 We've had some great guests on Tisky Sour this year, from Yanis Varoufakis to Namiki Konst, from Anna Kasperian to the late Michael Brooks. One of my favourite interviews was with Liz and Brace from the True and On podcast. They came on in July, which was the month that Ghislaine Maxwell, one of Geoffrey Epstein's closest associates, was arrested. Liz and Brace explained to me why the official narrative when it comes to Geoffrey Epstein contains more than a few hulls. That story isn't wrong, it's just incomplete. And perhaps the best place to start with where it's incomplete is talking about Geoffrey's background. Now, Geoffrey kind of came out of nowhere. He was a two-time college dropout who was hired, basically when he was a taxi driver, to be a schoolteacher at the Dalton School, which is a very fancy private school on the Upper East Side, very, very wealthy. But he was hired by a man named Donald Barr, who is the father of current Attorney General in America, William Barr. Now, that relationship aside, which is very, let's say unique, Donald Barr is also an ex-OSS agent, the OSS being the precursor to the CIA. So, you've got an ex-intelligence agent hiring this man out of nowhere, no college degree, plops him into high society. And from there, he gets hired as an investment banker on Wall Street. Now, so all this stuff aside is very much missing from the story. Wouldn't you say, Brace? Yeah, absolutely. I think just the fact that Donald Barr's son is now the person who's overseeing basically the investigation into Epstein post-mortem is astounding. Yeah, exactly. And so there's that. I mean, that's a very strange shape that makes that. But just the intense involvement of people connected to various intelligence agencies basically all down the line here is astounding. Epstein himself used to tell people that he was something like a bag man for the CIA, that he described himself as a financial bounty hunter who would, I guess, go get money that the CIA maybe gave to the wrong warlord or something. It's very unclear what happened there. But Ghislaine, when she enters his life in the early 90s following the passing of her father, who, of course, you guys are British, so you know Robert Maxwell, former labor MP, former head of a giant media conglomerate there who stole his employees' pensions, and of course, famously, allegedly, a spy for the Mossad for Israeli intelligence services, and a guy who really liked to sort of play in that world as well, a former member of British Intelligence too during World War II, where he allegedly executed a German officer, which, honestly, that's fine with me. I mean, there's a book written about Robert Maxwell calling him Israel's super spy. The daughter of this guy enters Epstein's life in 1991. And from there, he really takes off. She introduces them to all kinds of people in high society, right? Because Ghislaine, when she was younger, she grew up friends with the royal family. She has a lot of high society contacts. She went to Oxford. She gets to New York. The kind of story there is that she's penniless, but obviously not true. She flew on a damn conquered jet. And she starts introducing Epstein to people that, you know, he was rich at this point, but that he might not have otherwise known. And we'd be remiss not to mention too that Epstein's money, it is really unclear where it came from. He doesn't seem to have actually worked at all after he was basically given rights to this American billionaire, Leslie Webster's money. And so the relationship continues. Epstein kind of goes further and further up in high society. He's hanging out with the Clintons, Ghislaine's having dinner alone with Bill Clinton in New York. He's meeting basically every kind of rich and famous person you could ever dream of. And he's introducing a lot of them allegedly to very young girls. And another thing about about Jeffrey Epstein, and this has been testified about over and over and over and over again, is that all of his properties were wired up with cameras every single room. I mean, that links to one of the leading theories as well, right? So I just want to I just want to focus on that money thing just as a sort of summary in a way. If you watch the Netflix documentary, the story it tells you is that he became one of the richest men in America essentially by being charming. So it's sort of like he didn't get a degree, but he charmed someone's parent into getting him a job at Bear Stearns. And then at Bear Stearns, he charmed this, yeah, this other, this guy who owned the clothes firm to sort of give him billions and billions of pounds. And you're sort of watching it thinking like, fuck this guy must have been so charming to end up with the most valuable townhouse in New York. And the only thing he's got is this sort of, the story doesn't sound particularly viable to me. But in any case, you just brought up, yeah, that these secret cameras. And so one of the leading theories or the leading alternate theories about Jeffrey Epstein is it's not that he was sort of a rogue financier and was let off the hook because he was he was powerful, but his role in the establishment was to sort of involve other elites in these crimes and then potentially to film them. So the idea is it might have been a honey trap either, you know, to personally enrich themselves to blackmail people after having filmed them doing stuff, or they were working for secret services who wanted compromise on people. A lot of people forget this, but when Jeffrey was shortly after Jeffrey's arrested, right before his untimely demise in New York, the FBI when they were raiding his property, they said they found and confiscated hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tapes, what I'm assuming were probably CDs or DVDs, or Blu-ray, God knows what set up he had, but and they were all labeled what they say is, you know, person's name, man's name plus girl's name. By the way, there has been no mention of where these tapes are or where like any of that evidence is no one has even remarked on it since no one in the media has asked any official about it. We haven't heard anything, but the fact that those exist tells us that those that the tapings or the videotapes that he was accumulating that there was a purpose there. Now you can speculate and say, okay, was it on behalf of someone else? Was it just to kind of cover his faces? Was it kind of a, you know, I think we are of the opinion that it's kind of a mix of both, where it's like you keep this because you know what's going on in case you need it later. And this is something that I hear you mention on the show is the way you value tabloids, and I think this sort of leads into an interesting discussion about the media. So this is from the son, Ghislaine Maxwell and her pedophile lover Jeffrey Epstein were both Israeli spies who took pictures of powerful men having sex of underage girls to blackmail them, their alleged Mossad handler has sensationally claimed. I suppose why the fact this getting reported in the sun potentially, you know, messes with some of the conspiracy theories, basically, is that the conspiracy theory is that the media aren't covering it because they're scared to or because they're friends with the same people or because they're implicated, etc, etc. But then why would the sun be able to publish that? Because there is, you know, there is wound up with the establishment as anyone else. So why is it only the tabloids that can put this out there? Because obviously the alternative theory or the mainstream theory is the reason the sun can publish it is because you need less evidence and they can do these sort of salacious scandal stories. So what's your explanation of why the kind of thing you investigate on your podcast are more likely to be in a tabloid than the New York Times? We actually did, I think maybe a segment on the show or maybe I just meant to do a segment on the show about how incorrect the sun was on so many different points of this. They at different points within like a four month period said Ghislaine was in an apartment in France, she was in a chateau in France, she was being moved throughout the Midwest by a crack team of Navy SEALs and I think like two or three other places. So there's been a lot of misreporting there as well. The sun in particular also is I believe owned by Rupert Murdoch. If I'm not incorrect Rupert Murdoch and Ghislaine's father Robert Maxwell did not get along very well and maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know. I think that what the thing is is like a lot of like serious reporters don't maybe feel comfortable really putting the dots together or maybe they're told they're not able to put the dots together or maybe they're sort of their training, which this is sort of the theory that I'm more sympathetic to is that the the training of a lot of these so-called serious reporters prevents them from putting this kind of stuff together because they're taught to think of this as the realm of conspiracy theory and that everything is actually much more simple than it seems and etc etc etc. That's the most charitable interpretation of it I have. Other interpretations I'm sure people can put together themselves. Particularly we value the tabloids before the Jeffrey Epstein stuff grew up. Like old page six columns we have taken we've learned a lot from them. Page six is like a sort of society column in one of our gossip magazines the New York or tabloid type magazines The New York Pose because that will report a lot of stuff like the fact that Ghislaine was seeing having dinner with Bill Clinton in New York City. We take it we learn a lot from that kind of stuff. I think too like you know we should you know remind people that I mean I don't know if they're aware of this in the UK I think it made a splash over there but there was a leaked video that came out of a American news anchor Amy Robach. It was like she was caught on a hot mic basically I love saying that hot mic where she was saying that she had the Epstein story back in spring of 2015 and that she had everything she had the accusers she had everything you know they implicated some very powerful people she mentioned Bill Clinton I believe she mentions I believe she mentions in the video Prince Andrew and you know she said that it got completely shut down by the network and we should remember that you know what was happening in America in the UK in spring 2015 okay well we were months out from Hillary Clinton announcing her candidacy for presidency for the presidency and there was a royal baby about to be born and so you've got two very powerful you know political families in their own right in different respects that have the ability to withhold access on major stories in order to get the mainstream press as we will call it not to cover stuff and that's something that literally like literally happened now do I know if those conversations happened no I don't know I'm speculating but I think you can kind of line up some things where you've got you've got a case that implicates some very very powerful people and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of reasons why those people want to keep it out of outlets that normal everyday you know Americans or you know you know any population would find reputable it's easy to dismiss the tabloids oh it's the sun who cares oh it's New York Post it's gossip it's harder to discredit ABC news or the New York Times or the Washington Post this is Prince Andrew let's take a look one of Epstein's accusers Virginia Roberts has made allegations against you she was very specific about that night she described dancing with you and you profusely sweating and that she went on to have bath possibly there's a slight problem with with with with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don't sweat or I didn't sweat at the time and that was oh is she yes I didn't sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands war when I was shot at and I simply it was it was it was almost impossible for me to to sweat do you remember dancing at tramp no that couldn't have happened because the date that there's being suggested I was at home with the children you know that you were at home with the children was it a memorable night on that particular day that that that we now understand is the date which is the 10th of March I was at home I was with the children I'd taken Beatrice to a pizza express in working for a party at a I suppose sort of four five in the afternoon why would you remember that so specifically why would you remember a pizza express birthday and being at home because going to pizza express in working is an unusual thing for me to do a very unusual thing for me to do I've never been I've only been through working a couple of times and I remember it weirdly distinctly but as soon as somebody reminded me of it I went oh yes I remember that I'll explain why that for me is evidence well I mean I'm sitting on the fence here but why it could be evidence that deep state is not involved because presumably if this was a big cover-up that they don't want to unravel they'd give him some good lines and you can say a bunch of things about the CIA the MI5 whatever Mossad are they that dumb that he'd say how do I how do I stop this all unraveling and they say you couldn't sweat because of the Falklands war and then you went to pizza express when you were supposed to be having sex with an underage minor I forgot about the pizza express line I always remember the sweat but the pizza express one is like the real cherry on top I think a couple things about that I would say that I would push back on the idea that there is like one single like single subject that's driving like something here where there it's like one body that's controlling and manipulating all of these moving parts I don't think that's true but I also think that you know and I hope I'm not offending anyone here but I don't think Prince Andrew is perhaps maybe the sharpest tool in the box and I would imagine that you know they know okay well he's already pretty well implicated and there is quite possibly some documents coming out next week that might implicate him even further which we can get to but you know in the same way that they kind of like let him like kind of cut him loose because the other thing to remember here too is that like the United States is never going to like like the United States is never going to indict Prince Andrew on any like that is out of the realm of possibility like it would be completely unheard of for the United States government to indict a member of the royal family like it's just not going to happen and so like I think that you know his you know clearly very bad PR team aside like the sweat argument and the pizza express it's really like shocking they couldn't come up with like a better any and literally any other excuses I could see them saying well let's just see if we can run this out a little bit maybe people can be involved in a different way right so in a way he was obviously an incredibly unsympathetic well he's both well allegedly an abuser but also potentially a victim of a wider program to get if you want to compromise you'd want it off someone who was both in a position of incredible privilege and incredibly stupid and so to get a sort of hereditary royal he seems to be the dumbest hereditary royal that would make sense so at the moment obviously this is in the news because Ghislaine Maxwell is now in custody and we're presuming there are some very powerful people who are pretty nervous about what is going to come next one of them is potentially Donald Trump because they've been pictured together he was asked about this at a press conference this Tuesday let's take a look Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison and so a lot of people want to know if she's going to turn in powerful people and I know you've talked in the past about Prince Andrew and you've criticized Bill Clinton's behavior I'm wondering do you feel that she's going to turn in powerful men how do you see that working out I don't know I haven't really been following it too much I just wish her well frankly I've met her numerous times over the years especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach but I wish her well whatever it is I don't know the situation with Prince Andrew just don't know not aware of it it's like he he employed the same PR firm as Prince Andrew very bizarre answer what's going to what do you think is going to come out though of this she's got a book cry she's got has she got video CDs I think they were tabloids reporting that she's got what she's now sort of talking about the fact that she's got pictures and videos of high-profile people with what what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks are we going to get a big revelatory moment or is it going to be a bit of a damp squib well I think I think any revelations we're going to get are probably going to come out of the unsealed depositions or the depositions that are being unsealed within this this next week a lot of the tabloid reporting on like she is these DVDs or whatever I mean if you look at the actual people they're sourcing them from they are not the most credible characters in the world so I you know I would I would well I don't want it to be true because I want it to not have happened but you know I if that is true we'll see she seemed pretty surprised to be actually picked up in the first place Liz and I were present on on on her bail sentencing call she did not seem overly prepared for what's happening right now which I mean that could be for a variety of reasons the trial is actually set for a year from now so you know in that time they're gonna do discovery and they gotta you know collect evidence and put under the judge etc etc and so I you know I'm not exactly sure how much we'll find out in that time hopefully there will be more stuff that comes out but I would be shocked if she did not have some sort of dead man switch or something although from her behavior so far it doesn't seem like she might be totally ready to push that and it may not be time to sort of push that button