Why Prince Andrew was arrested for more than a sex scandal

David Sacks 0:00 Okay, everyone, by popular demand, we're doing an all-Epstein show today. My besties are all on vacation for ski week, so I'm taking this on solo. We have three different guests on, who all have very different interpretations and opinions of the Epstein story. Saagar Enjeti from Breaking Points believes that the Epstein story shows that there is a, quote-unquote, "Epstein class" that operates above law and accountability. He views this story as an indictment of our ruling elites. Michael Tracey is skeptical about many of the most malicious claims about Epstein, and questions whether they meet any kind of evidentiary standard. He has criticized the media feeding frenzy over what he has called Epstein Mythology. And finally, Kevin Bass, a citizen journalist, who's been tracking the released files and posting his findings on X, specifically in regards to Reid Hoffman, perhaps the figure in tech most closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Some of it gets heated, but hopefully you'll come away with new perspectives and great information. I felt like it was important to showcase a range of viewpoints on this issue. I'm trying to keep an open mind, and I'll describe my own point of view at the end of the show. And with that, here we go.

David Sacks 1:04 Saagar, let me start with you. What is the import of the arrest of Prince Andrew in the UK this morning? I mean, is this a case of show us the man and we'll tell you the crime? I mean, it- obviously, it seems kind of coincidental that he's not being arrested for misconduct in the Epstein affair. He's being arrested on mishandling, I guess, trade secrets or-

Saagar Enjeti 1:31 Mm-hmm

David Sacks 1:31 ... public documents. So obviously, the timing of this is not coincidental.

Saagar Enjeti 1:36 No, it's certainly not coincidental, but I do believe that the facts do matter in this case, and, uh, unfortunately, you know, for Prince Andrew, for Lord Mandelson, the former ambassador, uh, to the United States from the UK as well, it is pretty clear-cut that they did violate their official duties. We should remember that the crux of this case involving Andrew is not just about some of the accusations that were made, although that is the genesis, let's say, of the investigation and of the interest. This is about Prince Andrew serving as a UK trade advisor and forwarding non-public information to Jeffrey Epstein that's been released, that's currently in the file. Some of it is involving scheduling. However, uh, Gordon Brown, this morning, said that he had actually shared some new information with Scotland Yard and the police. So none... It's not exactly just what's in the file, but it could potentially be other, uh, material that Gordon Brown and the Chancellery were able to investigate as to what Prince Andrew was sharing as part of a broader probe into Lord Mandelson, and the tip-off that he gave to Jeffrey Epstein about an upcoming bailout. And I do think that this does reveal a- quite a lot about Jeffrey Epstein, that next is the genesis of his rise to power, his wealth, and his influence. Something that involved, let's say, s- even some of the co-hosts, uh, let's say, on this very podcast, which is a deep financial knowledge of money laundering networks, of trying to be at the very forefront of moving money across the globe, which I believe is his real power and his influence, which is what enabled much of the behavior that much of the public is now horrified by.

David Sacks 3:05 Okay, wait, I c- I can't let that just go by. What, what do you mean-

Saagar Enjeti 3:07 Sure

David Sacks 3:07 ... by involving co-hosts of this podcast?

Saagar Enjeti 3:09 Yeah, I'm talking about Jason. I, I actually thought that the Jason email, uh, was very interesting. So you'll see that in 2011, that Jeffrey Epstein is contacting Jason about Bitcoin. This is by-

David Sacks 3:19 Right

Saagar Enjeti 3:19 ... I saw, I watched your discussion. I'm not implicating him in any crime. I'm saying, if you watch and look at that email very closely, you are watching Jeffrey Epstein, a master money launderer and financial mastermind himself, be at the forefront of the Bitcoin technology and wondering about it in 2011, which, as Jason even pointed out in the last episode that you guys did about this, when Bitcoin was some $1 and some sort of open source project. Like, to me, that shows how at the forefront he was of new technology and new ways to move money surreptitiously across the globe, which is what I believe was his real strength and his, basically, um, his, his, uh, raison d'être, for being so useful to all of these different foreign governments and intelligence a- a- assets, including ours, Russia, Israel, various different Israeli... Or various different intelligence, uh, networks across the globe.

David Sacks 4:14 Yeah, let me just for, for viewers of this episode who didn't see that episode, let me just summarize what exactly happened there, 'cause I wanna just make sure that Jason's reputation is not unfairly impugned, and I don't think you're doing that-

Saagar Enjeti 4:29 No, yeah

David Sacks 4:29 ... but just to be absolutely clear about it. What happened was that Jason hosted an episode of This Week in Startups, roughly, I think in 2011, with a couple of the Bitcoin Core founders, and then Epstein reached out to him for an introduction to those people. I thought... And, and one of my takeaways from that was, like you said, Saagar, that Epstein was extraordinarily early to Bitcoin. He clearly had a nose for putting himself in the middle of things. I think 2011 is when I discovered Bitcoin, so that was relatively early. I thought it was almost comical the way that Jason was trying to warn Epstein, "Oh, you don't want to meet these guys."

Saagar Enjeti 5:08 Right. They're crazies.

David Sacks 5:08 "These are some-

Saagar Enjeti 5:08 Yeah.

David Sacks 5:09 "These are some crazies. They're, like, these crypto libertarians. They want to take down the government. There's no profit. Um, there's no investment opportunity here." In a way, it was kind of comical that Jason was trying to warn Epstein about the Bitcoin guys, rather than vice versa, but I don't really think people knew at that point in time-... what Epstein was involved in. Do you disagree with that? Do you think people-

Saagar Enjeti 5:35 Well-

David Sacks 5:35 -should have known by 2011?

Saagar Enjeti 5:36 Well, David, I mean, I will say-

David Sacks 5:37 What he was doing?

Saagar Enjeti 5:37 ... well, there is a way back machine, and we can go back-

David Sacks 5:39 Mm-hmm

Saagar Enjeti 5:39 ... and we can look at what the Google results were, and we do have somebody who pled guilty. And look, I mean, this is for every individual, uh, to make up their own mind. You can't Google for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor. I mean, that was literally a matter of public record. I can only speak for myself. That's not really somebody I would involve myself with, even at a professional level. Uh, and I mean, I guess-

David Sacks 6:00 Had you known?

Saagar Enjeti 6:00 Yeah.

David Sacks 6:00 Had you known?

Saagar Enjeti 6:01 Well, you can Google it. It's literally public record.

David Sacks 6:02 But it wasn't widely-

Saagar Enjeti 6:03 Yeah

David Sacks 6:03 ... publicized at the time. I thought that it had-

Saagar Enjeti 6:05 Well, there was a Palm Beach Post. There were N- New York Times articles that described it.

David Sacks 6:07 Well, I thought the Palm Beach- I thought the Palm Pea- Beach story didn't come out until... Or sorry, maybe it was the Miami Herald. Didn't come out till 2018.

Saagar Enjeti 6:13 Well, you're, yeah, you're talking about the 2018, kind of the broader story.

David Sacks 6:16 Yeah.

Saagar Enjeti 6:16 But the original solicitation of prostitution involving a minor charge, 2007, I believe, is when the non-prosecution agreement came to bear. That was all public record in terms of registration of a sex offender, and again, you can use the way back machine, and you can go back and look. I mean, again, this doesn't necessarily implicate anybody in a crime, and anybody can make up the decision for themselves as to how they would have, uh, you know, involved themselves with that person. But it was, it was out there. Like, it wasn't, uh, unknown, and I do think it's not really responsible to imply otherwise.

Michael Tracey 6:47 Quick factual clarification on that. Although it wasn't an enormous story at the time, you can find coverage in the New York Times in-

Saagar Enjeti 6:54 Yes

Michael Tracey 6:55 ... July of 2008 after Epstein pleaded guilty to the two state-level prostitution charges. We didn't have the full scope of the information, obviously, about what he was accused of or the nature of the non-prosecution agreement, but a Google search would have yielded that at that time.

Saagar Enjeti 7:09 Yeah, that's right.

David Sacks 7:10 Yeah. It's hard for me to judge. I certainly, in that time period, had never even heard of Jeffrey Epstein, and I don't think most people had. When did this become sort of a cause celebre? I mean, wasn't it more around his arrest?

Michael Tracey 7:24 2018, I would say.

David Sacks 7:25 '18.

Saagar Enjeti 7:25 2018. Yeah, I think it's-

David Sacks 7:26 Yeah

Saagar Enjeti 7:26 ... important to explain, and I- Michael, you can correct-

Michael Tracey 7:28 When the incredibly overrated Miami Herald series by Julie K. Brown, which con-

Saagar Enjeti 7:32 Yes

Michael Tracey 7:32 ... is just ra- rife with errors and mischaracterizations, became this sensation across the media landscape, and Julie K. Brown was showered with all these accolades from all these bogus journalism industry organizations. Even though, for example, I caught her fabricating quotes in her book, Perversion of Justice, which was based on the initial Miami Herald series.

Saagar Enjeti 7:53 Yeah, but Michael, I don't think that you would deny-

Michael Tracey 7:53 So just one of the most clownish people in the journalism landscape right now.

Saagar Enjeti 7:56 Michael, I don't think that you would deny that ultimately, that this did not... Yes, it was sparked by Julie K. Brown's Miami Herald stories, that a federal judge was not necessarily, like... You know, and the federal judge who reviewed the non-prosecution agreement did say that this was a violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act, because-

Michael Tracey 8:11 Yeah, that was overturned on appeal.

Saagar Enjeti 8:13 Right. Well, I understand. However, uh, this has also gone forth to the Supreme Court involving Ghislaine Maxwell, as I understand now, is currently being litigated, but I do think it is important-

Michael Tracey 8:22 No, it's not.

Saagar Enjeti 8:22 No.

Michael Tracey 8:22 The Supreme Court rejected it.

Saagar Enjeti 8:23 Yeah, that's what I'm t- what I'm talking-

Michael Tracey 8:24 You mean Maxwell's appe- uh, appeal?

Saagar Enjeti 8:27 I'm talking about the Maxwell appeal, but specifically the non-prosecution agreement and the overturning is what re-led to the current indictment of the 2019 indictment-

Michael Tracey 8:35 No

Saagar Enjeti 8:35 ... of Jeffrey Epstein. No, but-

Michael Tracey 8:36 That's wrong, Saagar.

Saagar Enjeti 8:37 No, well, go ahead. You c- I- I'm happy for you to explain it to me. Go ahead.

Michael Tracey 8:39 Yeah, I mean, this is-

Saagar Enjeti 8:40 Yeah

Michael Tracey 8:40 ... a misconception. The non-prosecution agreement was never overturned. Ghislaine Maxwell's-

Saagar Enjeti 8:45 Well-

Michael Tracey 8:45 ... argument includes... Let me just finish.

Saagar Enjeti 8:47 Sure.

Michael Tracey 8:48 Ghislaine Maxwell's argument in her appeals included citing the non-prosecution agreement as something that she claimed she ought to have been covered by-

Saagar Enjeti 8:58 Yes

Michael Tracey 8:58 ... and therefore insulated from federal prosecution, which was initiated against her in 2020. The non-prosecution agreement was never nullified. It was never voided. Bradley Edwards, the victim lawyer, attempted to convince federal judges to somehow nullify it, but he failed. The reason why Jeffrey Epstein was federally reprosecuted in 2019 is because prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Maureen Comey et al., concocted this cockamamie rationale for how they could circumvent the non-prosecution agreement by picking- claiming they found a new victim in New York, claiming that there was some interstate nexus in which they could tie some of the f- old Florida allegations, but it was never nullified at all. So just to be clear about that.

Saagar Enjeti 9:44 Well, so I, I apologize for not being very specific in my language. It was ruled in 2019 that it had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act.

Michael Tracey 9:52 Correct.

Saagar Enjeti 9:52 That's what led to the re-indictment.

Michael Tracey 9:54 No.

Saagar Enjeti 9:54 But what I'm specifi- well, no, no.

Michael Tracey 9:55 There was no connection.

Saagar Enjeti 9:57 Well, no, because that led to the story reopening from Miami Herald, and that led then to the 2019 SDNY prosecution.

Michael Tracey 10:04 Yeah, I mean, you got... You're being... I'm sorry.

Saagar Enjeti 10:05 Right.

Michael Tracey 10:05 Uh, not to be combative, but you have your chronology wrong.

Saagar Enjeti 10:07 Well, o-

Michael Tracey 10:07 The Miami Herald story was based on Julie K. Brown-

Saagar Enjeti 10:10 Came out in 2018. Right.

Michael Tracey 10:11 Julie... Yeah, that was based on Julie K. Brown colluding with the victims' lawyers, not the court ruling on the Crime Victims' Rights Act.

Saagar Enjeti 10:17 Well, okay.

David Sacks 10:17 All right, guys.

Saagar Enjeti 10:18 Go ahead, David.

David Sacks 10:18 Let me, let me just get control of this again, 'cause I think we're going down a rabbit hole, and there's lots-

Michael Tracey 10:21 That's just a rabbit hole

David Sacks 10:21 ... of aspects to this story that, that we could discuss. I think that we should probably judge each person who interacted with Epstein or visited his island, and so forth and so on, individually, in terms of what they actually did, what they actually knew. Saagar, I just think you're being a little bit unfair to Jason, because all he did was exchange emails with-

Saagar Enjeti 10:40 Well, I, I, I don't think that was being unfair

David Sacks 10:42 ... with Epstein on, in, in the 2011 time period. That's all.

Saagar Enjeti 10:43 Well, what I was trying to point out was Jeffrey Epstein's knowledge or interest of Bitcoin in 2011-

David Sacks 10:50 Yes

Saagar Enjeti 10:50 ... and that links to a broader Epstein involvement with money laundering and tax fraud and a so-called involvement with Leon Black and many of these other multi-

David Sacks 11:01 Right

Saagar Enjeti 11:01 ... billionaires who paid him lots of money. I'm just saying, I'm putting that-

David Sacks 11:04 Yes

Saagar Enjeti 11:04 ... as part of a piece-

David Sacks 11:05 Okay, fair, fair enough

Saagar Enjeti 11:05 ... into a broader scheme.

David Sacks 11:07 Yes.

Saagar Enjeti 11:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 11:07 And I think that exchange was noteworthy for the reason you just said, which is-

Saagar Enjeti 11:11 Yes

David Sacks 11:11 ... that Epstein somehow was putting himself in the middle of all sorts of things. I mean, he's almost like a Zelig-like figure who pops up in many different newsworthy stories over the last few decades, which is what I think makes this interesting.

David Sacks 11:25 I think maybe a question for each of you is, who do you think this guy ultimately was? I mean, you hear all sorts of theories. Let's-... say maybe the Epstein maximalist position would be that he was an intelligence asset or intelligence agent who was running a vast kompromat operation on his island, and th- thereby was corrupting and blackmailing the world's elite to someone who, uh... I, I think, Michael, you, you have a different point of view on that. Let me not characterize it. I'll let you guys do it, but Saagar, let me start with you. Who do you think this guy was, and ultimately, you know, at a 30,000-foot level, what do you think is going on here? What is this Epstein story really about? And then, Michael, I wanna go to you with the same question.

Saagar Enjeti 12:13 Yeah, sure. I mean, I do think that there is a very low-IQ, unfortunate, you know, explosion of, uh, accusations that are out there, and I wanna be very responsible in the way that I describe it. I think that Jeffrey Epstein was somebody who arose under very suspicious conditions, uh, in the 1980s, potentially involving Iran-Contra, knowledge specifically with arms traffickers, like Adnan Khashoggi and Douglas Lease, Steven Hoffenberg as well, and that these black market, money-laundering, tax evasion strategies were honed over a period which eventually ensnared various people, like Leslie Wexner and many other multi-billionaires. And that at the very same time, he also had, you know, his sexual proclivities, which I think at this point were well-known, and that those became, and became useful. His money-laundering-specific, uh, dir- duties and knowledge and usefulness, let's say, to the CIA, to various other intelligence assets, became a very useful part of the nexus in the post-Cold War environment. And that at the time, it was also socially known for a lot of Epstein associates that he had this bizarre practice of often, you know, seeking out massages, which in some cases, they are saying involving underage girls. And so to say that he was running a vast kompromat operation, I think, ascribes too much intention to what's really happening here. And w- the reason why I'm being intentional in my language is that what he clearly was doing was recruiting and running this, like, vast massage scheme, also involving Ghislaine Maxwell, and all across the world, Russian and Eastern European women, but also that this behavior was tolerated, in some cases, seen by a vast number of the global elite. Now, the 2007 su- circumstances of the non-prosecution agreement, you know, and Michael and I could go back on this, uh, forward a long time as to the circumstances of which that arose. However, I don't think, Michael, you would even deny that his access to wealth, power, and money did eventually allow him to get off with the 2007 non-prosecution agreement and the eventual sweetheart deal, uh, that he gets with his hiring, let's say-

Michael Tracey 14:17 I, I wouldn't agree with that, actually.

Saagar Enjeti 14:18 Well, I mean, I don't think the average Joe can just hire Ken Starr and, uh, private investigators and lawyers to tell some of the-

Michael Tracey 14:25 Oh, sure

Saagar Enjeti 14:25 ... purported victims and-

Michael Tracey 14:25 I mean, his, his vast wealth-

Saagar Enjeti 14:27 Um-

Michael Tracey 14:27 ... enables him to secure-

Saagar Enjeti 14:28 Right

Michael Tracey 14:28 ... very high-powered legal represent- representation. No one can deny that.

Saagar Enjeti 14:31 Well, that's what I'm claiming, is that certain-

David Sacks 14:32 But this whole concept of a sweetheart deal is a total canard that was-

Michael Tracey 14:34 Okay, well, hold on, hold on

David Sacks 14:35 ... popularized by Julie K. Brown.

Michael Tracey 14:36 Michael, I don't wanna get off on that yet.

Saagar Enjeti 14:38 Yeah.

Michael Tracey 14:38 But l- just l- go back to my original question of, what is your 30,000-foot take on what this story is about? Who was this guy, in your view? I will answer that. However, I do wanna just stipulate up front that I think this reflex to have to offer some kind of totalistic assessment of who Jeffrey Epstein was at his very essence has fed into so much of the constant churn of algorithmic slop that has generated this hysterical frenzy around this issue and has led to people being totally deluded about what we're even talking about. What do most people... I, I, I have some surmises about Jeffrey Epstein. He definitely was a money manager who, as you mentioned, was sort of like this zealot character who did have an extraordinary cross-section of connections with people from across fields. And, you know, I just was looking through some of these records in the new Epstein files productions, and I was looking for something else, but there are... There's an archive of these old message pads that he had at his Palm Beach house.

David Sacks 15:38 Mm-hmm.

Michael Tracey 15:38 And I'm scrolling through, and it turns out Halle Berry left him a couple of messages. I had no idea that Halle Berry was ever in contact with Jeffrey Epstein. So you can always find somebody new and novel [chuckles] who apparently had a one dealing or another with him. But why are we talking about Jeffrey Epstein right now in February of 2026?

Saagar Enjeti 15:55 Hmm.

Michael Tracey 15:56 Because Pe- he is believed to have been the most prolific child sex trafficker in American or perhaps world history, which is why this issue might now take down the British government. It's embroiling Norway. A minister in Slovakia had to resign over it. There's a new criminal investigation that was just launched in France, et cetera. That's what people conceive Jeffrey Epstein to have been, and that whole notion is based on just an onslaught of mythological nonsense that's pumped out daily by these YouTube shows, I won't mention names, podcasts, et cetera, social media personalities, who are driven by these perverse algorithmic incentives to be totally divorced from the facts, foreground this rampant speculation that ties in the Mossad, ties in unnamed other intelligence agencies with this presumed implication or this presumed, uh, s- uh, r- reality that, of course, we know for sure that Jeffrey Epstein was running this pedo crime ring, and we al- all... To the- they presuppose a conclusion that's just been floating out there in the ether, thanks to all this horrendous media coverage. I think this is the worst story of my adult lifetime in terms of the media coverage, and it implicates the alternative media, the mainstream media, and everybody in between. It's actually shocking. I will predict here and now that if we revisit this issue in, I don't know, two or three years, people will v- come to realize, if I have anything to do with it, that they were bamboozled on a mass scale. There's genuine fraud-... that has been rampant in term- the journalistic malfeasance. We're not supposed to ever consider the massive financial incentives where the Epstein industry is now something like I've estimated a billion dollars in terms of the payouts that have been given to purported victims who are allowed to just reimagine things that happened to them 20 years before as an adult, not as a child, but adult at the time of their claimed victimization, and then call themselves a sex trafficking victim. And then they can secure a couple million dollars tax-free from JP Morgan, and the media will hail them as these brave survivors without doing a single thing to check the veracity of any of their claims. You know why people are up- so upset about these redactions in the Epstein files? And I'm upset, too. I criticized Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna for the language of their bill that they crafted, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which they crafted in concert with Bradley Edwards, this extortionist, quote, unquote, "victim's lawyer," who's made a killing on this issue over the past 10 years, in conjunction with David Boies, another shyster. And Bradley Edwards, at his urging, Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie put in this giant carve-out to so-called transparency and disclosure into their bill, such that the DOJ was authorized to redact or withhold or conceal any information that could be the most tangentially tied to anything that's, quote, "victim-identifying." So they've been arguing frantically in federal court for the past few months that they're opposed to the disclosure of Epstein files, because it's going to terrorize all these beleaguered women. I don't know. Do you think that maybe if we did get full transparency, it might disrupt this sanitized, quote, "survivor" narrative that everybody pushes so credulously? I'll just give you one example, and I don't wanna go on for too long, and I... There's so many, uh, threads that I could pull here that you have to s- kind of rein me in. But one narrative that could disrupt if we actually did get genuine disclosure, which we're not, and in fact, Edwards et al. demanded that the entire archive be taken down because this disclosure was just too horrendously threatening to them. We would maybe get more insight into some of the government propaganda that's been allowed to promulgate unchecked. And Saagar, I wonder if you've corrected this on Breaking Points. You can let me know.

David Sacks 19:46 Sure.

Michael Tracey 19:46 But for months, uh, people, uh, politicians across the media s- the, the political spectrum, as well as the media writ large, have unthinkingly regurgitated this figure that there were over 1,000 victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Sometimes that gets upgraded to thousands of victims. That's what Pram- uh, Pramila Jayapal said at the Bondi hearing last week. Ro Khanna constantly blurts out this whole, this claim of over 1,000 survivors. And this is based on the July 6, 2025, FBI DOJ memo, which claimed that they, after a review of the evidence after the second Trump administration came in, they found that over 1,000 victims were, quote, "harmed by Epstein." So they used this very conspiculous- conspicuous weasel wordage, and it was very dubious to me the instant I read it. Turns out, you know, thank God on some level for the Epstein files, because there is a major revelation contained therein, which is that this whole- this number is a fraud. It's bogus. They, they, they admit in FBI memoranda that this number is based on a total of purported victims, the majority of whom were, would have been adults at the time of their claimed victimization anyway. But it... That includes the family members of alleged victims in that total number that's been bandied about.

David Sacks 20:58 Well, Michael, how many alleged victims are there?

Michael Tracey 21:00 Well, who knows? Why is the government deceiving the public about it? If people want to be mad about-

Saagar Enjeti 21:05 Can I jump in here, David?

Michael Tracey 21:06 ... Mad at Kash Patel-

Saagar Enjeti 21:06 I have a little bit about something.

David Sacks 21:06 Sure, yeah. Alright, let, let Michael, let, let Saagar-

Michael Tracey 21:09 Be mad at Kash Patel and Pam Bondi for putting out that phony, propagandistic figure and then have it be repeated ad nauseam without the slightest bit of critical discernment.

Saagar Enjeti 21:17 Well, I do-

Michael Tracey 21:17 Okay

Saagar Enjeti 21:18 ... Michael, I think we can at least agree that Ka- Kash Patel and Pam Bondi haven't, uh, handled this all that responsibly.

Michael Tracey 21:22 How about on that particular issue?

Saagar Enjeti 21:23 Oh, oh, uh, well, I mean, you're asking me to correct the record of something I've never even uttered. I've never said the word over 1,000 people.

Michael Tracey 21:28 No, I'm just wondering if you-

David Sacks 21:29 Okay, hold on, Michael. Let's, let's aggregate here.

Saagar Enjeti 21:30 It's literally not something-

David Sacks 21:31 Let's aggregate

Saagar Enjeti 21:31 ... that I've ever claimed. I mean, I do think, Michael, uh, that what you like to do is to go after... And really, I think fundamentally, I'm not even sure if you would reject this, you reject the idea of victimization, that post-victimization, uh, can even happen. And I also, I don't even necessarily want to get to-

Michael Tracey 21:46 I reject the idea of victimization?

Saagar Enjeti 21:47 I don't-

Michael Tracey 21:47 I don't even know what that means.

Saagar Enjeti 21:48 Well, you reject the idea-

David Sacks 21:49 Hold on. Michael, Michael, let's, let Saagar speak

Saagar Enjeti 21:50 ... that adult women could be victimized, uh, let's say, by Jeffrey Epstein, manipulated. Yes, in even if some cases, money were exchanging hands. I will say, by the way, that just paying or flying in adult women from Eastern Europe to, for the express purposes of having sex is a crime, by the way. Sure, it's not underage. However, we do have the 2007 draft indictment, where there were a number of underage victims that were mentioned there, where Epstein specifically asks a 15-year-old if he knows anybody who's younger, uh, that he could be able to recruit it. And so I do think your core contention that at the end of the day, he wasn't a, quote, "pedophile," uh, is definitely illegitimate. But I also don't necessarily wanna get dragged into the victim, uh, stuff, which I think that you are fundamentally focused on. Because I do think when you're saying, "Why are people talking about this?" It confirms a general suspicion of the way that people act with impunity at the highest levels of American or global society, in terms of their moral character, in terms of their dealings, let's say, financially. And, uh, you know, you like to brush across this intelligence question. I actually, I would love for you, uh, to be able to just grapple with some of the facts, you know, necessarily just related today, where the Israeli government was installing surveillance equipment in an Epstein-owned apartment, which they used for the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, where we have Ehud Barak and Epstein, uh, joking questioningly about Mossad, where Epstein is FOIA-ing 1999, the CIA, for any mention of himself for the very dealings that he himself had with the arms dealing industry in the 1980s, for the fact that he had a false Austrian passport at the age of 29 years old, Austria being the capital of spies, uh, long before he ever became, you know, very filthy rich. And so Michael, I think what you're obfuscating is a general interest in the story, and often that what you try to do is find the lowest IQ, most maximalist, have people talking about cannibals or anything like that-

Michael Tracey 23:37 Okay, hold on

Saagar Enjeti 23:37 ... and then paint that as a, as a bigger question.

Michael Tracey 23:40 That's not, Saagar, that's not what I do at all.

Saagar Enjeti 23:40 No, but it is-

Michael Tracey 23:41 Hold on, hold on.

Saagar Enjeti 23:41 Michael, even in your-

Michael Tracey 23:42 I barely mentioned the cannibalism stuff. I mean, of course, that's kind of a hysterical lunacy.

Saagar Enjeti 23:45 Yes, you're, no, you're trying to de- Yeah, you paint the rest of us who believe, let's say, in some of a bigger part of this story, as cred-

Michael Tracey 23:52 I mean, Saagar-

Saagar Enjeti 23:52 As, as-

Michael Tracey 23:52 ... if you believe-

Saagar Enjeti 23:53 As maintaining-

Michael Tracey 23:53 If you believe that we can just accept at face value that a 21-year-old model who accepted an invitation to visit Jeffrey's island-... when she was in the British Virgin Islands-

Saagar Enjeti 24:02 Potentially under false pretenses, also-

Michael Tracey 24:04 Oh, let me finish. Let me finish.

Saagar Enjeti 24:05 Potentially under false pretenses by Jean-Luc Brunel, who, by the way, is investigated-

Michael Tracey 24:08 And you don't bother even looking into it. No, I have nothing to do with Jean-Luc Brunel.

Saagar Enjeti 24:10 What do you mean I didn't bother looking into it? This is nonsense. I mean, I'm talking to-

Michael Tracey 24:12 Well, then tell me if you've looked into what I'm about to describe. Can I have 30 seconds to describe it?

Saagar Enjeti 24:15 All right, uh, go ahead.

Michael Tracey 24:16 Lisa Phillips, who was one of the women, uh, quote, "survivors," who spoke at these press conferences in front of the US Capitol, and infamously declared that she and her fellow survivors w- were going to create their own list of Epstein clients, and then hand it over to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, so they could read it out on the floor of the House of Representatives under the protections of the Speech and Debate Clause, and cau- caused a giant media firestorm, as I don't have to remind you. Her whole tale of victimization is that at age 21, as a professional model, she was on a photo shoot in the British Virgin Islands. Another girl, you know, or young woman that she was with, invited her to take a ferry to Jeffrey Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands. She accepted. She never claimed victimization for, like, fift- 17 or 20 years. She's on a podcast in 2020 saying, "Gee whiz, I never heard anything a- about all this crazy Epstein stuff, but I knew him, and I, I don't know what went- happened there." Then all of a sudden, JP Morgan opens its floodgates for settlements of t- you know, $290 million. You know, I know, like, we're not supposed to acknowledge human nature about what that can incent- incentivize on this particular subject. I mean, explain that to me. And she now claims that we're supposed to just take her to be a survivor? She was the one, uh, one of the women who also stood up and protested Pam Bondi last week. So, yeah, Saagar, if you do take at face value that that person can be rightly designated as a victim, and fuel and foment this giant worldwide pedophilia crisis that we're supposedly in the midst of, then I don't know. I mean, I consider you to have a pretty high IQ, and that's just not some, like, rando-

Saagar Enjeti 25:51 Right, I-

Michael Tracey 25:51 ... on social media talking about cannibals.

Saagar Enjeti 25:53 Right, but I-

Michael Tracey 25:53 So you tell me if you agree that that's a legitimate case of victimization, and it should be-

Saagar Enjeti 25:59 Michael, I think you've just done the classic example-

Michael Tracey 26:01 rightly engendering this worldwide pedophilic mass panic

Saagar Enjeti 26:01 ... of selecting somebody. Uh, uh, look, I'm not here to defend every so-called Epstein victim, because, by the way, I think that what you do very expertly is finding people like Lisa Phillips, and then por- trying to portray all of them of that sort. Like, would you deny that vast wire transfers, uh, were sent to Eastern Europe to fly in women for the express purposes of sex? Because that actually is-

Michael Tracey 26:21 Adult women. Adult women.

Saagar Enjeti 26:22 But, but... Okay, uh, uh, is that not a crime, Michael? Have you Googled the Mann Act? I mean, for somebody who has actually looked into prostitution, I mean, this is what I'm talking about, is that... By the way, also, you have not yet grappled with the 2007 draft indictment there against Epstein.

Michael Tracey 26:35 I'm happy to get into it.

Saagar Enjeti 26:35 Okay, I mean, uh, look, I have a, unfortunately, a very limited amount of time.

Michael Tracey 26:38 I asked four questions.

David Sacks 26:38 No-

Michael Tracey 26:38 Outstanding for that, and we got-

David Sacks 26:39 So, Saagar-

Saagar Enjeti 26:39 I, I published-

David Sacks 26:40 Go ahead, David.

Michael Tracey 26:40 Hold on, guys. S- so Saagar told us, um, upfront that he only had half an hour, so-

Saagar Enjeti 26:45 Yeah.

David Sacks 26:45 Okay.

Michael Tracey 26:45 You know, we don't have that much time. Listen, Saagar, let me ask you a couple other questions, and then once Saagar leaves, Michael, we can get you to say what you want to say. I want to go to the Les Wexner deposition the other day. What did we learn from that, specifically about how Epstein got his start? I do think that there are these questions about, again, who this guy was, how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars so early in his career? How did he seem to, um, obtain all these different, uh, connections, specifically to the intelligence world? Did any of that get resolved, and w- what- what's your take on that?

Saagar Enjeti 27:25 No, David, it wasn't resolved. Unfortunately, the entire transcript is not public. What we do know from the House Oversight Committee, at least what's been released now so far, is Leslie Wexner said he was never questioned, ever, once by the FBI or the Department of Justice involving this case. I will say, if you look at the track record of Leslie N- Wexner, it's incredibly bizarre. He claims that Epstein was a con man who stole his money for decades. In 1991, we have the power of attorney that was signed over to him. He claims that Epstein was a financial genius and a wizard. We have the transferring of the townhome, which eventually there was some payment, uh, that was reconciled, uh, on the back end. But an incredible amount of control that Jeffrey Epstein had over Leslie Wexner's finances, over the Wexner Foundation, which he used to funnel money to Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel, support many Zionist causes under the Wexner Foundation, including the Wexner Fellowship, currently at Harvard University. I do think it's important for us to explore some more of that. There's some very odd dealings with the beginnings of their relationship. Previous Epstein associates have testified that in 1992, which is shortly after power of attorney and all of that, uh, was acquired, or the relationship, sorry, between Epstein and Wexner began, is that much of Epstein's lifestyle exploded. Wexner does not even dispute, uh, that Epstein had vast control over his finances, and even claims that he was stolen from by Jeffrey Epstein, that their, uh, relationship is supposed to have ended sometime, I think, in 2007. But he has not yet answered questions about this relationship in an open public forum, beyond some statements, and he currently did issue an opening statement for the record. I personally would like to see the release of that transcript. I mean, all for transparency here in this particular case. He's an 88-year-old man, and I do think it's genuinely bizarre... Oh, and, uh, not to even mention the modeling, uh, industry, uh, which, you know, Eps- uh, which Wexner himself was involved in, and there's several emails, including Wexner's own crude drawing in the Epstein birthday book involving boobs, that he said that's all Epstein ever wanted. So their b- their relationship is bizarre, goes back decades. Wexner maintains, as I said, that he was conned and that he was stolen from. I don't really believe much of that story. Uh, Michael, you and I have now read thousands of Epstein emails. There's no fr- uh, sophisticated financial instruments going on, uh, even back to the very beginnings of, uh, Jeffrey Epstein's claims here about managing money. N- almost none of it s- passes the smell test. David, you're a very high net worth individual. You can go to Goldman Sachs or many other financial houses and get teams of people to manage money for sophisticated, uh, financial instruments and others not available to the rest of us. It'd be very odd for you to turn over-

David Sacks 30:02 Well, let me ask you, so, so he-

Saagar Enjeti 30:02 ... your finances to, to Jeffrey Epstein.

David Sacks 30:04 Yeah, so he, he began his career, I guess, at Bear Stearns. I guess there was a brief stint where he worked... I guess, he... One of the curious things about him is he dropped out of college-

Saagar Enjeti 30:14 Yes

David Sacks 30:14 ... around age 20.... I guess he was studying math. He then was a teacher at the Dalton School for, like, a year.

Saagar Enjeti 30:20 Correct.

David Sacks 30:20 And then he worked at Bear Stearns for four years?

Saagar Enjeti 30:23 He, he met Ace Greenberg through the Dalton School. Greenberg's, I think it was... It was either one of his children, uh, was there, and then he went to Bear Stearns. He's fired from Bear Stearns after a couple of years, and that's when his descent into what I call, like, the darkness, his expertise in money laundering, I believe that that's when it was honed, as reflects in the record and the testimony of the people who dealt with him there at the time, including the false passport, Iran-Contra, arms smuggling, and all of that that I've laid out.

David Sacks 30:48 Okay, so-

Michael Tracey 30:48 Saagar, can I ask you a quick question? 'Cause I know you have to go soon.

Saagar Enjeti 30:50 Yes.

Michael Tracey 30:50 I, I, I'm, I'm honestly curious if you would agree with this statement from Thomas Massie. This is from-

Saagar Enjeti 30:54 Okay

Michael Tracey 30:55 ... February 16th. He says, quote, "We're exposing the extent of Epstein's global pedophile ring and how it touches our government and aristocracy."

Saagar Enjeti 31:05 Mm-hmm.

Michael Tracey 31:05 So do you think it's a factually valid statement that what we know to have taken place, and maybe even is still ongoing, is a, quote, global pedophile ring?

Saagar Enjeti 31:16 Well, I mean, when what you're asking about a global pedophile ring is-

Michael Tracey 31:20 This is Massie

Saagar Enjeti 31:21 ... was there... Well, sorry?

Michael Tracey 31:22 This is Thomas Massie saying it, not me.

Saagar Enjeti 31:24 Yeah, Thomas Massie. A global pedophile ring-

Michael Tracey 31:26 Right

Saagar Enjeti 31:26 ... is a ring of global elites who seemed aware and perhaps participated in the abuse of underage children. Now, Michael, I will grant you this, and what I respect you the most-

Michael Tracey 31:37 So do you agree with the statement?

Saagar Enjeti 31:37 Well, no, I will grant you this. What I think you do well is to parse the actual individual claim of many of the victims and others that are out there, and I actually think you have a great role in this ecosystem for debunking, especially some of the lowest IQ content which is out there, like you did with the torture video. So I do wanna appreciate you for doing that. I do-

Michael Tracey 31:55 That was low-hanging fruit.

Saagar Enjeti 31:56 Well-

Michael Tracey 31:57 I mean, I don't-

Saagar Enjeti 31:57 Right, right, right, but, but, but

Michael Tracey 31:58 I don't really appreciate this idea that I only focus on low-IQ social media blather.

Saagar Enjeti 32:02 Okay, Michael, I, I-

Michael Tracey 32:03 I've delved very deeply into the legal minutiae of all this, Saagar.

Saagar Enjeti 32:07 Yes, I know you have, and I'm, I-

Michael Tracey 32:08 Jeffrey Epstein is just casually called a pedophile, i- virtually everywhere in the media, a- among every politician-

Saagar Enjeti 32:15 Right

Michael Tracey 32:15 ... nonstop.

Saagar Enjeti 32:15 And, Michael, much of your criticism-

Michael Tracey 32:17 And if you go and actually look at what he was, what he was convicted of in Florida-

Saagar Enjeti 32:17 Right, but your criticism, Michael, is that actually-

Michael Tracey 32:19 Nobody's s- nobody's thought to actually look at-

Saagar Enjeti 32:20 He was a ped- a ephebophile-

Michael Tracey 32:21 Nobody but-

Saagar Enjeti 32:21 ... because he liked pre, uh, post-pubescent 15-year-old girls

Michael Tracey 32:23 ... Saagar, don't you find it bizarre, don't you find it bizarre that for all the enormous media resources that have been poured into this story over the past however many years, among, by newspapers, magazines, podcasts, Netflix specials-

Saagar Enjeti 32:34 Mm

Michael Tracey 32:34 ... you name it, I guess I'm the only one who ever thought to actually go into the Florida court docket and pull up the transcript of the plea hearing in June of 2008 when he entered his gu- two guilty pleas, uh, his guilty plea in Char, uh, Florida for two state-level prostitution charges? And he's called a convicted pedophile ad nauseam. It turns out, the sole minor victim who was cited in that plea hearing as the o- sole minor to whom he procured for prostitution was literally 17 years old and-

Saagar Enjeti 33:03 Yes, Michael, I understand that

Michael Tracey 33:04 ... one day before 18th-

Saagar Enjeti 33:04 because they picked the oldest person-

Michael Tracey 33:06 One day before her 18th birthday, whose name-

Saagar Enjeti 33:07 ... in the indictment to plead guilty to, and there's a 14, 15-year-old, which is named in the 2007 draft indictment, which was released-

Michael Tracey 33:13 So is he a convicted pedophile or not?

Saagar Enjeti 33:14 Michael, you're focusing... I'm, I am focusing on a federal document. Uh, there's a federal document which specifically alleges a 14- and a 15-year-old were abused, including asking a 15-year-old-

Michael Tracey 33:23 Which document?

Saagar Enjeti 33:23 ... if there is... The 2007 draft. Uh, you have read it.

Michael Tracey 33:26 Oh, a draft indictment-

Saagar Enjeti 33:27 I know that you have

Michael Tracey 33:27 ... you're gonna take as dispositive?

Saagar Enjeti 33:28 Well, I, I'm not gonna... Okay, unfortunately, it was never, uh-

Michael Tracey 33:31 The indictment was never filed

Saagar Enjeti 33:31 ... it was never indicted because of the plea agreement, which eventually came forward. I mean, I think you're using the same tactic Alan Dershowitz did in his defense. Unfortunately-

Michael Tracey 33:39 I have nothing to do with-

Saagar Enjeti 33:39 I have to-

Michael Tracey 33:40 I have nothing to do with Dershowitz, or-

Saagar Enjeti 33:41 [laughs]

Michael Tracey 33:41 ... I don't share his tactical maneuver.

Saagar Enjeti 33:42 I unfortunately have to take my child to a doctor's appointment-

Michael Tracey 33:45 That's more important [laughs]

Saagar Enjeti 33:47 ... David, as I flagged, uh, to all of you-

Michael Tracey 33:49 Yeah, you do

Saagar Enjeti 33:49 ... uh, and, uh, uh, in the beginning of this entire thing. And I do want to say-

Michael Tracey 33:52 I think you're operating in good faith as well, Saagar, for the most part, unlike a lot of people who have glommed onto this story, and you're willing to, you know, engage on the substance. So that, again, is appreciated by me, and, you know, whenever you'd like to engage further, I'm always available.

Saagar Enjeti 34:05 All right, Michael. Uh, thank you, David, for the invitation.

David Sacks 34:08 Yes, thank you for coming, Saagar, appreciate

David Sacks 34:10 it. All right, so Michael, let me kind of reset here.

Michael Tracey 34:13 Okay.

David Sacks 34:14 I'm, I'm not sure you've had a chance to kinda lay out your case for what you called Epstein mythology.

Michael Tracey 34:21 Yep.

David Sacks 34:22 So I wanna give you a chance to kind of just lay out your thesis here, that what's happening is actually a, a type of moral panic or feeding frenzy, a type of hysteria. You've compared it to the Salem witch trials.

Michael Tracey 34:35 Yep.

David Sacks 34:35 There was also the case in the 1980s of the whole Daycare child abuse-

Michael Tracey 34:39 Satanic panic-

David Sacks 34:40 The Satanic panic

Michael Tracey 34:40 ... that's what it's called. Yeah.

David Sacks 34:42 Where I think hundreds of people went to jail or were prosecuted for that, it turned out.

Michael Tracey 34:45 Uh, I don't know if it was hundreds, but-

David Sacks 34:47 Yeah

Michael Tracey 34:47 ... uh, more than enough to make it a extreme miscarriage of justice.

David Sacks 34:53 So that's the comparison you've made. So I guess I wanna let you lay out that case in a clear way, 'cause I'm not sure that you've had a chance to quite do that yet.

Michael Tracey 35:02 Yeah. I mean, I've definitely laid out my case on this score in many other venues and on many other occasions, but I guess not on this particular-

David Sacks 35:09 Yeah

Michael Tracey 35:09 ... podcast yet, so I'm happy to sketch it out. In terms of the Satanic Panic parallel, that's not one that I would have necessarily been most inclined to bring up until recently, just because there's now this new layer of the mythology that's added, been added with the production of these Epstein, quote, "files," where people are reading snippets of emails to signify some kind of coded messaging around cannibalism or around grotesque child sacrifice. That really wasn't a hallmark of the Epstein story so much before this enormous tranche of emails were released. And it relates to the Satanic Panic frenzy insofar as claims around such things as, like, truly grotesque child sacrifice, mutilation of infants, you know, bathing toddlers in blood, like, all the most nightmarish scenarios you could possibly dream up, were alleged in the 1980s and taken deadly seriously by the authorities, resulting in, as you alluded to, a good number of people actually being thrown in prison for many years. And it was turn- it was found to be just a-... gigantic hoax. Um, but another, maybe a more apt parallel that also would have been apt even before this latest record production, is that the Satanic Panic frenzy of the 1980s was, uh, uh, ultimately concluded to have originated really with one woman, who was just straightforwardly mentally ill, delusional, needed to essentially be institutionalized, and yet she would make claims about sex ab- child sex abuse that the authorities countenanced or gave credence to. And there's a similar thing going on with the Epstein mythology. Now, when I mention the Epstein mythology, I'm not talking about the 2007, 2008 Florida non-prosecution agreement or that whole scenario that Saagar brought up in piecemeal before. That's a different element of this whole story. The mythology developed later, mostly around 2014, with the introduction of these new claims by Virginia Roberts Giuffre and her lawyers, Bradley Edwards, Paul Cassell, later David Boies, in which she alleged that she had been child sex trafficked around the world, and that she knew that Epstein enforced this child sex trafficking operation via blackmail. And also, she made specific allegations against three s- particular individuals: Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, Jean-Luc Brunel, and then also she accused a generic category of other high-profile prile persons, who she didn't specify, as also victimizing her, like prime ministers and, um, uh, politicians and s- presidents and so forth. Um, so that's the, basically the origin of what I would call the mythology, which is just sort of a, of a different order or magnitude than the initial Palm Beach prosecution-

David Sacks 38:12 Okay, got it.

Michael Tracey 38:12 ... which was effectively a local crime. But in terms of the mytholog- uh, the parallel to the Satanic Panic, Virginia Roberts Giuffre was a d- profoundly disturbed, mentally unwell person, who was validated and legitimized, and now continues to be celebrated as some kind of martyr for truth, even though if anybody had used a lick of discernment about... as to her claims, it would've been found that she could not be treated so credulously. Maybe she needed some help, but this idea that she would be the basis for this global scandal that's rocking all these countries is just outrageous. And there are two others who are fundament- two other mentally ill women, and I don't say that even to be pejorative or derogatory at all. It's just objectively true if you take a look. Maria Farmer is one of these other, uh, definitely mentally ill persons who, for example, introduced or was integral in in- introducing this idea that Epstein had cameras set up in all his bedrooms and bathrooms, and was surreptitiously recording prominent people, so he could use it for blackmail. And then another one, Sarah Ransome, was one of the people who spurred the mythology, in large part, around the island. So she came to claim, after going through several mental health crises, that she had been systematically raped at the island, even though when she actually had to eventually give deposition, she really described nothing of the sort. She was also an adult when she went to the island voluntarily, and she described a, what it was effectively a sex- a consensual, you know, minor sexual encounter with Epstein, but she dramatized it radically in the wake. And people don't know... I mean, d- David, did you, did you know this, or does anybody know that there... in, in the public know, that despite everybody and their mother, [chuckles] including, like, Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, et, et al, decl- declaring that the Epstein property in the US Virgin Islands, the private island, that it's Rape Island or Pedophile Island, that there's never been a credible allegation of rape ever discovered that, that take, that took place on that island? Like, is that well-known, or am I crazy?

David Sacks 40:13 No, it's not well-known. The only reason I knew is because I've heard you on a couple of podcasts-

Michael Tracey 40:20 Right

David Sacks 40:20 ... so I thought it was i- important to get you on as a counterpoint. So just with respect to these three women, they did go to the island. Is, is that true?

Michael Tracey 40:28 Sarah Ransome did.

David Sacks 40:29 Okay.

Michael Tracey 40:29 Um, Maria Farmer, no. Maria Farmer is the one who purported that she was actually the original Epstein accuser, and she was this great hero whistleblower, because she tried to sound the alarm way before all these other females were abused. She claims that in 1996, after she had been a 25-year-old employee of Epstein's, who basically sat at his front desk in his New York townhouse, that she was invited and accepted, uh, to go to the Ohio compound of Leslie Wexner to be an artist in residence of sorts, 'cause she was a paint- a painter. And then she claimed that over the course of her interactions with Epstein and Maxwell, she ended up filing a first, an attempted police report, and then went to the FBI, and she never really specified what it is that she claimed that she reported to the FBI with any clarity. But she told this tale about how Epstein had supposedly stolen these photographs that she had produced of her younger sisters, who were below the age of 18, so that she could use those photographs to paint paintings of her younger sisters in the nude. Now, I don't know. I mean, I guess that's a confession to production of child pornography, but technically speaking, but, you know... Um, but that's what she claimed, and then she also added that she had been sexually assaulted or abused or raped by both Epstein and Maxwell, and somehow over the course of that assault, at age 26, she had, like, a divine revelation, lit- literally, and realized that they were both pedophiles. This is how she recounted it years after the fact. And if you look at the police r- that FBI intake report or the complaint that was memorialized, that has come out, in terms of the, what was, uh, contemporaneously documented, she mentions nothing about a sexual assault. She mentions nothing about any kind of sex crime at all. She simply claims that these photos of hers were stolen, and there's never been any evidence that those pho- photos were actually stolen. So that's one person, and she's come be... These are, and they, these three women, Ransome, Farmer-... uh, Giuffre, Roberts Giuffre, were all integral in different dimensions of the mythology. They were incredibly important name plaintiffs in critical litigation, and they, you know, criminal investigations were launched based on the basis of her- their claims in various respects, and they're all just profoundly mentally ill, erratic, and wholly unreliable to the degree that if we're gonna have a international pedophilic mass hysteria narrative that's at all predicated [chuckles] on their claims, then we've entered into a fantasy land because it will never in the future hold up to any kind of rational re-evaluation or scrutiny at all.

David Sacks 43:07 Okay, so Roberts Giuffre or, or VRG as-

Michael Tracey 43:10 Yeah

David Sacks 43:10 ... as I think you've called her in your Substack.

Michael Tracey 43:13 Yeah. [chuckles]

David Sacks 43:13 When did she come forward with her-

Michael Tracey 43:16 Yeah

David Sacks 43:16 ... her story? 'Cause I-

Michael Tracey 43:18 So-

David Sacks 43:18 She was the basis of that Netflix movie or documentary called Filthy Rich-

Michael Tracey 43:24 Filthy Rich

David Sacks 43:24 ... about, about Epstein.

Michael Tracey 43:25 Yeah.

David Sacks 43:26 You're saying that that happened after the whole 2008-

Michael Tracey 43:29 Yeah

David Sacks 43:29 ... Palm Beach?

Michael Tracey 43:31 Yeah, I'll, I'll explain. By the way, Filthy Rich, which, uh, o- over this past summer when the Epstein furor kind of got reignited, it, like, skyrocketed to, like, the one of the, you know, the top of the charts on Netflix once again. So that little piece of commercial, uh, commercial propaganda has been very determinative in terms of how people have had their perception shaped of this issue. And it is like literal propaganda, I would argue, in the sense that it was concocted as a PR vehicle for the victim, quote, unquote, "victims," and especially their lawyers, to create, like, a public clamor for some kind of remedial action to be taken against, um, Epstein's co-conspirators or b- more, more, more relevantly, his estate. It was, it was a maneuver. It was a PR maneuver by a legal team who worked alongside the producers of that documentary, as it has, as has been so much of the mass market entertainment products that have been produced around the Epstein affair. It's only taken from that one perspective of the purported victims, and that perspective is shaped very carefully by their lawyers to create this sanitized survivor narrative that is now the predominant one. But in terms of her origins, yes, she, um, she initially filed some civil litigation around, mm, I wanna say, '09, 2010, maybe '08, as a Jane Doe. Um, maybe, maybe 2011, somewhere in that range. As first as a Jane Doe, meaning she wasn't named in the litigation, and this related to a period of around 2001, 2002, when she was in the Epstein orbit to some extent. And there's, there's evidence that she was in the Epstein orbit to some extent. She's not hallucinating everything. I've argued that I would... She's not so much a liar, I wouldn't say. Like, I've never directly accused her of lying about anything as such. I've called... I've said that she's kind of confabulated an alternate reality, and that's a little bit different 'cause it doesn't necessarily connote willful deceit, and it's almost even more disturbing if you think about it, but-

David Sacks 45:42 What's your basis for that? The big one, I guess, is that in your view, that she recanted her story about Dershowitz, or?

Michael Tracey 45:50 Yeah, she recanted her story, not just about Dershowitz. That's maybe the most well-known instance of her recanting one of her marquee claims, and it really o- only came about because Dershowitz was unusually motivated to actually pursue some sort of resolution through a very protracted litigation process against very high-powered lawyers. I mean, one of the fallacies here is that these survivors, quote, unquote, "such as Virginia, are taken to be these beleaguered victims, et cetera, who had no power at all in this dynamic." And yet, I mean, they were represented by some of the most powerful and skillful lawyers in the country, such as David Boies, who's, like, one of the best-known lawyers of all time and was hugely well-resourced. And also, you know, Virginia Giuffre became incredibly wealthy, maybe not as wealthy as you, David, but, you know, twenty... estimates range from, like, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five million dollars. It's hard to know 'cause a lot of the settlement details are secret. Um, so it wasn't just this hapless victim who had nothing, no leg to stand on in order to make her claims. But yeah, Dershowitz, she ended up recanting her allegations. And r- bear in mind, it wasn't just that she, you know, happened to level some accusation at some point, maybe in, like, casual banter. It's that she made allegations of herself having been victimized by Dershowitz sexually on at least six or seven occasions, and she described each individual instance of that victimization in vivid, graphic, almost grotesque detail, describing Dershowitz's body parts, sexual proclivities, et cetera, and she did this in sworn affidavits and under deposition, so could theoretically even be subject to perjury charges should a prosecutor ever have been inclined to bring them, which of course, they wouldn't have been in this environment. Um, and but it goes much further. She had to recant claims against a Harvard professor, a Stephen Coughlin, who she claims she had intercourse with. Um, she recanted even claims against Jean-Luc Brunel, who's another sort of actor or a player in this whole story that leads people to make their postulations about there being this supposedly international sex trafficking ring because he was, like, a modeling mogul. But he ended up getting arrested by French authorities under pressure from the US in 2019, after Epstein himself was federally indicted and arrested. And given the vagaries of the French legal system, which I don't fully comprehend still in relation to the United States, he was in custody or incarcerated for quite a long time pri- prior to any formal charges being brought. Eventually, she's called to provide evidence against... Virginia is called from Australia to go to Paris to provide evidence against Jean-Luc Brunel in 2021 in this format that is nothing that takes place in the US, but it's like where the both the defense and the prosecution have an ability to question or have colloquies with the accuser.... and she ends up having to retract her claims against him as well. And, you know, they, the, her lawyers had to admit that this memoir that she produced, or memoir, memoir manuscript that she produced in 2011 and 2012, that she was sort of scheming with this ghostwriter, who was potentially gonna work with her, Sharon Churcher, a journalist at the Daily Mail. She was scheming about how they could get the biggest possible book deal or even, like, a movie deal or some kind of entertainment package deal, and she already had been paid 160,000-plus by the Daily Mail, plus serialization revenue for having done an interview with them and given over the Prince Andrew photo. And then they wanted to marshal or leverage that momentum pub- publicity-wise from the Daily Mail's articles in 2011 into a book. And so Charon- Sharon Churcher, in this email exchange, you can go read it, it came acro- it came out in litigation, says, "Hey, yeah, you know what? Just, like, throw out- throw anybody's name that you can think of who might have had the most fleeting association with Jeffrey Epstein, and that'll get us the biggest possible book deal. That'll entice the most publishers and agents. And as to Dershowitz, yeah, I mean, he's pretty well-known, and we all think he's a pedo, so throw him in there, too." I mean, that's what they're saying. Um, and, you know, this is the-

David Sacks 49:47 Whoa, whoa, wait. This, this is your interpretation of what happened with the book?

Michael Tracey 49:50 No, it's almost literally what they say. I'm almost quoting ver- uh, I'm not f- exactly quoting verbatim.

David Sacks 49:54 Wait, who said that? Who said that?

Michael Tracey 49:56 This is what Churcher says to Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and she's all on board with it.

David Sacks 50:01 Well, how do we know that?

Michael Tracey 50:03 'Cause we have the transcripts of the emails.

David Sacks 50:06 Oh, wow. Okay, and then she-

Michael Tracey 50:07 They came out of the course of discovery in, in litigation.

David Sacks 50:10 And this person was... Giuffre's-

Michael Tracey 50:13 She was a tabloid trash journalist, yeah, who was working behind the scenes with Virginia.

David Sacks 50:16 She was a journalist who co-authored the book with her, or what was-

Michael Tracey 50:18 They were in talks with her-

David Sacks 50:19 What was her involvement?

Michael Tracey 50:19 ... to potentially be the co-author of the book. Uh, so they were s- they were sort of strategizing as to how they could get a book deal or get a literary agent to sign on with Virginia and get her a lucrative book deal.

David Sacks 50:34 And then what, what ended up happening?

Michael Tracey 50:38 A draft manuscript was produced. I don't know exactly how involved Churcher was in the-

David Sacks 50:42 Was there a book published, or?

Michael Tracey 50:45 Not initially. Finally, a version did eventually come out last October, after Virginia Roberts Giuffre's purported death in April of last year. And I just only say purported 'cause the circumstances of it are still bizarre. Look, I mean, I'm... I, I'm willing to grant that she is, in fact, dead at this point, but, I mean, that's another sort of tangent.

David Sacks 51:03 Right.

Michael Tracey 51:03 But no, it didn't come out for a long time. A, a draft was produced, and then the draft manuscript had to be pr- had to be, um, um, revealed or pr- handed over, over the course of litigation with Dershowitz. And her lawyers, by the, by 2017 to 2019, had to admit on her behalf, so David Boies et al., that this fiction... that, that this memoir manuscript, which had been presented as nonfiction, which was shopped around to potential book publishers as nonfiction, which had been the basis for a lot of media coverage around these allegations as, uh, as though it were a non-fictional representation of her purported experiences, they finally have to admit that it was a fictionalized account [chuckles] of her purported experiences. So, like, for example-

David Sacks 51:50 This is, this is VRG's own lawyers-

Michael Tracey 51:52 Yes

David Sacks 51:52 ... admitted.

Michael Tracey 51:52 Yes.

David Sacks 51:52 Like David Boies.

Michael Tracey 51:54 Right. Yep.

David Sacks 51:55 So they basically said that this manuscript, which had been the basis for her story, and you're saying-

Michael Tracey 52:00 A lot of the mythology.

David Sacks 52:01 And you're saying-

Michael Tracey 52:01 Like, Bill Clinton was on the island, she claimed.

David Sacks 52:03 You're saying that-

Michael Tracey 52:03 No evidence that Bill Clinton was ever on the island. He did fly around on Epstein's private jet in 2002 and 2003, but no evidence he ever went to the island.

David Sacks 52:09 So Bill Clinton was never on the island.

Michael Tracey 52:10 She claimed that she saw him on the island, and which is false, as far as we go- as far as we know, or as far, far as all the available evidence has ever suggested.

David Sacks 52:18 That probably is one of the most repeated claims-

Michael Tracey 52:21 Right

David Sacks 52:21 ... in respect to Epstein-

Michael Tracey 52:22 It's false

David Sacks 52:22 ... which is that Bill Clinton was on the island, and you're saying that's just completely untrue. And that came from VRG's manuscript, which ultimately they had to admit was a work of fiction, not nonfiction. At least her own lawyers did.

Michael Tracey 52:34 Correct. Correct, but to... But what's so mind-boggling is that just relatively recently, after this whole blowup around Epstein got ignited [chuckles] last July, the book publishers obviously realized that it was a v- hi- highly profitable opportunity for them to produce some version of her manuscript in the form of a new memoir. Now, she had been working on a new version of it with another ghostwriter for some time, Amy Wallace. But they obviously wanted to peg the publication of it to this n- renewed Epstein uproar. So this, her, quote... The, the memoir finally gets published in some capacity in October of last year. It becomes an international bestseller, not just in the United States, but in Britain, Australia, et cetera. And I'm still stunned. I mean, maybe I ca- I'm, I don't, I can no longer really be stunned anymore, but it's still stunning to think back on how credulously the reception to that memoir was, even though, I mean, it was basically just Amy Wallace, this ghostwriter, repackaging and massaging, um... Well, I always catch myself when I use the verb massage now. I shouldn't use that. Repackaging the initial memoir manuscript and basically updating it for 2025. And nowhere-

David Sacks 53:54 Wait, so, so does that mean-

Michael Tracey 53:54 ... nowhere do they, nowhere do they dis- do they disclose that it's based on a fictionalized [chuckles] manuscript, so it's just a fraud that was perpetuated.

David Sacks 54:00 Wait, so they ultimately did publish a version of the manuscript?

Michael Tracey 54:03 Yes, last year.

David Sacks 54:04 And did that book include the accusations against Dershowitz and Bill Clinton, or had that been removed by that point?

Michael Tracey 54:11 To clarify, those allegations of sexual improprieties against Dershowitz were not in the 2011 manuscript. Those were concocted later as a basis for Virginia Roberts Giuffre to join this ongoing litigation that her lawyer, Bradley Edwards, had initiated around something called the Crime Victims' Rights Act, and how the non-prosecution agreement from 2007, 2008 had supposedly violated the non- the Crime Victims' Rights Act. It's a, it's a complicated issue, um, but that was debuted. Those da- those claims against Dershowitz w- were debuted in December of 2014.... um, but there are a bunch of other claims already in the manuscript from 2011, and there's a reference to Dershowitz, but it's just not a, a, an accusation of sexual, uh, misconduct.

David Sacks 54:54 Okay, got it. Okay, the, the three women that you mentioned, um, [lips smack] Giuffre, Ransome, Farmer, did they have the same lawyers or different lawyers? Were the lawyers working together?

Michael Tracey 55:03 Uh, pretty much the same lawyers.

David Sacks 55:04 Okay.

Michael Tracey 55:04 I mean, it's basically the same cabal of lawyers. It's, uh, David Boies' firm-

David Sacks 55:08 So is it your, is it your argument-

Michael Tracey 55:09 ... Boies Schiller and then Bradley Edwards' firm.

David Sacks 55:11 Okay.

Michael Tracey 55:11 Bradley Edwards was the initial lawyer that w- that oversaw primarily the Florida... The, the, the purported victims from the Palm Beach phase, from like 2002 to 2005, um, he started representing them around 2008, and then Boies came a little bit later around the more kind of grandiose litigation. But they were working... They've worked in conjunction with one another, and still are. They're still suing as a, in a class action lawsuit that they initiated last October, Bank of America, to extract a couple of hundred more million dollars, just like they did from JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, and the Epstein estate, and plenty of individualized s- lawsuits that they've alluded to but never, um, clarified the parameters of. Like, they brag, Bradley Edwards does, that they got like 20 or 25 settlements that are still secret, he says, from specific individuals whom he acknowledges may not have committed any wrongdoing at all, but just simply don't want to suffer the PR backlash that we're seeing now on steroids. So it's a hugely lucrative industry, and I don't know. You tell me, David, is this like dimension of this whole story ever mentioned anywhere in any of the popular media coverage, whether it's on podcasts-

David Sacks 56:20 No

Michael Tracey 56:20 ... or on CNN or anywhere?

David Sacks 56:21 No. Um, okay, so... And even the Deutsche Bank settlement, I don't think I'd heard of that. What did- what was that?

Michael Tracey 56:28 So when Epstein dies, August 10th, 2019, right, the... A feeding frenzy breaks out in terms of litigation that is brought against his estate. 'Cause at that point, Epstein is obviously no longer available to contest any claims that are made against him, and libel laws cease to apply. People are aware, obviously, that he was very wealthy. He wasn't like a multi-multi-billionaire, as a lot of people suspected at the time, but according to his, um, disclosure of assets when he was arrested, his net worth was like six h- uh, 650 million, so still a pretty big estate. And so because of this flood of lawsuits against the estate, the executors of the estate, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, decide to agree to coordinate with the victims' lawyers, Bradley Edwards, David Boies, et al, to set up a basically a mediation program that they call the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund, which is a holistic settlement process that victims or alleged victims could submit claims to, and then there would be a mediator brought in to evaluate the claims and decide what amount of money to give out. So there wouldn't have to just be like a flood of individual lawsuits. They could kind of consolidate it. And so they set up a settlement model, basically, for the Epstein estate, which was expressly non-adversarial, meaning there would be no adversarial scrutinization of the claims that were made to justify somebody's entitlement to millions of dollars. People, um, as a, a, a... Claimants were entitled to as much as $5 billion from just this one settlement fund, and it was tax-free, by the way.

David Sacks 58:14 Wait, this is with, this is with Deutsche Bank?

Michael Tracey 58:16 No, no, this is the Epstein estate. I'm getting to Deutsche Bank-

David Sacks 58:18 Oh, I'm sorry, okay

Michael Tracey 58:18 ... 'cause it ties into the Epstein estate.

David Sacks 58:19 Okay.

Michael Tracey 58:19 From the Epstein estate. This... The Epstein estate was first in the chronology of settlements, and so they set up a settlement model, right? So non-adversarial, confidential, tax-free, because they claim that it applies under s- that it could be categorized under the IRS code as, like, uh, compensation for a, an injury, so therefore you don't have to pay income taxes on it. Um, and so that gets set up, right? And then-

David Sacks 58:40 And who adjudicates that?

Michael Tracey 58:43 The court in the US Virgin Islands, 'cause the estate was domiciled in the US Virgin Islands, appointed, on the recommendation of both parties, a, an independent mediator or administrator, Simona Lelchuk, her name is, who specialized, she claimed anyway, in this sort of thing, and, like, she had a extra sensitivity towards sexual assault victims, she claimed. Um, I mean, it's kind of a phony... Uh, we, we don't want to get, you know, sucked into that necessarily tangent, but, um, yeah. So there's an independent administrator, and that was modeled, they said, on previous consolidated settlement mechanisms, such as, like, the Jerry Sandusky... Um, I don't know if you recall the Jerry Sandusky sand-

David Sacks 59:27 Mm-hmm

Michael Tracey 59:27 ... scandal at Penn State, where cl- uh, claims were made that this football coach had abused a bunch of boys, and so a consolidated settlement program was set up to pay out settlements to claimants and like-

David Sacks 59:36 Okay, got it. So that's the Epstein estate.

Michael Tracey 59:37 Yeah.

David Sacks 59:37 So let's get to the Deutsche Bank aspect.

Michael Tracey 59:38 Yeah, yeah. So then they, they, they take that model that had been set up for the Epstein estate, and then they start going after banking... major multinational banking institutions that David Boies and Bradley Edwards decide to, very creatively and cleverly, I have to say, allege were complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's, like, world-spanning s- child sex trafficking operation, and therefore were liable-

David Sacks 1:00:01 Wait, what is the nexus between Deutsche Bank or Bank of America and Epstein? W- were those the banks that he used?

Michael Tracey 1:00:07 Je- Epstein banked at those institutions.

David Sacks 1:00:09 Okay.

Michael Tracey 1:00:10 So first JP Morgan, from, like, the late '90s to 2013, roughly, and then Deutsche Bank from 2013 to 2019. And-

David Sacks 1:00:18 And the argument is that they should have somehow stopped his activities-

Michael Tracey 1:00:22 Yeah, that they were neg-

David Sacks 1:00:23 ... or, or failed to do a KYC-

Michael Tracey 1:00:24 Yeah

David Sacks 1:00:24 ... or something like that?

Michael Tracey 1:00:25 Yeah, I mean, they, they, they, they, they, they first started making a much more accusatory argument about their direct complicity in facilitating a sex trafficking operation. But what the judge ultimately agreed to was to, that they were effectively, or they were reasonably guilty or reasonably to be found liable for essentially negligence. Because Epstein would withdraw cash-... and that's supposed to trigger certain monitoring provisions that it was claimed JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank did not satisfactorily do. I mean, it was kind of like a stretch of an argument, frankly.

David Sacks 1:00:59 Okay, I get it. I get it. Okay, but-

Michael Tracey 1:00:59 But because of, like, the popular climate around, oh, some of the pe- anybody who was involved in this in any way has to pay for all this pedophilic sex trafficking, there wasn't a whole lot [chuckles] really that the lawyers for those banking institutions could do to take the heat off.

David Sacks 1:01:13 Okay, got it.

Michael Tracey 1:01:13 So they settled, right?

David Sacks 1:01:13 Okay.

Michael Tracey 1:01:14 So they settled.

David Sacks 1:01:14 Right, so they settled and-

Michael Tracey 1:01:14 So there are two settlement funds, and that... Yeah, so a- and one thing-

David Sacks 1:01:17 How, how big are those settlement funds, tho- those two?

Michael Tracey 1:01:20 So JP Morgan was... Ended up totaling around $290 million, and the lawyers end up convincing the judge who presided over this agreement in New York, the federal judge, Rakoff, to grant them 30% in legal fees or attorney's fees that they claimed. Um, and Deutsche Bank was around 90 million or 80 million maybe. Um-

David Sacks 1:01:42 Okay. So it's, so-

Michael Tracey 1:01:44 So just to add those up, though, so the Epstein estate was around, if I'm remembering, $121 million, and that's gone up, actually, since even more litigation's been filed, separated apart from the class action settlement. JP Morgan, 290, Deutsche Bank, around 80 or 90, so we're already at, like, a half a billion dollar industry, and there's plenty of other lawsuits and settlements that have been spawned from this thing. And so I just have never understood, or I do understand it, so I should correct myself... I've always found it perversely amazing that this whole aspect of this story is never mentioned, 'cause it's led to s- such things as this gross inflation of the total number of victims, where you have adults men who are eligible-

David Sacks 1:02:24 You're saying that there are financial incentives.

Michael Tracey 1:02:26 Of course.

David Sacks 1:02:26 You're saying there's financial incentives here. And just the lawyers are... These are contingency fee plaintiffs' lawyers? They get, like, 30%, or what's their... I mean, these guys are not paid by the hour, right? They're, they're-

Michael Tracey 1:02:36 No

David Sacks 1:02:36 ... They get-

Michael Tracey 1:02:37 W- well, no. Well, could... The, the... I don't think it's... No, not, it's not a contingency fee-

David Sacks 1:02:42 Okay

Michael Tracey 1:02:43 ... set up for this. They, they got the judge to approve a 30% earmark of the resulting settlement funds to be, uh, gi- given over for attorney's fees. So it wasn't a contingent based on the client, it was that the judge approved 30% of the overall settlement.

David Sacks 1:03:01 Got it. So the, the lawyers who sort of organized these settlement pools-

Michael Tracey 1:03:06 Right

David Sacks 1:03:07 ... negotiated essentially their cut up front, and you're saying that-

Michael Tracey 1:03:11 With the judge, right.

David Sacks 1:03:11 With the judge, and you're saying that was about 30% of all the settlements?

Michael Tracey 1:03:14 It was exactly 30%.

David Sacks 1:03:15 Okay. Okay, got it.

Michael Tracey 1:03:16 But you have a... If you have a set of criteria that are so lax, I mean, JP Morgan eve- had even more lax criteria than the Epstein estate, which basically allowed anybody who ever, like, came within two football fields of Jeffrey Epstein to file a claim against him and get a few million dollars, tax-free. Um, but the, it w- the JP Morgan settlement was even more lax. So there are people who are event- basically, uh, rejected... The few [chuckles] who were rejected from the Epstein estate fund ended up getting a settlement from, some of them anyway, the JP Morgan or Deutsche Bank fund. So that, that's... So this woman, Lisa Phillips, who was, like, an adult model, never made any claim about anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein that was wrongful for, like, 20 years, said on a podcast publicly that she had no idea what these girls were talking about when they make these allegations against Jeffrey Epstein. As of 2020, she said this. By 2023, she's getting, you know, she never... She- I asked her, she didn't disclose to me her full amount, but, you know, probably around 2 million at, at least, and then she- they get free healthcare from yet another settlement between the US Virgin Islands, the government of the US Virgin Islands, and the, and JP Morgan, um, that they set aside for just free healthcare for, until 2028 for any allel- alleged Epstein victim. Um, and it's just like, w- don't people [chuckles] recognize how that can be incentivized, this i- inflation of the number of total victims we're told must exist, and that thus gives rise to this mass hysteria and moral panic about, like, thousands of victims? I mean, at this Bondi, Pam Bondi hearing that was so contentious last week at the House Judiciary Committee, you had people screaming, "Thousands of victims need, you know, demand justice!" And it's just like a concoction that is not grounded in any th- approximation of, like, [chuckles] empirical fact. So I always say, if people wanna be mad at Pam Bondi and Kash Patel for something, be mad at them for signing off on that ridiculous memo from last July, where they include that figure of over 1,000 victims that ha- has fu- given fuel to the most maximalist conceptions of Epstein Mythology in terms of the victims that were left in their wake. I mean, Saagar always wants to... And I shouldn't maybe say too much, 'cause I'm not... And I'm not trying to impugn him at all, but I do get a lot of people on the internet doing a variation of what Saagar did, saying, "Hey, let's just talk about the intel ties. Forget all this, you know, gossip stuff around the victims."

David Sacks 1:05:31 Well, they are interesting. I mean, the intel ties are interesting, right?

Michael Tracey 1:05:34 Sure, I'm, I'm... You know, the whole story is interesting.

David Sacks 1:05:36 Yeah.

Michael Tracey 1:05:36 It's interesting that Epstein apparently met Michael Jackson in his Palm Beach house, and photos of it came out. It's i- interesting that he consorted-

David Sacks 1:05:44 Okay, well let me, let me-

Michael Tracey 1:05:44 ... with everyone from Donald Trump to Bill Clinton. I agree, it's interesting.

David Sacks 1:05:46 Right. Let me bring up one sort of criticism of you, and then I want to give Kevin a chance to get in here. So look, I, I think it's very important that we hold this process to evidentiary standards, like you're saying. I think that people's motivations need to be examined, especially, like, the lawyers who are bringing these cases, who are, you know, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars. So I think you are, and I think even Saagar admitted this, I think, are playing an extremely important role in this process by bringing some rigor and accountability to a lot of these claims, and I think that's really important. At the same time, you're not really offering an explanation of so many aspects that are so interesting about Epstein, and I'm not saying it's necessarily your duty to do that, but I'm wondering, you know, do you have a, a theory of how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars? How did he get so connected? Some people, like Mike Benz, have said that it all goes back to Bear Stearns, where he says that one of his accounts was BCCI, which was this notorious international bank that was involved... Uh, it eventually was shut down because it was involved in international-... money laundering and crimes, things like that. So I think this is Mike Benz's theory. In any event, do you have a theory that would provide a satisfactory explanation for so many of the threads that we see, or do you just feel like it's not really your job to, to do that, and your job is really more just to poke holes in, you know, what are some of the more outlandish claims of politicians or lawyers?

Michael Tracey 1:07:26 Well, I'm happy to address any little data point that people want to throw out at me. [chuckles] I mean, I do that all day, every day, pretty much. So it's not like I'm trying to avoid anything or be at all evasive, right? So people ask me all the time, "Okay, how did he make his money? What about Leslie Wexner?" Et cetera, et cetera. So it's not like I'm unaccustomed to addressing any of this stuff. It's just that I feel like there's a bit of a fallacy or like a logical flaw in attempting to say that it's incumbent on me to proffer some kind of ultimate totalizing theory. I have a theory I could sketch out that maybe explains some of what people would like to know in such, you know, [chuckles] that people are so titillated by. But I think, again, one of the things... one of the reasons why the coverage of the story has been so horribly bad is that speculation has replaced fact, and we just have this whole mythology or folklore that's developed, and that people just kind of ambia- ambiently absorb, and then they end up just believing things that are totally false. So for example, people just believe, and I'm sure that you've seen this, that Epstein must have referred to his private plane as the Lolita Express. Therefore, anybody who was ever on the plane must have known that this was, like, a child sex trafficking plane, because why else would it be named the Lolita Express after the famous book about, you know, [chuckles] a 12-year-old girl or whatever, who was a sexual object? That's just, like, false. I mean, that was a... th- th- that's just, there's never been any evidence for that. It was a nickname that was invented, like, by a... It was a cheeky nickname invented by this British tabloid, and so that's just one example of all those-

David Sacks 1:08:55 Right

Michael Tracey 1:08:55 ... flotsam that gets-

David Sacks 1:08:56 Okay, but, but, but to go back-

Michael Tracey 1:08:57 Okay, in terms of... Yeah, go back.

David Sacks 1:08:57 Do you have a theory of how specifically Epstein got started? 'Cause somehow, I guess it was in the '80s, he went from someone who was just a trader at Bear Stearns to very quickly amassing a fortune that, I don't know, seems like hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, like you said, he died with about six hundred and fifty million. I don't know how, how big the fortune was in the 1980s. We know that Wexner sold him the townhouse. I guess one of the details that came out the other day as Wexner said it was at, what he was told was fair market value, and Epstein obtains his plane from Wexner. So, I mean, is that the explanation that somehow he got his start because Wexner was extraordinarily generous towards him? Like, I'm just curious, like, what-

Michael Tracey 1:09:42 Not quite, not quite. Um, so I mean, there, there was a h- a huge New York Times article that was one of the few helpful contributions to the [chuckles] popular knowledge around Jeffrey Epstein recently in December, where they go through... I mean, they, they basically set out to answer the question that everybody always asks with, like, a wink and a nod, as though they think that the asking of the question is supposed to prove that the answer would be fundamentally sinister, meaning how did Ef- Jeffrey Epstein make his money? 'Cause the idea is that he must have made his money by dint of his orchestration of this pedophilic sex trafficking ring that he enforced by blackmail at the direction of the Mossad or something like that. And the eh, New York Times goes into fairly forensic detail about how he ended up accumulating money over the course of the 1980s. So people could go read that if they'd like. I mean, I do think that it's fair to say, and saying this does not mean that you have to, [chuckles] sort of, have to condone everything that Jeffrey Epstein ever did over the course of his entire life, but I do think that he was definitely very high intelligence. I do think that he was, um, highly proficient in mathematics as a young man, which is why he... part of why he became a math teacher at the Dalton School, a pretty prestigious private school in Manhattan. Then ends up getting recruited to Bear Stearns, and ends, ends up innovating some novel financial maneuvers that you're probably much more fluent in than me in terms of describing, 'cause I'm not a finance guy. But it was around a time where there was a demand for Wall Street to innovate new tactics for very high net worth individuals to structure their wealth, to lessen their tax burden, to do all kinds of other things. And Epstein did so, and then he leaves Bear Stearns- so he rose through the ranks of Bear Stearns pretty quickly. So aro- around age 24, 25, he was, like, a partner, or he had some relatively high-ranking position, um, relative to the rest of the workforce at, uh, Bear Stearns at, at a young age. He starts, starts up his own boutique financial advisory firm that's tailored specifically to very high net worth individuals, such as, ultimately, Leslie Wexner, who is one of the wealthiest people in the United States. Yes, they do have a... He was def- Wexner was definitely Epstein's most important client. They, there was the power of attorney that was handed over, which is seen unto itself on the Internet to be either inherently sinister or to show us that, of course, Epstein must have been in some kind of, like, pedophilic collusion with Wexner. But, I mean, it's explicable if you actually want to know what it was about. At a certain point, people just want to, have to have the ability to keep asking that question with, like, a gleam in their eye, as though the, they're supposed to... It's supposed to imply that there is this pedd- like, that, like, that the pedo sex trafficking is the ultimate answer to everything. But, you know, Ghislaine Maxwell, when she gave her proffer interview last summer to the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in the very first time, amazingly enough, that she was asked by any US government official to simply describe her experiences w- with Jeffrey Epstein. Imagine that. Um, despite having been integral, we, we've been told all these years, uh, in the running of the most prolific child sex trafficking operation, I guess, in world history. Only in July 2025 did any government official ever just ask her to just describe what her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was all about, and she said that she observed Ef- Epstein doing a lot of work that would seem very complicated and intense to her in terms of his financial business. So, for example, Maxwell says Epstein ended up basically restructuring all of-... the finances for Wexner's business holdings, and, you know, he owned The Limited, he owned Victoria's Secret, other kinds of women's clothing outfits and retailers. He had real estate developments, and Epstein was basically the money guy for all of it. And for a man who, in the early '90s, was already worth, like, a couple of billion, Wexner, that is, if Epstein is getting, like, a yearly cut of the revenues, that could add up over time, right? Then he had a handful of other very high net worth clients, like Elizabeth Johnson, who was an heiress to the Johnson & Johnson f- fortune; Leon Black, the headfu- hedge fund, uh, manager. So you don't need that many [chuckles] extremely high net worth clients, right, if you're their go-to money manager, to eventually div- uh, uh, build up a pretty nice sized fortune, I would imagine. So I'm not saying we have a full accounting of, like, every penny that he ever accumulated over the course of his life, but we have quite a bit of information. And it just occurs to me that some- the people who are- who most loudly ask, "How did he get his money?" almost don't even wanna know or read into the information that is currently available.

David Sacks 1:14:04 All right, well, I mean, it is kind of unusual that a money manager in that position would obtain that much money so quickly. I'll just say, like, from my experience with the money management business, they're not generally able to charge that much. But let me put a pin in that, 'cause I wanna let Kevin Bass get in here.

David Sacks 1:14:23 I've been following your feed quite a bit. You are basically a, a startup entrepreneur who had got interested in, in the Epstein files. I think you used AI to analyze them, and in particular, you've been looking at Reid Hoffman's story about Epstein, and you've put together an analysis. I think you've called it the Reid Hoffman files. I've been following your, your tweets, and it's quite interesting. Let's start with how you got into this, what got you interested, and, and how you've been doing your research.

Kevin Bass 1:14:52 Yeah, so originally I just saw that, uh, there was kind of a conflict, uh, on social media about Reid Hoffman. I didn't know much about, uh, the Epstein files or, or about that particular conflict, but I was curious. I built some really sophisticated AI tools, you know, mostly using, like, vectorized s- uh, SQL databases and, and some of the MCP stuff with the new agents, and, uh, for, for some other purposes, and so I wanted to port those over to see if I could resolve some of these questions. Uh, Elon had some very strong opinions about Hoffman's involvements with Epstein, and he's usually at least, uh... If he's not always directly on the bullseye, he's usually at least a few inches away, so I wanted to go check those out. And then, you know, I do- they, they came out in, I guess, late January, January 30th, the big ones that re- the big drop that recently happened, and so I just, uh, I started going through the Reid Hoffman part in particular. Uh, and I essentially started to try to organize, or I have organized most of my analyses around some core claims that Hoffman made about his involvement with Epstein. I've, I've just been asking the question: Are these claims true? Uh, are they supported by the record or are they contradicted by the record? And, um, overwhelmingly, like, absolutely overwhelmingly, uh, they appear to be contradicted relentlessly by the, uh, the, the drop that came out in January, um, 30th. If you want, I can go through some of the big ones, uh, and then I can-

David Sacks 1:16:28 Yeah, I mean-

Kevin Bass 1:16:29 ... also talk about-

David Sacks 1:16:30 Yeah. Maybe, maybe a place to start is with Reid Hoffman's statement in 2019 to Axios. This is when, I guess, the Epstein scandal first, I think, became national news, and people who were closely associated with him felt the need to characterize their relationship with him, to distance themselves, to explain how they knew him or how closely they knew him. And Reid's statement at that time was the following. Let me just read this out. This is, uh, Reid Hoffman speaking: "My few interactions with Jeffrey Epstein came at the request of Joi Ito for the purposes of fundraising for the MIT Media Lab. Prior to these interactions, I was told by Joi that Epstein had cleared the MIT vetting process, which was the basis for my participation. My last interaction with Epstein was in 2015. Still, by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice. For this, I am deeply regretful."

Michael Tracey 1:17:35 Oh, give me a break.

David Sacks 1:17:36 Is that statement accurate?

Kevin Bass 1:17:39 Not at all. Uh, and in fact, it's not just from 2019. Uh, he even reiterated this on February 4th this year on X repeatedly. He said, "I only know Jeffrey Epstein because of a fundraising relationship with MIT, which I very much regret. These meetings were all coordinated by Joi Ito, then director of MIT Media Lab." Uh, and he also says, "We... Yes, with Joi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab, who asked me to he- help MIT fundraise with Epstein. I regret," blah, blah, blah. Like, none of that's, uh, at all true. Uh, there's very few mentions of even fundraising with MIT. I would even go so far as to say, I don't know... I, I've said it this way on, on, on some of my posts, but it's like the extent of the relationship between Epstein and Reid Hoffman, it almost looks like best friends. Like, my, my best friends I don't interact with as- anywhere near as much as, as, as Reid Hoffman and, um, and Jeffrey Epstein did over, you know, between 2013 and 2019. Um, you know, their constant contact, uh, there's something around on the order of about, a, about 400 initiations by Hoffman to Epstein. It wasn't just mediated by Joi Ito at all, and, uh, you know, their s- their sec- their assistants were in constant contact with each other. They had extensive financial relationships.... There's something like 42 different meetings, uh, that are documented. Around 20 are absolutely confirmed. Uh, they met in, in person for breakfast. They would, uh, spend each other- spend each other's- spend time with each other's, at each other's houses overnight, meeting ... Um, you know, Epstein met his wife. It is claimed that, by Hoffman, that he only was there for one night. Even the one time that we have absolutely documented that, documented that uh, he's referring to, he was there for two nights, and almost certainly there was two other i- island visits as well, in addition. Uh, it's an extraordinarily extensive personal and business relationship, and it's not just about Joi Ito. Now, Joi Ito was a really important part of it. Um, Joi Ito was sort of, uh, as far as I can tell ... Again, you guys know a lot more about this than I do, but as far as I can tell, really going through the files over the last couple of days, Joi Ito was sort of, um, Epstein's, uh, gateway into sort of academia, Cambridge, Harvard, science. That's, that's sort of his main, uh, gateway there. Uh, Reid Hoffman was his gateway into, uh, Silicon Valley, into tech, uh, the main guy. And, uh, so, so there is a very close relationship as well between Joi Ito and Hoffman, but there is also very much an independent relationship between Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein, uh, uh, very much independent of Joi Ito.

David Sacks 1:20:30 Okay, so, so Reid claimed that he only had a few interactions with Epstein. That's false. You're saying he had hundreds.

Kevin Bass 1:20:36 Hundreds.

David Sacks 1:20:37 Including dozens of in-person meetings and-

Kevin Bass 1:20:41 Yes

David Sacks 1:20:41 ... stay, stay at the island at least once. You said for two nights, not one, and there were probably a second or third visit.

Kevin Bass 1:20:49 Yes.

David Sacks 1:20:50 There was the stay at the townhouse. Reid claimed that all of his interactions were sort of mediated by Joi Ito and were about the MIT Media Lab. By the way, it's not clear why someone would feel s- compelled to spend so much time fundraising for MIT, which wasn't even their alma mater. So this whole explanation didn't really make a lot of sense from the beginning, but it's pretty clear that the topics of conversation were not about MIT or MIT Media Lab. In fact, I thought one detail that was really kinda interesting was their first interaction, or one of the first, was about they bonded over a book called Deception, which I haven't-

Kevin Bass 1:21:31 Yeah

David Sacks 1:21:31 ... I haven't read the book. I don't know what the thesis is, but it appears to justify the use of deception in certain circumstances. Anyway, I just think that was ironic, I guess, if nothing else.

Kevin Bass 1:21:44 Mm. Yes.

David Sacks 1:21:45 But look, I, you know-

Michael Tracey 1:21:46 Can I make a quick comment in mind? Or-

David Sacks 1:21:47 Yes, go ahead. Yes.

Michael Tracey 1:21:47 Okay.

David Sacks 1:21:47 Yeah, Michael, go ahead.

Michael Tracey 1:21:49 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:21:49 Do you want to be Reid's-

Michael Tracey 1:21:49 So-

David Sacks 1:21:49 ... defense attorney in this context? [laughing]

Michael Tracey 1:21:51 N- not, not exactly-

David Sacks 1:21:52 [laughing]

Michael Tracey 1:21:52 ... although I end up, I guess, putting myself into a position where it can come across that way. I'm really trying to be the, the defense attorney for, like, sanity.

David Sacks 1:22:00 Yeah, go ahead.

Michael Tracey 1:22:01 So here's what I would say. I have to just reject the whole premise of this discussion that is so ubiquitous now, which is that anybody who so much as exchanged a chortling email with Jeffrey Epstein ... And I know Reid Hoffman apparently had a closer relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than just one email here or there. But the principle that anybody who had some interaction of, of some degree, uh, to some degree or another, with Jeffrey Epstein, now has something that they have to issue these mealy-mouthed, melodramatic statements of profound apology for, is just so tedious and ridiculous. What are they guilty of?

David Sacks 1:22:39 Well, it-

Michael Tracey 1:22:39 If the implication is that they're, by association, guilty of enabling pedophilic sex trafficking, that is a flagrant misconception.

David Sacks 1:22:49 S-

Michael Tracey 1:22:49 Do people know... How come it's never clarified that Jeffrey Epstein was never even accused of committing any illicit sexual acts against any person under the age of 18 after the year 2005? So I don't know what years Reid Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein interacted, but this idea that he was, like, looking the other way while all these preteens were being raped is just nonsense. But the media never clarifies it. So now we have everybody from Noam Chomsky to Steve Bannon being told that their reputation is in tatters and they are themselves, like, by association, some sort of, like, sex criminal enablers, and it's just a, it's just a total fantasy.

David Sacks 1:23:28 S- so Michael-

Michael Tracey 1:23:29 And it's part of the moral panic.

Kevin Bass 1:23:29 Yeah. Michael, I think this... I think you're making some really interesting points. Um, I think they're important. I think-

Michael Tracey 1:23:36 I mean, Epstein pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges in 2008. You're saying Reid Hoffman, and Noam Chomsky, and Steve Bannon should have all said, "Oh, because the guy pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges," which they were, which they were, that means nobody can ever consort with him ever again for the rest of his life? I think that's a ridiculous standard.

Kevin Bass 1:23:53 So there's, there's, there's two d- there's two different issues here. One is, um, whether or not there's this global pedophile ring, and, you know, i- we can even go further-

Michael Tracey 1:24:02 Right

Kevin Bass 1:24:02 ... and there, there's this sat- these Satanic rituals and all this other stuff, which, uh, I'm inclined to think that, uh, you're, you're very close to the truth in what you're saying. On the other hand, um, there are Reid Hoffman's public statements, mm, like, dramatically minimizing the relationship. Now-

Michael Tracey 1:24:21 Sure

Kevin Bass 1:24:21 ... I think that can easily, obviously, be explained. There's an obvious explanation where we don't have to necessarily, uh, impugn to Reid Hoffman, you know, being a pedophile or any of these other things that people are wanting to suggest because he lied, and the alternative explanation is just that this is such a hot potato.

Michael Tracey 1:24:40 Right.

Kevin Bass 1:24:40 There is a hysteria, so people lie about their relationship with Epstein, even though-

Michael Tracey 1:24:46 Yeah

Kevin Bass 1:24:46 ... they're not guilty of something that's terrible behind the scenes.

Michael Tracey 1:24:48 Yeah.

Kevin Bass 1:24:48 Any association at all-

Michael Tracey 1:24:50 That's possible

Kevin Bass 1:24:50 ... is radio- with Epstein, is radioactive. I mean, but so if somebody lies, then, I mean, they can be condemned for the lie, 'cause lying itself is condemnable.

Michael Tracey 1:24:57 Yes, and that's what we're talking about. And that's what-

Kevin Bass 1:24:58 Like how Rudnick made up a ridiculous lie that was totally pointless and actually counterproductive for his purposes, and the lie itself can be condemnable-

Michael Tracey 1:25:07 ... but not necessarily because Howard Lutnick is covering up any kind of pedophilic sex criminality, just because of the moral hysteria that's been allowed to be unleashed around this stuff, where, like, any connection [chuckles] in any way to Epstein is, like, grounds for censure.

David Sacks 1:25:20 Yeah, and l- all right, let me tell you my, my point of view on this. So, so first of all, I think you're correct that there's a lot of guilt by association happening, and there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy. And like you said, just because someone emailed Epstein doesn't mean that they were involved with him in some nefarious way, and I thought it was unfair when Saagar mentioned that Jason had, you know, emails with Epstein back in 2011 to make an introduction. I think that's-

Michael Tracey 1:25:47 I hadn't even seen that.

David Sacks 1:25:48 I mean, yeah, I think that's-

Michael Tracey 1:25:49 It's not, it's not important enough to even to draw my attention, like, who cares?

David Sacks 1:25:52 It's a, it's-

Michael Tracey 1:25:52 There's plenty of interesting material in the files, but, like, random-

David Sacks 1:25:54 Totally

Michael Tracey 1:25:54 ... emails.

David Sacks 1:25:55 No, no, and I, I agree, and that's why I tried to defend Jason there, 'cause I know there, there was just nothing to that. Now, in the case of Reid, I think that there's a couple of things that are interesting about this. Number one is when this new Epstein files drop happened, Reid came out on X and very aggressively started pointing the finger at other people, wildly accusing both Elon Musk and Donald Trump of somehow being involved in Epstein's purported crimes. And this is just a classic case of someone throwing stones while living in a glass house. I mean, you look at his own statements from 2019 all the way up to weeks ago, and they don't hold water at all. He lies about the extent of his relationship with Epstein, how many times they met, what the subject matter was, what the context was, how many times he visited the island, potentially. I mean, just one lie after another, while, again, wildly accusing other people, and you do have to just ask, what is going on here?

Michael Tracey 1:27:03 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:27:04 And-

Michael Tracey 1:27:04 I mean, I mean, that just-

David Sacks 1:27:05 Yeah, yeah

Michael Tracey 1:27:05 ... goes to show how weaponizable this whole thing is, and how the Epstein story or any kind of tangential connection to Epstein can be leveraged to serve some kind of preexisting agenda. So if, like, Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk don't like each other, then they could accuse each other of, like, having a more, a closer connection to Epstein than they did, and it's just like a, a, a, a, a slugfest. Yeah, and yet I'm still struggling to understand, like, what the underlying accusation of wrongdoing is supposed to be, above and beyond just how perhaps Reid Hoffman and/or Musk or whomever might have misrepresented the relationship.

David Sacks 1:27:42 Well, it's-

Kevin Bass 1:27:43 The question, the question is also partly, like, why did he need to so aggressively attack others? Why did he need to so aggressively lie about the relationship? Is it just that he's covering himself because of a moral hysteria, or is there... I don't know.

David Sacks 1:27:58 Well, I, I-

Kevin Bass 1:27:58 There's also-

David Sacks 1:27:58 ... I mean, my, my theory on this, I think it's kind of obvious what he's doing, is that by pointing the finger at Trump or Elon, actually both, he's driving everyone into their partisan tribes-

Michael Tracey 1:28:11 Right

David Sacks 1:28:12 ... so as to, I think, seek protection of the Democrat tribe, to which he's contributed hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think it's worked. I mean, you look at the mainstream media coverage of this, the New York Times coverage of it, which we talked about on a previous episode of this show. They wrote an article about Epstein's ties to Silicon Valley. Other people w- who had far less extensive of a relationship with Epstein got paragraphs in that story. Reid Hoffman was only mentioned in one sentence, along with three other people. So he does seem to be getting a pass from, you know... Michael, if, you know, you wanna cr- characterize this as a feeding frenzy or moral panic or hysteria, what have you, whatever it is, he seems to be getting a pass from the media. And my point about this has not been to accuse Reid of crimes, because I don't think we have any basis for that whatsoever. Let me just state that clearly. My-

Michael Tracey 1:29:04 Isn't that a fallacy of all this, then? [chuckles]

David Sacks 1:29:06 No, well, let me, let me get to that. My, my point has just been that the media needs to cover this in a fair and even-handed way-

Michael Tracey 1:29:12 Sure

David Sacks 1:29:12 ... as opposed to-

Michael Tracey 1:29:13 Or, or the other-

David Sacks 1:29:13 Like you said, weaponizing it to go after the people they don't like, because there's political advantage in that.

Michael Tracey 1:29:20 Or, or another parallel is Hillary Clinton just came out this week and gave an interview on the BBC, where she said, "We, the Clintons, Bill and I, we had no real connections with Epstein, but Donald Trump, we can just assume as unassailably true that he's in the process of orchestrating a cover-up, 'cause he has something to hide." Now, and then on, on the other hand, Trump will toggle back and forth between, uh, Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman, "They're the ones who are truly implicated by their association with Epstein. I had nothing really to do with the guy." And then the next day he'll say, "Oh, I'm a little upset or rueful that Bill Clinton's been dragged into this mess." And it just gets, you know, framed around, organized around just like a partisan battering ram, and it just becomes incredibly tedious, because there doesn't even have to be any more, any concrete allegation of any wrongdoing whatsoever. There's no credible allegation of any pedophilic wrongdoing by either Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, anybody. So, like, what are we talking about here ultimately? We're like in this other domain of, like, who can establish the most damning guilt by association, even though nobody can spell out what the guilt is supposed to be tied to.

David Sacks 1:30:29 Well, and but here's the question is, why did Reid so brazenly lie about his relationship with Epstein? It could just be that he wants-

Michael Tracey 1:30:38 Why did Howard Lutnick lie?

David Sacks 1:30:39 Well, it could just be that he wants to protect his reputation in business by minimizing the association. But obviously, when you lie that extensively and that brazenly about it, it is gonna make people think that you have something to cover up, and, you know, I think that-

Michael Tracey 1:30:56 People think a lot of dumb things. I mean, is there, like, any evidence at all-

David Sacks 1:31:00 Well, I'm not

Michael Tracey 1:31:00 ... that would con- that would tie Reid Hoffman to some kind of child sex crime? Not that I know of.

David Sacks 1:31:03 No, I'm not accusing him of that.

Michael Tracey 1:31:04 So if people think that's what's being covered up, then they should be disabused of that fallacious notion, rather than-... countenancing the notion and allowing the mass hysteria to c- continue proliferating unhindered.

David Sacks 1:31:17 Can I ask you something, Michael?

Michael Tracey 1:31:19 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:31:19 What evidence is there for, um... So on the island or in general, what evidence is there that, um, people were being trafficked, maybe not minors? Uh, did that actually... Were people actually going to the island for that purpose? Was that that extensive or not?

Michael Tracey 1:31:38 It's impossible to know what people even mean by trafficking anymore. Trafficking is an incredibly nebulous concept. It's very much open to the whims and discretion of prosecutors who seek to fit some fact pattern to a desire to prosecute somebody for some sort of ten- [chuckles] you know, sexual-related offense, if it involves simply facilitating the movements of somebody from point A to point B. So if adult women consensually flew on an airplane to go visit a luxury island in the Caribbean, and over the course of that visit, maybe they engaged in some consensual sex act, and then 20 years later, they can retroactively classify it as trafficking, and that will entitle them to, like, millions of dollars in tax-free settlement money, are we gonna take at face value that that constitutes trafficking? 'Cause I don't, so I'm, I'm always a little bit mystified as to what we're supposed to understand as trafficking now.

David Sacks 1:32:32 So your overall perspective on this is basically that a lot of the discourse about this is constructed, and we don't really understand the underlying facts. Is that your-

Michael Tracey 1:32:41 I mean, I understand-

David Sacks 1:32:42 basic position?

Michael Tracey 1:32:42 ... the underlying facts to the greatest degree that I can ascertain them, and I think that they're, they are just chronically and almost unbelievably mischaracterized everywhere you

Michael Tracey 1:32:52 look.

David Sacks 1:32:52 Let me get you to react to this tweet that someone just at mentioned you on.

Michael Tracey 1:32:56 Uh-oh, here we go.

David Sacks 1:32:57 [laughs]

Michael Tracey 1:32:59 A brilliant-

David Sacks 1:32:59 And-

Michael Tracey 1:32:59 ... uh, feedback, um, uh, I'm sure.

David Sacks 1:33:01 Well, this is... Okay, this is a guy, I don't know this guy, Present Witness. Um, but this is what he's saying is the evidence, okay? So I just... You know, I wanna get your reaction to-

Michael Tracey 1:33:11 Evidence of what?

David Sacks 1:33:11 Well, let me read this for people who are just listening and can't see the screen, and then I'll get your reaction to it. So he, he says, "Here's the evidence: $160 million from Leon Black, $50 million townhouse and power of attorney over Wexner's estate, cameras in his residence wired by Israeli government, compromising photos of Prince Andrew, Clinton, et cetera, confirmed sex trafficking of underage girls from Maxwell, Brunel, and others, teaching job with William Barr, parentheses, CIA. Khashoggi was a client of Epstein, parentheses, money laundering for intelligence, question mark. Advisor to Ehud Barak and the Rothschilds. Rummler, chi- who is the chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel under Obama, was a key advisor and backup executor in his will. There are millions of files still redacted. None have been released by CIA, State Department. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone telling you that there's nothing to see here is attempting to whitewash the most important revealing intelligence-related story of our lifetimes." And then he calls you out here: "Michael Tracey doesn't understand the difference between evidence and proof, and is cynically exploiting sexually abused women for engagement."

Michael Tracey 1:34:14 [chuckles] Okay. I mean, first of all, I don't know what that guy is even arguing all that stuff is supposed to be evidence of. Like, what is the ultimate contention that he's claiming those myriad scattered data points are supposed to justify? I mean, it, it... That's, that, that's so- it's why- that's what's so strange about this story. Nobody can really ever articulate... Like, S- Saagar struggled to articulate what I suspect actually is his ultimate belief, which is that there was some kind of pedo trafficking operation. Like, he, I think, said that he agreed with the Thomas Massie quote that I read out to him, but on its face, that's sort of like a bizarre statement to make. So they latch onto this other peripheral stuff around intelligence and whatnot, and that guy said, "How dare anyone ever s- say there's nothing to see here?" And he ascribed that to me. I've never said there's nothing to see here. People tell me all the time that I allegedly have said there's nothing to see here, but I don't say that at all. I'm pretty much as obsessed, if not more obsessed, with this story than anyone at this point, to a degree that's probably not very healthy, like, [chuckles] mentally.

David Sacks 1:35:20 But you're obsessed with it-

Michael Tracey 1:35:21 So of course I don't say that-

David Sacks 1:35:21 ... but, but, hold on-

Michael Tracey 1:35:22 But I'm obsessed with it from a different standpoint

David Sacks 1:35:23 ... You're obsessed with it in the s- Hold on, Michael, let me just-

Michael Tracey 1:35:24 Yeah

David Sacks 1:35:24 ... let me just ask you about that. You're obsessed with it in the sense that you think this is a modern-day Salem witch trial.

Michael Tracey 1:35:30 Right, which is fascinating.

David Sacks 1:35:32 Yeah, so you're fascinated from, like, a sociological standpoint, which is, have humans evolved beyond, you know, where they were hundreds of years ago, engaging in witch hunts and-

Michael Tracey 1:35:43 Mm

David Sacks 1:35:43 ... things like that, or do you think it's in- interesting in other ways?

Michael Tracey 1:35:46 I think it's interesting in other ways, definitely in that way as well, but there are other ways in which it's interesting. I think it's almost interesting as an anthropological survey of sorts among, you know, uh, elites, movers, and shakers, you could say, where Epstein did have this extraordinary ability to network and to convene people who probably otherwise would never have been convened. So I've been saying that I think Jeffrey Epstein is the only man on Earth who could have brought together for a friendly social powwow Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon. Like, I'm almost jealous of that. I mean, I'm sure that would have been a very [chuckles] fascinating discussion to listen in on, right? And there are other examples. And so I think it's interesting from that perspective. I mean, I think uh, everything that... Every little piece of information that can be uncovered about Jeffrey Epstein's life is now almost intrinsically interesting, just given the salience of the story, right? So I guess I'm interested just from that perspective, 'cause, like, obviously he's now a historic, or world historic even, figure. And so yeah, I'm always, I'm always down to find out something new about what Jeffrey was up to. So sure, I think it's interesting politically, just in terms of how this can be leveraged into some sort of political battering ram against enemies. And, uh, you know, this is like the number one oppositional Trump narrative of the second term. It's almost-... Russiagate redux in the outsized prominence that Epst- that, uh, Democrats are giving it, in terms of what they bring up day after day in hopes of it undercutting Trump or bedeviling him. So-

David Sacks 1:37:28 Yeah, it does-

Michael Tracey 1:37:29 Just even from that perspective-

David Sacks 1:37:29 It seems to be like the, the new, new Russiagate in, in that way, where every possible tangential fact is somehow connected.

Michael Tracey 1:37:36 Correct.

David Sacks 1:37:37 And it, but the whole thing kind of metastasizes and is used in a partisan, weaponized way.

Michael Tracey 1:37:43 Yeah, and but-

David Sacks 1:37:44 There's no question about that

Michael Tracey 1:37:44 ... but it's different in that there's an international component. Like, this is the number one scandal right now that's ravaging Norway, Slovakia, I was mentioning, obviously Great Britain today, eh, other places, you know, United Arab Emirates, um, name your country. So there's an inter- like, it's been internationalized, which is just fascinating as well. They... Didn't, didn't they burn, like, an effigy of Jeffrey Epstein in Iran or something? I mean, it just never ends. So, of course, there's, like, infinite fascinating material, at least to me. I just don't accept that in order to be fascinated by this, we must bo- we must, you know, have this weird epistemology where we can just collect all these discrepant little pieces of information, blast them out on the internet, and then just think that we've done the argumentative and logical work necessarily, necessary to somehow establish how that proves our ultimate notions about what the story is supposed to signify. Which, again, is pedophilic sex trafficking enforced by blackmail that ensnared prominent individuals at the direction of some intelligence agency. That's the crux of the Epstein mythology, and it's been systematically unraveled, including, you know, partially by this, the disclosure of more Epstein files, but even pr- prior to January 30th or December 19th, the two productions, there was never any credible evidence for any of it. So, yeah, I am fascinated in terms of how people come to believe such mythological things, and the journalistic malfeasance, again, that has been characterizing this story as well, is of, is of particular interest to me, because they... It's been a central factor in how the myth- mythology's been allowed to just kind of proliferate without any countervailing point of view, uh, being-

David Sacks 1:39:30 All right

Michael Tracey 1:39:30 ... being put to it.

David Sacks 1:39:31 All right, I think that's a pretty good place for us to wrap up. Kevin, do you have any final thoughts?

Kevin Bass 1:39:36 Um, I'll just continue releasing some of this stuff. I, uh, I tend to agree with Michael, but, um, you know, I also think that sticking to the facts is also very important, too, and, and telling the truth is, is important in both directions as well, so...

Michael Tracey 1:39:52 Can I, can I just make one f- a concluding thought?

David Sacks 1:39:53 Yes.

Michael Tracey 1:39:53 I, I actually do think it's, you know, I'm, I'm happy for this opportunity to speak on your podcast. I assume I'm reaching an audience that probably would never, not otherwise hear of me to a large extent, and because I do think it's actually very disturbing that so many people around the world are being told that it's somehow been proven or vindicated that there is a massive child rape ring, or that there were mass child rapes that were allowed to be perpetrated by the highest levels of government and then were covered up. Because, as I mentioned on Piers Morgan this week, it's very easy to imagine how people with a predisposition toward mental illness, who hear this stuff and believe it, might be driven to do something, like, homicidally crazy. So I'm not predicting anything in particular. I just think it's, it's probably the most explosive thing to tell the mass public in terms of what it might incite particular people with a particular mental instability to, to, to do. So, I mean, that's just one of the potentially detrimental effects of all this, that I think it should be rationally countered to the maximum extent possible, and I think we're going to be beset with this issue for the foreseeable future. So at a certain point, I don't know, maybe there should be a little bit more momentum [chuckles] behind providing some degree of a rational corrective. I mean, or does it... Is it just me? I mean, am I the only guy who's gonna be doing this forevermore? I mean, there's some more who have, like, come to take on a little bit more of a skeptical perspective, but-

David Sacks 1:41:26 Well, I think we kind of-

Michael Tracey 1:41:26 We should, we, we have- we should be cognizant of the real-world ramifications, rather than just speaking about it in the abstract or, "Who suffers more, Reid Hoffman versus Elon Musk?" or all this other stuff. I think it, it really is a crazy-making thing that's been inculcated in the public.

David Sacks 1:41:41 Yeah. Well, look, I think both of you have performed very valuable services for the public in regards to this whole episode. I think, Michael, you are asking really important questions about evidentiary standards, and what is the basis for some of the more, let's call them Epstein maximalist claims out there, again, about this global pedophile ring and so forth. And I think you're right that when you're talking about crimes, you have to be evidence-driven, and there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy here. And it is appropriate to ask what the motivations are of everyone involved in this story, and you're one of the only people who are doing it. Although, it does seem like you are making a difference. There does seem to be a vibe shift a little bit around what you're doing.

Michael Tracey 1:42:22 Somewhat.

David Sacks 1:42:22 Somewhat.

Michael Tracey 1:42:22 Yeah, because most people who are have, like, who have their brains wired in a normal way, which would not include me-

David Sacks 1:42:27 [chuckles]

Michael Tracey 1:42:27 ... they would probably have an, um, like, a negative emotional reaction to being inundated day in and day out with accusations of personally being a pedophile or harboring, like, depraved-

Kevin Bass 1:42:37 [chuckles]

Michael Tracey 1:42:37 ... sexual fantasies of their-

David Sacks 1:42:39 Well, they're still the mob

Michael Tracey 1:42:40 ... little molested children or whatever. But, like, you know, obviously, that is not the case for me. But I can withstand it, 'cause I'm used to the torrent of vitriol, but most people, I think, probably [chuckles] would be dissuaded from taking a certain angle on a certain subject, if that's what they had to endure.

David Sacks 1:42:54 Well, the mob does not like being accused of being a mob, and their defense mechanism seems to be to accuse anyone who points out some of these problems in the, the logic of basically somehow being involved in, in the crimes that they're alleging. So in any event, I, I, I do think that you are performing-... a valuable service. You know, when Hollywood dramatizes this, it's, um, you know, it's like Henry Fonda in the Ox-Bow Incident, or maybe it's Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. You've got a mob, and you have this one lone figure who's standing athwart the mob, trying to talk sense into them. And, you know, in real life, it's not Gregory Peck. It's, like, a guy in a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey. [laughing]

Michael Tracey 1:43:39 [laughing] Yes.

David Sacks 1:43:40 Uh, [laughing]

Michael Tracey 1:43:41 For all the money I'm told I'm surreptitiously receiving from Leslie Wexner and the Mossad, I mean, I wish I could get some better digs, but-

David Sacks 1:43:48 Yeah, and Kevin, I do think that what you're doing is really important because I think that this, the c- citizen journalism here that's sleuthing through the Epstein files is turning up really interesting things, and I do not think it's appropriate for Reade to be, again, wildly pointing the finger at other people while the evidence shows that he's been bold-faced lying about every aspect of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And to be honest, if he had just kept his mouth shut and not accused other people, I'm not even sure this would be a topic on the show. I would just wait to let the chips fall where they may and see what ultimately comes out about this. But he kind of put himself in play by saying all of these things, and I do think it's appropriate to examine the record and, and assess his credibility on that basis. And you've done that job, and I hope you and other people will keep going through the files and actually seeing what is actually there so we can get to the truth of this story.

Michael Tracey 1:44:48 I agree, and thank you.

David Sacks 1:44:49 Well, let's, let's wrap it there. I just want to make one final point, which is, you know, even when years ago, this was sort of a cause célèbre on the right, where you had right-wing podcasts pointing the finger at Bill Clinton or other left-wing figures, I never weighed in on this. I wasn't sure what to think. I still am not completely sure what to think about it. I don't want to get over my skis in terms of overly associating myself with any one point of view, because I think when people do that, they do kind of dig in, and I'm keeping an open mind with respect to what comes out next. It would not surprise me at all if Michael Tracey turned out to be correct, but also it wouldn't completely surprise me if some version of Saagar's, uh, version of the story proved to be correct, a- assuming more evidence comes out. So I'm keeping an open mind. I do think it's really important for us to evaluate the claims critically, which is why I think it's important to hear from people like Michael Tracey, and I look forward to seeing what comes next, and we'll address it then.

Michael Tracey 1:45:52 I, I try to be rigorously evidence-based as well myself, so I don't discount the idea that something could theoretically come out that would undermine some of the assumptions or conclusions that I've derived from my, you know, research and reporting on this. So I think that's a healthy epistemological habit, to always be open to the possibility of something that's contra- in contravention of your prior assumptions, uh, being presented to you. So why not?

David Sacks 1:46:19 Absolutely.

Michael Tracey 1:46:20 Fully agree. Okay, we'll leave it there. Thanks, guys. [upbeat music]

Speaker 1:46:24 Let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 1:46:27 Rain Man, David Sacks.

Speaker 1:46:30 I'm going all in.

Michael Tracey 1:46:31 And instead-

Speaker 1:46:32 We open-sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 1:46:35 Love you, bestie.

Speaker 1:46:36 Ice queen of Kin Klong. I'm going all in. Let your winners ride. Let, let your winners ride. Let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 1:46:44 Besties are back.

Speaker 1:46:45 Go, go 13. [laughing] That is my, uh, dog taking a piss in your driveway, Sacks. [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:46:50 Wait, no, no, yeah. [laughing]

Michael Tracey 1:46:52 Oh, man!

Speaker 1:46:53 My avatar will meet me at Blizzard.

Jason Calacanis 1:46:55 We should all just get a room and just have, like, one big, huge orgy because they're all just useless.

Michael Tracey 1:46:59 [laughing]

Jason Calacanis 1:46:59 It's like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.

Speaker 1:47:03 Wet your- The feet ... feet. Wet your feet. Wet your feet. [laughing] We need to get merch.

Jason Calacanis 1:47:09 Besties are back.

Speaker 1:47:10 I'm going all in. [upbeat music] I'm going all in!