Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrilling Threads, where the show that takes these massive,
tangled stories in the news and we just try to
pull on one thread and see if the whole thing
starts to unravel so you can actually see the pattern underneath.
Speaker 2: And today, I mean, we are navigating some of the
most difficult sensitive material we've really ever tackled. This is
stuff that cuts right to the heart of power.
Speaker 1: It really does finance, government media, all of it.
Speaker 2: And the new revelations they pretty much confirmed that this
whole network was built on leverage, not on loyalty, and
the implications of that are just they're staggering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's our hook for today. It starts with
this what a lawmaker called an extraordinary statement. It confirms
the nature of new evidence from the Epstein files. We're
really past speculation now, oh absolutely, We're talking about direct
confirmation of materials that prove, well, it proves a systematic enterprise,
something designed for control through blackmail. So we're going to
dive into that, the ethics of releasing it, and one
relationship that's somehow flown under the radar, right.
Speaker 2: And our mission today is really about meticulous review. We
have to look past the sort of sensational headlines and
really focus on the mechanism. How did this machine of
influence and information control actually work?
Speaker 1: Okay, so what are we working with?
Speaker 2: So we're drawing on analysis from a few places, statements
that members of Congress made to CNN, for one, and
also the perspective of a New York Times op ed
columnist Michelle Goldberg.
Speaker 1: And this was all pulled together where it was.
Speaker 2: Discussed in a piece from the YouTube channel MS and notew.
The title was blackmail evidence lawmaker says Epstein photos show
sex acts, compromising positions. So that's our starting point.
Speaker 1: Okay, and before we go any further, we have to
acknowledge how incredibly sensitive this all is, especially for the victims.
They are at the absolute core of this tragedy. So
our focus here will stick to the facts and the
source material. We're pulling the thread on the infrastructure of
power abuse, you know, the system of control exactly.
Speaker 2: The facts themselves are disturbing enough, we don't need to
sensationalize them. They confirm a whole web of criminality that
just goes so far beyond the original charges.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's unpack this starting with that huge confirmation
the hard proof. A member of Congress is speaking to
CNN and they openly confirm what people have you suspected
for years. They're asked directly, do you have pictures of
people engaged in sexual acts as part of this release?
Speaker 2: And the answer was just a flat yes and and.
Speaker 1: I OT, yes, there are pictures of people engaged in
sexual acts.
Speaker 2: And I mean that's the moment the entire conversation changes, right,
because when you have a sitting member of Congress, someone
with access to this stuff, making such a high stakes
claim on the record.
Speaker 1: Not a rumor anymore.
Speaker 2: No, it moves it from conspiracy into verified fact. It
proves that what's being held back isn't just you know,
flight logs or emails about dinner.
Speaker 1: It's explicit records of criminal acts, right. And I just
don't think you can overstate the political weight of that.
It just vaporizes the ability for anyone associated to say, oh,
I was just there for a quick meeting.
Speaker 2: That defense is gone. It forces everyone to confront what
Epstein was actually collecting, which will leverage exactly and the
term they use compromising positions, that's not accidental. The analysis
and our source points out these aren't just pictures of
people at a party. These are pictures showing people in
sexual acts. The very fact that this material was so
systematically collected it raises the question.
Speaker 1: Why why would you build a massive, organized archive of
illegal material? And that takes us to the main theory, right,
the whole purpose of keeping, as the source says, extra records,
videos and otherwise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the core implication is explicit. These records were
kept for the purpose of blackmail.
Speaker 1: So the crime isn't just the sexual predation, which is
horrific on its own.
Speaker 2: No, that was the means to an end. The actual product.
The strategic goal was creating this industrial scale machine for leverage,
a tool you could use against the global elite.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's stay on industrial scale for a second. That
implies a level of organization that it's terrifying. It is.
This isn't just some camera left on by accident. For
this to work as a reliable blackmail operation, the archive
would have to be what meticulously indexed, oh.
Speaker 2: For sure, tagged by name, date, location, stored securely. It's
essentially a private intelligence database.
Speaker 1: And that's not a one person job.
Speaker 2: No, that requires resources, planning, skilled help. It points to
a long term strategy of gathering power, not just wealth,
but real political and financial power.
Speaker 1: Because if you have that kind of material on a
judge or a senator or a CEO.
Speaker 2: You don't need their respect, no, you command their fear.
And that level of organization shows an intent that is
just so much more sinister than simple criminal acts.
Speaker 1: And this is where it spills over from the individuals
and the photos into well government.
Speaker 2: Itself, absolutely, because if the blackmail was successful, and we
have to assume it was at least sometimes, it just
opens up these massive questions. Were government officials and either
party blackmailed?
Speaker 1: Were their decisions influenced? Where they told who to protect
or who to ignore?
Speaker 2: Exactly? It's not about a one time favor. It could
be years of policy decisions, regulatory approvals, legal protections, all
of it bought with a threat.
Speaker 1: And it wouldn't have to be crude, right, not like
give me million dollars.
Speaker 2: No, it's much more subtle.
Speaker 1: It could be just a slight change in some regulatory language,
or an investigation into an ally that just quietly goes away.
Speaker 2: Right. The absence of action can be just as corrupt
as a direct action. If an official is compromised, their
main goal is no longer.
Speaker 1: Public service, it's self preservation.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Anything that might expose the network becomes a third rail.
They can't touch it. And if that led to systemic protection.
Speaker 1: Influencing who gets prosecuted or who doesn't, then.
Speaker 2: You're looking at a whole new category of what the
source material calls the extra crime.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's elaborate on that. What are these extra crimes?
We're going beyond the initial abuse.
Speaker 2: Charges, way beyond the source notes that successful blackmail means
you have to review for these other crimes. So you're
talking about extortion obviously, right, But then obstruction of justice.
Did compromised officials use their power to stop investigations potentially
wire fraud or mail fraud if they used interstate commerce
to run the criminal enterprise? And then the big one
conspiracy charges.
Speaker 1: Linking everyone who helped create, store or use this blackmail archive.
Speaker 2: Exactly. This isn't just a lott of names. This is
basically our rikey case waiting to be made against an
international crime syndicate. Wow, that was operating under the guise
of what philanthropy and finance.
Speaker 1: That structural view is, it's essential. So okay, let's talk
about how this photographic evidence actually works in the public square.
For years, all we heard were denials.
Speaker 2: Is just a business meeting, right, I didn't know anything
criminal was happening.
Speaker 1: How does a lawmaker confirming these photos just shatter those narratives?
Speaker 2: It makes them collapse instantly. The defense that you were
just networking on the island, or that it was strictly professional,
that just can't hold up.
Speaker 1: Not when you're faced with confirmed visual explicit material.
Speaker 2: It fact checks every single one of those public denials
with this immediate, damning evidence of intimacy of complicity.
Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, and we have to be fair here,
the source does mention the caveat.
Speaker 2: It does a very important one.
Speaker 1: Some people, including women, might be in photos in public
places that have nothing to do with the criminal stuff.
Not every picture implies guilt, and.
Speaker 2: That's a crucial distinction. It speaks to how complex this
whole release processes, which we'll get into. But the counter
argument is still so powerful.
Speaker 1: Especially for the people in you know, Trump world and
other business officials who use those absolute denials.
Speaker 2: Right, The source suggests that the totality of the evidence,
the photos of sexual acts, plus the emails, the law,
it all helps undercut those denials. It sudjusts there was
and I'm quoting here, quite a bit of socializing, not
just quote unquote networking.
Speaker 1: And that difference socializing versus networking. Yeah, that's the firewall.
This evidence just burns right through. It is networking is professional,
transactional maybe, but socializing of the kind that leads to compromise,
that suggests you willingly entered Epstein's world.
Speaker 2: A world you had to know was high risk. It
requires a level of intimacy and trust that would be
necessary for both his blackmail operation.
Speaker 1: And for someone like Steve Bannon to even begin what
they call that rehabilitation project we're going to.
Speaker 2: Talk about exactly. So, the value of this evidence isn't
just about identifying who's guilty. It's about exposing the structural
lies of the entire network.
Speaker 1: It forces a total public reassessment of every statement ever
made by anyone who claimed ignorance.
Speaker 2: And confirming photos of sexual acts is the definitive counter
to any more attempts to minimize what this was. It
was a criminal, secutional compromising operation from day one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that brings us to the next section. The
sheer scale of this evidence. It just highlights how incredibly
difficult this is for the Department of Justice to release.
Speaker 2: Right. The source material details just how much the FBI
is sitting on and it's not a few files, No,
I mean, what's so fascinating is the volume. We knew
there were video cameras in a lot of the rooms,
but the source says the FBI reportedly has hundreds of
hours of videos and tapes.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of hours, Freds, you just had to let that
sink in for a minute. That's not a few incriminating snapshots.
That is systematic, continuous documentation across.
Speaker 2: Multiple properties over years. It's a functional library of leverage.
Speaker 1: And we know what kind of impact this material has
had on people who've seen it.
Speaker 2: Yes, the source mentions Congressman Garcia, who said similar things
about black mail material and just the trauma of viewing it.
Speaker 1: What did he say.
Speaker 2: He's quoted as saying there's black mail material, that they're
all pretty traumatized by whatever it is they've seen.
Speaker 1: So think about that. The investigators, the oversight officials, they
have to sit and watch hundreds of hours of this
horrific material.
Speaker 2: Trying to figure out who's a victim, who's a perpetrator
who is being blackmailed. It just confirms that the evidence
isn't abstract, it's viscerally painful.
Speaker 1: Which shifts the focus immediately and ethically to the victims.
It has to the need for, as the source says,
serious fairness and just care and how this is all used,
especially because the network itself might still pose a danger.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the trauma, the fear, it's paramount. The material is
described as certainly some terrible stuff, but the emotional stakes
for the victims are just immense. I mean, they've been
through hell and tragically. The source notes that some of
them are scared for their lives. They fear what will
happen if their images are released.
Speaker 1: That phrase, scared for their lives, That says so much
about the power of this network, even with Epstein Kahn hmmm.
It implies the threat doesn't just come from him, It
comes from the powerful people he compromised and their allies
who are still out there.
Speaker 2: This isn't about embarrassment, It's about physical safety.
Speaker 1: Which brings us right to the heart of this redaction dilemma,
the tightrope the DOJ is walking right.
Speaker 2: Transparency is essential, you have to have accountability.
Speaker 1: But the release has to be what's the phrase, so
careful for these women who have already been through so much.
Speaker 2: Retraumatization is a huge danger.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the technical side of this. What
are the specific protection measures and how hard are they
to actually implement with hundreds of hours of video.
Speaker 2: Well, the primary goal is redacting the faces of the victims. Okay,
with photos, that's doable. It's time consuming, but doable. But
with hundreds of hours of videos it becomes this massive,
incredibly complex challenge.
Speaker 1: You're talking about software, right, You're.
Speaker 2: Relying on advanced video processing software to track and blur
faces that are in motion, in shadow, maybe partially obs
but that software.
Speaker 1: Isn't infallible, and one mistake.
Speaker 2: One mistake, and you risk exposing a survivor to the
entire world.
Speaker 1: And the goal, the ethical goal is not to create
more damage. Yeah, not to retraumatize them by putting them
under this public microscope exactly.
Speaker 2: It's trying to shield them from that secondary trauma, the labeling,
the harassment, the threats that always happen when victims in
these huge cases are identified.
Speaker 1: The goal is to prevent giving them more public scrutiny,
which as the source says is not what anyone wants.
Speaker 2: No, they're survivors. The focus has to be on the
powerful people who committed the crimes or were controlled by them.
So you're walking this razor's.
Speaker 1: Edge release information to hold the powerful accountable.
Speaker 2: Without turning the vulnerable into targets, and that takes an
incredible amount of resources.
Speaker 1: Which leads us to oversight to accountability. The source highlights
the whole political context around this and why external pressure
is so necessary.
Speaker 2: That pressure from Congress is absolutely crucial. The source notes
there was a significant lack of faith in the Trump
DOJ for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: And that's not just a general criticism.
Speaker 2: No, it's a recognition that when you have confirmed connections
between powerful political figures and this compromised network, the justice
system itself might be compromised.
Speaker 1: Right. The lack of faith comes from the fact that
Epstein and his people got sweetheart deals in the past.
Speaker 2: Exactly that phrase, lack of faith for obvious reasons. It
just says so much about why you need checks and
balances here. If the officials in charge of releasing this
might themselves be connected.
Speaker 1: Or served in an administration where key figures were involved,
like we're about to discuss with Bannon.
Speaker 2: External pressure from Congress is really the only way to
make sure the full truth comes out impartially, So.
Speaker 1: You have this tension. The DOJ has to be so
careful to protect victims, but at.
Speaker 2: The same time oversight has to apply maximum pressure for
transparency about the powerful.
Speaker 1: It's about keeping the pressure on, showing that there is
a check on the process.
Speaker 2: Right. Accountability can't be some closed door internal process when
the corruption is this high level. You need that external
validation that things are moving forward and nothing's being hidden
to protect someone who's politically connected.
Speaker 1: And what really stands out is that dual mandate total
transparency for the powerful, but total protection for the vulnerable.
And those two things are so often in conflict.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible challenge.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's shift gears now. We're moving from the
physical evidence itself to what the communications around it reveal
about specific high level political relationships.
Speaker 2: Right, And for this we're turning to the perspective of
Michelle Goldberg, the columnist at the New York Times. Okay,
her analysis is so key because she argues that the
big revelation isn't just that Epstein knew these men, we
kind of knew that. It's the degree of closeness in
certain relationships, and.
Speaker 1: That closeness, she argues, explains why some people have faced
consequences and others.
Speaker 2: Haven't precisely, And the one relationship she singles out as
being under scrutinized is the one between Jeffrey Epstein and
Steve Bannon.
Speaker 1: Which, given Bannon's role in modern politics, especially around the
twenty sixteen election and after, that connection is just it's explosive,
It absolutely is.
Speaker 2: The source spends a lot of time on Bannon's deep
involvement in what it calls a rehabilitation project for Epstein.
Speaker 1: A rehabilitation project. Yeah, that's so much more than just
being an acquaintance.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's worlds away from that. A project like that
implies active, high level work strategy, using Bannon's entire network
to restore Epstein's reputation after his first legal problems back
in the late two thousands.
Speaker 1: So Bannon wasn't just giving a little advice. He was
deploying his entire professional toolkit media messaging, political influence, narrative shaping.
Speaker 2: Access to funders, to thought leaders, all of it to
help Epstein re establish himself.
Speaker 1: So what does that say about Bannon's willingness to either
overlook or or actively shield Epstein's criminal past.
Speaker 2: It's just a profound cat. I mean, Bannon doesn't usually
associate with people who don't offer him some kind of
strategic value, and in this case, Epstein offered money and access.
So getting involved in a rehabilitation project means Bannon thought
Epstein was either redeemable or more cynically, just useful enough
to be worth the risk.
Speaker 1: And the evidence of their closeness goes beyond just the
idea of this project.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the concrete evidence is what makes it so compelling.
The source points to emails that confirm their relationship was
extraordinarily close. We're talking about Bannon giving him all kinds
of advice, political, strategic, media advice. It was an active advisory.
Speaker 1: Relationship, and there was more than that, right Yeah.
Speaker 2: And maybe the most vivid detail is the possibility of
Bannon sending a plane to pick him up at one point.
Speaker 1: Sending a plane that shatters the whole We were just
networking defense completely.
Speaker 2: You don't send a plane for a casual acquaintance. You
send a plane for someone who is critical to your operation.
Or someone you're extremely close to personally.
Speaker 1: It suggests a real mutual.
Speaker 2: And this leads to this really memorable, almost visceral anecdote
that Goldberg uses to illustrate the intimacy the mirror selfie analogy.
Speaker 1: Right, she says, what, I don't think I have mirror
selfies with my very best friend exactly.
Speaker 2: It's this personal, almost absurd detail that just perfectly captures
how shockingly familiar they were, way beyond professional.
Speaker 1: That detail really sticks with you, doesn't it. It makes
this abstract political relationship feel messy and personal and frankly
just deeply strange.
Speaker 2: It does. It suggests a bond of trust and confidence
that would have been necessary for Bannon to even consider
a politically risky rehabilitation project for someone like Epstein.
Speaker 1: And that intimacy raises the stakes so much, especially when
you bring in the unreleased footage.
Speaker 2: Yes, the source raises this really serious implication that Bannon
still has fifteen hours reportedly a video footage of Epstein
that he hasn't released.
Speaker 1: Fifteen hours. Okay, that's a critical piece of information. If
the FBI has hundreds of hours from the residences and
this high level political operative reportedly has fifteen of his own.
Speaker 2: What does that imply, Well, it implies a lot. First,
what does it contain? Why hasn't it been turned over
to the authorities?
Speaker 1: And is Bannon himself now using this material as leverage
as protection in his own world?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the question. If the original purpose of
all this footage was blackmail, then the person who currently
holds it inherently holds power.
Speaker 1: He goes right back to what we were talking about
in the first section. The entire operation was based on
creating and holding.
Speaker 2: Leverage exactly, so by reportedly retaining this footage, Bannon could
be seen as holding this powerful card in the political game,
whatever his stated reason for having it is. The potential
for leverage is in the material.
Speaker 1: Itself, which is where the Columns analysis gets really sharp. Right, Yeah,
pivots to what the source calls the double standard.
Speaker 2: It does the fallout from all the Epstein disclosures. We've
seen consequences for some people but not for others. Right, So,
for example, the source mentions Larry Summers he had to
step down from his position or his responsibilities at Harvard
after his connections came out.
Speaker 1: So immediate severe institutional consequences for powerful people in finance,
in academia, they were forced out.
Speaker 2: But Bannon, despite this extraordinarily close relationship, the rehabilitation project,
the fifteen hours of video, Yeah, he seems to have
gotten what the columnist calls a pass.
Speaker 1: So why why the difference?
Speaker 2: That's the key question. If his connection was demonstrably closer
than say, Summers was, why was there no institutional consequence
for him?
Speaker 1: Well, let me just challenge that slightly. Is it possible
the institutions Bannon works in, you know, political media activism,
just have different standards. He can't really step down from
a position that he basically created for himself.
Speaker 2: And that's a crucial point. The columnist actually addresses that,
She suggests he's gotten a pass potentially because of his
close relationships with some of the right wing influencers who've
put the stories.
Speaker 1: And other fora So it's an allegation of network protection
information control.
Speaker 2: Exactly, if you control the narrative and you have powerful
allies in key media platforms, you can effectively shield yourself
from the kind of scrutiny that brings down an academic
or a CEO.
Speaker 1: So the media environment itself is the institution that decides
who gets a consequence, and who doesn't.
Speaker 2: That's the suggestion that political alignment might be a protective shield.
It implies we've created these two different spheres of accountability,
consequences for the non political elite, but immunity for the
politically aligned.
Speaker 1: It definitely makes you ask if consequences are determined less
by what you did and more by how powerful your friends.
Speaker 2: Are and the ability to control the narrative to point
the finger somewhere else. That's arguably the most powerful form
of leverage today.
Speaker 1: Finally, we just have to place all of this in
the right timeframe. When was this relationship so active.
Speaker 2: The source confirms it was happening when Bannon was still
very much in trump ward.
Speaker 1: So that reinforces the direct connection between Epstein's blackmail network
and the highest levels of the US government. This wasn't
some old relationship.
Speaker 2: No, it was active when Bannon was one of the
most powerful political brokers in the country.
Speaker 1: So that intertwining of blackmail and political power, that really
is the core thread we've been pulling on in this
whole thrilling threads deep dive. The physical evidence proves the
system was for blackmail and Bannon's apparent immunity seems to
prove that the system can still protect its own.
Speaker 2: Even someone that close to the blackmailer himself.
Speaker 1: We have covered so much incredibly sensitive ground today, let's
just let's try to synthesize the three big threads we've pulled. First,
the documented consermed existence of blackmail material photos of people
in sexual acts, confirmed by a lawmaker. That cements that
Epstein's entire operation was built on leverage.
Speaker 2: Second, that incredibly complex ethical tightrope between victim protection and transparency,
the need for extreme caution and redacting faces from hundreds
of hours of videos. It shows the huge burden the
DOJ has to avoid re traumatizing people while still holding
the powerful accountable.
Speaker 1: And Third, the specific, really disturbing evidence of that extraordinarily
close relationship between Ebstein and someone like Steve.
Speaker 2: Banneck right, including the claim about fifteen hours of unreleased.
Speaker 1: Footage, which reveals this sort of structural failure of accountability
in politics, where some people get a pass that people
in other fields just don't.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for you listening to this?
The lasting significance here is less about shocking new names,
though I'm sure more will come out it's more about
confirming this systematic, industrial scale collection of compromising material. It
was used for leverage over business, government, media. Epstein wasn't
just a predator, he was a political operative wielding blackmail.
Speaker 1: And this evidence forces us to accept that powerful institutions
may have been silently directed by this hidden influence for years, and.
Speaker 2: That influence might still be out there through people who
have access to the material, like those rumored fifteen hours
Bannon might.
Speaker 1: Have, and that idea of silent direction that brings us
back to the biggest question, you know what about institutional integrity.
We know the whole point was to get power through silence,
to use the threat of release to ensure cooperation to
shield people involved in those extra crimes.
Speaker 2: So that raises a question you really have to ponder,
what are the broader ramifications for our institutions, for the DOJ,
for universities, for political parties. When we realize that this
compromising information existed and it was controlling decision makers for so.
Speaker 1: Long, the slow release of this material, it just chips
away at our trust in those institutions.
Speaker 2: Because it proves they were vulnerable to being compromised by
these outside criminal forces.
Speaker 1: And that's the final thought we want to leave you with.
If the goal was power through silence, and that silent
power corrupted our institutions, what happens now that the information
is slowly coming to light.
Speaker 2: Does the damage just stop because the man who collected
it is gone? Or has the network already figured out
how to protect itself, like the lack of consequences for
someone like Bannon might suggest.
Speaker 1: We invite you to consider just how difficult the task
ahead really is. And as the oversight bodies struggle with
this whole redaction dilemma trying to balance two vital needs,
we want to ask you directly, considering all the challenges,
what do you think is the greater priority right now?
Speaker 2: Is it total immediate transparency to get full public accountability
for these powerful figures, or.
Speaker 1: Is it comprehensive protection and meticulous redaction for the survivors,
even if that means the process is slower. Where do
you draw that ethical line?
Speaker 2: Let us know what you think as we continue to
pull at these thrilling threads