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A Senator Finally Said the 'B' Word
Senator Wyden confirms what I've reported for six years: Epstein ran a blackmail scheme. So why is the New York Times burying it?
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Six weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died in his Manhattan jail cell, I published an interview I had recorded days after his death. My investigation had multiple sources confirming that Epstein operated as an intelligence asset running a blackmail operation targeting America’s elite. I documented the financial crimes, the intelligence connections, the systematic compromise of democratic institutions.
But that’s not where the story ends.
That was just the beginning. What followed was a six year immersion course into how the media world really works. I took the story to CNN who immediately bought it - only to kill it. Catch and kill - the same technique the National Enquirer used to protect Trump, now deployed by a major news network to bury the Epstein blackmail operation.
My former colleagues at CBS News were happy to see me - only to pour cold water over the story - even though I knew it met their standards and practices. The network where I’d worked as an executive producer went against their own journalistic standards to protect Epstein.
So there I was: a reporter stuck in the worst position you ever wanted to be in: holding the hottest story in the world without the protection or backing of a major news organization. I understood the calculation perfectly. If I didn’t report what I knew, I’d have a target on my back. If I did report it, I’d also have a target on my back - but maybe less so.
So I did the only thing I could do - I reported it anyway on my podcast.
I was sure of my sources. I was sure of my training. I knew what I had.
What followed wasn’t debate about the facts - it was like a hurricane ripped through my life.
Special Report: The Secret Life of Jeffrey Epstein: Spies, Blackmail, and Financial Crimes | ||||||
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The Cover-Up Accelerates | ||||||
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Six Years Later, They’re Still Burying It
Now the New York Times publishes 7,000 words about Epstein’s financial control over Leon Black. They have the emails. They have the Senate investigation. They have a sitting U.S. Senator using the word blackmail to describe the relationship.
And they bury it at the end of the article as a response to their piece from Senator Wyden whose office likely provided the trove of emails to the Times.
“This report raises questions as to whether there was more at play in the relationship between these two men, potentially including blackmail,” Senator Ron Wyden said.
That’s how the Times avoided reaching the obvious conclusion. A United States Senator investigating billions in Epstein transactions publicly states this was blackmail. That’s not buried in paragraph 87. That’s the headline.
Instead, the Times frames the story around nasty emails and financial disputes—Epstein’s tantrums, his demands for $40 million annually. They give you smoke while obscuring fire. Again.
Six years after CNN killed my story, institutional media is still playing the same game. They’re obscuring the truth while ensuring you miss it.
Here’s what the Times minimized: Bank of America flagged $170 million of Black’s payments to Epstein as suspicious. Black wired hundreds of thousands to at least three women listed as Epstein’s associates and victims in federal filings. Two more women told Virgin Islands investigators that Black sexually abused them after Epstein introduced them. Black paid $62.5 million to the Virgin Islands for immunity—a settlement explicitly stating “Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations.”
That’s a blackmail operation with a paper trail.
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Trump’s Commerce Secretary Confirms It
Three weeks ago, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—Epstein’s former neighbor—called him “the greatest blackmailer ever,” directly contradicting the FBI and DOJ’s official position.
Lutnick described visiting Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and seeing a massage table surrounded by candles as the centerpiece. When he asked about it, Epstein moved uncomfortably close: “the right kind of massage” daily.
“What happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video,” Lutnick said. “This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever, blackmailed people. That’s how he had money.”
His comments enraged Trump officials who spent months claiming Epstein didn’t blackmail anyone. FBI Director Kash Patel testified under oath there’s “no credible evidence.” Now Patel’s senior—a Cabinet secretary—publicly calls that a lie. Rep. Robert Garcia demanded Lutnick testify. Lutnick declined.
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The Machinery of Suppression
A boycott campaign led by Allison Gill targeted my work. A reputational assault operation run by Charles “Chuck” Johnson worked to discredit me. If anything were to ever happen to me, they should start with Chuck, and no, I’m not suicidal at all.
In six years since publishing the most significant intelligence story of the decade, not one major outlet has picked up the phone to interview me. Not one has even attempted to match it - and by now everyone knows - so why don’t they report it?
It’s as if I’ve been punished for Epstein’s crimes - because I did my job. Career destroyed, reputation systematically dismantled, name erased from the story I broke. The machinery that protected his operation while he was alive turned its full force on the journalist who exposed it after his death.
But that’s okay. That’s the price of having the privilege of being a reporter.
I’ve never wavered, and I stand by my reporting to this day. I am extremely grateful to have found an outpost here on Substack where so many of you sustain me both through free and paid subscriptions. A foundational pillar of this Substack is that truth always wins. And this may be the week where the truth finally does begin to do some winning.
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Truth Always Wins
I’m not sharing this story as a tale of personal vindication. This is a story I share about the momentous control over media that has covered up for Epstein and for Trump for far too long.
That machinery is why Maxwell got transferred to minimum-security after meeting with Trump’s Deputy Attorney General. It’s why Treasury Secretary Bessent refuses to turn over Epstein files to Congress. It’s why the Justice Department released redacted documents revealing nothing. And it’s why we must see the full, unredacted Epstein files.
Wyden’s investigation shows Epstein moved money through Russian banks now under sanctions, targeting women from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan. Black stayed on the advisory board of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund longer than any other American, sitting three seats from Putin. The same Black who gave Jared Kushner $185 million when no bank would touch the family.
This is the network I documented in 2019—a systematic breach of American capitalism through sexual blackmail, foreign intelligence providing the architecture, American billionaires providing the funding.
The media that should have exposed this covered it up. That suppression—that institutional capture—is why our democracy now faces the abyss.
Now a US Senator has finally used the word blackmail. Trump’s Commerce Secretary confirms it. Virginia Giuffre’s memoir (out tomorrow from Knopf) six months after her suicide, is likely to reveal more. The truth will keep surfacing despite every effort to suppress it. But the media maintains its cover-up.
We need to be clear about what six years of suppression cost us. Six years while this network flourished. Six years while the same machinery protected Trump. Six years while democracy was systematically compromised.
This week, every journalist and editor needs to ask themselves if they are willing to stand in the way of truth as our democracy crumbles around us - or whether they will live up to the highest calling their profession and countrymen expect of them. The truth will eventually win - it’s the price we all pay that will change.
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