervert, you know, on the side, or as like, you know, just as an element of that.
	For example, I bet that when you have these parties, not every single one of the girls was 14 years old, but like he definitely had, and this is well documented, he had like a very, he had a fascination.
	He liked them young is what people would say, 13, 14, 15 years old.
	So then let me ask you a question then.
	Mike, if you were granted an opportunity or anyone was granted an opportunity to talk to Maxwell, Ghelane Maxwell, what would you be most interested to learn from her that she would actually tell you?
	Like, what would she know?
	Because she did two interviews prior, one with CBS and one with like some Scott, you know, some UK thing.
	And she wants to testify.
	Could we learn anything from her at all?
	Mike.
	Yes, I would ask about the specifics of financings that touched brokering of deals either on behalf of or in partnership with government agencies, including the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, France, the U.K., and the like.
	It was in 1991, for example, when it's reported that Maxwell linked up with Ghelane.
	I would take that history from 1991 to call it 2008 or 2019 if you want to go there.
	And I would go basically step by step through the major financing activities.
	And I would, you know, because a lot of this is private, by the way.
	There's a hundred different transactions we know that Epstein was involved in attempting to broker financing for, but there's a lot of these are also going to be non-public.
	And because they're not, this is not a traded on the NASDAQ.
	And so I would go through those financial transactions.
	I would look at U.S. State Department, basically diplomatic and intelligence ties to activity around those deals.
	And then I would look basically at the CIA files around that transaction or industry.
	And I would do a search for Jeff for Epstein or the outside financiers.
	Basically, if you compile that list of all the different outside financial facilitators used for activities that Epstein looked like he was involved with, then, because what you're going to have is you might not necessarily have Epstein's name.
	What you might have is a facilitator with access to capital in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
	And that might be what you have from an analyst memo or some CIA cable in 1999.
	And you think it's Epstein, but you're not really sure it's Epstein when you look at the analyst memo.
	And then you can ask Elaine that.
	Hey, a CIA cable that's recently been declassified refers to some retail, some apparel agreement that's going to help basically the retail Sector on the island of Haiti, but actually, what the CIA wants to do is they want to unionize all the garment workers in order to use them for street protests to assist the Aristide government or something like that.
	And it's going to be arranged through a financier based in the U.S. Virgin Islands associated with these redacted names of funds.
	Was Jeffrey Epstein that financier?
	These are the sorts of specific questions you would want.
	So you need to have that mind mapped.
	And I don't think that anyone in the Trump admin is even close to that because they're so fixated on the blackmail.
	They're so fixated on the kind of primal elements of it.
	They're missing out on the functional elements of why he would belong to intelligence at all.
	So then what do you think Delaine Maxwell would know about the financial dealings?
	And I know you got to wrap in two minutes here.
	So just kind of wrap it up.
	What other immediate, let's put Delaine Maxwell to the side because you got two minutes.
	I'm sorry.
	Can you just say what other actions do you think could be taken immediately to get to the bottom of this?
	Because you're focused on something a lot of other people are not.
	A lot of people want client lists and they want, you know, the sex stuff.
	You're much more interested in the intelligence and the money.
	Two minutes, Mike, and then you got a dash.
	Yeah, the OPR report is so simple.
	It's right down the hallway, Pam.
	It's right there, and that is something that you should be able to make public quickly.
	And that way we will know, because Epstein was asked if he was, if Acosta was reportedly asked per that OPR report, if Epstein was an intelligence asset.
	And like I keep saying, that is not the question.
	Asset is not the word.
	Asset has a formal file.
	You're going to find this as a facilitator.
	And I would encourage the folks investigating this to do a deep study on figures like Bruce Rappaport, figures like Mark Rich, figures like Adnan Khashoggi, figures like the head of the BCCI bank and the like.
	This is what you are looking for in the Epstein intelligence connection.
	And you need to be able to issue spot that.
	But first, make the OPR report transcripts of the Costa public, and then everything around the CIA Office of General Counsel, as well as the personal correspondence of Bill Barr and Jeffrey Rosen as the OPR report was being put together about the intelligence ties.
	Show us you've done that.
	One month from now, be able to tell us, or two weeks from now, be able to tell us in a press conference that you looked at that OPR report and you're making it public so that we can check this off the box and it'll be a show of good faith, I think, that the public will greatly appreciate.
	God bless you.
	Mike Benz, we'll have you on us soon.
	Thank you so much.
	Really appreciate it.
	Thanks, Charlie.
	Thanks so much for listening.
	Everybody, email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
	Thanks so much for listening.
	God bless.

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