True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 485: Barak in the New York Groove
Aired: 2025-08-28
Duration: 01:51:29


=== I'm Still Fucking Here (01:59) ===

[00:00:00]  Well, I'm back.
[00:00:02]  You are.
[00:00:03]  And you I'm gonna say this because there was a comment and I just want to clarify and put on the record.
[00:00:09]  Someone was like, oh, sounds like old Liz.
[00:00:11]  I hope she's not smoking again.
[00:00:13]  No.
[00:00:14]  No, I'm not.
[00:00:15]  He never stopped.
[00:00:17]  I am just very sick.
[00:00:20]  But I'm still fucking here because I know.
[00:00:24]  That has been sort of the elephant in the room the whole time.
[00:00:26]  No, I don't, I don't, I'm not sick in the way that, like, I'm going to get you sick.
[00:00:31]  You have been doing, first of all, you can't do it.
[00:00:33]  I'm not sick in the what you have been doing.
[00:00:35]  First of all, you cough all through the show.
[00:00:37]  I cough because I smoke.
[00:00:39]  But I cough because I'm sick, but not contagious.
[00:00:43]  off because I'm sad.
[00:01:09]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:10]  Hello.
[00:01:11]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:12]  My name is Bryce Ben Belden.
[00:01:13]  We have producer Young Chomsky, No Relation.
[00:01:17]  And this is True Not.
[00:01:18]  Hello.
[00:01:21]  Sorry, we need the sirens right now because this is an emergency episode.
[00:01:28]  What was keep it in?
[00:01:30]  Can you stop playing with the little baby gun with your little thing?
[00:01:35]  Can you stop playing with your little thing?
[00:01:37]  Well, that's what you're doing.
[00:01:38]  Cool.
[00:01:38]  Suicide.
[00:01:39]  Something a woman says to you before you commit suicide.
[00:01:42]  We, I'm already going to commit suicide because the worst has happened.
[00:01:45]  But it's not the worst yet, but we're, because we're going to fix it.
[00:01:50]  You all know, as I'm sure from the description of this episode, has led you to understand Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift has announced something that I don't like.

=== Taylor Swift's Engagement Announcement (10:28) ===

[00:01:59]  An engagement.
[00:02:00]  Yes.
[00:02:01]  Correct.
[00:02:02]  Between the two of them.
[00:02:02]  Yes.
[00:02:03]  And did you look at it?
[00:02:05]  Did you look at the post?
[00:02:06]  I did look at the post.
[00:02:07]  Did you look at the ring?
[00:02:08]  It's fake.
[00:02:09]  What do you think of the ring?
[00:02:11]  I don't know.
[00:02:11]  What am I supposed to think of rings?
[00:02:13]  This is.
[00:02:14]  I mean, wow.
[00:02:15]  I think you're supposed to think a lot of things.
[00:02:18]  Yeah, I think, wow, what a fucking asshole.
[00:02:20]  I would have gotten out of a better one.
[00:02:22]  But what do you think of the ring?
[00:02:23]  I think it's ugly.
[00:02:24]  You think it's ugly?
[00:02:25]  Well, let's be honest.
[00:02:27]  We're not, you know.
[00:02:30]  What?
[00:02:31]  Neither of these people have the greatest taste.
[00:02:33]  I know.
[00:02:33]  That's so true.
[00:02:34]  That's why I'm like, please televise the wedding.
[00:02:37]  Please just give us this.
[00:02:38]  We're going to get some stuff from the wedding.
[00:02:39]  We're going to get some stuff.
[00:02:40]  No, no.
[00:02:40]  I don't want a fucking spread.
[00:02:42]  I don't want paparazzi photos.
[00:02:44]  I want this on fucking broadcast television.
[00:02:47]  Fucking stream this shit.
[00:02:48]  I don't give a fuck.
[00:02:49]  Like, let's do it up British style.
[00:02:52]  I want commenters there.
[00:02:53]  I want live red carpet.
[00:02:56]  Don't like, I just, it's so, it's going to be so ugly.
[00:03:03]  And I want to see it.
[00:03:04]  You're correct.
[00:03:06]  I'm so fascinated by what kind of wedding she's going to have.
[00:03:11]  Yeah.
[00:03:12]  What dress she's going to pick.
[00:03:13]  That ring.
[00:03:15]  I wonder if he thought, saw it and was like, it reminds me of my Super Bowl ring.
[00:03:20]  It's so mean.
[00:03:24]  Well.
[00:03:25]  So.
[00:03:25]  I just want to put my throw my hat in the ring here, maybe a little belatedly, but as has been true and on house style for a while, we acknowledge that Taylor Swift is one of the hottest women in the world.
[00:03:36]  And I don't know if that's true, but she's definitely one of the women I'm most in love with.
[00:03:40]  Okay.
[00:03:41]  Yeah.
[00:03:42]  And which women don't like to hear.
[00:03:44]  I'll say that.
[00:03:46]  Is it because they're like Lesbo truthers on her?
[00:03:48]  No, but every time I've said that to a woman, they've gotten mad in a way that's confusing to me.
[00:03:54]  I also want to say for the record, I mean, for the Lesbo Truthers, I think she, you know, she could be both.
[00:04:01]  She could cheat.
[00:04:02]  No, but I mean, like, the idea that she's like, I mean, I think she just saw confirmation that she was in a relationship with a woman.
[00:04:09]  So you could, yeah, because, yeah.
[00:04:11]  And I'm just saying, like, like many women of Taylor Swift's demographic, they have also had a short lip.
[00:04:25]  And then she got full.
[00:04:26]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:04:27]  Okay, that's just don't say it.
[00:04:29]  But I think of it like this.
[00:04:31]  Michael, the guy from the, Michael, I can't say his last name, Barbara, the guy from the daily, he was married to a dude.
[00:04:38]  And then he's like, I'm full.
[00:04:40]  But I'm still hungry for, I've still got a little room left in me, tell me, for women.
[00:04:45]  Wait, is that how that went?
[00:04:46]  I thought he, I thought it was the other way.
[00:04:49]  I was married to a guy.
[00:04:51]  Bye-bye.
[00:04:53]  I've discovered I'm straight.
[00:04:55]  Or interesting.
[00:04:56]  Or my bisexuality.
[00:04:58]  Usually it goes the other way.
[00:05:00]  Obviously, it usually goes the other way.
[00:05:01]  Liz because usually you're like I feel like they should do a podcast episode about that I would listen This is the most interesting.
[00:05:08]  What could possibly be so great?
[00:05:10]  This would be better than, it wouldn't be better than Eli Taylor Swift.
[00:05:15]  Because it reminds me of like the decision.
[00:05:17]  I was getting nostalgic for the decision.
[00:05:18]  What's that?
[00:05:19]  The LeBron decision when he went to Miami.
[00:05:22]  When he was taking his talents to Miami.
[00:05:23]  Who could forget?
[00:05:24]  Who could forget?
[00:05:25]  Literally, no one could forget except you too.
[00:05:26]  Well, we didn't ever know in the first place.
[00:05:29]  It was like one of the biggest media events.
[00:05:30]  When did it happen?
[00:05:32]  When he went to Miami.
[00:05:33]  What about when it was?
[00:05:35]  209 to 1010 when was it?
[00:05:37]  Oh, I was so busy back then.
[00:05:38]  I was not paying attention to.
[00:05:40]  Because I was like kind of.
[00:05:41]  2010.
[00:05:42]  Yeah.
[00:05:42]  I don't know.
[00:05:43]  I was.
[00:05:45]  Anyway.
[00:05:46]  Because I'm kind of missing like galvanizing TV moments.
[00:05:50]  And so that's why I really want the Taylor Swift thing to be like a fucking like Megan Markle explosion on the TV.
[00:05:57]  But what was I just saying?
[00:06:01]  LeBron?
[00:06:02]  No, before that.
[00:06:04]  Oh, lesbian.
[00:06:06]  Oh, gay, that's strange.
[00:06:07]  Oh, this is what I'm thinking.
[00:06:09]  I would love Ezra Klein in conversation with Michael Barbaro, Michael Barbarian, about the lifestyle.
[00:06:22]  Yeah.
[00:06:23]  And I would listen to an hour podcast of either the daily or the Ezra Klein show of them talking about that.
[00:06:30]  So when I was I find it the whole culture there in, I guess it's not the editorial room, but whatever sort of room they inhabit.
[00:06:41]  Fascinating.
[00:06:41]  So when I, when I, when I, when I went on Ashley St. Clair's podcast the other day, I gave her advice.
[00:06:48]  I was like, you got to try to get on Real Housewives of New York with the baby.
[00:06:53]  And, you know, be, you know, it's, I'm like, that's, this is my advice.
[00:06:56]  But that got me actually thinking about, I'm like, there's so much.
[00:07:01]  Like, if I had a direct line to Andy Bravo, I have an indirect line, but if I had a direct line to Andy, Andy Cohen, I'm like, I could change, I could make Bravo bigger than Dubai.
[00:07:12]  Just go to a West Village Equinox at like 6:30 in the morning.
[00:07:15]  I know, but I can't look good.
[00:07:19]  I don't look good before one because I got to take all my peptides.
[00:07:22]  So, you know, Andy wouldn't like me and I have to stay up all night.
[00:07:24]  But I have so many good ideas.
[00:07:27]  And one of those, I think, would be the sex lives of the New York Times star reporters.
[00:07:32]  Because we would get to see a lot and full uncensored showtime style.
[00:07:36]  The thing is, I don't want to see it.
[00:07:38]  I do.
[00:07:39]  Yeah.
[00:07:40]  You do?
[00:07:40]  I want to hear it.
[00:07:42]  Ew.
[00:07:42]  I think a lot of people, it would be a big draw.
[00:07:44]  I'm not going to like pleasure to it, but I want to see it.
[00:07:51]  I want to see a lot of things I don't want to see.
[00:07:53]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:07:54]  No.
[00:07:55]  You don't?
[00:07:55]  No.
[00:07:56]  Sometimes you're like, I don't want to see that, but I want to see that.
[00:07:58]  If it's there, I'll look at it.
[00:08:00]  I'm not going to, I'm not going to work as the cameraman.
[00:08:04]  I'm not going to seek it out besides praising play.
[00:08:07]  It seems like you're seeking it out right now.
[00:08:08]  You're trying to put it into the universe.
[00:08:10]  I'm just trying to give Bravo a good advice, sort of Epstein style.
[00:08:13]  But actually, that would be a great transition.
[00:08:14]  We're not transitioning yet because I want to say this about Taylor and Travis.
[00:08:19]  That should be me.
[00:08:21]  You should be the.
[00:08:23]  Either one.
[00:08:26]  Brace the bride.
[00:08:27]  And look, I'll cough.
[00:08:30]  I have a question.
[00:08:31]  What?
[00:08:32]  I do.
[00:08:36]  Do you think that the podcast rollout was like planned?
[00:08:48]  Like they've been engaged for a while, and they did the podcast rollout pre-announcing the engagement as a way to kind of like ease themselves back into the public discourse.
[00:08:58]  Yes, right?
[00:09:00]  Yes.
[00:09:01]  I wonder how much of that.
[00:09:02]  That's also tied with her album engagement.
[00:09:04]  Well, no, I know about that.
[00:09:05]  Or engagement, whatever the release.
[00:09:07]  Yeah.
[00:09:08]  I'm just like.
[00:09:12]  Do you think she does a big wedding or a tiny one?
[00:09:15]  I don't know.
[00:09:16]  I know that my invitation will get lost in the mail once again.
[00:09:19]  You should just know this is what if you want to go.
[00:09:23]  I do.
[00:09:24]  Start dating one of someone from the crew.
[00:09:26]  From that.
[00:09:27]  Who's in the crew?
[00:09:29]  I mean, so many.
[00:09:30]  Time.
[00:09:30]  I feel like people are going to try to be globbing on to be back in the crew who have left the crew.
[00:09:35]  Yeah.
[00:09:36]  Now that, no.
[00:09:39]  Okay.
[00:09:39]  Everyone wants to go to the wedding.
[00:09:42]  Carly Claus.
[00:09:43]  No, Carly Klaus was the woman she dated.
[00:09:45]  Well, there's rumors.
[00:09:46]  Well, there's rumors.
[00:09:47]  But I'm just saying, if I go there, it will straight up be a last-minute.
[00:09:51]  Does anyone here want to say object?
[00:09:53]  Because she's like that.
[00:09:54]  She'd like that kind of stuff.
[00:09:55]  And I'd say, I do.
[00:09:56]  And Travis Kelsey, who's a fucking jock and bully, most popular guy in high school, will look at me and be like, he's fucking nothing.
[00:10:04]  He can give you nothing.
[00:10:05]  He doesn't have nearly as much money as me.
[00:10:07]  He's not as talented in sports as me.
[00:10:09]  But I'd be like, but I can love better.
[00:10:11]  I can love you better, Taylor.
[00:10:13]  You could be like, nice job getting your hands on a ring this year.
[00:10:17]  Yeah.
[00:10:18]  You're going to run in like fucking Dustin Hoffman and be banging on the glass.
[00:10:22]  Yeah.
[00:10:23]  Well, that doesn't work.
[00:10:25]  Shoot yourself.
[00:10:26]  No, pull out the 32, start.
[00:10:28]  Yeah, shoot myself.
[00:10:30]  Make it about me in some way.
[00:10:32]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:10:33]  Can you imagine if like someone kills themselves there with this wedding?
[00:10:38]  Yeah.
[00:10:38]  So this is what I'm saying.
[00:10:39]  You make fun of me for wanting to see things that are bad to see.
[00:10:43]  And then immediately I want to see that.
[00:10:45]  And now I'm seeing it in my fucking mind's eye, which is fucking 4K Ultra HD because I've got a great imagination, which is what people have always said about me, even though guys like Travis beat me up for it because I dreamed too big.
[00:10:56]  But I do, I do would love to see, yeah, just pulling out a gun and fucking ruining her fucking wedding.
[00:11:03]  Just, and then multiple people like catching on and being some horrible event.
[00:11:08]  There's just a mass suicide.
[00:11:09]  Suddenly we are in a Japanese movie.
[00:11:11]  Yeah, just like people cutting their throats with like, you know, folded over programs that become really sharp pieces of paper.
[00:11:18]  You know, she's crying.
[00:11:19]  She can't believe it.
[00:11:20]  Not because people are dying, but because her wedding's ruined.
[00:11:23]  Her wedding.
[00:11:24]  She can't be married because like a pop star is supposed to be seem available to me.
[00:11:29]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:11:30]  Interesting.
[00:11:31]  Yeah.
[00:11:33]  I have a thing on my browser that like, it's like a widget or whatever that all mention of like, if, you know, whoever has like Sabrina Carpenter has a boyfriend, it takes him out of every picture and mention.
[00:11:46]  Although I'm good with that one.
[00:11:49]  With who?
[00:11:50]  Sabrina.
[00:11:51]  She did the tiny guy.
[00:11:53]  Well, she's tiny.
[00:11:54]  She's tiny.
[00:11:55]  No, I know.
[00:11:55]  I like when tiny gets with tiny.
[00:11:57]  You think Munchins should make?
[00:11:59]  No, I just, it makes me happy when they find each other.
[00:12:02]  Yeah.
[00:12:02]  Well, it's probably easy because they're the only people, you know, who look at the other people's knees or whatever.
[00:12:06]  Sabrina!
[00:12:07]  You don't have to look up.
[00:12:09]  You don't have to look up.
[00:12:10]  You're both like rejected from your eye.
[00:12:12]  It just makes me happy.
[00:12:13]  Yeah.
[00:12:14]  She's my, but he's weird looking.
[00:12:16]  I don't.
[00:12:17]  That's, I don't pay attention to guys like that.
[00:12:19]  No offense.
[00:12:20]  I should stop.
[00:12:21]  People get mad at me when I comment on people.
[00:12:23]  Yeah.
[00:12:23]  But sexism, nostalgic.
[00:12:26]  Bitch.
[00:12:27]  You heard her.

=== Rabin's Operations Role (15:48) ===

[00:12:28]  Let's do the episode because listen, Matthew told us his parents listened to the last time he came on and they said we were stupid.
[00:12:33]  And that's not what they said.
[00:12:35]  That was what his dad said.
[00:12:36]  That's what his dad said.
[00:12:37]  Well, he used a different word.
[00:12:38]  He used a different word.
[00:12:39]  What's the synonym for stupid?
[00:12:40]  And I don't say that.
[00:12:41]  I don't use that word.
[00:12:42]  They also said that we were.
[00:12:44]  I'll keep listening to find out what they said.
[00:12:47]  What do you, what do you keep listening to find out what they said?
[00:12:50]  Don't worry about it.
[00:12:52]  Why don't you say it?
[00:12:53]  I don't say that sort of thing.
[00:12:54]  Why don't you say it right now?
[00:12:55]  I'll say it.
[00:12:55]  They call this anti-Semitic.
[00:12:57]  They call this anti-Semitic.
[00:12:58]  But we're not.
[00:12:59]  In fact, we are sort of neutral on the issue.
[00:13:03]  But we're just kidding.
[00:13:04]  Just kidding.
[00:13:07]  I'm not going to tell you our position.
[00:13:08]  We have with us today Matthew Petty from Reason Magazine.
[00:13:14]  And we are talking about, we actually have some scoops here.
[00:13:17]  So unfortunately, we ruined it by being stupid for 30 minutes.
[00:13:20]  But we have a pretty information-packed episode about Ehud Barak's hacked emails having to do with Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, all the greats.
[00:13:30]  Just listen.
[00:13:31]  It's right now.
[00:13:40]  On November 21st, 2013, Jeffrey Epstein, whose email address is gvacation, wrote, My thoughts were confirmed when it was said to me, if Ehud wants to make serious money, he will have to build a relationship with me.
[00:13:56]  Take time so that we can truly understand one another.
[00:13:59]  I just listened.
[00:14:01]  Later that day, Ehud Barak writes back, Who said it?
[00:14:04]  Jeffrey Epstein responds, Rothschild.
[00:14:08]  To which Ehud Barak responds, I'm ready, but I need your advice regarding how.
[00:14:14]  And then in a parenthetical, ladies is your forte.
[00:14:18]  Ehud Barak.
[00:14:20]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.
[00:14:24]  We're talking about emails today.
[00:14:27]  And we have with us one of the most prolific emailers of all time.
[00:14:31]  He sent one to every congressman, every senator, telling them to legalize being a libertarian because that's right.
[00:14:39]  Assistant editor?
[00:14:40]  What is it?
[00:14:41]  Assistant editor?
[00:14:41]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:42]  They should call it deputy editor or something.
[00:14:44]  That's probably already a different position.
[00:14:46]  Assistant editor, really?
[00:14:47]  I think there's like assistant and there's associate.
[00:14:49]  That's better than assistant to the editor.
[00:14:51]  Oh, yeah.
[00:14:52]  No, I'm not.
[00:14:52]  Yeah, when I say it helps because, you know, it makes you look a little harmless because I'm like, I'm an assistant editor.
[00:14:57]  Exactly, like an intern or something.
[00:14:58]  Well, assistant editor at A Reason Magazine, Matthew Petty, Lord of the Libertarians.
[00:15:04]  How are you doing?
[00:15:05]  Welcome to the show.
[00:15:06]  I'm doing wonderful.
[00:15:07]  Thank you for having me on.
[00:15:08]  Why are we having you on?
[00:15:13]  Well, there was a leak of emails from, I'm not going to say which country, which former prime minister.
[00:15:21]  You know, I can't say that.
[00:15:23]  It was, of course.
[00:15:24]  An Israeli prime minister.
[00:15:26]  Ehud Barak.
[00:15:27]  Ehud Barak, who is not only the former prime minister of Israel, but more relevant to today, a business associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:15:36]  And so when his emails got leaked, they've been floating around the internet for a few months, but nobody's really bothered to look into them because it's like, oh, Ehud Barak's a has-been who cares about his emails from 2015, 2016.
[00:15:48]  The people who leaked these emails maybe did a bad job of advertising.
[00:15:53]  We talk about that later.
[00:15:55]  Ostensibly a Palestinian group.
[00:15:56]  We can also talk about that later.
[00:15:58]  But when I saw it, I realized, wait, I should just search like Jeffrey Epstein because this guy did business with him.
[00:16:04]  And I thought this was going to be like a few fragmentary things because, again, these emails were from like 2015, 2016 after Epstein is sort of out of the business.
[00:16:14]  After Barack is sort of washed up.
[00:16:16]  And to my surprise, I found, I think, 2,600 results.
[00:16:21]  So there's a lot going on there.
[00:16:24]  And, you know, I want to be clear about something.
[00:16:27]  Tucker Carlson claimed that, or Tucker Carlson sort of floated the idea that like Ehud Barak was Epstein's handler at Israeli intelligence.
[00:16:36]  I didn't know he said that.
[00:16:37]  Oh, yeah, he said that at like some big conservative conference.
[00:16:41]  I think it may be the TPUSA thing.
[00:16:42]  Yeah, TPUSA.
[00:16:44]  And that freaked out the Israeli government to the point where they had to issue.
[00:16:48]  They did.
[00:16:48]  Yeah.
[00:16:48]  They had a statement about it.
[00:16:50]  Yeah.
[00:16:51]  My t-shirt that says not involved in human trafficking.
[00:16:54]  But yeah, I mean, these emails don't show that.
[00:16:58]  They don't show Epstein being like Barack being Epstein's handler because they wouldn't show that, right?
[00:17:03]  These are from after both of them are sort of washed up figures.
[00:17:07]  But I think that is interesting because I get the sense that Epstein is trying to, and this is what my reporting focused on.
[00:17:13]  Epstein is trying to get back into some kind of game with like surveillance and government connections in lots of different countries.
[00:17:22]  I mean, surprising ones, too.
[00:17:24]  Yes, yes.
[00:17:25]  And Barack is sort of, you know, Hill's willing to take Epstein's money.
[00:17:30]  He said it to Haaretz.
[00:17:31]  I saw a business opportunity.
[00:17:33]  Haaretz didn't have the full extent of these relationships going on.
[00:17:37]  But yeah, Barack was willing to take Epstein's money because Epstein still had a lot of money to throw around.
[00:17:41]  And Epstein was looking to get connected to perhaps diversify his address book of intelligence adjacent and politically well-connected people.
[00:17:51]  Yeah, I mean, with Ehud Barak, is, you know, that's one of the figures that we've really had a lot of confirmation was hanging out with Epstein much later than like publicly Bill Clinton was or anybody.
[00:18:02]  Yeah, I was going to say, he's not just like a business associate.
[00:18:05]  Like these guys were boys.
[00:18:06]  Yeah.
[00:18:07]  Like, like, in the Prince Andrew sense.
[00:18:09]  There's very, there's very interesting photos, multiple photos that are sort of like paparazzi ones taken of Ehud Barak kind of disguising himself, attempting to disguise himself.
[00:18:21]  Poorly.
[00:18:22]  Leaving Jeffrey Epstein's residence.
[00:18:24]  Actually, one of those incidents is mentioned in the emails here by one Alan Dershowitz.
[00:18:29]  I also have to say, I can't call him by his last name because then in my head, I just keep thinking about Obama and Epstein hanging out.
[00:18:37]  I know.
[00:18:38]  I got to call him Ehud.
[00:18:39]  Ehud.
[00:18:40]  Well, I want to talk before we get into how these emails came about and maybe who maybe got them.
[00:18:48]  I think it would behoove us to talk about Ehud Barak and his career a little bit.
[00:18:53]  So Ehud Barak is most commonly referred to, including by us, as former Israeli prime minister, because that's technically the highest rank he achieved.
[00:19:02]  But I think for this, I want to call him Lieutenant General Ehud Barak, the most decorated.
[00:19:08]  I don't know if that's changed now, but at one point, the most decorated soldier in Israeli history.
[00:19:13]  Which is saying a lot, actually.
[00:19:15]  I know, it really is because like most everyone has to be in the army.
[00:19:19]  Yeah, I kind of like forgot how big of a deal he was until I was like rereading a bunch of this stuff because we do always refer to him rightly, like you say, as former prime minister.
[00:19:30]  And so I just kind of like slot him amongst many and you forget, like, oh no, he actually was kind of a big deal.
[00:19:37]  Yeah, no, he was.
[00:19:38]  So his entire career before office was in the military.
[00:19:41]  He was in commando operations, eventually headed the Sayaret Maktal.
[00:19:46]  I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but you know, it's a subjective now.
[00:19:50]  You can see that.
[00:19:50]  I don't give a fuck about any of this pronunciation.
[00:19:52]  I'm just going to say.
[00:19:53]  It's a special operations force, kind of like Delta or SEAL Team 6.
[00:19:58]  Yeah, this is from an article in Haaretz.
[00:20:00]  It was almost a freelance initiative of a handful of veteran officers to train a small group of special forces operatives capable of placing and maintaining listening devices deep behind enemy lines.
[00:20:11]  This is Ehud Barak's unit.
[00:20:13]  While these commandos were, of course, rigorously trained in all manner of combat scenarios, most of their training was focused on carrying out their mission without being detected and leaving no trace.
[00:20:24]  Well, leave no trace.
[00:20:25]  Leave no trace.
[00:20:26]  It's so green.
[00:20:27]  I know.
[00:20:27]  Because actually, if you want to read more about Syret Maktal, again, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right.
[00:20:34]  Ronan Bergman of the New York Times wrote a really comprehensive book, Rise and Kill First.
[00:20:38]  Yeah.
[00:20:39]  History of like Israeli sort of covert, sort of like, because it always like covert operations and intelligence gathering and just straight up killing people sort of blend together.
[00:20:47]  But it's a good book and it's with the caveat that, you know, it's like what people are willing to give a New York Times reporter.
[00:20:55]  But it's pretty glowing.
[00:20:58]  It is, but it also does air a lot of dirty laundry.
[00:21:00]  I don't know why.
[00:21:01]  Yeah.
[00:21:02]  That's always usually a good mix when you can kind of pick out how the dirty laundry gets like kind of laundered.
[00:21:09]  A little bit.
[00:21:10]  Yeah.
[00:21:11]  No, seriously.
[00:21:12]  Like there's a lot of, you know, in those books, you can get a lot of information.
[00:21:15]  Well, interestingly enough, he was actually teammates with Benjamin Netanyahu during the famous raid on Sabina Flight 571, where Netanyahu was famously shot, but not killed in a classic case of IDF-friendly fire.
[00:21:33]  I think actually a bullet went through a woman and hit Netanyahu.
[00:21:36]  I was trying so hard.
[00:21:37]  And it's like, please, let me get him.
[00:21:41]  It was someone from the future trying to kill baby Hitler.
[00:21:44]  He was also a big part of the revenge operations for blacks on blacks on black and for black September, the Munich Massacre.
[00:21:52]  By 76, he was heading up the unit and planned the raid on Entebbe where Netanyahu's brother was the only IDF casualty.
[00:22:02]  Famously.
[00:22:04]  Famously.
[00:22:05]  But he's heading up.
[00:22:06]  I mean, I do think it would benefit us too.
[00:22:10]  I almost said Bahoo again, but not going to do it.
[00:22:12]  What's Bahoo again?
[00:22:12]  I'm not going to say Bahoo for like three or four more episodes.
[00:22:15]  It would benefit for us to just take a moment and sit with this.
[00:22:17]  Like, you know, he was in charge of this like special operations like spy killer unit.
[00:22:24]  I mean, there's a reason why Tucker, I mean, besides like the anti-Semitism and the like, you know, pandering to his base bullshit, that, you know, but him leaning into Ehud's military intelligence background and kind of tying that to Epstein.
[00:22:40]  I mean, there's a reason, which is because he was way up to Pitop, head of one of the most famous like intelligence units in the world.
[00:22:52]  Yeah, I mean, he after this, he headed up Amman, which is the head of military intelligence in Israel.
[00:22:57]  That's where he goes from that.
[00:22:59]  And then all the way up to chief of staff of the armed forces.
[00:23:02]  By the time he retires in 1995, like I said, most decorated soldier in Israeli history and fairly ugly, too.
[00:23:11]  That's kind of what I like.
[00:23:12]  Netanyahu, I hate to say it, wasn't a bad-looking guy when he was younger, and he kind of looks like a commando.
[00:23:18]  Barack is maybe not so good-looking when he's younger, which is, you know, and older.
[00:23:24]  And older.
[00:23:24]  Well, he's certainly not good looking now.
[00:23:26]  No.
[00:23:26]  No, he looks like he's got like cheeseburgers saved in his cheeks for winter.
[00:23:31]  He, of course.
[00:23:32]  He does look kind of, I don't know what the Latinate adjective is for like a squirrel, but he does kind of look.
[00:23:36]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:23:37]  He's like stocking up for hibernation.
[00:23:40]  In a way, I feel like he maybe is.
[00:23:44]  He joins the Labor Party, of course.
[00:23:49]  Of course, a strong proponent of Israel's social democratic tradition.
[00:23:55]  And he is immediately appointed Minister of Internal Affairs by Rabin.
[00:24:00]  Of course, Rabin is shot and killed by a right-wing law student soon after that.
[00:24:06]  Itamar Ben-Gavir, currently in the government, famously very happy.
[00:24:10]  I think he was, it was, it was Ben-Gavir, right, who, who prior to that had ripped off a piece of Rabin's car and was like parading it around like a war trophy.
[00:24:21]  So the Rabin assassin, his brother is like out of jail and on Facebook and is actually like has a weird sort of off-compass politics where he's basically like, I have no regrets for killing Rabin, but also Israel is like a genocidal fascist state.
[00:24:37]  Interesting.
[00:24:38]  He's like, we're all living on like stolen land because it's not land back because it's not a theocracy.
[00:24:44]  Like, oh, okay, well, that is, yeah, no.
[00:24:47]  But it's not, but it's not like your sort of typical orthodox anti-Zionist.
[00:24:50]  This guy is like really off-compass, and he'll just straight up say like the state is genocidal.
[00:24:54]  Is he orthodox?
[00:24:56]  I don't even know.
[00:24:57]  I would assume he was ultra-Orthodox when they killed Rabin.
[00:25:01]  Well, I don't know.
[00:25:01]  I know some of those guys are kind of secular.
[00:25:03]  Well, I mean, he cited a specific thing in like ancient Jewish law to like why he.
[00:25:08]  There we go.
[00:25:09]  Yeah.
[00:25:09]  I mean, this is just totally aside.
[00:25:11]  There was, there was a, I can send you the article afterwards, but some, some like, one of the left-wing, I think it was like 972 or one of them like found this guy on Facebook and like interviewed him.
[00:25:20]  And he had just completely off-compass politics.
[00:25:23]  And like friends who can read Hebrew and like go on his public Facebook today say he's like just like totally out of his way.
[00:25:31]  More to the left than the Israeli left on something.
[00:25:33]  Well, that's fine.
[00:25:34]  Yeah, it's not saying that much.
[00:25:36]  The Israeli left is exemplified by Ehud Barak being eventually the leader of the Labor Party, but I get ahead of myself.
[00:25:43]  Shimon Perez replaces Rabin, appoints Ehud Barak as foreign minister.
[00:25:48]  So this guy has not been like in the Knesset or anything before this, like, or had a job.
[00:25:54]  He has been in military intelligence for his entire life, essentially, since he got drafted when he was a teenager.
[00:26:01]  And now here he is foreign minister after basically a year in government.
[00:26:06]  Then, of course, Netanyahu beats Perez, and Barak goes and he does get elected to Knesset, leads the Labor Party, and three years later takes the PM seat himself in 1999.
[00:26:20]  Big year.
[00:26:21]  Big year.
[00:26:21]  Well, the big year and the big things that happen after that are the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the Camp David talks plus the classic famous, you know it, you'll love it, the second intifada.
[00:26:35]  Interestingly enough, part of his sort of like, and I haven't read the book or anything.
[00:26:40]  This is just like one of the things I knew about Barack that I think I actually learned when I found those pictures of him in disguise leaving Jeffrey Epstein's house came out.
[00:26:49]  He apparently, allegedly, was assassinated PLO leaders and probably members and probably just random people in Lebanon while dressed as a woman in the 1970s.
[00:27:02]  So he's a bit of a discussion.
[00:27:04]  Was that like, do you think that he just did that on like his own or do you think that was like a method?
[00:27:10]  Well, it did sort of like he just happened to be cross-dressing and then decided to famously, obviously, we know about the IDF's penchant for stealing women's clothing in Gaza.
[00:27:22]  And so maybe he sort of like, you know, prefigured that a little bit or set a trend within the IDF.
[00:27:27]  I love that he's like, it's, I don't know.
[00:27:30]  It's so, it's so, it's a little cinematic, you know, I gotta say.
[00:27:36]  They look at me.
[00:27:37]  Israeli spy dressing up as a woman to assassinate.
[00:27:40]  I know, but they have all this mythos about them that it's hard for me necessarily to take much of it as like at face value because it's such an important part of their like strength projection.
[00:27:48]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:27:49]  I know.
[00:27:50]  These guys who are willing to do anything.
[00:27:51]  They're experts.
[00:27:52]  I mean, it's not that crazy to be like, and then you put on a dress.
[00:27:55]  like well I guess that's true in Zero Dark Thirty there's that scene where they're all dressed as chicks in Pakistan yeah it's like that one's easy because they're head to toe that's what I yeah Yeah, that seems like, I think that is like, that doesn't count.
[00:28:09]  Yeah, I know.
[00:28:10]  I don't think that counts.
[00:28:11]  I agree.
[00:28:11]  I don't think that counts either.
[00:28:13]  So, I know, because so much of the PLO is secular, you'd have to just, like...

=== Sergei's Unusual Requests (15:31) ===

[00:28:16]  Like, can you imagine if someone's like, I'm doing drag, but they're in a burqa?
[00:28:19]  It's like, it's like, okay, dude.
[00:28:20]  Yeah.
[00:28:20]  All right.
[00:28:21]  Oh, he's so clever.
[00:28:22]  Yeah.
[00:28:23]  So he loses.
[00:28:24]  He's prime minister for three years and he loses badly, like a fucking blowout to Ariel Sharon in a special election.
[00:28:32]  He immediately cashes in and he goes all in on the classic former politician job, I guess you want to call it, of taking fake board positions in companies where you get massive payouts for doing zero work.
[00:28:48]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:49]  And he does really well in that.
[00:28:51]  He goes on Israeli industries, cybersecurity, defense, and real estate companies, makes a mint, total blatant corruption.
[00:29:00]  There's actually a really long report in Haaretz from 2009 about his business dealings.
[00:29:06]  And this is, you know, I guess he's out of government until about 2008, 2007.
[00:29:11]  So like, you know, it's kind of looking back on what he was doing while he was out of government.
[00:29:16]  Liz, could you read this?
[00:29:17]  I mean, it's interesting.
[00:29:19]  Findings that reached Haaretz indicate that up to April 2008, about 10 months after Barack entered the defense ministry, over 5 million NIS was accumulated by Ehud Barak Limited.
[00:29:35]  name some of the money was transferred from companies with which barack is known to have worked such as tamir fishman and escape rescue systems a company that specializes in rescuing people trapped in tall buildings classic very profitable enterprise however most of the money was transferred from anonymous sources in israel and abroad so i think that is kind of crucial to hone in on I don't know it's just saying that like,
[00:30:03]  listen, and there's a, it's a really long article.
[00:30:07]  It's clear that like, especially with a lot of his real estate dealings, that he, he transferred the companies to his kids and they kept making a ton of money and he portrayed it as a gift to them.
[00:30:19]  But it's clear that like there's something funny going on here.
[00:30:22]  I mean, this is sort of the crux of the article because the guy is just getting massive influxes of cash from completely unaccountable sources that are not even in Israel, which is obviously something going on there.
[00:30:36]  He also meets Epstein after he gets out of government pretty quickly in 2003 via Shimon Perez.
[00:30:43]  So he's told different, it's actually interesting because he's told, there was one interview where he said I met him via Shimon Perez, and there was another interview where he said the same thing, but it puts it in a very different light.
[00:30:53]  He met him at a party with Shimon Perez, Bill Clinton, and other unnamed famous people.
[00:30:59]  Wow.
[00:30:59]  Oh, interesting.
[00:31:00]  Well, they hit it off because he immediately gets $2.3 million for writing two research papers, only one of which was actually written and completed for the Wexner Foundation.
[00:31:17]  Of course, Leslie Wexner's organization.
[00:31:20]  Epstein, I mean, I don't think we need to tell our listeners, very close with Leslie Wexner.
[00:31:24]  Wexner bought the house in townhouse in Manhattan that Barack would later be photographed sort of escaping from.
[00:31:32]  You know, this is clearly something's going on here.
[00:31:35]  You're not paying a guy $2.3 million to write like a couple.
[00:31:39]  Why the fuck does the Wexner Foundation need a paper on the Israel-Palestine conflict from Ehud Barak?
[00:31:48]  I mean, it's like, can't Leslie write it?
[00:31:51]  They're just laundering money.
[00:31:52]  Yeah.
[00:31:53]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:53]  Very, I think, pretty clear something's going on there.
[00:31:57]  He re-enters the government in 2008, becomes defense minister in a coalition government under Omer.
[00:32:03]  And then when Netanyahu comes roaring back in 2009, he remains defense minister.
[00:32:09]  He actually leaves the party that he is the leader of.
[00:32:12]  He leaves labor when they break with Netanyahu so he can remain in the government.
[00:32:16]  And I think he's out in 2013 and returns to private life.
[00:32:24]  Although, actually, that's not true.
[00:32:25]  He starts like a couple, he started a couple new political parties, but he has, I think the most recently in like 2019, but he has unsuccessfully returned to power.
[00:32:35]  But of course, 2013, that leads us pretty directly into where these emails start flying back and forth.
[00:32:42]  I think the earliest emails in here are from 2013.
[00:32:45]  I think so.
[00:32:46]  There were some things from 2012, but I think it was stuff he forwarded himself from earlier.
[00:32:51]  So this is where your reporting comes in.
[00:32:54]  Because what were these guys up to together?
[00:32:58]  So what was publicly known, actually this became a thing during the 2015 election when Barack was trying to get into politics and Haaretz sort of broke the story.
[00:33:07]  And it was kind of funny because Netanyahu was one of the big like invest open the Epstein files guys.
[00:33:13]  Yeah, there's a lawsuit about it.
[00:33:15]  Really?
[00:33:15]  Yeah, there's a lawsuit in Israeli court, actually, specifically about the Wexner Foundation papers, where Likud sued.
[00:33:25]  I don't know, it's in Hebrew.
[00:33:26]  And like, I did, you know, auto-translate isn't that great.
[00:33:29]  And so, but I did find out from like contemporaneous English language reporting, I think, in Times of Israel, that Likud lost and had to pay Barack and the Wexner Foundation $500 each.
[00:33:43]  $500 only.
[00:33:44]  $500 each.
[00:33:44]  I don't know.
[00:33:45]  It's one of those things.
[00:33:46]  I don't know.
[00:33:46]  I don't know.
[00:33:47]  Sort of slap on the wrist legally.
[00:33:49]  Exactly.
[00:33:49]  I mean, or maybe it's like a token thing.
[00:33:51]  I don't know.
[00:33:51]  But yeah, I mean, this became an election issue.
[00:33:54]  And it is kind of funny now, given the valence of like the political valence of all this stuff that it was like Netanyahu was like, open the Epstein files.
[00:34:00]  Yeah.
[00:34:01]  But yeah, I mean, it's because there was some thing.
[00:34:05]  Sorry, it was an issue in the 2019 election.
[00:34:08]  The investment happened in 2015 where there was some startup called a reportee, which is just such an Israeli and it's also very mid-2010.
[00:34:17]  I love it.
[00:34:18]  Reportee makes me so happy.
[00:34:20]  And I guess just interrupting the story.
[00:34:22]  In an innocent time.
[00:34:24]  Let me slightly derail, but there has been sort of an online phenomenon of people calling things spiritually Israeli.
[00:34:30]  But these are people who are oftentimes wrong because spiritually Israeli things are things that are named like Roporti or some shit like that.
[00:34:39]  What do they say that are spiritually Israeli?
[00:34:41]  Is it called Crumble Cookie?
[00:34:43]  And I'm like, that's actually, I don't think that is.
[00:34:46]  I think there is like an overlap between the like Israeli startup naming conventions, like the mid-2010 sort of twee millennial thing.
[00:34:54]  Yeah.
[00:34:55]  Reportee is the perfect.
[00:34:57]  Exactly.
[00:34:57]  Yeah, I know.
[00:34:58]  I know.
[00:34:58]  Yeah.
[00:34:59]  I mean, like Crumble to me, for instance, seems a thoroughly American.
[00:35:03]  Yeah, but it's hard to separate those.
[00:35:05]  I mean, Crumble is named like Flickr and one of those Web 2.0, like Reporty.
[00:35:11]  So what does Reporty actually do?
[00:35:13]  They are sort of 911 call manage.
[00:35:18]  They are a 911 call management technology.
[00:35:22]  Like basically like we can use AI.
[00:35:23]  I'm not entirely 100% clear, but it's like we can use AI to find out where the person's calling from and manage the, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:35:31]  And basically, Barack comes in, but becomes chairman of the board because he fronts a lot of money for it.
[00:35:39]  But the money is coming from Epstein.
[00:35:41]  And there's this sort of complicated system where like they put it together into like a partnership in the Virgin Islands.
[00:35:48]  And then that partnership invests in.
[00:35:51]  Reporty.
[00:35:52]  Now, one of the other, so funny.
[00:35:54]  It's been renamed Carbine, which also I think is a good like 2010s to 2020s.
[00:36:00]  Carbine with a Y, by the way.
[00:36:02]  And so like, we miss it now, you know?
[00:36:07]  So this, this, one of the board members of Reporty was the former head of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris.
[00:36:16]  Sorry, pause right here.
[00:36:18]  What is Unit 8200?
[00:36:20]  Let's see, it's really equivalent to the NSA.
[00:36:21]  It's the signals intelligence.
[00:36:23]  It does basically the same things as the NSA does.
[00:36:25]  It does it on a very intensive and thorough scale in Israel and Palestine particularly.
[00:36:31]  Probably elsewhere too, let's be real.
[00:36:33]  Yeah, but no, I mean, they're very, very thorough.
[00:36:35]  Like there was a good Art Guardian slash 972 article that came out that talked about how they were like subcontracting Microsoft because they just had so much data that they couldn't store like every single phone call in Gaza.
[00:36:50]  So yeah, Pinchas Buchris retired from this and was one of the co-founders of Reporty slash Carbine.
[00:36:57]  And he claimed to Haaretz when the story broke about Epstein's involvement of like, I don't know where the money, the money came from Barack.
[00:37:05]  I don't know who Jeffrey, like, I didn't know who Jeffrey Epstein was, was involved.
[00:37:09]  But the emails say something slightly different, which is that there's a Skype call invitation for Buchris and Epstein and Barack together.
[00:37:19]  Yes.
[00:37:19]  And then Barack writes to his lawyer, like, can we change the terms of the partnership based on this?
[00:37:27]  So based on what they talked about, what they talked about on the phone.
[00:37:30]  So, I mean, at the very least, it's probably, it's almost, I mean, I know you can't say this because you're like a journalist, but we can say whatever we want.
[00:37:36]  They had that month.
[00:37:37]  We know they had that motherfucking call.
[00:37:39]  But at the very least, he knew that Epstein was a partner in this because otherwise, wouldn't you be like, who the fuck is the other guy in the Skype call?
[00:37:46]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:37:47]  And so to me, I mean, a little bit also just about Unit 8200 and like the tech sector in Israel.
[00:37:54]  Israel has a shit ton of cybersecurity companies.
[00:37:58]  And like, I would say the majority of them are founded by or staffed by former Unit 8200 people.
[00:38:06]  Yeah.
[00:38:07]  I mean, that's, it's sort of known as like a big tech incubator.
[00:38:10]  Yeah.
[00:38:10]  Yeah.
[00:38:11]  Which I think is like, I mean, this is, goes bigger than this story, but I think there's a, something to be said about how Silicon Valley is very thoroughly like militarized and militarized by this one particular state.
[00:38:23]  Um, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:38:26]  But yeah, so uh well, yeah, Silicon Valley also, like, there's a bunch of companies that have people from Utah 8200 working in them as well.
[00:38:35]  I think that there's like Facebook isn't like a big, like, or is it TikTok?
[00:38:40]  Someone recently hired like some United A200 person, but like there's a bunch in like Silicon Valley companies as well.
[00:38:48]  Yeah, so Rapportee becomes, you know, the, the, it seems to be the only like investment that actually goes through, uh, but it also sort of opens some doors for Epstein.
[00:39:00]  Bucharest is one of them.
[00:39:02]  I mean, I don't really know what else they talked about.
[00:39:05]  Uh, from what I, from what I gathered from like the Skype call, it was about the financial terms, but right now Epstein is in touch with this guy.
[00:39:13]  Um, and he also presses uh Barack to sort of like he introduces Barack to people and then presses Barak to like help expand those contacts.
[00:39:24]  Uh, one of the big ones is Sergei Belyakov, who's a Russian cabinet minister.
[00:39:29]  And like Epstein was known to have contacted Belyakov.
[00:39:34]  Um, actually, a Russian opposition news outlet somehow got some of the emails from between Epstein and Belyakov, which are also in this Barack Epstein trove.
[00:39:42]  And there's, I don't know where they got them from or how they verified them, but I could tell you that they overlap.
[00:39:49]  And basically, Epstein introduces Belyakov to Barak.
[00:39:53]  Belyakov invites Barak to come to St. Petersburg, the one in Russia, not the one in Florida, for some economic conference, because that's what he's the minister of.
[00:40:03]  And then Epstein writes separately to Barack, like, can you please help me set up a meeting?
[00:40:09]  Can you use Sergei to help me set up a meeting with Putin?
[00:40:12]  And I'm not political, which is a very interesting thing to say.
[00:40:16]  Yeah, you know, actually, I have some of the Putin's.
[00:40:18]  I kind of don't think he is.
[00:40:19]  He was political.
[00:40:20]  Yeah, I mean, he was a Democrat, you know, but there's a few different emails that like reference Putin that are a little like interesting.
[00:40:29]  So I think the one you're probably talking about right there is from April of 2015.
[00:40:38]  Which was a very active month in these emails.
[00:40:40]  Very active.
[00:40:41]  And it's from Jeffrey to Ehud, and it says, I spoke to Sergei afterwards.
[00:40:45]  He will help.
[00:40:46]  I suggest you send him a note that states that you think Putin and his advisors would benefit from spending some time with Jeffrey to discuss markets, currency, and the financial system in the new world of zero interest rates.
[00:40:59]  And that I'm not political.
[00:41:00]  He has to answer certain questions.
[00:41:02]  Speak today.
[00:41:04]  Later, or excuse me, rather, prior, two years before from 2013, there's an email from Epstein to Barack that says, Putin asked that I meet him in St. Petersburg at the same time as his economic conference.
[00:41:18]  I told him no.
[00:41:20]  If he wants to meet me, he will need to set aside real time and privacy.
[00:41:24]  Let's see what happens.
[00:41:25]  That's in 2013.
[00:41:27]  Michael Wolf has also claimed very recently on a podcast, like a week before this article, like my article came out, that like Epstein bragged to him about flying to Russia and meeting Putin.
[00:41:37]  But like, it's like I couldn't really track down whether that was real.
[00:41:43]  And it seems from these emails that like this is something Epstein wants, but it's not clear whether that's like something he got.
[00:41:48]  I mean, it was clearly like there were Russian elites willing to give Epstein the time of day, which there's a lot to say about that.
[00:41:55]  I don't know if he actually, it's, it's, there's a big question mark about whether he actually accomplished what he wanted to with Putin.
[00:42:02]  Also, like, what the fuck he wanted to accomplish with Vladimir Putin.
[00:42:06]  I read, fuck, I think it was maybe in that like Russian opposition like website that he wanted to brick's cryptocurrency, which would really hit in a certain corner like a Twitter, to be honest.
[00:42:18]  I mean, it's also like so of the time.
[00:42:20]  Yeah.
[00:42:21]  I mean, a couple, a couple months after the, or a few months rather, or no, a month, excuse me, after that last email in 2013, Jeff writes to Ehud, Putin will redo his staff in the summer, bringing only very trusted people closer.
[00:42:35]  More info on phone or face to face, which is interesting because it seems to at least acknowledge that emails might be being read or possibly read by somebody.
[00:42:46]  Well, you'd hope that the intelligence guy would know.
[00:42:48]  So what is he doing with Belyakov, with Sergei?
[00:42:52]  Good question.
[00:42:54]  We don't know.
[00:42:55]  We don't really know.
[00:42:55]  Del Center had a lot more than I had.
[00:42:58]  So my article just sort of is focusing on what's new.
[00:43:02]  And it links, but yeah, the Dulce A Center talks about how like Belyakov asked him for advice or he asked Belyakov for advice about a woman who is blackmailing people.
[00:43:12]  He also offered Belyakov like advice on how to get around U.S. economic sanctions.
[00:43:17]  Yeah.
[00:43:18]  And yeah, there's probably, I mean, it's the sort of like, what is it, Palace of Mirrors or Wilderness of Mirrors?
[00:43:27]  Well, it's interesting because I saw those emails too and I was like, I don't know.
[00:43:31]  Like, are these, it's like a weird CIA thing?
[00:43:33]  I don't know.
[00:43:34]  But the fact that there's similar emails to the ones in this that make me be like, oh, maybe that shit is real.
[00:43:39]  I mean, the reality is, is during this time period was when Epstein was most active in trying to contact the Russians.

=== Epstein's Russian Meetings (06:19) ===

[00:43:47]  This is when, and maybe I'm getting ahead of ourselves about, so I'll just mention this and we can move on.
[00:43:52]  This is also when he was introducing Peter Thiel to Russia's UN diplomats.
[00:44:01]  And so it's very interesting because the leaked emails cut off in like mid-2016.
[00:44:06]  Late 2016 is when Epstein and Thiel have a meeting with Churkin.
[00:44:13]  And then there's another meeting with Barack and Tom Barak, different spelled with two R's and a CK, who's the, he's been described as like him, Trump and Epstein were the three musketeers of nightlife in Michael Wolf's reporting.
[00:44:28]  And he is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and the sort of like viceroy overseeing Syria policy.
[00:44:35]  Yes.
[00:44:35]  But of course, these emails just, the hacked emails cut off.
[00:44:39]  right before those meetings.
[00:44:41]  So we have no fucking idea what's going on there.
[00:44:43]  Yeah, I mean, the Wall Street Journal thing is, if I just derail us for just a moment, there's a couple articles that detail it, but one is called, I think it's from the list of names in Epstein's calendar.
[00:44:58]  Epstein has his final scheduled meeting with Vitaly Churkin on January 10th, 2017.
[00:45:03]  The following month, the diplomat died on the eve of the 65th birthday.
[00:45:06]  Three days later, after, or three days after Churkin's death, Epstein sent an email to Teal, as you read, my Russian ambassador friend died.
[00:45:13]  Life is short.
[00:45:14]  Start with dessert.
[00:45:16]  Oh, where's the poet?
[00:45:17]  I know, but they had like multiple lunches together.
[00:45:22]  I think, yeah, it says they had at least eight meetings scheduled with Epstein.
[00:45:26]  Churkin did, which I think is interesting because that's when a lot of this stuff was going down.
[00:45:34]  He's meeting with another Russian.
[00:45:36]  So I don't know if Epstein was ever directly involved in these meetings, but Barack definitely was and was definitely updating Epstein about these meetings.
[00:45:43]  Yes, okay, yeah, true.
[00:45:44]  Victor Vexelberg, who is also close to Putin and is just kind of like, he's a businessman.
[00:45:50]  I think he's a mining magnate originally.
[00:45:52]  Classic.
[00:45:53]  But, you know, he's very, very post-Soviet.
[00:45:55]  But he's breaking out into other industries.
[00:45:57]  And yeah, he meets.
[00:46:00]  Well, we'll talk about the person he met on this, that Barack met on the same day as Vexelberg.
[00:46:04]  But the other thing that Barack tried to loop Epstein into was this surveillance thing called Five Dimension that offered, I mean, they had like a slideshow with mock-ups of like a control room where you could just track individual people and cell phones.
[00:46:23]  And there's, yeah, like basically Epstein says, call me about this.
[00:46:30]  And then there's no real indication of whether they pursued this further, but this was clearly, this is the kind of business idea because there's more than one that Epstein was bringing, that Barack was bringing to Epstein and Zing.
[00:46:42]  Do you want to invest in this?
[00:46:43]  So Fifth Dimension is from where?
[00:46:46]  So it's, it's the, the funding was coming from Vexelberg in Russia, but the actual company was, I'm not going to say which it was Israeli and after Barack turned down the investment, or I think he turned down the investment because there's another email where one of Barack's, I think, relatives is just like, this is not a good idea to invest in.
[00:47:09]  The person who did step up was Benny Gantz, the leader of the Israeli left for a while.
[00:47:15]  Another former general and I think former defense minister made the famous campaign ad where he said, like Netanyahu is not killing enough people in Gaza.
[00:47:23]  This was like 2021 era.
[00:47:26]  And then Gantz, yeah, Gantz ended up kind of walking out with his tail between his legs because the company went out of business because Vexelberg came under U.S. sanctions for election meddling.
[00:47:36]  Yeah, Barack might not have invested, but Vexelberg did invest $12 million.
[00:47:42]  Gantz comes in in 2015 as chairman, and then Deputy Mossad head Rahm Ben Barak was president.
[00:47:50]  And so, in order to, because they were going on, they were in a little bit of trouble because of the U.S. sanctions, they were in talks to be bought by NSO Group, who you might remember, listeners, from being behind the Pegasus spyware product.
[00:48:04]  But those talks fell apart.
[00:48:06]  They were like, we don't need this shit.
[00:48:08]  And probably it also became because, you know, NSO Group, I think, also came under U.S. sanctions.
[00:48:12]  Like, there was just a lot of radioactivity in this field.
[00:48:16]  I know.
[00:48:17]  They waited a little too long.
[00:48:18]  I feel like now would be a perfect time.
[00:48:20]  It's, it is, it just, I think what this does show us, though, is something interesting, which is this overlap between like Russian funny money and Israeli funny business, which like I think has been pretty much a constant since American money.
[00:48:39]  And American money.
[00:48:39]  It's all American money going to Israeli businesses, meeting up with Russian money.
[00:48:44]  It's all sloshing around.
[00:48:46]  This is also, you know, this is this is a Zerp story.
[00:48:49]  This is a Zerp story.
[00:48:50]  Zerp.
[00:48:51]  Zero interest rates.
[00:48:53]  Ah.
[00:48:54]  TBT.
[00:48:56]  But that's when things were good, man.
[00:48:59]  It's just, it's, I think that there is, I mean, like, I don't, you know, this is a little outside the remit of what we're talking about today, but like the Russian mafia has like a pretty big influence in Israel.
[00:49:10]  And there are some like, I think high-level deals that go down between these, this sector, the security sector, and some people in that.
[00:49:20]  Yeah, it's kind of funny because nobody really talks about the Russia-Israel connection because, like, you know, Zionists in the U.S. are not going to draw attention to that because Russia is a state enemy of the U.S.
[00:49:29]  And then like the anti-imperialist types, a lot of them are pro-Russia.
[00:49:34]  Yeah, it's difficult.
[00:49:36]  And Russia kind of plays both sides of shit a lot.
[00:49:38]  But like, you know, when Netanyahu or Likud put up those giant thank you Trump banners on their headquarters, on the other side of that was thank you Putin.
[00:49:50]  Like there was a giant, you know, and they have, there's a lot of, there's some close relationships there with Likud and the Russian government.
[00:49:57]  Yeah, it's, it's, uh, well, there's another person who is connected to Barack and Epstein and met with.
[00:50:05]  Do you want to talk more about Fifth Dimension?

=== Close Relationships With Russia (03:41) ===

[00:50:07]  Or?
[00:50:07]  No, I mean, no, we don't have to.
[00:50:09]  Too.
[00:50:09]  It's just, it's, it's, I think that, like, this is notable here, right?
[00:50:14]  Like, like, a lot of these emails, I mean, they talk about investing in a few different things, but the main ones here are Israeli spyware companies.
[00:50:22]  I mean, there's no kind of other way to frame that.
[00:50:24]  Like, the two ones that I mean, Barack only invests in one of them that we know, but like, uh, or the one of them that's mentioned in here.
[00:50:32]  I mean, we don't know what else happened off email because they often also talk about a lot of face-to-face meetings.
[00:50:37]  Yeah, it's like a lot of you up.
[00:50:38]  Half the emails are like you up.
[00:50:40]  And like, I'm not, we're not kidding.
[00:50:42]  Genuinely, half of these.
[00:50:44]  I've looked at every single email, and there are how many?
[00:50:47]  I think there were like 2,700.
[00:50:48]  Yeah, there's a lot of people.
[00:50:49]  No, when we say they're boys, I mean, they're boys.
[00:50:51]  They're boys.
[00:50:52]  To be fair, every Israeli company is an Israeli spy company, whether or not it says it is.
[00:50:58]  Yeah, it's true.
[00:50:59]  Well, that's the whole thing with the Unit 8200 being an incubator for the startup nation.
[00:51:04]  Yeah.
[00:51:07]  But there's, there's so many emails that are just like, are you awake?
[00:51:11]  What number can I reach you?
[00:51:12]  Also, like, I Jeffrey, first of all, he is emailing from his iPad constantly.
[00:51:19]  It's so at all hours of the night.
[00:51:21]  The time stamp on some of these emails.
[00:51:23]  Well, there is the time zone because they're coming from Barack's inbox.
[00:51:27]  I know, but it's quite, it's, I will say it's all over the place.
[00:51:31]  The man was very active and especially on his iPad.
[00:51:35]  And second of all, the way he writes emails, which we have commented on in the past, we were reading his emails that came out in part of the like JP Morgan suit.
[00:51:51]  He writes like that Autistic Hamster Twitter account where there's just like a bunch of, which shout out to the Autistic Hamster, but where there's just like a bunch of spaces everywhere and it's all lowercase.
[00:52:04]  I will say it's a little like 14 year old girl Tumblr style.
[00:52:09]  Yeah.
[00:52:09]  But it's Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:52:11]  He cannot speak English.
[00:52:13]  I think that's like one of the main things I learned from here is that like Epstein's, I mean, he's from Kony, right?
[00:52:18]  Like, you know, down there, they definitely, you know, there's a, let's say it's a heavy accent, right?
[00:52:22]  It's this sort of Eastern European style.
[00:52:24]  He talks like somebody dictating to like a broken down dictaphone that like he refurbished from some fucking, you know, Hudson antique mall that he bought it from.
[00:52:34]  It is not.
[00:52:34]  It's also like a crazy like typing style.
[00:52:37]  I have a theory that is like, I'm just, there's no reason for me to believe this other than like spiritually, I believe it because I too went through this transformation, which is I think he was a Blackberry guy early on.
[00:52:51]  And I was a Blackberry girl.
[00:52:52]  I loved my Blackberry.
[00:52:54]  And the switch from Blackberry to iPhone and then having to kind of you're typing differently and going from BBM to this is, I feel like I'm seeing a little bit of the, this is a little of my, you know, anthropology.
[00:53:09]  There is, I've always wondered where like the boomer style, because you, like, the boomers, like my elementary school teachers were boomers.
[00:53:15]  And when you were like right with a pen and paper, they were sticklers for like penmanship and grammar.
[00:53:19]  As they should have been.
[00:53:20]  Yeah, but then you take that same generation class of people and you put them in front of a keyboard and it like it's not just that they make typos It's like their entire thought process just breaks and it's true comes incoherent.
[00:53:32]  I'd like to read to do Mavis Beacon like I did.
[00:53:35]  I'd like to read the last text essays my father sent me Which is still can't shed the image of Dershowitz's dick flapping up and down on the volleyball Well, at least we know where you got it is listening to the episode.
[00:53:47]  That makes me feel good.

=== Island Memories (07:53) ===

[00:53:49]  Can I say something off the record?
[00:53:50]  No, it went on podcasts.
[00:53:53]  You can, but then it's on the record because we're on a podcast.
[00:53:56]  All right.
[00:53:57]  Fuck it.
[00:53:57]  Okay.
[00:53:58]  I'll just, last time I came on the show, my mother asked me, Matthew, are you going to get in trouble?
[00:54:02]  They're like, that podcast seemed pretty anti-Semitic.
[00:54:05]  And it's your mom's, your mom's Persian?
[00:54:09]  Yeah.
[00:54:10]  And my dad.
[00:54:11]  Was she happy about that?
[00:54:13]  No, yeah.
[00:54:14]  No, and then I was like, Brace is Jewish.
[00:54:16]  She's like, oh, okay, I get it now.
[00:54:17]  Yeah.
[00:54:18]  And then my dad was like, you know, the talent was like, these people sound fucking retarded.
[00:54:23]  Your dad said I sounded fucking retarded.
[00:54:25]  Your dad sounds fucking retarded.
[00:54:27]  Hey, I mean, well, it's just, listen, yeah.
[00:54:33]  Cool.
[00:54:34]  Now I have like a fucking, now I hate myself, but it's all good.
[00:54:38]  My dad loves me, I guess.
[00:54:40]  But he didn't even say, I love you.
[00:54:41]  He just said Dershowitz's penis.
[00:54:42]  He didn't say, he hasn't said, I'm surgeon.
[00:54:44]  Control F, I love you.
[00:54:45]  Never done.
[00:54:46]  So there's an interesting sort of chain of emails that I think is illustrative of, just before we get away from Victor real quick, of trying to set up these deals because it looks like Epstein is trying to insinuate himself.
[00:54:58]  Barack and Epstein kind of as a pair are trying to kind of glom themselves onto this much richer man.
[00:55:03]  So on June 26th of 2014, there's an email or as a forwarded email.
[00:55:10]  There is an email to Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:55:12]  I'll get to the forwarding part later.
[00:55:13]  From Ugo Braschetti Paretti from API Group, which is an oil and gas or Grupo API.
[00:55:22]  It's an oil and gas conglomerate that took over the shell concessions in Italy in the mid-1970s.
[00:55:27]  And it says, hi, Jeffrey.
[00:55:28]  As agreed, here's a brief presentation of my company.
[00:55:31]  Thank you.
[00:55:32]  All the best.
[00:55:33]  Ugo.
[00:55:34]  And Epstein forwards the email to Ehud Barak 40 with a message for Victor.
[00:55:39]  Barack responds, Jeff, I'm in New York 16th to 20th July.
[00:55:44]  Victor will probably be in New York as well, at least part of this period.
[00:55:47]  I'll try to reset our trilateral meeting.
[00:55:50]  Regarding this, which is the Ugo email, let me think.
[00:55:54]  Probably VV.
[00:55:55]  That's Victor.
[00:55:56]  Probably a PE fund, an oil bigger player.
[00:55:59]  Let's talk about it later today or tomorrow.
[00:56:01]  EB.
[00:56:02]  He always sends his emails.
[00:56:04]  And then it says send for my iPhone.
[00:56:06]  And then Jeff says, I can be there on the 18th only.
[00:56:08]  And Barack writes, okay, I'll try to seduce him pause into a meeting on this date.
[00:56:13]  Best EB.
[00:56:15]  who knows what happened after that but you know they're sort of trying to like insinuate themselves as a duo it seems like with other businessmen yeah they're making money moves Like they're partners.
[00:56:26]  Like this is, this is the thing.
[00:56:28]  Barack really downplayed a lot of this.
[00:56:31]  And like, this actually, these emails, I feel like, are kind of a bigger deal than even the 8200 stuff.
[00:56:39]  You know, them lying about that, because it really clearly shows how closely connected these guys were business-wise.
[00:56:45]  I mean, Barack is sending Epstein also like op-eds he's writing, which are also really poorly written and like also not maybe so great at spelling.
[00:56:54]  And being like, can you look this over?
[00:56:55]  Like, they're both sending each other stuff like frequently.
[00:56:58]  They email each other more than I email either of the people that I work with.
[00:57:02]  That is kind of cute.
[00:57:03]  Oh, come on.
[00:57:05]  I would never email like my boy.
[00:57:06]  I'd be like, can you look at this?
[00:57:07]  What about me?
[00:57:08]  I mean, we should be doing this kind of stuff.
[00:57:10]  Yeah, but you know, my boy.
[00:57:11]  One of the details that I just got hit on the cutting room floor from this article because there wasn't a place to put it.
[00:57:17]  And it was also sort of a minor thing, but it was, so it's been reported publicly that Barack stayed in Epstein's apartment.
[00:57:24]  And, you know, he had that, like the New York Times recently put out that like hand-drawn map of Israel.
[00:57:30]  Yes, which the New York Times needs to publish because I want to see.
[00:57:33]  I know you all listen to this show.
[00:57:35]  The former prime minister of Israel, I want to see his version of what Israel looks like on a map from that year.
[00:57:41]  I have a funny thing.
[00:57:42]  I feel like there is a fucking important thing.
[00:57:44]  I don't think it'll be Eretz Israel stuff.
[00:57:45]  I don't think there is a funny because there was a hand-drawn, there is another hand-drawn Barack Israel map famously.
[00:57:54]  The napkin one, right?
[00:57:54]  Yeah, the napkin one.
[00:57:55]  He made a piece, or like the, the, the, a lot of people use this to say Palestinians are unreasonable because like this didn't go anywhere, but like there was some kind of abortive attempt at a peace talk with Yasser Arafat where Barack literally like drew the peace offer on a napkin.
[00:58:11]  And I'd love to see that napkin just like I'd love to see.
[00:58:15]  Maybe we compare and contrast the Afghan bill chocolate.
[00:58:17]  I can't remember if it was him that said it or like someone else involved in negotiations like I wouldn't have taken that deal either.
[00:58:23]  Yeah, so so but yeah, Barack's chief of staff, what I found in the email is that Barack's chief of staff also, there's like an email from Leslie Groff, who's Epstein's assistant.
[00:58:33]  Yes.
[00:58:34]  Basically offering to quote reserve unquote an apartment for Barack's like not his like like parliament chief of staff, like the chief of staff of the Israeli army under Ehud Barak.
[00:58:47]  And he died, so I couldn't ask him for comment.
[00:58:49]  By the way, nobody has responded for comment.
[00:58:53]  There was one company that was approached by them for investment where they were like, I basically, I had no idea Epstein was involved in this.
[00:59:02]  And Ehud Barak never went ahead with the deal, anyways.
[00:59:05]  Nobody else responded.
[00:59:06]  I assume they probably thought it was smarter to, I mean, we're recording this basically immediately after the article came out.
[00:59:14]  So I don't know, but I think it was probably, they probably calculated it was smarter to like wait, see what comes out, and then like correctly guess afterwards.
[00:59:21]  100% the smarter thing to do.
[00:59:25]  So what else are these guys getting up to together?
[00:59:28]  Well, the island thing.
[00:59:32]  There is another thing that didn't make it to the article.
[00:59:35]  Well, again, it's known that Barack visited the island at least once.
[00:59:39]  And there is an email where afterwards, he tells Epstein, thanks for the hospitality.
[00:59:44]  Nice, impressive island.
[00:59:45]  Please find attached my thoughts in the Israel situation.
[00:59:48]  Yeah, I also want to mention something else about the island here.
[00:59:53]  Here's an email from January 8th, 2014.
[00:59:56]  Sorry, I'm reading fucking emails here.
[00:59:58]  Epstein says, Can your security people and then two spaces, period, then two more spaces, and then all in lowercase, give me their NYPD contact info?
[01:00:07]  Who do you normally use?
[01:00:11]  And Ehud Barak, there's like some back and forth with like these people, it's like clearly old people trying to email each other and it's not working.
[01:00:18]  And he says, Jeff, hi, I've ended up misleading you mistakenly.
[01:00:21]  Nilly, which is Ehud Barak's wife, send it right.
[01:00:24]  We are reaching JFK slash New York on Wednesday, the 22nd at 6 a.m. and taking two hours later, 8 a.m., an American Airlines flight 936 to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
[01:00:36]  The flight lands in St. Thomas on 12:55 p.m.
[01:00:41]  I'm still trying to arrange that the security guys will not come to the island.
[01:00:47]  Does this work for you best, Ehud Barak?
[01:00:52]  So we have it right there in black and white that Ehud Barak is like, I'm trying to make it sure that my security guys don't come on the fucking island.
[01:00:59]  There is another email, which I stupidly, I don't think that I actually wrote down here or I put down in my notes here, but there is reference to a Druze security guard, which is like appears to be like maybe a personal security that's assigned to Ehud Barak from like the Israeli state or like a bodyguard who is made mention of visiting the island on the second day.
[01:01:25]  Now, Ehud Barak has claimed, I know this is a small point to quibble on, but he's claimed that he only went to the island once and he spent a few hours there.
[01:01:33]  But obviously they went twice.
[01:01:36]  The first day it seems like sand security and the second day they brought the Druze fella with them.

=== Peter Thiel's Amphetamine Impression (15:09) ===

[01:01:42]  And I just think it's a little interesting.
[01:01:44]  What did you guys have to talk about?
[01:01:45]  It's a big island.
[01:01:46]  Couldn't you just send your security maybe up to the temple?
[01:01:49]  Well, as Danny DeVito's character and always sunny says, he was just there for the snorkeling.
[01:01:54]  there for the snorkeling but we gotta talk about one of the greats, Peter Thiel Yeah, so can I say something actually off the record?
[01:02:13]  Yes.
[01:02:14]  I really don't want to sued.
[01:02:16]  It's like a lance.
[01:02:19]  Back on the record.
[01:02:20]  You could say that, but I can't.
[01:02:21]  Can we bleep that?
[01:02:22]  Sure.
[01:02:25]  Wow.
[01:02:27]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:02:28]  I mean, so Peter Thiel, who, of course, is so tweaked out at this point that if you ask him about this and he says he doesn't remember, he might be right because it appears he has destroyed his brain with methamphetamine.
[01:02:41]  I'm not saying that he has.
[01:02:42]  I'm just saying it looks like he has.
[01:02:44]  He reminds one of a tweaker.
[01:02:46]  I know.
[01:02:47]  I'm kind of upset that we're not going to his like four-part talk on how he's not the antichrist.
[01:02:53]  When I saw that it was happening, I immediately did try to get us tickets, which I think it would even be.
[01:02:57]  It's sold out, right?
[01:02:58]  Sold out immediately because people like him.
[01:03:01]  I want to.
[01:03:02]  I had a crazy interview with the New York Times where they're like, basically, are you the Antichrist and are you trying to destroy the humanity?
[01:03:08]  And he's like, you know, if somebody asked me if I'm the Antichrist and trying to destroy humanity, that would be a pretty easy thing to answer.
[01:03:17]  But also, like, isn't the Antichrist?
[01:03:18]  The reason I don't think he is is because I think the Antichrist would have an answer for that.
[01:03:22]  Yeah, for sure.
[01:03:23]  The thing about the Antichrist is like, I could talk a lot about the Antichrist.
[01:03:27]  I could talk for four different sessions about it.
[01:03:29]  But like, he's supposed to be charismatic.
[01:03:32]  It's not even.
[01:03:33]  Peter Thiel.
[01:03:34]  And also, like, Peter kind of like maybe intimates during that interview that Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist.
[01:03:39]  Greta, come on the show.
[01:03:40]  We like you now.
[01:03:41]  We like you.
[01:03:42]  You're dark Greta.
[01:03:44]  I like dark Greta.
[01:03:45]  I know.
[01:03:46]  We do.
[01:03:46]  We rock with Greta now.
[01:03:49]  But he, I'm like, she's not the Antichrist either, dude.
[01:03:53]  Like the Antichrist.
[01:03:54]  I think that he doesn't think that he is the Antichrist.
[01:03:57]  But I think he believes in the Antichrist.
[01:04:00]  But he's like not Christian.
[01:04:02]  I know that's what, but no, he is.
[01:04:05]  He is fake, though.
[01:04:07]  If you put, and I would never do that.
[01:04:09]  What's the difference between fake and real Christianity?
[01:04:10]  If you put a gun directly to his head, and this is, again, this is just like a thought experiment.
[01:04:16]  If you put a loaded .45 caliber, seven in the mag, one in the chamber, locked and ready to rock, gun to his head, and you said, do you believe in, like, are you Christian?
[01:04:29]  He'd probably be like, nah, I don't think he is.
[01:04:33]  I feel like if you think you're going to, I think if he said yes.
[01:04:38]  Yes.
[01:04:38]  And I, and I, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and I accept it.
[01:04:41]  Yeah.
[01:04:42]  I had a conversation with a conservative journalist years ago, like 2019, where he made like a political alignment chart.
[01:04:48]  You were being groomed.
[01:04:49]  We made like a political alignment chart of like who fears God and who, who believes in God and who fears death.
[01:04:54]  And we put Peter Thiel in the like fears death, does not believe in God.
[01:04:59]  Absolutely.
[01:05:00]  That's so true.
[01:05:03]  This is not a lawsuitable statement of fact.
[01:05:06]  This is just a funny story.
[01:05:08]  Yeah, the fear of death is while a like classic bourgeois, you know, like obsession, how these guys have like taken it to the limit is still so fascinating and symptomatic.
[01:05:24]  There's something interesting, actually a crossover that is sort of will lead us to a little Peter Thiel stuff.
[01:05:29]  So famously, I mean, we're talking about lawsuits here.
[01:05:31]  The reason we're talking about that with Peter Thiel is because he funded the parish Hulk Hogan's lawsuit on Gawker, which led to the dissolution of Gawker, Nick Denton's reinvention as a China guy, about five attempts, failed attempts to restart the website Gawker, which grew increasingly desperate and increasingly smaller audience.
[01:05:53]  I'm not really sure.
[01:05:53]  I think they're probably still trying to do it.
[01:05:55]  I feel like it's a shame because I do think that having Gawker around while Nick Denton became a China guy would have been very cool.
[01:06:04]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:06:04]  And an interesting arc for everybody.
[01:06:06]  But famously, Peter Thiel bankrupted Gawker, right?
[01:06:12]  What I didn't realize until we were getting ready to do this episode is that Victor Veckelsberg came to the rescue and bought a minority stake in Gawker right after the lawsuit when it was up for sale.
[01:06:25]  It's just a little interesting.
[01:06:27]  I don't know what that means.
[01:06:29]  There's no Kevin Bacon situation.
[01:06:31]  Insight I can take from that, but it is like weird.
[01:06:34]  Like what a two personalities because these guys were both orbiting around Epstein and Barack literally sometimes on the same day here.
[01:06:43]  Yes.
[01:06:43]  So this is probably, this was the big like eye-bugging scoop.
[01:06:50]  So it's known that Thiel has met with Epstein.
[01:06:53]  Yes.
[01:06:53]  He his they got the calendar and then when the Wall Street Journal asked him about it, he admitted meeting, basically said Epstein was a crazed networker and basically just offering like to introduce him to people.
[01:07:06]  Never reported who those people were.
[01:07:07]  One of them was Ehud Barack, according to these emails.
[01:07:10]  You have emails where Barack is arranging this meeting where like Epstein's like a puppy dog being like, please meet Peter Thiel, please meet Peter Thiel, please meet Peter Thiel.
[01:07:20]  Eventually Barak can like meet Peter Thiel and it's interesting because he basically once once they're finally setting up the meeting, he asks Epstein like, yo, is there time to get coffee with my boy Victor Vechselberg on that the morning before?
[01:07:34]  Which is pretty interesting.
[01:07:35]  I don't know if these are connected or they just happen to be in like, this is when Barack is in New York, so this is when he can meet everyone.
[01:07:43]  He describes the meeting to a different associate who we just didn't mention the article because we're not trying to bring them in.
[01:07:51]  You've read the emails.
[01:07:52]  You're free to say whatever you want.
[01:07:54]  But yeah, he says it's like to talk about geopolitics and it's a quote first date unquote.
[01:08:00]  And that he's met Teal before at like the Davos, like the famous Legion of Doom evil people conference.
[01:08:10]  Oh, we know.
[01:08:10]  We've been.
[01:08:11]  We speak.
[01:08:12]  Yeah.
[01:08:12]  You've been?
[01:08:13]  No.
[01:08:14]  So you're a CIA agent.
[01:08:15]  You've been at Tavo.
[01:08:16]  Davos?
[01:08:16]  No, I know.
[01:08:17]  I would, I would, I, well, we had some, we had this one, Caitlin on to speak about earlier, but Davos is done.
[01:08:23]  It's, it's dusted.
[01:08:24]  It's fucking.
[01:08:25]  Yeah, I listen to the episode.
[01:08:26]  Literally dusted because now we're going to do my.
[01:08:28]  Well, so you have the email in there, and he says he doesn't remember.
[01:08:32]  That Peter Thiel probably won't remember me.
[01:08:33]  Yeah.
[01:08:34]  But there is a line because I have had access to these emails for a while.
[01:08:37]  I've been reading these emails for a while.
[01:08:41]  Yeah, I sort of had to beg the TrueNON people not to.
[01:08:44]  We've literally been bargaining, reporting on any of this stuff because you told me you were working on something.
[01:08:49]  I'm like, well, I don't want to get ahead of you.
[01:08:52]  You know what I mean?
[01:08:53]  But, which, you know, I'm not a journalist.
[01:08:56]  I'm just a guy who reads emails.
[01:08:58]  In your version, for legal reasons, I'm assuming, in the article, there is a blacked out portion.
[01:09:05]  But the actual email, let me just read the whole thing.
[01:09:08]  From Ehud Barak to Gary Feigel.
[01:09:13]  And it says, Gary, going to meet him for dinner tomorrow.
[01:09:16]  This is about Peter Thiel.
[01:09:18]  He asked to bring another person with him.
[01:09:20]  I don't know who or why.
[01:09:22]  I met him once in Davos some two years ago, but he was, I guess, under some drug impact.
[01:09:30]  What a nice way to say it.
[01:09:32]  Peter Thiel was under, according to Ehud Barak, Peter Thiel in Davos was under some drug impact.
[01:09:39]  Probably he doesn't even recall it.
[01:09:41]  The drug hit him.
[01:09:43]  Let's see.
[01:09:44]  I was told by the host of the dinner that we will probably spend it talking just geopolitics.
[01:09:49]  It's a first date.
[01:09:51]  I don't think he's a huge, I don't think, I think he's of huge potential to accelerate things by the sheer reputation he's got.
[01:09:59]  No way, it's a waste, misspelled, of time.
[01:10:02]  Thus, I'm going to do it and we will see.
[01:10:05]  I'll let you know.
[01:10:06]  Best to yell.
[01:10:07]  We couldn't walk that long today.
[01:10:09]  Hope you enjoyed it.
[01:10:09]  Warm regards, E.B. What a way with words.
[01:10:13]  He was, I guess, under some drug impact.
[01:10:15]  So that is the former prime minister of Israel, former head of military intelligence in Israel.
[01:10:21]  Confirming.
[01:10:22]  Assessing about Peter Thiel's drug use.
[01:10:27]  Yeah, I'm not going to comment on that because it's just, it's just too much.
[01:10:29]  It's outside the remit.
[01:10:30]  It's outside the remit.
[01:10:33]  She's commenting on it.
[01:10:34]  This is the thing.
[01:10:34]  Well, that's the thing.
[01:10:35]  It's Ehud Barak's opinion according to this email you just read to me.
[01:10:39]  So, you know, I don't know.
[01:10:42]  I didn't see it through Ehud Barack's eyes.
[01:10:43]  I don't either.
[01:10:44]  I don't know.
[01:10:44]  I will say, I do think a lot of people in Davos were suffering from a lot of drug impact.
[01:10:49]  I think that there's, I think people were snoozed to the gills there, frankly.
[01:10:53]  And if you're suffering under that much drug impact, that like funky old Ehu Barak is like.
[01:10:59]  Suffering.
[01:11:00]  Yeah.
[01:11:00]  Yeah.
[01:11:01]  What's suffering?
[01:11:02]  Because sometimes drug can impact you in a good way.
[01:11:06]  What drugs do you think he's on?
[01:11:09]  Besides, don't say all because I'm not going to say what drugs are in the room for this man.
[01:11:12]  I know.
[01:11:13]  So let me just be clear.
[01:11:14]  Nobody else is involved in saying this but me.
[01:11:17]  I'm only looking in your eyes, baby.
[01:11:18]  I'm not saying...
[01:11:19]  I'm just like, I'm not intending to defame or do any slander here to anybody.
[01:11:24]  I would say that some of Peter Thiel's public appearances give the impression or remind one of people on high doses of amphetamines, whether legal or illegal.
[01:11:39]  Some of those things are popular in the chem sex community.
[01:11:44]  Possibly it went from chem sex to just chem living.
[01:11:49]  One doesn't know and one doesn't assume.
[01:11:51]  One just sees the popular trends in the world.
[01:11:55]  But there are also other, like, what's that fucking drug that people like at the Pentagon do?
[01:12:00]  I want to say, like, there's another, it's like a neurotropic style drug.
[01:12:05]  Product of modafinil.
[01:12:07]  Modafinil.
[01:12:08]  Oh.
[01:12:08]  Modafinil.
[01:12:08]  I'm going to say modafinil.
[01:12:10]  Wasn't that also a Sam Binkman Free drug?
[01:12:14]  I would assume so.
[01:12:14]  I mean, I'm going to say the stack, we're probably not looking at something that different from SBF.
[01:12:20]  Although, obviously, we're probably not looking at anything at all.
[01:12:22]  I'm just saying there are certain characteristics that you have.
[01:12:25]  And I say of my own past as somebody who suffered under drug impact, it's very clearly some form.
[01:12:34]  It's very clearly that sometimes amphetamine-style drugs do make one stutter, sweat, be unable to answer basic questions and achieve a skull-like appearance.
[01:12:48]  No, he wasn't on modafinil.
[01:12:50]  It was MSAM.
[01:12:52]  What's MSAM?
[01:12:53]  Those patches?
[01:12:54]  The patches.
[01:12:55]  It was this anti-seizure patches?
[01:12:56]  No, it wasn't seizure.
[01:12:57]  I think it was a patch.
[01:12:58]  It was a methamphetamine patch, basically.
[01:13:00]  That Sam was.
[01:13:01]  I don't know what it's like.
[01:13:02]  Remember, he was tweaking out in court trying to get it.
[01:13:04]  But anyways, Ehud Barack, and I'm not saying I think any of this is true.
[01:13:08]  I'm just saying what could be true if you were on, if you were making public appearances where you were tweaking out, you were probably on some form of tweak.
[01:13:16]  Ehud Barack clearly seems to think that the tweak wien was so bad or the drug impact was so bad that it would affect the memory of meeting this memorable character, the prime minister, former prime minister of Israel.
[01:13:28]  Wouldn't it be so funny if it was just like something total, like if he was in Davos, but just like on heroin?
[01:13:34]  He's just like nodding out at the white table.
[01:13:37]  Klaus Schwab are like at the beginning of fucking Once Upon a Time in New York in like a little fucking concrete alcove in the Chinatown, Davos Chinatown, smoking an opium pipe, some little fucking loincloth, you know, coolie lighting it for them.
[01:13:51]  Oh my God, but I don't think that's true.
[01:13:53]  I think it probably was something a little, but I don't think it was anything.
[01:13:56]  I think that Ehud Barak thinks that.
[01:13:59]  Anyways, Peter Thial, Jeffrey Epstein, what's going on?
[01:14:03]  Yeah, so he arranges a meeting with him and Barack to, as far as I can tell, just like, you know, introduce each other, meet, talk about geopolitics, which is very interesting because again, when Epstein is like, I'm not political.
[01:14:15]  Also, I love talking politics.
[01:14:18]  I mean, I don't know.
[01:14:20]  I don't know what he was definitely playing some game and he was definitely Epstein was definitely playing some game and trying to like get as many intelligence adjacent people as he could into his circle.
[01:14:27]  I don't know why.
[01:14:29]  If I were to speculate, go out on a limb, it's like he thinks he kind of knows that like he's on borrowed time.
[01:14:34]  This plea deal is infamous and there's lots of legal pressure.
[01:14:39]  And so maybe looking for an escape valve, which would also explain a lot of the Russia stuff.
[01:14:44]  Anyways, we don't know what happened between Barack and Teal at that first meeting.
[01:14:50]  It did match up with the around the same.
[01:14:53]  I believe that, yeah, it matched up with the same time period that Teal admitted to meeting Epstein to the Wall Street Journal.
[01:15:00]  So like, also, apparently, Barack mentioned that Teal was bringing some other person, which like we don't also, we don't know who that is.
[01:15:08]  But we do know that two years later, Epstein brings, calls the partner or emails the partner of Valar Venture.
[01:15:16]  Valar, Valar?
[01:15:17]  Valar, probably.
[01:15:18]  Valar Ventures.
[01:15:19]  You can pronounce the name anyway you like.
[01:15:21]  Which is another Teal fund, another Teal-funded operation, and basically says, hey, like, Ehud Barak has a startup called, I forgot what it was called Reporty or Carbine at the time.
[01:15:33]  You want to meet him?
[01:15:33]  And, oh, it was called Reporty, yeah.
[01:15:36]  And then Valar actually, you know, goes and meets Barack and the Reporty team with Epstein's invitation and says, he's like, and by the way, it's like very, like, the Valar partner writes, like, thank you, Jeffrey, for your interest.
[01:15:51]  Like, this is not.
[01:15:52]  It's clear they know each other.
[01:15:53]  Definitely from these emails, it's clear that they know each other.
[01:15:56]  Yeah.
[01:15:56]  And then he writes after the meeting, like, this is kind of a premature idea, so we're not looking to invest in it just yet, but maybe in the future.
[01:16:05]  Valar does not be clear.
[01:16:07]  To be clear here, Valar does not invest in Rapportee, but another Teal thing, the Founders Fund, does invest in Reporty.
[01:16:14]  And this is actually the first Israeli startup that they put money into.
[01:16:19]  I don't know anything from the emails about whether this was because of that meeting with Valar or whatever else, but I do know that some of the early contacts between Teal and Barak were arranged by Epstein and that Epstein was very keen on getting people in the Teal universe to put money into Rapportee.
[01:16:40]  So this is an interesting email from June of 2014.
[01:16:45]  And it's from Ehu Barak to Jeffrey Epstein.
[01:16:48]  It says, Jeff, interesting discussion regarding the meeting.

=== Prince Andrew's Chinese Connection (10:32) ===

[01:16:51]  We'll update when you land.
[01:16:53]  We have it 90% sure on Monday afternoon.
[01:16:56]  VV, that's not Velar Ventures.
[01:16:59]  That's Victor Veckelsberg, I assume, goes with his son to an ice hockey match.
[01:17:04]  After the match, we will meet ice hockey, also probably the Russian guy.
[01:17:08]  He's supposed to call me with an hour and a place.
[01:17:10]  I assume that it'll be in his place around 5.30 or 6 p.m.
[01:17:14]  Should you try to reset PT to 8.30 p.m.
[01:17:19]  Please call when you land.
[01:17:21]  Best.
[01:17:22]  Yeah, that's what I was talking about earlier.
[01:17:24]  It wasn't coffee in the morning.
[01:17:25]  Sorry, it was coffee the same day.
[01:17:26]  Yeah.
[01:17:27]  So, I mean, the subject line is R-E-V-V comma PT.
[01:17:31]  And so it's like they were really kind of like juggling these guys.
[01:17:34]  And like, I mean, again, I know that's a little complicated, but what they're doing in part here, they're trying to like get Veckelsberg to invest in some stuff.
[01:17:44]  One of those is Grupo API, but another one of those is an Israeli spyware company, Fifth Dimension.
[01:17:51]  And at the same time, it's pretty clear that they're trying to get Peter Thiel to do something similar, right?
[01:17:56]  To maybe invest or at least get one of his funds to invest, which one does, the founder's fund, in a different Israeli spyware company.
[01:18:06]  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that that is the game, to the extent we could say we know that's the game Epstein's playing is he's trying to bring in all sides of like the sort of corporate intelligence world together under his auspices.
[01:18:20]  There's another country involved we'll talk about with like a very little small breadcrumbs of that, the sort of the third sorry the North Korea thing?
[01:18:29]  No, I was talking about the China thing.
[01:18:31]  Oh, yeah.
[01:18:31]  There's a North Korea thing?
[01:18:33]  Yeah, dude.
[01:18:34]  What the fuck?
[01:18:35]  Okay, I'll interrupt then.
[01:18:37]  One of the most tantalizing emails that we get no other anything else from, at least that I could find, from Jeffrey Epstein to Ehud Barack on February 28th, 2014.
[01:18:48]  The North Koreans have approached some people.
[01:18:50]  As an American, I cannot do biz there.
[01:18:52]  They're looking to build giant infrastructure guaranteed by mining.
[01:18:55]  So this is 2014.
[01:18:56]  And around that time, I believe, and I didn't look into, this is something that when I read these, when I initially got access to these emails by DDOS Secrets, I read this and I was like, okay, filing that away.
[01:19:09]  And I looked it up a little bit.
[01:19:10]  And there were SEZs that were being started by North Korea in the north of North Korea, like near the Chinese border.
[01:19:18]  And there was a large-scale infrastructure project.
[01:19:21]  I think a railroad that they were building with the Russians.
[01:19:25]  And some of that stuff was guaranteed with mining concessions within North Korea.
[01:19:31]  And so I'm like, I guess.
[01:19:32]  I'm like, I'm wondering who he says.
[01:19:34]  The North Koreans have approached some people.
[01:19:36]  I don't know.
[01:19:36]  We have nothing else.
[01:19:37]  Because a lot of these emails do have Epstein talk in it.
[01:19:40]  The China thing, I think, is really interesting.
[01:19:41]  Yeah, do you have the Chinese one in front of you?
[01:19:44]  Let me pull it up.
[01:19:45]  It's got such a distinctive typo.
[01:19:48]  Well, actually, Chinese, the way he writes Chinese.
[01:19:50]  I'm going to scroll down the article because the whole email is contained in the article.
[01:19:53]  Yeah, okay.
[01:19:54]  But yeah, and this is another like ominous Jeffrey Epstein type.
[01:19:57]  Wealthy Chinese, that's how he spells it.
[01:20:00]  Looking for to start personal protection co in Beijing.
[01:20:04]  Kidnapping has begun.
[01:20:06]  What the fuck does that mean?
[01:20:08]  Kidnapping has begun.
[01:20:09]  Kidnapping has begun.
[01:20:10]  The kidnapping has begun.
[01:20:13]  Him saying wealthy Chinese is so fun.
[01:20:15]  Because he forgets the second E, right?
[01:20:17]  Yeah.
[01:20:18]  It really reads like a tweet.
[01:20:20]  Yeah.
[01:20:21]  I like looking forward to start a company.
[01:20:23]  Like he's like a folksinger, like a pop Dylan zone.
[01:20:26]  Looking for to start.
[01:20:27]  Looking for to start a company.
[01:20:28]  Looking for a little protection company in Beijing.
[01:20:32]  And then Barack writes, Where'd you see it, E.B.?
[01:20:34]  And then Jeffrey E writes, Andrew.
[01:20:37]  And Barack says, The prince?
[01:20:39]  Question mark, E.B.?
[01:20:40]  The prince?
[01:20:41]  And Jeffrey E says, yes.
[01:20:43]  So Prince Andrew.
[01:20:44]  So Prince Andrew's letting him know that the wealthy Chinese are being kidnapped and it's time to start a company, personal security.
[01:20:52]  And the Prince Andrew, that is very interesting because Prince Andrew has recently, and again, I'm not saying anything law suitable under American or British law.
[01:21:01]  Prince Andrew has recently come under fire because of his close association with a Chinese businessman.
[01:21:08]  I forget the name, but it's linked in the article, who was accused by the British government of being a spy.
[01:21:16]  And by this, I mean like this Chinese guy was like, why is my visa being denied?
[01:21:21]  And he went to court about it.
[01:21:22]  And the court was like, because we think that you are cultivating Prince Andrew in an intelligence operation.
[01:21:28]  Wow.
[01:21:28]  Chinese Andrew.
[01:21:31]  This was like reported in the BBC as like an anti-intelligence operation.
[01:21:35]  I know.
[01:21:36]  We're going to get British dumbest fucking guy.
[01:21:39]  Which can you imagine?
[01:21:40]  I mean, that is like a really long list.
[01:21:42]  Probably the easiest guy to entrap.
[01:21:45]  I know.
[01:21:45]  Probably the easiest guy to entrap, though, of any like high-profile figure.
[01:21:50]  Yeah, I think he's got pretty low standards.
[01:21:52]  No offense to the ladies.
[01:21:57]  So, yeah, the Chinese businessman was named Yang Tang Bo.
[01:22:00]  Again, I'm just reading from the BBC.
[01:22:02]  This is not.
[01:22:02]  Yang Tang Bo.
[01:22:03]  Yeah, Yang Tang Bo.
[01:22:04]  And apparently, like Prince Andrew tried to use him to set up a channel communication with Xi Jinping to invest in.
[01:22:12]  What the fuck does Prince Andrew have to say to Xi Jinping?
[01:22:15]  That's so embarrassing.
[01:22:17]  And there is a birthday letter involved, which they love.
[01:22:21]  These people love sending each other birthday letters.
[01:22:23]  The Chinese fella sent him a birthday letter?
[01:22:25]  No, no, Andrew sent, use the, use this, this businessman to send Xi Jinping a birthday letter.
[01:22:30]  What did the birthday letter say?
[01:22:32]  It doesn't say in this article.
[01:22:33]  It's Prince Andrew just writing in phonetic what he thinks is Chinese.
[01:22:37]  And I'm not going to do it here on the podcast.
[01:22:40]  I just feel like a Brit shouldn't be writing a birthday letter to the Chinese.
[01:22:44]  I mean, it's just like, there's a lot of history there.
[01:22:46]  There's a lot of, I know.
[01:22:47]  I know.
[01:22:47]  I know.
[01:22:48]  Sorry.
[01:22:49]  Sorry, mate.
[01:22:51]  Just a bit of sport.
[01:22:56]  Apparently, Prince Andrew was trying to get Chinese people to invest in his incubator, which is called Pitch at Palace.
[01:23:02]  Pitch at Palace.
[01:23:02]  I just had the app.
[01:23:04]  We covered that in one of our first episodes.
[01:23:07]  He was in Singapore, I think, when a lot of this shit went down.
[01:23:13]  He does.
[01:23:13]  His whole thing was going to Asia.
[01:23:15]  The Pitch at Palace thing, the app was not working very well when I downloaded it.
[01:23:19]  But he was trying to do a startup fun thing.
[01:23:22]  He's a bit of a Hunter Biden figure in this regard.
[01:23:26]  He is.
[01:23:27]  But he was trying to do something.
[01:23:30]  It's a little unclear, but I guess, you know, listen, if you can get to Xi, get to Xi.
[01:23:33]  But I'm like, can't you like get your secretary to do that?
[01:23:36]  I guess it might not get to Xi Jing.
[01:23:38]  I don't think that he's like allowed true like diplomatic channels.
[01:23:42]  The secretary, it's like that Philip K. Dick book where the guy thinks he's like filling out puzzles, but he's actually like solving the missiles right now on Earth.
[01:23:51]  They just have Prince Andrew like, yeah, like, no, you can write a letter to Xi Jinping, and they just throw it away right away.
[01:23:56]  So in the BBC article, there are some very funny things in here.
[01:24:01]  But so they have a quote from a witness statement given in court by Dominic Hampshire, who's who's Prince Andrew's like, well, I don't know his title exactly.
[01:24:12]  It was like his right-hand man is Consigliere.
[01:24:15]  And Mr. Hampshire said in his witness statement that there was quote, nothing to hide, unquote, between Andrew and Xi, and they were full of, quote, top-level nothingness, unquote, such as birthday wishes.
[01:24:25]  Mr. Hampshire said that the late Queen Elizabeth II knew about the contacts with China and they were quote, perhaps even encouraged, unquote.
[01:24:32]  He described Andrew as quote, a valuable communication point with China, unquote.
[01:24:37]  Though the documents revealed that Mr. Hampshire thought, quote, China would prefer a different royal.
[01:24:43]  Okay, that makes me feel better about China.
[01:24:45]  At least that they're like, well, what do you think they prefer?
[01:24:50]  Any of them?
[01:24:51]  Obviously, will.
[01:24:52]  Will.
[01:24:53]  Definitely will.
[01:24:56]  I don't know.
[01:24:57]  At that point, I guess the Queen.
[01:24:58]  They're like, can we get?
[01:25:01]  I don't think you can.
[01:25:02]  What would you do with that?
[01:25:04]  I feel like the Chinese could appeal to Charles.
[01:25:07]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:25:08]  Because he likes a quaint thing, and they could be like, we have ancient culture.
[01:25:13]  Prince is a very interesting fellow.
[01:25:15]  Yes, he is.
[01:25:16]  The portrait, his portrait choice really changed the way I view him and how he views himself in history.
[01:25:23]  It's very fascinating to me.
[01:25:25]  His little model town made me be like, oh, he's, I get it.
[01:25:30]  There's something not right with him.
[01:25:32]  Samuel and Ryan without him.
[01:25:33]  And I do think that he's more self-conscious than maybe self-conscious enough to wear long sleeves to hide his fingies.
[01:25:41]  Well, not even Trump's doing that.
[01:25:43]  Anyways.
[01:25:44]  So this BPC article, what's very interesting about it is that it portrays like Prince Andrew's China contact as sort of like a desperate gambit because the Epstein interview just ruined his life.
[01:25:54]  Oh.
[01:25:55]  So that's how it's publicly reported.
[01:25:57]  I would do that.
[01:25:58]  But the emails kind of reveal that it wasn't, that this isn't that like, that's not how Prince Andrew's contact with China started.
[01:26:05]  He didn't start after his reputation was destroyed.
[01:26:07]  He was like while Epstein was alive and active.
[01:26:10]  Yeah.
[01:26:10]  He was, I don't know how deep these connections went.
[01:26:13]  Andrew's a secret China guy.
[01:26:16]  Yeah.
[01:26:17]  Wealthy Chinese.
[01:26:18]  Could be, you know.
[01:26:20]  Wealthy Chinese.
[01:26:21]  I can't do it.
[01:26:22]  What the fuck accent is that?
[01:26:23]  I can't.
[01:26:24]  You try.
[01:26:25]  Succulent Chinese male.
[01:26:26]  Succulent Chinese guy.
[01:26:30]  Sucking on a Chinese Chinese guy.
[01:26:34]  Get your hands off my penis.
[01:26:35]  Get your hands on my penis!
[01:26:38]  Put your hands on my cock.
[01:26:41]  Please stop.
[01:26:42]  But sorry.
[01:26:42]  Well, cock is obviously, that's an allusion to the rooster.
[01:26:48]  Chinese guys like those.
[01:26:50]  And the cockfighting, of course.
[01:26:52]  Do they cockfight in China?
[01:26:54]  If not, then I can bring it there.
[01:26:56]  But it's the only way for roosters to earn glory.
[01:27:00]  But I still think it's wrong, but it's still.
[01:27:02]  I get why they do it.
[01:27:03]  The roosters, not the people who do it.
[01:27:05]  But so, wow.
[01:27:09]  I mean, Andrew isn't in these emails that much, but there's allusions to a few guys like of Andrew quality in here where like Epstein is like, do you want to have dinner with me, Pritzker, and Woody Allen?

=== Noam Chomsky's Controversial Remarks (15:23) ===

[01:27:23]  And Rothschild, too.
[01:27:24]  And a Rothschild, too.
[01:27:25]  I know, but it's Arianne de Rothschild.
[01:27:28]  That's like, I assume, like, there's many mentions, and we actually, I don't think I have time to cover it today.
[01:27:33]  We might do it in another episode, but there's a lot of Ariana de Rothschild is in these emails a lot.
[01:27:40]  Basically, Epstein is introducing the two of them.
[01:27:43]  It seems like it finally goes down at some point, maybe in Geneva or maybe somewhere else, but they definitely meet in Geneva at one point.
[01:27:51]  And it seems like Epstein is trying to get Ehud Brock to pull some strings in Israel because the Rothschild Foundation, and I mean, the Rothschilds were integral to the setting up of Israel, to the early Zionist movement, because they were getting, her foundation was getting taxed.
[01:28:08]  Also, Arianne de Ross Child, I just want to be clear there, not Jewish.
[01:28:12]  Much like Elaine Maxwell, who was a Protestant, she is, she is, she is not Jewish.
[01:28:18]  Yeah, she married into the Russian family.
[01:28:19]  She married in and she's a goy.
[01:28:21]  Just want to be clear there.
[01:28:23]  But she's now in charge of like the whole group.
[01:28:26]  I know.
[01:28:26]  Isn't it funny to have a goyish Rothschild in charge of the Rothschilds?
[01:28:32]  Shit.
[01:28:32]  She's like in charge of the wine.
[01:28:34]  Like their stash or their winery?
[01:28:37]  No.
[01:28:38]  Oh, yeah.
[01:28:39]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[01:28:40]  Very, very famous.
[01:28:42]  One of the most famous holdings.
[01:28:46]  important.
[01:28:57]  So what else?
[01:28:59]  What else?
[01:29:00]  There's a lot of stuff.
[01:29:02]  There's the you want to talk about the Chomsky stuff, which is another thing that didn't make it into the final article.
[01:29:10]  But I mean, it's known that Epstein and Chomsky hung out.
[01:29:14]  Not only hung out, but that Epstein was helping Chomsky with money matters.
[01:29:18]  Yeah, so there's not much of that.
[01:29:20]  I didn't see much of that in these emails.
[01:29:22]  I saw nothing of that.
[01:29:23]  No.
[01:29:23]  Yeah.
[01:29:24]  But there was a lot of, like, I would have loved to, yeah, I would have loved to include it.
[01:29:29]  There just was nowhere to put this in the article because it's kind of rehashing what's already known because it confirms like Chomsky went to the Wall Street Journal and had admitted, basically, they asked him why we hang out with Epstein.
[01:29:41]  First, he's like, none of your business, which is never an answer you want to give that.
[01:29:44]  That's a journalist.
[01:29:45]  You told me that.
[01:29:46]  Yeah.
[01:29:47]  That's never an answer you want to give a journalist.
[01:29:49]  None of your business.
[01:29:50]  There are so many other better things to say.
[01:29:53]  Or if, you know, better yet, don't answer if Jeffrey Epstein's name is involved.
[01:29:58]  But yeah, the emails, and then, but then he also said, like, yeah, I met with Barack and Epstein to discuss the like Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[01:30:08]  And the emails do show that of like this weird dynamic where like Chomsky would send Epstein some like opinion about like Israel and then Chomsky and then Epstein would like forward it to Barack and they'd like have a chuckle about it and then at some point they were like like do you guys want to just all three of you meet up at MIT and they did meet which was what's been publicly reported and I don't know what they talked about but Probably the same things they were talking about in the emails.
[01:30:38]  So I wrote Chomsky in 2022 because some people found a photo on his, on Epstein's French butler's Facebook page of him and Chomsky really near Chomsky, or excuse me, Epstein's house in Paris.
[01:30:57]  And I was like, what's the deal with this picture?
[01:30:59]  This blah, blah, blah.
[01:31:00]  This is when it was taken.
[01:31:01]  This is who it is.
[01:31:02]  And he says, looks like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
[01:31:04]  I can't recall the dates, but once my wife Valerie and I stayed in a hotel near there for a few days while I was giving talks.
[01:31:11]  I don't think that's true.
[01:31:13]  I think he might have probably maybe staying in.
[01:31:15]  I think he might be lying to me.
[01:31:16]  I think he was staying in Epstein's house, maybe.
[01:31:19]  I said, thank you so much for your response.
[01:31:20]  So this was just a stranger asking for a photo.
[01:31:24]  And more specifically, did you ever visit an apartment or house at 22 Avenue Fock in Paris or meet Jeffrey Epstein?
[01:31:32]  Thank you.
[01:31:33]  He says, I'm deluged with mail, and unlike everyone I know, I try to respond to substantive letters.
[01:31:37]  But I have to set tight priorities.
[01:31:39]  One is to keep away from personal matters which are no one's business, especially when the answers are in print, like my meeting with former Israeli PM Ehud Barak at Harvard, arranged by Epstein.
[01:31:49]  No, yeah, they met Harvard, not MIT.
[01:31:51]  Yes, but the thing is, I was like, this is in print.
[01:31:55]  Where is this in print?
[01:31:56]  And me and Twitter user Gumby4Christ scoured the internet to try to find anywhere this was in print.
[01:32:02]  It was printed in like one, I think, Hebrew language news article that was like contemporaneous from the meeting.
[01:32:11]  But I asked, was Epstein a part of the meeting or did he just arrange it?
[01:32:15]  He said he arranged it but didn't take part.
[01:32:17]  It was a report in the Israeli press where there was considerable discussion of Barack and Epstein.
[01:32:23]  And obviously it came out later that Epstein was helping Chomsky move money around and helping him with his taxes.
[01:32:32]  I don't know what the fuck that means.
[01:32:33]  They never got more on it than that.
[01:32:36]  But these emails paint obviously this picture of him sort of middlemaning with Ehud Brock, which we knew, but Chomsky emails Epstein in August of 2015.
[01:32:45]  Bad news.
[01:32:46]  We decided not to go.
[01:32:46]  This is about Greece.
[01:32:48]  I was invited to talk at the parliament, but what can one say?
[01:32:51]  That aside, they've got plenty of people giving them bad advice.
[01:32:56]  Epstein says, only go to Greece if you feel well.
[01:32:58]  I just had to send my plane to bring another lefty friend back from Athens to see a Jew doctor in New York.
[01:33:05]  And he writes, bad for them.
[01:33:06]  This is from Epstein to Chomsky.
[01:33:08]  Good for you.
[01:33:09]  No need to have only one currency.
[01:33:11]  It's old-fashioned.
[01:33:12]  You are, of course, welcome to use apartment in New York with your new leisure time or visit New Mexico again.
[01:33:22]  He also wrote, Ants find the shortest route to food by trying many and discarding what doesn't work.
[01:33:27]  No algorithm, no input and output, only a goal.
[01:33:29]  Sounds closer to our problem.
[01:33:32]  So I don't really Know what the fuck that means.
[01:33:37]  Chomsky responds: there were plenty of warnings about one currency not needed, unfortunately.
[01:33:41]  Appreciate the invitation, but leisure time?
[01:33:43]  Is that an English phrase?
[01:33:45]  And okay for ants, but don't see how that helps us.
[01:33:48]  I think the one thing I want to focus on here is: you are, of course, welcome to use our apartment in New York with your new leisure time or visit New Mexico again.
[01:33:57]  Because obviously, Jeffrey Epstein has a ranch.
[01:34:00]  He has a property in New Mexico, Zorro Ranch, where it is alleged that some of his kind of stranger experiments with wanting to breed or do whatever.
[01:34:14]  Some of the more lurid details about his strange predilections are kind of emanate from.
[01:34:22]  And, you know, from reading this email, it seems pretty clear that he's like, Noam Chomsky, you have been and stayed at my ranch in New Mexico.
[01:34:32]  Would you like to go there again?
[01:34:34]  Which is, I mean, that's pretty new.
[01:34:36]  That is new.
[01:34:37]  We didn't know that.
[01:34:39]  I mean, yeah, this was one of those things.
[01:34:42]  So you actually got Chomsky to like respond and comment to, like I mentioned, I did want to mention the Chomsky-Epstein stuff.
[01:34:48]  There wasn't anywhere to put it, but I did reach out to like Valeria and Noam himself for comment, and neither of them responded.
[01:34:56]  Not about the New Mexico thing, but because there is a photo in a classroom apparently at Harvard of this was half like I wanted to know what was going on here.
[01:35:06]  I mean, this was the famous meeting that was reported on, half because this was part of my process of like verifying these emails were real.
[01:35:12]  I did actually get other people to like confirm details of them.
[01:35:17]  But yeah, they never responded, but it's a photo of what can I say?
[01:35:22]  It's a photo taken from Epstein's perspective because Epstein's the one who emailed it of Barack and Chomsky talking to each other.
[01:35:29]  There is a bald man in the background whose face I do not recognize and who I could not find from any of those like AI face search things.
[01:35:36]  And then there is a woman with her back to the camera with greasy long black hair who, I mean, I don't know.
[01:35:44]  I don't know if you've seen this photo.
[01:35:45]  Yeah, I have seen the photo.
[01:35:47]  I don't think it's Ghelane Maxwell.
[01:35:49]  I know where you're going with that.
[01:35:50]  I don't think I wasn't going anywhere.
[01:35:52]  Just because of the date, I don't think it's Ghalain because she and Epstein were kind of split by that point.
[01:35:56]  Yeah, I mean, very mysterious, very, very mysterious photo.
[01:35:59]  But yeah, I mean, at first, I emailed them and I didn't even bring up Epstein or anything.
[01:36:03]  I was just like, I'm like, I obtained some documents and I'm trying to prove that these are real.
[01:36:10]  Do you know if this photo is like really of you?
[01:36:13]  And just like no response.
[01:36:14]  I emailed them both like twice and just.
[01:36:16]  Well, I don't think he can physically respond to things.
[01:36:19]  I think he's pretty ill now, right?
[01:36:21]  Yeah, but Valeria probably opens.
[01:36:22]  Yeah.
[01:36:23]  Yeah, she probably can.
[01:36:24]  But she probably doesn't have the same fidelity to responding.
[01:36:27]  That's true.
[01:36:28]  I mean, it's, you know, I mean, I think it's pretty well confirmed that that's a real photo.
[01:36:34]  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things in there that like confirm that these emails are real that just like not worth publishing or just like they're not worth, but it's like, yeah, these are this thing is filled with all kinds of goofy photos of Barack and Barack with famous people.
[01:36:49]  There's one with like Barack and Clinton.
[01:36:50]  There's one with, yeah, and so.
[01:36:53]  There's a funny email from Ehud Barack to Jeffrey, or excuse me, from Epstein to Barack, which says, can you do dinner with Chomsky either September 20th or 21st?
[01:37:01]  And Barack responds, hi, Jeff.
[01:37:03]  Okay, either one is good.
[01:37:05]  Best EB.
[01:37:06]  And so it seems like maybe the trio of them had dinner together.
[01:37:08]  Ehud Barak also, at the beginning of this correspondence, is given a question or more like a statement from Chomsky about Israel.
[01:37:18]  It's sort of a negative statement about Israel.
[01:37:20]  That's a little too long to read, but you can imagine what it says.
[01:37:24]  Well, it is interesting because Chomsky is not presenting himself as an anti-Zionist here.
[01:37:28]  He's actually saying like, I want to do best by Israel.
[01:37:30]  That's true.
[01:37:31]  Maybe I will read it.
[01:37:32]  40 years ago, Israel was one of the most admired countries in the world.
[01:37:36]  Now it is most disliked.
[01:37:37]  40 years ago, it was pretty clear, as I wrote at the time, and I was far from alone, that those who call themselves supporters of Israel are in fact supporters of moral degeneration, international isolation, constant conflict and security problems, and maybe worse.
[01:37:51]  So it has occurred.
[01:37:52]  Israel even now is an official whose task it is to deal with international isolation.
[01:37:56]  Israelis like to attribute all this to anti-Semitism, which hasn't changed in the past 40 years, or to appeal to, quote, we have no negotiating partners, which won't wash.
[01:38:05]  The problem is not Netanyahu.
[01:38:07]  The policies and problems are much deeper.
[01:38:09]  The crucial question is how long and how far will Israel proceed on its course to self-destruction?
[01:38:14]  So yeah, it's a little, you know, couched in, it's a little concerned there.
[01:38:19]  And Chomsky, you know, Epstein forwards this to Chomsky or to Ehud Barak, who writes, and he writes, he's 87 and funny.
[01:38:29]  What is a response?
[01:38:30]  No, you missed the other.
[01:38:32]  Oh, you're right.
[01:38:33]  Yeah, it says, which one?
[01:38:35]  Noam Chomsky?
[01:38:36]  When?
[01:38:36]  Where?
[01:38:37]  Is he still alive?
[01:38:38]  That's what Ehud Barak writes.
[01:38:39]  Fair question.
[01:38:40]  Yes.
[01:38:40]  And Epstein responds to that with, yes, he's 87 and funny.
[01:38:45]  What is a response?
[01:38:46]  And then will you be available on Sunday afternoon?
[01:38:49]  And he says, Ehud Barak writes, wow, long live Chomsky.
[01:38:53]  Not exactly an unconditional supporter of Israel, but an intellectual giant of worldly significance.
[01:38:59]  A lot of truth in his criticism of Israel by him, although I reject many of his other observations.
[01:39:04]  I can be at your place around 6 p.m. on Sunday.
[01:39:06]  Earlier we're in the theater.
[01:39:07]  Please confirm that that's okay.
[01:39:09]  Best Ehud Barak.
[01:39:11]  It's just interesting.
[01:39:12]  You know, it's interesting to see these things.
[01:39:15]  Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, I don't know what else to say.
[01:39:20]  I don't really know what to make of this whole relationship.
[01:39:23]  There's a lot of strange.
[01:39:24]  I mean, this is the thing with the Epstein thing is there's just so many like little, it's almost like the JFK assassination where there's just so many little threads that go off and like just like opening up the quote Epstein files unquote would be interesting just to like pull on these little threads and see not even like the central crimes, you know, at the center of this whole case, just like all the other social, social interactions.
[01:39:50]  And what was that Barack called him in the birthday letter?
[01:39:53]  You are a collector of people.
[01:39:54]  Well, he collected a lot of people.
[01:39:58]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:39:58]  I mean, this is, I mean, I think we get some insight here, much more than we actually got in the official Epstein files release of Epstein's business, right?
[01:40:09]  Like that's actually one of the big mysteries with Epstein, like what he did, how he made a living.
[01:40:14]  And it seems like part of this was he was in business with Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel, former Israeli military intelligence spy master, working with all these different Israeli spy companies, with Peter Thiel, with Russian oligarchs.
[01:40:30]  It just, it's a little interesting peek basically into how that worked.
[01:40:34]  And like, you know, I'm like, I'm not alleging that Noam Chomsky did anything funny with him sexually, but it is interesting that like he did move a lot of money around for Noam Chomsky.
[01:40:46]  Well, I mean, this is sort of the thing about the, and we can talk about the provenance of these emails, which I think has to be addressed.
[01:40:51]  Yes.
[01:40:52]  And yeah, why we both have access to them and they're not out in the public domain.
[01:40:55]  They sort of are in the public domain.
[01:40:57]  But these are all from 2015, 2016.
[01:40:59]  So this is after, I'm assuming that like the real heavy sex trafficking shit is not happening anymore because this is after.
[01:41:08]  I don't think if it was happening, it would be happening by email.
[01:41:10]  No, but I mean, it's...
[01:41:11]  Except with Jess Daly.
[01:41:13]  It's like, you know, Epstein's already been arrested.
[01:41:16]  His operation was busted, shut down.
[01:41:19]  So in one way, it's like less damning because it's like not these people going to him in like the late 90s and early 2000s when he was neck deep in it.
[01:41:27]  But on the other hand, I mean, it is damning because these people knew, like, it was publicly known what Epstein was, like, not in, it was not deniable at all.
[01:41:37]  I think what he makes reference to an article that's being written about him describing him as a, like, child, as having been busted for child sex crimes or whatever.
[01:41:47]  I don't have it in front of me.
[01:41:48]  But, like, he write, he forwards that to Ehud Barak.
[01:41:51]  This is not a secret between him and Barack.
[01:41:53]  I think Barack, I forgot which news outlet he told.
[01:41:55]  It was either Haaretz or Daily Beast.
[01:41:57]  Those are the two that really covered the relationship.
[01:42:00]  God bless Noga Tarnopolski at Daily Beast, who like somehow scored this very telling interview.
[01:42:06]  Yes.
[01:42:07]  One of the things, I forgot whether it was this or the Haaretz one, but Barack had said basically like, yeah, I knew Epstein had been arrested for solicitation of prostitute, but I didn't know it was a minor prostitute.
[01:42:18]  It's like, that's not the only thing Epstein was known for.
[01:42:21]  Yes.
[01:42:31]  Well, before we wrap up, we should talk about where these emails came from.
[01:42:35]  Yes.
[01:42:37]  So the emails, they were, I got them and Brace got them from this website called DDOS Secrets.
[01:42:44]  Real shout out to these guys, DDOSSecrets.com.

=== DDOS Secrets Revelations (05:43) ===

[01:42:47]  I think people know who they are.
[01:42:48]  They should know who they are.
[01:42:50]  People should know.
[01:42:50]  I know a lot of people like in journalism who don't.
[01:42:53]  And when I point them to this website, they're like, wow, this is.
[01:42:55]  There's a lot.
[01:42:56]  There's a lot of documents on there.
[01:42:59]  This is founded by, I mean, like, WikiLeaks right now is dead.
[01:43:02]  They don't think, I think they don't take new stuff anymore.
[01:43:05]  But this was founded by some former WikiLeaks folks and hosts both public leaks of leaks of information that they're given and they just blast out.
[01:43:17]  One of the big famous ones, people who have not heard of DDOS Secrets have often heard of BlueLeaks, which is 2 million police files and Homeland Security Fusion Center files.
[01:43:29]  They have gotten numerous data dumps since then.
[01:43:33]  They also have a private section of the website for things that have a lot of personal information that they're not going to blast the internet.
[01:43:41]  The Barack Email Trove, which, to be clear, is not just Barack Epstein.
[01:43:45]  Ehud Barak talked to a lot of other people too, but the Epstein ones are a big portion of this.
[01:43:51]  But yeah, several different Israeli institutions have been hacked and leaked to DDoS Secrets.
[01:43:57]  The hacker is this group called Handala, which is named after a Palestinian cartoon character.
[01:44:03]  I don't know if you've ever seen like the kid, the barefoot kid with his back.
[01:44:06]  That's Handala.
[01:44:07]  It's like Uncle Sam, their equivalent, like their national symbol.
[01:44:10]  And so this group presents itself as Palestinian.
[01:44:13]  But oddly enough, they also, like, go after Iranian opposition groups.
[01:44:17]  So I think that maybe they're not actually...
[01:44:21]  I mean, that's the thing is people sort of say that they're, like, an Iranian state hacking group.
[01:44:28]  Yeah, I don't know.
[01:44:28]  I don't know anything about them.
[01:44:30]  It's not my business.
[01:44:31]  I did not contact them.
[01:44:32]  I just got these emails straight through DDoS Secrets.
[01:44:35]  But I also did like look up because they were before they were like vacuumed up by DDoS Secrets and posted to their like, you know, private journalist section, they were also like Handala made a Telegram post about them where it's like not clear that they even knew what they had because they're like basically, haha, we are inside of Ehud Barak's computer and we have been for years.
[01:45:02]  And like, here's like a goofy selfie of it.
[01:45:04]  It's like a picture of him with a Roman helmet.
[01:45:06]  Also, do not go seek out this Telegram post because all the links in it scream at your computer that like this is filled with viruses.
[01:45:12]  Just don't do that.
[01:45:15]  I mean, I'll be real.
[01:45:16]  Just try not to click on many links from Telegram chats anyways, especially probably links from a Telegram chat by a hacker.
[01:45:24]  But yes, so yeah, these were posted.
[01:45:27]  They were floating around, but I think, I mean, this is why it's like kind of an Iranian fingerprint.
[01:45:32]  It's like a combination of technical competence where you, wow, you got into Ehud Brock's computer and then just total political incompetence where you like, you have no fucking clue what you have or how to publicize it in like any way.
[01:45:43]  So, you know, whatever.
[01:45:45]  I'm not trying to do whatever the goal of these hackers was.
[01:45:48]  I'm not trying to accomplish that.
[01:45:49]  I don't care that they were bad at their job.
[01:45:51]  I'm interested because they sent this stuff around.
[01:45:55]  DDOS stuff, secrets picked it up, and we found some very interesting things in it.
[01:46:01]  And I mean, yeah, I think there was probably more stuff that I didn't find.
[01:46:05]  You found some stuff in it that I didn't find.
[01:46:08]  And I'm sure if other journalists who have access to this look, I'm not recommending anyone do anything, but yeah, there's a lot there.
[01:46:16]  Well, I think that's about wraps it up.
[01:46:20]  Can I say something I forgot to say last time I was on the show?
[01:46:23]  What is it?
[01:46:24]  Last year, I got Henry Kissinger's FBI file about all the threats against Henry Kissinger's life.
[01:46:30]  lot of LaRoucheites.
[01:46:32]  Yes, the only time, did I say this in the show?
[01:46:35]  No.
[01:46:35]  No, I just knew that.
[01:46:36]  Okay.
[01:46:36]  Yeah, so there was a lot of goofy stuff.
[01:46:39]  Actually, not a lot of leftists, more like diaspora people and crazy right-wingers.
[01:46:42]  There's one that an informant described as a man who killed 20 Turks and whose name sounds like a Greek pastry.
[01:46:49]  Interesting.
[01:46:49]  The Greek guy was pissed about the Cyprus invasion.
[01:46:52]  That makes sense.
[01:46:53]  But the only time Kissinger ever personally went to the FBI, and this does tie into the Epstein stuff, was because of the LaRoucheites, because Lyndon LaRouche just ran a public campaign to like kill.
[01:47:06]  No, not kill.
[01:47:07]  Harass Henry Kissinger by calling him a pedophile.
[01:47:10]  And they like went up to his wife in public and like, does your husband still molest boys?
[01:47:14]  They like called an airport lounge.
[01:47:17]  Yeah, no, there's pictures of them doing that at an airport.
[01:47:20]  Yeah, no, no.
[01:47:20]  They called an airport lounge and were like, please tell Mr. Kissinger that like the boys from molesting he ordered are here.
[01:47:27]  Just like all kinds of things.
[01:47:28]  They just keep doing this shit.
[01:47:30]  And then someone called in a bomb threat against one of Kissinger's speeches.
[01:47:33]  It's not clear if the LaRoucheites did that or not, but when that happened simultaneously with the LaRoucheite fatwa, Kissinger writes this like long typewriter letter to the FBI that's like, Lyndon LaRouche is a menace to society and must be arrested.
[01:47:48]  And like there's memos with the FBI guys being like, what do we do with this?
[01:47:52]  Like, should we just wait till LaRoucheites actually do something illegal?
[01:47:55]  And then they get some like message from like headquarters that's like, just leave it.
[01:47:59]  But that's because, you know, LaRouche was a little protective.
[01:48:04]  Fuck.
[01:48:05]  Oh, so there is actually mention, this connects also to Epstein because Epstein makes mention in an email to Barack about meeting up with Kissinger's China guy, who we knew that Epstein was close to one of Kissinger's guys.
[01:48:18]  The name escapes me.
[01:48:20]  It's not in front of me, but apparently it was this China guy.
[01:48:23]  And he was trying to hook him up with Ehu Barak.
[01:48:25]  These guys, even Epstein and Barack way back in the mid-2010s, know it's the Chinese century.

=== Chinese Century Sleep Hygiene (02:58) ===

[01:48:30]  It's the Chinese century.
[01:48:32]  Prince Andrew will tell you it's the Chinese century.
[01:48:36]  Matthew, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:48:38]  Thank you for having me.
[01:48:40]  And for not scooping me on this.
[01:48:59]  I'm going to start emailing you guys like Epstein.
[01:49:03]  You should.
[01:49:05]  Can't make recording today.
[01:49:08]  I guess I can't really.
[01:49:09]  You need an iPad.
[01:49:10]  I need an iPad.
[01:49:11]  Dude, me with an iPad would change the world.
[01:49:15]  I don't think it would change the world.
[01:49:16]  I think you would just be like, oh, here's a flat screen.
[01:49:19]  You have iPad.
[01:49:20]  Of course I have iPad.
[01:49:22]  Do you achieve things with it?
[01:49:25]  Sometimes I use it to read.
[01:49:26]  Sometimes I prefer it to Kindle, actually.
[01:49:29]  Is it big?
[01:49:30]  Because it's big and sometimes easier.
[01:49:33]  I don't, I'm going to say something.
[01:49:35]  Kindle is great because easy transport tiny.
[01:49:41]  But I don't love reading on it.
[01:49:44]  Like I don't love the type, the contrast.
[01:49:49]  It's like a little, and some of the, I don't know what you call it, but the way you swipe things, it's like, I don't like its responsibility.
[01:49:57]  I don't like doing it.
[01:49:58]  Sometimes it takes me back a page.
[01:50:00]  Yes.
[01:50:00]  When I want to go forward a page.
[01:50:01]  I find the highlighting and all of that to be not as easy or as like you used to.
[01:50:07]  Highlighting and the way you can make notes on iPad is like way easier.
[01:50:13]  Plus I use it to watch slop in my kitchen while I make dinner.
[01:50:19]  Maybe I'll get iPad.
[01:50:20]  I'm not going to get an iPad.
[01:50:21]  I'm too scared.
[01:50:21]  I'm scared of tablet.
[01:50:23]  Why?
[01:50:23]  I don't know because I don't know what they're for.
[01:50:25]  What do you mean?
[01:50:26]  I just told you what they're for.
[01:50:27]  I know, but that seems like phone.
[01:50:29]  It is.
[01:50:29]  It's big, but without phone capability.
[01:50:32]  I know, but that confuses me.
[01:50:33]  They made a big phone that you probably call now, but I can't.
[01:50:36]  It doesn't on Wi-Fi.
[01:50:39]  You know what it's also nice for?
[01:50:40]  Looking and reading stuff in bed.
[01:50:42]  That's not computer.
[01:50:43]  I can't do phone in bed because I never bring my computer in bed.
[01:50:47]  I don't do phone in bed.
[01:50:48]  You don't?
[01:50:49]  No.
[01:50:49]  But that's because of your sleep hygiene.
[01:50:51]  Because of my sleep hygiene.
[01:50:52]  Because my feeling is hygiene is a trade-off.
[01:50:55]  I have really poor personal hygiene now, but my sleep, I haven't brushed in, I don't know what.
[01:51:00]  I love that you're not saying brushed what?
[01:51:03]  Yeah, I haven't said because you brush any crevice, but that's what you're doing, your teeth for the gums, but also there's a bunch of other ones in your body, even ones you wouldn't even think of right now for the top of your head.
[01:51:12]  There's more ones that are hidden.
[01:51:14]  But I don't, I haven't done that in weeks, but my sleep stuff is really good.
[01:51:18]  Yeah.
[01:51:19]  Well, that's good.
[01:51:20]  At least you got one thing going for you.
[01:51:21]  Makes sense.
[01:51:22]  All right.
[01:51:23]  Well, my name is Bryce.
[01:51:24]  I'm Liz.
[01:51:24]  I'm Prudy Young Chomsky.
[01:51:26]  And this has been Tronan.
[01:51:27]  We'll see you next time.