
Big Tech, Big Banks, and Big Gov
For many years, I have talked about the hijacking of Bitcoin, the ensuing civil war, and the caricatures of 'Greg' and 'Mastercard' (NASDAQ: MA) because they are easy for readers and listeners to understand. But, I think it's time to be very clear that Gregory Maxwell and Mastercard are little more than symptoms of a disease and relatively small pillars of a system that is much more correlated and intertwined than we want to think. The problem is that explaining it requires long form, patience from the reader, and a lot of digging.
Small blockers aren't a monolith. Neither are big blockers. In this article, I intend to show how intelligence agency officers, military, banking, finance, and government officers aren't a monolith either. But they also aren't very deeply separated. They share many of the same people, ideas, and policies, and have revolving doors among them. I summarize them, often, as 'Big Tech, Big Banks, and Big Gov,' but the next time someone asks, 'was it the NSA, CIA, Silicon Valley, crypto-anarchists, or the Federal Reserve who hijacked Bitcoin?'
You can just answer 'yes.'
The Big Banks, Big Tech & Big Government successfully hijacked BTC over the last decade, and convinced normies to trade their freedom for dollar profits.
BCH and BSV exist because some bitcoiners refused to be bought by Reid Hoffman, Henrie Di Castries and the UltimateBet guys. pic.twitter.com/kVNHPx4uZF
The truth is there is something very wrong with how the world has been knitted together since World War 2, but the rotten fruits we are harvesting from Musk, Thiel, and Trump were planted before the telegraph was cutting-edge technology.
It's easy to think that trio is new and revolutionary tweeting Dogecoin memes on X or throwing millions behind culture war Senate candidates to usher in a new wave of surveillance capitalism or when a casino mogul turned populist president, promises to drain a swamp but then reneges on all the transparency within six months of inauguration.
This is a story that began centuries ago, when controlling money meant controlling everything, and it continues today on the screens in your hands and the servers in data centers under mountains. It is the story of how Big Banks, Big Tech, and Big Government fused into a single sprawling machine, turning citizens into free-range serfs on a plantation that remains invisible to anyone who doesn't push the envelope. The only difference in today's authoritarian systems is that people used to get thrown in cages, slaughtered, viciously overthrown, etc… Today, everything is a 'soft' version of what came before. Soft coups, soft imprisonment, soft enslavement, soft wars… Bitcoin is different because it is hard, and understanding that may be the last chance to break free from our soft cages.
The Rothschild template
The modern playbook for financial control was written in the late 1700s by a family of farmers turned pawn shop owners, turned bankers. By the early 1800s, the Bauer family had become Lords under a red-shielded crest (or Roth-Schild, in German). Nathan Mayer Rothschild built a pan-European banking empire that didn't merely lend money to monarchs, but anticipated wars, underwrote both sides, and leveraged a network of private couriers and pigeons to obtain news faster than any government.
When Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, Rothschild agents delivered the news to London days before anyone else. Nathan quietly dumped British bonds, then repurchased them at panic lows, cementing his family's fortune and proving that whoever controlled information controlled markets, and whoever controlled markets controlled nations.
Paul Julius Reuter, a former Rothschild carrier pigeon handler, founded Reuters by mid-century. It soon became the principal news wire of the financial world and was heavily patronized by NM Rothschild and Sons investment bank before blowing up as the official wire service of Europe and the United Kingdom.
Across the Atlantic, the Associated Press was formed, consolidating narrative power in the hands of the largest media agencies, who use AP as a non-profit conglomerate to share the opinions of the largest companies in 'the news.'
Finance and information had become two blades of the same scissor by the time of the Mexican-American War, and narratives set in board rooms became the official written history of the Western Hemisphere thereafter, thanks to 'the news' being whatever the big corporations decide it is.
The consequences of this can be illustrated in Standard and Poors' refusal to downgrade the credit of the subprime lenders of Wall St before the 2008 global financial crisis under the auspice that the news of the credit downgrade would itself cause the collapse; suggesting that big media and big finance may be too closely intertwined to be useful when they're actually needed.
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Industrialists and arms dealers
As the 19th century lurched into the 20th, global cartels of industrialists and arms makers grew fat on the machinery of war. World War I and II marked the era when the Rothschilds lost much of their primacy in Western finance, scattered by Nazi oppression, the war, and then ultimately eclipsed by growing rivals. Yet while the family's grip loosened, their blueprint endured: central banking, industrial espionage, and the seamless fusion of state and permanent war economy. New players simply stepped into the Rothschild mold, turbocharging these strategies for an age of global surveillance and endless conflict.
The post-war era also cemented the rise of the United States as the center of power for this new age. With the U.S. having essentially zero industrial damage or scars of war, and a newly booming economy due to massive investment in both infrastructure and a population emboldened by the victory and cultural shift to American exceptionalism, the United States was primed to dominate.
This domination was formalized in 1944 at Bretton Woods. The dollar was pegged to gold, and every other currency pegged to the dollar. The U.S. Federal Reserve effectively became the world's central bank, stewarding not just American prosperity, but global dependency. In 1971, Nixon ended the gold peg, unleashing fiat currency maximalism.
Here's President Nixon 'temporarily' suspending the dollar's convertibility into gold.This act dismantled Bretton Woods and launched the fiat era we live in today.History.
pic.twitter.com/waZ3V30WbM — Gold Telegraph ⚡ (@GoldTelegraph_) May 2, 2025
Money was no longer restrained by physical collateral; only by political will and printing presses.
Managed wisely, the Federal Reserve could plan investments with commercial and investment banks, government investment strategies, technology, and military excursions for profit. The inflation that would come from printing could be outpaced by growth in the American economy and debts repaid by profits generated in the cycle.
For the most part, this worked. Soft money created a tremendous boom in technology, infrastructure and wealth for the American people—especially if they were lucky enough to own any hard assets, which were distributed cheaply in the form of real estate to WWII veterans and their children, making for a strong economy of ownership and creating the American middle class.
But it was also fragile, cyclical, and the central planning of the economy by big finance and big government created the opportunity to build the ultimate plantation: infinite leverage, infinite debt, and infinite opportunities for control.
They just needed a catalyst or two.
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Lansky's neon laboratory
Meanwhile, in postwar Las Vegas, Meyer Lansky, the mob accountant who built the Mafia's Murder Inc. into a global money laundering empire, was busy innovating. Working with Moe Dalitz, a former rum-runner turned casino kingpin, Lansky transformed Vegas into a giant lab for behavioral manipulation. They discovered that painting over windows, removing clocks, and blasting bright lights kept gamblers in a timeless haze.
Feeding them steaks and booze sealed the deal and made gamblers profitably addicted to the atmosphere of the casino. That addiction created liquidity, and that liquidity created the means for incredible amounts of money laundering in cash when the world was quickly moving toward electronic means of accounting.
Lansky famously set up sophisticated communications taps that gave him visibility into Federal Reserve movements: an underworld front-run on monetary policy. Vegas was not just a crime hub; it was a prototype for simultaneously hacking human psychology and financial markets, and the CIA was taking notes.
MK Ultra, the infamous mind control program, is mostly remembered for LSD. But it quickly expanded into electromagnetic experiments, light pulsing, and frequency entrainment. The casino was a perfect model: override natural rhythms with artificial light, distort perception with alcohol and time loss, and rake in profits.
The intelligence community and then the Department of Defense quickly understood that Lansky and Dalitz had built a behavioral Ponzi scheme that was as scalable as any multinational.
Furthermore, while mind-altering drugs, torture, and brutalism made for rogue assets that were difficult to control, the soft control of the populace through their televisions and cultural experiences made the assets of the plantation—the people—easier to control without the need and risk of large-scale chemical experimentation.
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Delgado, Becker, and the electromagnetic mind
Enter Dr. Jose Delgado, the Spanish neuroscientist who, a generation before Neuralink, implanted electrodes in bull brains and famously stopped them mid-charge with a radio signal. Delgado proved that you didn't need to control an entire brain if you could tune a few neurons. Just the right circuit, and you owned the creature.
Around the same time, Dr. Robert Becker, an orthopedic surgeon, mapped the tiny direct-current electric fields that govern how bones knit and tissues regenerate. The Pentagon funded his work after noticing Navy pilots exposed to avionics developed sky-high cholesterol and collapsed vitamin D cycles. The conclusion: electromagnetic environments and distance from the circadian rhythm rewrote biology at the cellular level.
The casino was the seed. The lab tests were the sprout, and the budding military-industrial complex was quickly scaffolding the modern digital plantation with control of media, scientific research, finance, and the blue light full of numbing entertainment that was making its way into everyone's homes
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From Stanford to Silicon Valley's Panopticon
Much of this research funneled through the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a quiet outpost of Cold War spook experiments. From there emerged the Silicon Valley ethos: a fusion of military contracts, university labs, and private venture capital that blurred lines between spycraft, consumer tech, and behavioral economics.
This is the world that gave us the MIT Digital Currency Initiative via their various media labs and financial entanglements with private financiers and intelligence community participants.
Source: The Guardian
It also gave us Peter Thiel (PayPal [NASDAQ: PYPL] co-founder and Palantir architect) who turned Big Data into the ultimate counterinsurgency tool, selling it to governments under the banner of 'knowledge management.' It produced Elon Musk, who absorbs billions in public subsidies for rockets, cars, and Neuralink brain chips that read like Delgado's wireless experiments reborn in the Matrix. Jack Dorsey, the bearded anachronist shaman of payments and social media, who quietly built Twitter into the globe's emotional steering wheel and handed the reins to big government censors before selling it to Musk and pivoting to Bitcoin (but the wrong version, as we'll see).
Source: New York Post
It also gave us a President who learned everything he knows from running a casino empire and mastering the art of social engineering via social media. On promises of 'draining the swamp,' he brought in a Vice President, a direct protege of Peter Thiel, and advisors with deep roots in the Silicon Valley surveillance economy.
It's no wonder the swamp is still full, but Palantir gets juicy new contracts to surveil American citizens while Trump launches memecoins in a decentralized casino built on Solana blockchain.
This was all underwritten by the same families, funds, and secretive institutions that once funded trench warfare and military bonds. Big Banks provided capital. Big Tech built the tools. Big Government enforced the architecture, and together, they created the cyclical economy that they all needed to stay in power and create the illusion of wealth.
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Bitcoin: The last rebellion
But the plantation had a crack in its wall.
In the late 1970s, David Chaum, a cryptographer with a libertarian streak, proposed anonymous digital cash, seeing already that banks and states would unite to track every transaction. Many others followed with tooling to help make the individual more secure and more private. Phil Zimmerman's PGP, Timothy May's Blacknet, Len Sassaman with encrypted email and reputation protocols, Hal Finney building PGP 2.0 and reusable proof of work as a SPAM filter…
There were dozens of attempts at creating a digital cash so that free people could have a free money separate from the central bank state, the military industrial complex and its tentacles into everywhere, but they were plagued with centralization risk and trust issues because the cypherpunk community was also embroiled and entangled into the mess of white, gray and black hat activities, so they couldn't trust each other not to be crooks or Feds, double agents or corporate shills.
Due to trust problems, every digital cash or cryptocurrency attempt failed until Bitcoin.
By 2008, the world had seen the booms and busts of multiple cycles, multiple massive and increasingly complex wars, the rise of asymmetric warfare, and more. Against that backdrop, Bitcoin was born from a stew of NSA hash functions, academic cryptography, cypherpunk manifestos, truly free market incentives, and the complex web of internet culture. Its genius was simple: by linking energy (proof of work) and time (block intervals) into an unforgeable public ledger, it turned computation into a monetary asset. No trust, no leverage, no threats. Just proof of work and public attestation of the truth; auditable by anyone.
The ledger of account, humanity's oldest technology, was now decentralized and incorruptible—at least in theory. It was, as Satoshi Nakamoto wrote, 'a chain of digital signatures' that abstracted value, energy, and time into money, and maybe poked the bubble created by hundreds of years of meddling and corruption.
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The hijacking: Silicon Valley's second gold rush
This was intolerable to the plantation masters. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, PayPal), Marc Andreessen (Netscape, Facebook board), Peter Thiel, and the sprawling VC apparatus of Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, Digital Garage, Baillie Gifford, AXA Strategic Ventures, and CME Ventures swarmed Bitcoin. MIT, which is a friendly nest for CIA projects, provided academic cover. They knew Bitcoin was technologically secure. It couldn't be cracked, hacked, or back-doored. It couldn't be brute-forced or censored directly, but the weak link in any system is always people. People run the Bitcoin GitHub repo. People mine the blockchain. People run the startups that use it and trade it. Those people were the target.
These people were pitched to participate in Bitcoin's inevitable progress, but the real aim of investor capital was to neuter it: scale it down, throttle its capacity, and force all meaningful transactions onto private side-chains controlled by the same banks and data oligarchs who control the old world.
Thus, the Bitcoin Civil War erupted. Bitcoin's true believers resisted predatory capital and social engineering campaigns while companies like Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Kraken, Bitfinex, Blockstream, Lightning Labs, Chaincode Labs, and others let themselves be bankrolled by this old world clique.
They took over Bitcoin Core (BTC) and strangled it with propaganda about the need for throttled throughput.
They sold the public on 'digital gold' as a sterile warehouse asset that 'will make you rich' while keeping the global programmable ledger neutered.
It was a brilliant soft coup d'etat
The companies like Coinbase and Blockstream that compromised their values and took in venture capital grew into multi-billion-dollar darlings, rebranding Bitcoin as a global casino, are now sending back into the military-industrial complex!
It's just like Lansky's casinos. They facilitate the facade of business to test out people's behavior while committing them to the addiction of the system, pumping up liquidity, and selling services to Big Tech, Big Banks, and Big Government. The new neon lights are price charts, dopamine cycles, hideous influencers, and endless 'number go up' speculation.
Meanwhile, side chains and off-chain solutions were readied alongside dark order books and market makers to facilitate illegal trade and money laundering for the insiders and spooks while managing the controlled rails to herd meaningful, taxable commerce of the average person back under banks and regulators.
This occurred at the cost of Bitcoin ever becoming a useful asset in real, disruptive commerce. The fiat money-printing cycle now rewarded coin holders into satiety, compliance, and turned them into a soft marketing wing, much the same way as cheap real estate was weaponized to turn baby boomers into advocates for constant growth in taxes and welfare.
All it took was for people to feel like they had left the rat race to become the foot soldiers of maintaining the trajectory of the plantation.
But a splinter chain, Bitcoin SV (BSV), survived various rounds of cullings. It preserved Satoshi's original vision: unlimited scale, protocol stability, micropayments, and on-chain data ownership. In other words, the true Web3 of self-sovereign data, peer-to-peer apps, and unstoppable finance, all tied directly to the energy-time ledger that makes Bitcoin unique.
Instead of fast gains in wealth, BSV exclusively offered the world a free and nearly costless access to a global database tied to a hard money system. But it also offered the hard truth of hard work to a people who had become addicted to soft money and neon lights.
And that's only the first part of the challenge with BSV.
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The suppression of BSV
No surprise, then, that the empire fights BSV at every turn. Jack Dorsey's companies block their tickers and hashtags. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta (NASDAQ: META) shadowbans BSV content. Michael Saylor, a newly minted 'Bitcoin' evangelist, conspicuously pushes BTC's digital gold meme while ignoring Bitcoin's computational utility and feeds the gamblers' addiction with new financial vehicles like 'Bitcoin Treasury Stocks.'
Exchanges delist BSV under regulatory excuses. Payment processors refuse integration. They might even kill their supporters for getting too close to liberating the people.
He tweeted that specific message from Twetch, which is a BSV-powered blockchain-to-Twitter client. He understood the power of a truly scalable, public blockchain, and didn't care about the social stigma of BSV.
A real hero! — Kurt Wuckert Jr (@kurtwuckertjr) July 12, 2025
Why?
Because BSV is dangerous to the plantation, it breaks Big Tech by enabling data ownership and direct monetization, bypassing platforms. It breaks Big Banks by enforcing scarcity through proof of work, making a money that can't be printed by decree. It breaks Big Government by providing a transparent ledger for voting, budgets, and identity systems that don't require state attestation.
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The last firewall before technoserfdom
For hundreds of years, from Rothschild pigeons to Reuters wires, from Lansky's casino labs to MK Ultra's frequency experiments, from Palantir's social graphing to Neuralink's promise of wireless brain taps: the same triangle of Big Banks, Big Tech, and Big Government has refined the art of managing populations through money, media, and mind.
BSV is the first technology since the printing press that genuinely threatens this triangle at a fundamental level. It is a ledger anyone can write to. It is money tied to physics, not policy. It is a data layer immune to censorship. It promises a world where your vote, health record, business contract, music royalties, and everything else is secured by the same transparent protocol and cannot be intimidated or social-engineered by the shifting whims of unelected corporate boards or opaque state agencies.
The plantation will not give up easily. They haven't given up on keeping Bitcoin hijacked and under their control. Remember, they have had centuries of practice. They will dismiss BSV as a scam, obscure it with noise, or starve it of liquidity through pressure campaigns.
But the plantation's greatest asset is your inertia. Your willingness to stare at blue-lit screens that siphon your dopamine. Your resignation to debts that rise faster than your pay. Your fatalism in the face of wars spun up by think tanks whose logos are older than your grandparents.
we in craig wright vs klaus schwab timeline — ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ (@delete_shitcoin) September 25, 2022
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The call to action
It does not have to be this way. For every corrupt agent, investor, and politician, there's a good person looking for ways to make the world a better place. You stand at the same crossroads as every generation that faced a new feudal order, from serfs under steel visors to colonists under mercantilist tariffs. You can learn how this system was built, how fake news isn't new, how banks rig markets, how governments launder consent… We cannot 'trust the plan' or sit back and let anyone else fight these battles for us.
Trump is now claiming the Epstein list is a democrat hoax…MAGA has about one week to completely remove the movement from Donnie and reclaim its values, or the whole thing is over.
At least you got weird new prisons, Palantir, REAL ID & 5 trillion in new debt out of the deal! — Kurt Wuckert Jr (@kurtwuckertjr) July 13, 2025
We must opt out of the mind control and opt into a freer future, and one good way to start is by building, using, and transacting with BSV.
By anchoring your digital life to a chain that anyone can audit, no one can censor, and no consortium can inflate.
The chains are digital now, but so is the key.
Break free!
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Watch: How do you build a successful ecosystem? Bring blockchain to the builders!
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The Independent
36 minutes ago
- The Independent
The Epstein Files: How the saga unfolded within Trump's administration
Jeffrey Epstein may have been dead for six years, but the circumstances surrounding his death and the evidence supporting federal charges of child sex trafficking continue to make headlines. Most recently, they have caused a schism in MAGA world, reigniting anger from some supporters of President Donald Trump over his campaign promise to release the FBI files on the Epstein case, which the Department of Justice now says will not happen. At the heart of the anger is the supposed existence of a 'client list' of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent associates, whom some claim that Epstein blackmailed over their alleged involvement in his trafficking ring. Conspiracy theorists have long demanded its release, but now the Trump administration says there is no evidence it exists, despite Attorney General Pam Bondi having said in February that it was on her desk. Bondi now says she was referring to the overall case file. The attorney general also said officials at the Justice Department were examining a 'truckload' of evidence that had previously not been made public. However, the department concluded that public disclosure would not be appropriate, and much of the material was sealed by a judge. This has added fuel to rampant speculation that Trump is on the alleged list, despite its apparent nonexistence. This caused a storm among right-wing influencers, including commentator Tucker Carlson, activist Laura Loomer, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who are outraged over this lack of transparency. Here's what you need to know about the case and why MAGA is up in arms. What are the so-called 'Epstein Files'? Epstein was a wealthy and very well-connected financier who was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. He was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York City about a month after his arrest. Investigators concluded he died by suicide. His former girlfriend, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls, and at trial in late 2021, was convicted of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Because the couple's social circle included royals, presidents, and billionaires, the case gained massive attention and fueled some of the biggest conspiracy theories driving Trump's supporters. Trump himself was a friend of Epstein, and the two were photographed and filmed together on several occasions. In 2002, Trump described Epstein as a 'terrific guy' whom he had known for 15 years, in an interview with New York magazine. He added: 'It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Being so well-connected, key figures in the MAGA movement have long propagated unsubstantiated claims that Epstein was murdered and that 'deep state' actors in the government are hiding lists of his clients, videos of crimes being committed, and other evidence. Among those figures were now-FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino, who both stoked conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein's death, with the latter telling listeners in 2023 that there are people in the 'Washington swamp who are not telling you the truth.' In 2019, Trump himself suggested there was a cover-up and was asked on Fox News on the 2024 campaign trail if he would declassify documents relating to the case once he took office again — these became known as the 'Epstein Files.' Then-candidate Trump said he would, alongside files relating to 9/11 and the JFK assassination, but hedged his answer on Epstein, adding: 'I think that less so because you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.' What has happened since Trump returned to the White House? In February, weeks after Trump's inauguration, Bondi was asked during a Fox News interview whether the DOJ would release the alleged client list. She responded: 'It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that.' A few days later, Bondi told the network that the Justice Department planned to publish 'a lot of flight logs' and 'a lot of names' related to Epstein. On February 27, far-right influencers, including Jack Posobiec and Scott Presler, as well as the individuals behind the LibsofTikTok and DC_Draino accounts, were invited to an event at the White House and provided with binders marked 'The Epstein Files: Phase 1' and 'Declassified.' After jubilant images of the group holding the binders aloft were published, their excitement quickly faded when they realized that the content was already almost entirely in the public domain. Some were outraged and blamed Bondi. Loomer blasted the handling of the publication, writing on X: "The Epstein files were released in an unprofessional manner with paid, partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us. I can't trust anything in the binder. Neither should you." In May, Bondi claimed there were 'tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn,' adding further fuel to conspiracy theories that powerful people were being protected and the decision to release 'Phase 1' had been to allow time for some kind of cover-up. Bondi pushed back on this notion, saying: 'It's a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public.' Multiple people who worked on the criminal cases of Epstein and Maxwell told The Associated Press that they had not seen and were unaware of a trove of recordings similar to what Bondi had referenced. June 5 — Musk and Trump's feud explodes with Epstein allegation As the months-long bromance between Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk came to a spectacular end with a social media battle for the ages, the topic of Epstein arose in one of the most explosive posts exchanged that day. Musk tweeted: 'Files linked to the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have emerged as a point of fixation for Trump and his allies and right-wing media figures. 'Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.' Shortly after, he wrote: 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' Later, perhaps as cooler heads prevailed, Musk deleted the tweet. July 7 — MAGA world erupts over DOJ memo At the close of the Independence Day federal holiday weekend, the Justice Department announced in a two-page memo, in conjunction with the FBI, that there was no client list and no additional files relating to the case would be made public. The DOJ, it said, had determined that no 'further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,' much was sealed by a court to protect Epstein's victims, and 'only a fraction of it 'would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.' Additionally, the memo said that no further charges were expected as investigators 'did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.' Also released were hours of footage, which officials say further confirms Epstein died by suicide while in custody in his jail cell in Manhattan in 2019. The 11-hour video of Epstein's final hours in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center had one minute of footage missing, and forensic experts concluded that the clip had been 'modified,' adding fuel to the fire. While the memo said the government's highest priority was combatting child exploitation, it added: 'Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.' Right-wing conspiracy theories and renewed suspicions of a cover-up went into overdrive over this retreat by Bondi. Former Trump adviser Bannon questioned if the administration is really as transparent as it claims to be. Loomer called on Bondi to resign 'for lying to the American people,' a call echoed by fellow MAGA influencer Glenn Beck. Podcaster Megyn Kelly called Bondi 'either lazy or incompetent,' and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused the Trump administration of being part of the cover-up. July 8 — Trump tries to deflect while Bondi attempts clean-up In a Cabinet meeting on July 8, with reporters present, Trump interrupted a question on the topic, saying: 'Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking — we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.' Bondi then clarified her past comments on the case: 'In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, it's sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that.' Concerning her later comments about the 'tens of thousands' of videos, she said that they had 'turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein.' Musk once again joined the conversation, posting on X: 'How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won't release the Epstein files?' The former DOGE administrator also claimed, with no evidence, that his nemesis, Bannon, was in the files. July 11 — Bongino's future in doubt The most public split within the Trump administration emerged between Bondi and Bongino, with the deputy FBI director expressing dissatisfaction with how the memo had been released. He told allies that he may resign as the storm over the memo continued within MAGA world. According to reports, the two had a fiery confrontation with Bongino attacking Bondi for her handling of the situation. To try and diffuse speculation about infighting within the administration, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on X that he had personally worked with both Bongino and Patel on the memo. 'All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo,' Blanche wrote. 'The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo's composition and release is patently false.' This provoked an angry response from Loomer, who asked why no one had signed their name on the memo, speculating that the FBI had wanted to release more information and Bondi — whom she refers to as 'Blondi' — had refused. 'Blondi is literally blowing up the Trump admin by concealing information, spending time on Fox News lying to MAGA base and by releasing contradictory statements,' wrote Loomer on X. July 12 — Trump defends Bondi amid continuing MAGA outrage Only one person could attempt to diffuse internal strife within the administration, and so on Saturday, the president took to Truth Social and, in an extraordinarily lengthy post, defended Bondi amid continued calls for her resignation from his base. Trump praised her for doing a 'fantastic job' and urged his 'boys' and 'gals' in MAGA world to stop attacking her. 'What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals?'' Trump wrote. 'They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We're on one Team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening.' 'We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,' Trump protested. The president's post did little to quell the anger from his base, who continued to call for the release of the files. His first-term national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, wrote on X: '@realdonaldtrump please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR is not going away.' He added that failing to address unanswered questions about Epstein would make facing other national challenges 'much harder.' Musk once again commented on X, replying to a post: Seriously. He [Trump] said 'Epstein' half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein. Just release the files as promised.' On the same day, rumors circulated that Patel, like Bongino, was also considering leaving the FBI. The director wrote on X that it is an honor to serve the president and 'I'll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.' The following day, asked about Bongino's future, Trump said he was in 'good shape,' adding: 'I spoke to him today, Dan Bongino, very good guy. I've known him a long time.' Before this, it had been reported that Trump was angry at Bongino over the situation. The president's daughter-in-law appeared to be off-message in terms of tamping down the scandal when she told Bennie Johnson on his podcast that there needed to be 'more transparency' from the administration regarding the Epstein case and that more information would be released 'sooner rather than later.' On the same day, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at a news conference that there were only two things possibly be happening regarding the case. 'Option one, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and the MAGA extremists intentionally lied to the American people for years about the Jeffrey Epstein situation,' he said. 'Option two is that, in fact, there's reason for the American people to be concerned as it relates to what information has not been released that could be damaging to the Trump administration and the friends and family of the Trump administration and their billionaire, corrupt supporters. And so, they're actively engaging in a cover-up,' Jeffries continued. He added that if the administration was 'hiding something,' it was up to Congress to 'uncover the truth for the American people.' Later, Texas Democratic Rep. Marc Beasey introduced a resolution calling for the immediate release of all unclassified Epstein Files. That echoed calls from MAGA Republicans. 'America deserves the truth about Jeffrey Epstein and the rich powerful elites in his circle,' Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X Monday. Nevertheless, House Republicans blocked another Democrat push to force the Trump administration to release the 'FULL' Epstein files. Seizing on growing MAGA infighting, California Representative Ro Khanna introduced an amendment to the GENIUS Act on Monday, calling on Bondi to compile and release all Epstein records within 30 days. Late Monday evening, the House Rules Committee voted 7–5 to block the proposal from reaching the lower chamber. July 15 — Trump says Bondi should release 'whatever she thinks is credible' On Tuesday, with the scandal refusing to die down, Trump told reporters on the South Lawn that Bondi should release 'whatever she thinks is credible' on Epstein. When asked if Bondi had informed him that his name appeared in the file, the president said no and that he had received a 'very quick briefing' on the review of the Epstein files before the release of the memo a week earlier. 'And in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen, and I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden -- and you know, we and we went through years of that with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, with all of the different things that we had to go through,' Trump said. 'We've gone through years of it, but she's handled it very well, and it's going to be up to her,' Trump said of Bondi. 'Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.'


Times
41 minutes ago
- Times
Trump says his enemies ‘made up' the Epstein files
President Trump has defended his administration's decision not to release the Jeffrey Epstein files amid a growing Maga backlash, as he accused Barack Obama and Joe Biden of 'making up' their existence. The US president said that Pam Bondi had handled the files 'very well', despite calls from prominent Trump supporters for his attorney general to be fired. After Bondi's decision last week not to release the files, Trump has tried to persuade Maga supporters to drop their calls for transparency. Conspiracy theorists have alleged the files contain a 'client list' with the names of prominent associates of Epstein as well as details about the death of the disgraced financier and paedophile, who committed suicide in his prison cell in 2019. A memo released by Bondi last week said there was no evidence Epstein was murdered or that he kept a client list. After his election last year, Trump appointed Maga proponents of the Epstein conspiracy theories to his administration including Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, and Dan Bongino, the agency's deputy director. But these same figures have now found themselves part of an administration defending the decision not to release the trove of evidence. In a change of tactics, Trump accused James Comey, the former director of the FBI under Obama, of inventing the files. 'These files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden [administration],' he said on Tuesday. Democrats in Congress are pushing for the files to be released, exposing splits among Trump's supporters. On Tuesday, Republicans in the House blocked attempts to force their disclosure. 'That was probably not the last time that you're going to see us deal with this issue,' Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts and the House rules committee ranking member, told Axios. Trump, a friend of Epstein, once described the sex trafficker as a 'terrific guy'. 'It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,' Trump said in an interview in 2002.


Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Goldman Sachs finances $270 million affordable housing project in New York
NEW YORK, July 15 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs (GS.N), opens new tab will finance a $270 million affordable housing project to build 385 apartments in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York Governor Kathy Hochul's office said. The city's housing crunch and rising rents have become a key focus of Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's campaign. The project financed by Goldman's Urban Investment Group will include commercial space, the governor's office said in a statement. "This project is helping us fight the housing affordability crisis while also prioritizing improvements that will make the neighborhood more livable for families," Hochul said. Mamdani aims to invest public dollars to triple the city's production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes – constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years, according to his campaign website. His stunning victory over former Governor Andrew Cuomo has drawn concerns from business leaders, including some on Wall Street, about the costs of his proposed policies. Goldman's Urban Investment Group has invested nearly $11 billion in affordable housing and other development projects across the state and $9 billion in New York City since 2001. "Our investment is a down payment on East New York's potential, creating thousands of high-quality, affordable homes and essential services that will fuel the economic vitality of the community," said Asahi Pompey, chairman of Goldman's Urban Investment Group.