A LOGICAL LOOK AT THE EPSTEIN ABSENCE

Lack of proof is not proof of anything.

By Daniel Jupp at Jupplandia.

The US Department of Justice, together with the FBI and Trump appointees Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, have disappointed those who were awaiting release of the so called Epstein Files.

For a long time it has been widely suspected that the death of serial sexual abuser and well connected multimillionaire Epstein was a deeply suspicious one. Epstein was supposedly on suicide watch in prison, but we were told by the Biden era types and those that remained in the first Trump term that somehow the surveillance measures taken for prisoners on suicide watch had failed, somewhat conveniently, in this case. For those who saw Epstein’s long history of both socialising with much of the upper echelons of US society and of convincing, coercing or forcing teenage girls into sexual acts, his death acted as a confirmation of the idea that powerful forces did not want Epstein testifying to their activities.

Various versions of the Epstein ‘truth’ accumulated, some of them contradicting each other. Epstein was a CIA agent. Epstein was a Mossad agent. Epstein ran a version of a honeypot trap on behalf of US intel, or on behalf of Israeli or British intel. Epstein was either individually, or as such an agent, blackmailing rich and powerful people with knowledge of their sexual crimes, which he had invited them to enjoy at Epstein Island using the girls he had himself abused.

The official narrative was that these were ludicrous conspiracy theories. Democrats and many Republicans both dismissed any idea of Epstein being at the centre of such an operation, as if the idea that powerful people might include men who liked to fuck underage girls and would worry about that being revealed was innately ridiculous…..and also strenuously tried to link Donald Trump to Epstein, sharing photos of the two men together, and claiming that Trump was a pedophile sex abuser too. A clear double standard applied. Show the same Democrat voter a picture of Bill Clinton with Epstein and you were a wild eyed conspiracy theorist, but show them Trump with Epstein and you got a knowing and agreeing smirk just before another Pussy Hat lecture on Trump’s innate wickedness.

Epstein then became a curious double phenomenon in the Democrat mind, a figure who simultaneously proved that Trump was a sex abuser AND that MAGA voters believed any wild, lurid and unproven conspiracy theory about sex crimes where none existed. Epstein proves Trump is a pervert/Epstein proves MAGA voters are crazy conspiracy theories was a glaring display of cognitive dissonance, one of those jarring examples of twisting the interpretation to fit what you need it to fit which get satirised with those ‘press button A’ or ‘press button B’ (but you can’t press both) memes of a sweating man caught between two mutually exclusive ideas he believes at the same time.

And for a significant number of MAGA voters, particularly those most influenced by alternative media, the Epstein Files became a sort of quest you could go on to uncover the truth. The expectation was that the truth had been hidden because it implicated too many powerful people and confirmed just how many of the great and the good were in fact vicious, depraved abusers in the exact same mould as Epstein himself. Epstein’s suicide was obviously a silencing murder, and somewhere out there was a store of information that would prove it, that would irrefutably show a long list of people who had acted in depraved and abusive ways. That information was the Client List, together with testimony of abuse survivors, and it was eagerly anticipated that a Trump government would release it. In fact, based on this widespread speculation and concern, that’s exactly what Trump and his appointees to do when they launched a review of the Epstein case and all the evidence pertaining to it.

That review concluded that Epstein killed himself, and that there was no such thing as a Client List at all. Bondi, Patel and Bongino all state that Epstein killed himself and that there is zero evidence of him blackmailing anyone else or preserving details and footage of sex abuses by anyone else to aid in that blackmail. The conclusion ‘nothing to see here’ provokes fury in some quarters, with a clear binary division of reactions predominating.

What we seem to be being offered now is the Betrayal Argument or the Bullshit Argument. The Betrayal Argument assumes that Epstein didn’t kill himself, that there was a Client List and that there was evidence of sex crimes by lots of other powerful people that has been deliberately covered up by Trump, Bondi, Patel and Bongino. Under this response, all these figures are complicit and they have betrayed the people who looked to them to expose the darkness, name names, and put perverts behind bars. The Bullshit Argument by contrast say, OK, it’s confirmed now, it was all rubbish, the only proven abuser is Epstein, and he killed himself out of despair at being caught and facing years in prison. Those who believe the first are ready to condemn the whole Trump administration as being the same as the Biden administration or the Deep State. Those who believe the second are ready to condemn anyone who still has questions as a conspiracy theorist.

My own view is that neither reaction is logical. I want to look at this in a purely logical fashion, really with the kind of logic that applies without needing deep drill down on what evidence is presented by either side. Just on logic alone, can we reach a conclusion which isn’t as extreme and final as 1. It’s all a disgusting cover up and we have been betrayed or 2. It’s all wild speculation and you are crazy conspiracy theorists. I don’t think these binary choices cover all the possibilities that are likely and rational and I don’t think either of these total, definitive responses represents the most rational and the most likely possibilities available.

First, what is known and seems to be agreed on by everyone?

1. Everyone seems agreed that Epstein was a sexual abuser who either persuaded or forced underage girls to have sex with him. Reports now indicate up to 1,000 victims of Epstein as a sexual predator. Several victims provided extensive evidence against him. This level of predation puts Epstein in the bracket of the most prolific sex offenders, on a par with a decades long abuser such as Britain’s Jimmy Savile or with the most prolific of Muslim grooming gang child rapists.

2. Very few people dispute that Ghislaine Maxwell acted as Epstein’s chief conspirator and accomplice, helping secure young girls for his crimes. There are however a very small number of people who seem to believe that Maxwell was not deliberately procuring these girls as sex victims or sex slaves, but as whatever surface explanation employment Ghislaine was in charge of.

3. Epstein had a very extensive range of rich and powerful friends and associates, and flight logs confirm that a number of senior politicians and well known celebrities visited his home and the places where Epstein himself abused teenage girls.

4. Epstein died from ‘suicide’, despite being under supposed constant supervision and observation to prevent his suicide.

5. Despite the extensive number of rich people connected to Epstein, Britain’s Prince Andrew is the only person who has paid a significant sum in compensation to one of these victims as the result of a civil lawsuit.

6. Prince Andrew’s accuser Victoria Guiffre died from suicide, again in a manner claimed by some to be highly suspicious. Speculation has centred on whether Guiffre, like Epstein, was silenced for what she knew or what extra information she was about to reveal, or whether she killed herself simply from the memory of her exploitation and the stress of it being publicly discussed.

7. The Trump adninistration prepared Epstein Files folders for invited press, only for those folders to contain almost no fresh information. These folders were delivered in a dramatic fashion, on the same day that British PM Keir Starmer visited the White House.

8. Dan Bongino previously discussed the Epstein Files as if he was sure they existed and as if their lack of public release was highly suspicious.

9. Dan Bongino in office concluded things opposite to his pre-administration stance.

10. Pam Bondi previously referred to the need to release the Epstein Files and to having the Epstein Files on her desk.

11. Pam Bondi then declared that there are no Epstein Files.

As a necessary conceptual framework providing some relevant context to all of the above, we can add that 1. All major intelligence services and multiple western police forces have used sex based sting operations and honeypot operations in the past. 2. Blackmailing agents to do what you want them to do is a fairly basic and often repeated element of espionage and intel community tradecraft 3. The FBI and CIA in the Epstein period were highly politicised, highly partisan and guilty of multiple nefarious actions which suggest that teenage sexual exploitation for blackmailing leverage wouldn’t necessarily be something it’s impossible to imagine them doing 4. The destruction of evidence of wrongdoing was common to the FBI and the Obama and Biden administrations. 5. Hillary Clinton for example got away with destroying huge amounts of evidence, the FBI on multiple occasions announced that evidence was lost or destroyed, including evidence of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden potential sexual crimes with underage victims (the diary and the laptop) and the anti Trump J6 Committee destroyed thousands of hours of filmed exculpatory evidence relating to J6 prisoners.

All of this contextual background suggests that it’s perfectly possible that Epstein was an agent of intel organisations whose personal sexual exploitation of underage victims was united with a blackmail operation offering others the chance to indulge in sexual crimes, recording that behaviour, and subsequently using the recordings to control those people. None of the contextual background proves this was the case-it just suggests it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. Both instant dismissal of the idea as a ‘conspiracy theory’ and instant acceptance of it as proven fact is illogical, since the first ignores the contextual support for such a theory and the second ignores the lack of any definitive proof of such a theory.

For believers in the theory, the Trump administration had promised to share that definitive evidence, which does exist, and then betrayed that promise. Elon Musk in his current severe and sudden return to TDS, has seized on the lack of forthcoming evidence as proof of the existence of total betrayal, a logical fallacy common to those most sincerely or cynically disappointed with the results of the reviews conclusions:

But for those who already considered it a fantasy, the Trump adninistration’s review and dismissal confirms conclusively that no such evidence has ever existed. But really both interpretations simply repeat the attitude the person possessed before the review was conducted. Clearly this issue conveniently divides, as so many others do, on already existing attitudes to Trump and his administration and whether it can be trusted. Musk for example has turned against the administration, and therefore it confirms for him that he’s correct to have done so.

Logically, are there other possibilities than 1. Betrayal and cover up or 2. It’s been confirmed as total fantasy? Of course there are.

First there are remaining oddities and omissions in the evidence presented as the basis of the reviews conclusions. It’s certainly true that what we have is a significant shift in the position of Trump administration figures on the Epstein Files. The pre 2nd term position of JD Vance for instance was definitely leaning strongly towards the assumption that the Files and Client List were real and that failure to present them represented conspiracy and dishonesty:

So what changed between then and now? Well Bongino, who was screaming for release of these Files when he was a podcaster and discussion show host, is now a Deputy Director of the FBI. Kash Patel, who was publishing books on the Deep State and its insidious depravity and corruption when out of power, is now in charge of one of the main branches of the alphabet agency network. JD Vance is now the Vice President. The change in position on the Epstein Files has followed a change in status in relation to the intel and security apparatus. But that again can derive from different realities. It could mean capture by the Deep State now they are sitting in the system. Or it could mean they have now had the opportunity to thoroughly examine the evidence, and found nothing. It is once again not an issue of proof, but an issue of trust.

For what it’s worth, and it is worth something, the track record of most of these members of the Trump administration is a good one which suggests some degree of trust is owed to them. We aren’t being told there’s nothing there by Democrats or by the likes of John Brennan anymore. We are being told this by people who had a track record of opposing the Deep State and being open and transparent with us. Once again though trust is subjective, and established patterns of behaviour matter but are not definitive proof of anything. It seems to me highly unlikely that Patel, Bongino, Vance and Trump are all agents of the Deep State or that on getting into office despite determined Deep State resistance to that they all suddenly betray everything they were before that. But this is not evidence of innocence, merely judgement of character and probability. Bondi I am far less sure of, but still consider terms like ‘Scam Bondi’ and the instant assumption of wrongdoing unfair.

If the reversal of prior attitudes is a glaring inconsistency, which it is, it is also not the only one. One of the most suspicious elements of the prior official narrative was that we were told that surveillance of Epstein had mysteriously failed and there was no footage that could confirm or deny whether he had killed himself, but now we have an official narrative which suddenly uncovers footage of the cell and a record of who enters the vicinity of the cell proving that nobody else did so. If this footage has existed all along and offers definitive proof that Epstein killed himself, why didn’t the previous administration release it? It would have been in their interests to do so when Vance, Bongino, Patel and much of MAGA was suggesting Epstein didn’t kill himself. Wouldn’t that have been a perfect way to end claims of an Epstein murder and cover up much earlier, AND to embarrass MAGA types at the same time? Remember, the Biden administration and the Deep State repeatedly concocted and fabricated ‘evidence’ against Trump and MAGA. If they had footage that they could use to say “see, these are conspiracy theory lunatics” it seems extremely curious that they didn’t deploy that as a weapon when it was available to them.

In the above two examples then we have BOTH context of prior behaviour and fresh evidence supporting the findings of the review and the honesty of those findings, AND remaining and unresolved inconsistencies that suggest the opposite. There’s nothing definitive either way. It’s extremely odd that surveillance footage was once denied and now exists, and equally extremely unlikely that the Trump administration would somehow fabricate this evidence or not conduct their review honestly.

Some commentators though have escaped the binary trap of assuming either betrayal from the Trump administration or that there never was anything more here than just one depraved pervert. And here is where we get back to that established alphabet agency habit of themselves breaking the law to destroy or conveniently lose vital evidence:

From the comments of the review conclusions themselves, we know that there is a huge amount of evidence surrounding Epstein (Epstein Files, if you like) that the Trump administration says exists and also says it cannot release. The review states that this is evidence that is sensitive in terms of the privacy, identity and wellbeing of Epstein’s victims, which is a reasonable point. In any case against a sexual abuser, there are going to be details that aren’t publicly released and details that are extremely distressful for surviving victims and their families, together with things that are not presented in court because they aren’t needed to confirm guilt or because they would have this negative impact on survivors.

But we also know that all of the evidence collected was collected mainly during the Biden term by people with a track record of lying about evidence and destroying evidence. The Wray era FBI (and possibly the Brennan era CIA) was in possession of all this for months after month after month. With Epstein dying at the end of the first Trump term, the Deep State had the whole Biden term to use, change and/or destroy any Client List. Catturd is absolutely right on this.

It is logical to suspect that if no evidence of a Client List, of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein’s death, and of blackmail by Epstein of others can be found, the reason for that absence could be explained by that evidence having been destroyed long before this Trump adninistration got to trawl through what remains. But we don’t know. We can’t prove it. It’s just something that would be consistent with FBI and CIA actions in the Biden years. There would be a huge incentive to destroy this information, particularly in the transition period in the final weeks of the Biden administration. Which would mean that the Trump administration now could completely honestly say “there’s nothing there, we haven’t found anything” without that really proving a Client List never existed at all.

This present administration would be looking at evidence already filtered to prevent discovery, like the difference between examining a fresh crime scene and examining one that a professional ‘cleaner’ or a team of cleaners has already thoroughly scrubbed to remove all evidence. It’s like looking at a redacted document without knowing it’s been redacted.

Some will say this point represents clinging to the idea of a Client List, but I’d say it’s just logical to admit that an intel apparatus and administration with a proven record of lying about and destroying evidence could have done the same thing with Epstein related material. If that happened, what’s left is what was designed to lead to the conclusions of the review. Of course you find nothing incriminating others, when what’s incriminating others is removed.

Perhaps the most interesting and startling analysis I’ve seen has come from my friend Peggy Traeger Tierney at the Tierney Real News Network. Tierney accurately predicted four months ago that the review would conclude finding no evidence of a Client List and determining that Epstein killed himself. But she avoids both the idea that this means the Trump administration has betrayed the truth and the idea that there was never anything there in the first place. And she puts the context of the Epstein Files Part One binders release earlier in this administration occurring on the sane day as the White House welcoming Keir Starmer to finalise a trade deal at the heart of her analysis:

“How do you think Trump got the UK to make such a great trade deal for the American people? It's called leverage using the Epstein files. There were likely British elites in there - or Trump and Bondi let the UK Prime Minister believe there were. The UK can handle their own punishment. That's not our responsibility. But Trump used that leverage to help the American people get BILLIONS in trade deals and tariffs. Smart.

Nobody could figure out why Trump and Bondi did that. Now you know why. LEVERAGE. Many called them stupid for doing the binders. Nope. GENIUS. The truth is most of the evidence in the Epstein files has probably already been destroyed by now.

The paid influencers on X (including Elon) want you to think Trump is somehow guilty and Bondi is covering for him. They’re doing everything they can to try to tie Trump to Epstein when Trump literally threw Epstein OUT of Mar-a-Lago. STOP BUYING THEIR LIES.”

This argument, while on the surface quite extreme, is actually in logical terms at least as convincing as the positions most people are putting forward. Tierney’s view is that of course if anything like a Client List existed it would have been destroyed before the Trump administration got in. The administration has promised to reveal everything, but there’s nothing left to reveal. What do they do in those circumstances, knowing that many of those howling for the Client List will now never accept that it isn’t there and somebody can honestly tell them it isn’t there?

Are they smart enough to turn that absence to their advantage, and at least get some benefit from it? So they make a big fuss about the Epstein Files Part One release when there’s nothing in it, as a means of leveraging panic and influence in trade negotiations. Morally it might be not the most ideal action, but pragmatically it would turn an absence and a loss into an actual benefit for the nation. Britain is hurried into a trade deal with a hidden agreement that damning Epstein information including British figures isn’t released, while the Trump administration are essentially bluffing on that. I’m not saying Tierney’s view is accurate and I’m certainly not saying it’s true, but it is the most striking independent view I’ve seen that avoids the binary definitives and has some logical consistency of its own. The contradiction in it for me would stem from how deeply entangled US and UK Deep State actions have been in the very recent past, which might let a UK leader see through such a bluff, and the extent to which Starmer is himself just a midwit puppet-moron serving non British interests anyway.

Where Tierney is definitely correct in my view is in terms of the people turning against the Trump administration on this issue. These are the same people who turned against the Trump administration on Iran. And the same people who turned against the Trump adninistration on the BBB. In those instances, these influencers are often people who joined MAGA very late and have left the 2nd term very early (both Tucker and Musk fit this profile). Most of them have Koch billionaire links, prior Democrat links, or their own actual malign conspiracy theories to peddle (like the Jew hatred behind so much of the isolationist attack on Trump’s Iran policy). There is a combination of lost down the rabbit hole, peddling fantasies along the way, or possessing other interests that really lie behind their alleged horror and loathing of what they claim is Trump administration failure to deliver (like Musk’s need for EV subsidies and Indian tech migrants).

Perhaps in many of these cases what worries these people is not failure to deliver on the Epstein Files content, but failure to deliver in terms of other things they want for which the Epstein Absence Fury is only a thin cover. Yes, it could be read as the Trump adninistration promising a lot and then betraying those promises by engaging in foreign wars, claiming scandals are done and dusted when no prosecutions have taken place, and not handing over things they said they would hand over. But this surely ignores how much the 2nd term is delivering, just as it ignores positive aspects of backing Israel against Iran and positive aspects of the BBB.

I don’t think this administration has betrayed people. I think it’s being betrayed by people who joined it late and for their own reasons. At the same time I still consider it unlikely that a very powerful man with very powerful friends invited those very powerful friends constantly to the same location where he was raping and abusing underage girls and only Prince Andrew ever slept with one of those girls. That’s like admitting that the Diddy Freak Off parties were real but that everyone else attending never fucked anyone at these events. At Epstein’s parties it’s almost impossible to believe that other attendees had no sexual contact with underage girls coerced or forced into that contact. Whether a formal list of those people was held by Epstein and used for blackmail, and whether intel agencies were controlling Epstein and behind his wealth in the first place, are different questions. Both of those possibilities are not insane or crazy ones, but you actually don’t need them to be true for it to be true that there were other guilty parties who need to be found and punished.

It may be that the firm evidence has been destroyed, or just doesn’t exist anymore. It may be that prosecutions would be very, very difficult. That doesn’t mean there were no other sexual predators here. Similarly, Epstein may have physically killed himself with no other person putting a belt or a rope around his neck. But he was on suicide watch. At the very least there was a severe failure there that could be incompetence or could have been deliberate. Just as Epstein coerced underage girls into sex acts, so too is it possible that Epstein was coerced into killing himself, or that ‘errors’ facilitating suicide were deliberate.

The final possibility is that there is evidence, and the Trump administration is holding it as a bargaining chip. It’s prepared now to use that evidence in more subtle and morally dubious ways than simply publicly releasing it against the Deep State and whatever powerful perverts were also fucking underage girls in Epstein’s mansions. Again, there is no proof of such a possibility, and it’s one I’d hope isn’t true because morally speaking it would put the Trump adninistration in a very similar position to the claimed crimes of blackmail using underage rape made against Epstein and the Deep State. One could say that using this evidence now against the people who commissioned it is slightly different, but it’s still far beyond white knight territory and deep into becoming the thing you despised.

But I think what I’ve hopefully indicated here is that when there is a record of the destruction of evidence, combined with accusations of intel agency involvement, combined with time passing under a corrupt administration, the absence of evidence is no longer the proof of innocence. Nor is the declaration of an absence of evidence by a fresh adninistration proof that it is the same as the old one, or involved in the cover up and guilty of betrayal. As with whether or not we believe in intel involvement in JFK’s assassination, there are a multitude of competing theories and the idea of a definitive answer becomes impossible. When people who might destroy evidence have years, let alone decades in the JFK case, to do it, what we see will never be what was once there to see, only an edited version of that. In a climate of competing dishonesties, there is no firm proof, no smoking gun, no final answer, no closure of the case by the absence of proof.

There is only who you trust most, and who you trust least, and the thread of what is logical, and what is not. Those are your guides and it’s very unlikely, based on logic, that a path of obscured tracks leads to a place of firm answers.