# The Book That Wasn’t Supposed to Exist - Epstein's Birthday Book Released!

An episode of [Patrick Boyle On Finance](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1547740313), 17 Sep 2025, 36 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO3104284738.mp3

In 2003, Ghislaine Maxwell compiled a 238-page leather-bound book for Jeffrey Epstein — filled with letters, sketches, poems, and photos from billionaires, politicians, scientists, and celebrities. This book was never meant to be public. But now, thanks to the House Oversight Committee, it’s part of the public record — and it’s worse than anyone expected.We’ll also explore the deeper questions: Where did Epstein’s money come from? Why hasn’t the government followed the money? And what does this say about the two-tiered justice system in America?This scandal isn’t just about Epstein. It’s about the system that made him possible. Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Ways To Support The Channel: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

## Transcript

[0:00] There's a story about halfway through the Epstein birthday
[0:03] book written in a child's handwriting, which seems to be
[0:06] titled Uncle F Makes Party, and it's about a grown man who
[0:10] doesn't know how to use a party who defecates on the floor.
[0:15] This story, written by a child, is possibly the most tasteful
[0:20] story in the Epstein birthday book, which was released by the
[0:23] House Oversight Committee last week.
[0:26] I'm not sure if Uncle F was supposed to be Jeffrey Epstein.
[0:30] The handwriting isn't great and it might be an E rather than an
[0:33] F, But if the story was about Epstein, it highlights how in
[0:37] this book, which was written by his friends and given to him as
[0:41] a birthday gift, almost every story referred to him doing
[0:45] something. Think we're folding?
[0:47] I should point out early on that this video is not really
[0:50] appropriate for younger viewers as I'll be talking about
[0:53] politicians, business leaders, Royals, and other ne'er do
[0:57] wells. Look, I've signed a number of
[1:00] birthday cards over the years. The kind of gets passed around
[1:04] at an office and you don't always know the person it's for
[1:07] very well. I've usually written happy
[1:10] birthday, hope you have a great day or something like that.
[1:13] I might make a joke if I thought that the person would appreciate
[1:17] it. Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book
[1:19] is nothing like that. There were a few polite messages
[1:23] in there. There was a nice note from his
[1:25] mom, for example, but things go downhill.
[1:28] Very, very quickly. This wasn't exactly a birthday
[1:32] card either. It was 238 pages long for one
[1:36] thing and bound in leather. It appears to have been printed
[1:39] in three volumes, probably because of its length, and it
[1:43] was titled The 1st 50 Years. It was put together by Epstein's
[1:48] now jailed Co conspirator Jolene Maxwell in 2003 as a 50th
[1:53] birthday gift and it contained messages from billionaires,
[1:57] politicians, Nobel Prize winners, childhood friends,
[2:01] former girlfriends and a wide circle of Epstein's elite
[2:05] acquaintances. 1 contributor The industrialist and Epstein art
[2:10] advisor Stuart Piver is credited by news sources for writing a
[2:14] Limerick about Epstein that sums up the overall tone of the book.
[2:19] It ends, though, up to no good. Whenever he could, has avoided
[2:24] the penitentiary. Among the contributors were
[2:27] people like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and EU KS recently
[2:31] sacked ambassador to the United States Lord Mandelson.
[2:35] The book was created three years before Epstein's first abuse
[2:38] allegations became public, but many of its entries suggested
[2:43] his behaviour was an open secret and a source of entertainment
[2:47] for his friends. President Trump initially
[2:50] claimed that the Wall Street Journal made-up the book when
[2:53] they wrote about it a few weeks ago, calling it non existent and
[2:57] fake. He even launched a $20 billion
[3:01] defamation lawsuit against the newspaper, its publisher and its
[3:05] owner, Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News, a network that's
[3:10] been credited with the rise of President Trump and which is
[3:13] generally supportive of him. This book might never have
[3:17] surfaced if it wasn't for people like JD Vans asking where is
[3:21] this letter on the Everything app formerly known as Twitter.
[3:26] Even after the House Oversight Committee released a scan of the
[3:29] book this week, complete with Trump's sketch and signature,
[3:33] the White House, who are possibly taking PR advice from
[3:37] Prince Andrew, continues to claim that the book is a forgery
[3:41] and fake news released to perpetuate the Democratic
[3:45] Epstein hoax. The book turns out to be much
[3:49] worse than many expected, not just for Trump, but for everyone
[3:53] associated with Epstein. While the birthday book has
[3:56] gotten the most press, it wasn't the only document released by
[4:00] the House Oversight Committee. There's a copy of Epstein's
[4:03] will, a copy of the 2007 non prosecution agreement, and
[4:08] entries from his address book. On top of all of this, on
[4:12] Thursday, Bloomberg News published an article about the
[4:16] trove of 18,000 personal emails from and to Jeffrey Epstein that
[4:21] they got access to. Those emails contain sometimes
[4:25] chilling details about how Epstein lived and his
[4:28] partnership with Elaine Maxwell. The Birthday Book and other
[4:33] documents raise even more questions about Epstein's
[4:37] influence and how widely known his behaviour was amongst his
[4:40] friends and associates. I've read the entire Birthday
[4:44] book so that you don't have to. So let's go through what we've
[4:48] learned about Epstein and his associates, who contributed to
[4:51] the book, and why this is not just political or a celebrity
[4:55] scandal, and how it actually matters.
[4:58] The Birthday Book opens with a prologue written written by
[5:01] Jelaine Maxwell in handwriting that's so difficult to decipher
[5:06] it could be mistaken for a doctor's prescription.
[5:09] There's a good chance that Epstein didn't understand a word
[5:12] of it, and after one page of that handwriting, most people
[5:16] would just give up. And that's quite possibly why
[5:18] the FBI had all of this evidence and obviously much more, but
[5:23] claimed that they couldn't find anything incriminating.
[5:26] Bill Clinton's handwriting is possibly worse than Jelaine's,
[5:30] and I can't tell but wonder if Epstein spent so much time
[5:34] visiting university math departments not because he was
[5:37] interested in mathematics, but because he was trying to find a
[5:41] code breaker who could decipher his birthday book.
[5:44] Trump is alleged to have referred to Epstein as an
[5:48] Enigma, which is quite fitting as the Enigma machine was a
[5:51] cipher device used in World War 2, and this book reads like it
[5:55] was designed as a challenge for Alan Turing.
[5:59] It's not clear to me if these people actually have such
[6:02] terrible handwriting or if it's just a smart strategy they came
[6:06] up with when they're writing something either inappropriate
[6:09] or to someone inappropriate, where they just scribble on the
[6:13] page and the person who gets the message assumes that it said
[6:16] something nice, but there's nothing incriminating left that
[6:19] can be used as evidence. Trump's strategy was a bit
[6:23] different to Clinton's. His message is clearly typed so
[6:27] fully legible, but then he follows the Roy Cohen strategy
[6:30] of just denying everything and calling it fake news.
[6:34] So far, that strategy seems to be somewhat working, but the
[6:38] scandal just won't go away. Are you still talking about
[6:42] Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for
[6:45] years. The book is structured like a
[6:48] scrapbook and divided into themed sections.
[6:51] Family, Brooklyn, girlfriends, children, friends, science girl
[6:57] dash, friends, this time with a hyphen between the word girl and
[7:00] friends, then special assistance and business.
[7:04] After Jelaine's almost undecipherable message, we get
[7:08] into the family section, which is not so bad, but still a
[7:12] little bit weird. It kicks off with Epstein's
[7:15] birth certificate and a few other mementos from his You'd
[7:18] like a Cub Scout graduation certificate with some
[7:21] undecipherable writing underneath it.
[7:24] There's a strange photo of Epstein, which seems out of
[7:26] place in the family section with what appeared to be armed
[7:30] African soldiers. And Jelaine has written
[7:32] underneath these were your body bodyguards before you began
[7:36] trading with presidents and getting the Army and Secret
[7:39] Service to greet you. Now, I'm not sure if that word
[7:43] is trading. And like I said, her handwriting
[7:45] is not easy to read. There are plenty of
[7:48] inappropriate photos even in the family section.
[7:51] And there's a photo of Epstein and Shalane together labeled The
[7:55] First Date Something 1991. There's a nice letter from his
[8:00] mother that's several pages long where she writes about his youth
[8:04] and tells him that his father would be proud of him.
[8:07] She mentions that he was listed as Bachelor of the Month in
[8:10] Cosmopolitan magazine when he was 27 years old and in a
[8:14] possibly tongue in cheek manner says today you still hold that
[8:17] title, showing some awareness of his reputation with women.
[8:22] In the Brooklyn section there were a bunch of newspaper
[8:25] cuttings, the first one being about a young Jeffrey Epstein
[8:29] playing the accordion at Carnegie Hall.
[8:31] I can't find much about this section online, but they don't
[8:35] seem like real newspaper articles.
[8:37] They're possibly written by his friends reminiscencing about his
[8:40] youth. They've headlines like hunchback
[8:43] dies, teen bitten and things like that.
[8:47] Some names appear to have been redacted even in these articles.
[8:51] One of the stranger ones, with the headline Yellow Laundry
[8:54] Mystery Solved seems to be about a young boy being caught
[8:58] urinating on his neighbor's laundry while it's drying on a
[9:01] clothesline, and I don't know what to tell you about that.
[9:05] On page 57, there's an unsigned handwritten note from a Brooklyn
[9:10] friend who writes about how the author, along with Epstein,
[9:13] their friend Warren Eisenstein, and Epstein's brother Mark,
[9:17] picked up girls on the beach and took them out on a boat, where
[9:20] the author claims to have threatened them with violence
[9:23] and told them to strip off their bathing suits.
[9:26] The same person describes himself and Epstein in bed
[9:30] porking some girls while Epstein is shovelling penicillin down
[9:34] his throat. He further describes going out
[9:37] with Epstein and two very young girls.
[9:41] In this section, there's a partially redacted story headed
[9:44] up The Rabbi's Daughter, where the author describes bringing a
[9:48] girl to Epstein's mother's house and making her take her top off
[9:52] so we could touch her boobs. Many of the stories about
[9:55] Jeffrey's youth in Brooklyn have strong references to sexual
[9:59] exploitation, some possibly involving minors, with many
[10:04] glorifying Epstein's skills of manipulation.
[10:07] And in reading this, you really have to wonder if these are the
[10:10] fun stories that these people tell of growing up with Jeffrey
[10:13] Epstein. What are the stories that they
[10:15] chose to keep quiet about? In the first of two sections
[10:19] titled Girlfriends, we start out with a letter from a friend who
[10:24] describes how Epstein participated in peace marches in
[10:27] the 70s because they were the easiest places to get laid.
[10:31] There are intimate pictures of Epstein with women whose faces
[10:35] are redacted, a photo of Epstein with a woman labeled with the
[10:38] quote we think he works for the CIA.
[10:42] There's one picture with Chilane where she appears to be speaking
[10:45] with a woman whose image is redacted.
[10:47] And the caption he promised you what?
[10:51] There are multiple photos of Epstein in bathtubs with his
[10:54] genitals redacted. And there is this one of Jeffrey
[10:57] in bed wearing speedos, which was not redacted by the
[11:00] government, but which I redacted as no one needs to see that.
[11:05] The girlfriend section wraps up with Jeffrey and Chelane's
[11:09] recreation of the Nirvana Nevermind album cover and then
[11:13] we move on to the section titled Children.
[11:17] The children's section kicks off with the story I mentioned
[11:20] earlier. Uncle F makes party.
[11:23] Then there's a child's drawing of what's possibly a wedding
[11:26] with a bunch of crying children in the background and a little
[11:29] song written over the drawing which contains the line.
[11:33] Where is the groom? He's in the ladies room.
[11:36] Was this child aware of what a creep Epstein was?
[11:39] I don't know. A lot of the writing is
[11:41] difficult to read. It does also look like there's
[11:44] possibly the figure of a child drawn in in the belly of the
[11:48] possible bride. There were a few other things in
[11:52] this section, photos of what are possibly the children of friends
[11:55] or relatives playing the piano and things like that.
[11:58] And then we move on to the friends section, which is the
[12:02] most disturbing part of the book.
[12:04] The friends section kicks off with a photo of what looks like
[12:07] Epstein and another man. Epstein has a stocking over his
[12:11] head and the friend is wearing a balaclava.
[12:14] The text underneath reads in part Jeffrey Free unveiled his
[12:18] plan. To some it may have seemed a get
[12:21] rich quick scheme, but to me it was pure genius.
[12:24] Rob and Kill was the name of the plan, the first victim to be
[12:28] attacked and brutally plundered. Would she want more than that?
[12:32] On the boardwalk in Venice Beach, broad daylight.
[12:36] The dastardly thieves were never caught.
[12:39] If we keep scrolling, there's a note from Leon Black, the Co
[12:43] founder of Apollo Global Management, who describes
[12:46] Epstein in his contribution as a Vanity Fair poster child
[12:50] shortened to VFPC. He mentions Epstein's unique tax
[12:55] strategy and recasts him as the hero in Hemingway's Old Man and
[13:00] the Sea. Except instead of catching fish,
[13:03] this old man is catching women, blonde, red or brunette, spread
[13:07] out geographically. I don't really get the
[13:10] impression that Black has actually read the book.
[13:13] A few pages later there's a letter referring to Epstein as
[13:17] Degenerate one and the letter is signed Degenerate 2 AKA and then
[13:23] a redacted name. After that we have the famous
[13:26] letter from Bill Clinton praising Epstein's childlike
[13:30] curiosity. Luckily not his curiosity about
[13:34] children, which is what we're most worried about.
[13:37] After that comes a letter from Alan Dershowitz, the long time
[13:41] Harvard professor and lawyer for celebrities like Epstein, Trump,
[13:45] and OJ Simpson, who recently lobbied for Shalane Maxwell to
[13:49] be granted immunity in exchange for testifying in front of a
[13:53] congressional committee. In the letter, Dershowitz jokes
[13:57] about how he had talked Vanity Fair into changing the focus of
[14:01] an issue from you to Bill Clinton.
[14:04] The next page then is a mocked up cover of Vanity Fair
[14:07] magazine, renamed as Vanity Unfair, with headlines saying
[14:12] that Epstein might have been Jack the Ripper, that he
[14:14] financed the terrorist group Al Qaeda, along with stories about
[14:18] Jeffrey Epstein's bloody summer and Jeffrey Epstein's redacted
[14:23] word rampage. Bill Elkus, the founder of the
[14:26] venture capital firm Clearstone, is in there too.
[14:30] In his note, he wrote about a time in 1988 when Epstein
[14:34] visited him in Fairfield, IA. He wrote, It's no secret that
[14:39] Jeffrey appreciates beautiful women, but not many people know
[14:43] that he can create them out of thin air.
[14:45] He then recounts how Jeffrey managed to find a tall,
[14:49] beautiful blonde who returned to New York with Epstein.
[14:52] The next day, he writes, I'll admit to 1 wondering at the time
[14:56] whether Jeffrey somehow arranged the whole episode through some
[14:59] long distance escort service. He has since told the press that
[15:03] the event had occurred long before any articles came out
[15:06] about Epstein, good or bad. Pretty much every one of the
[15:10] letters contains either an inappropriate story or
[15:13] inappropriate insinuations. Mentions of inspecting the Royal
[15:18] Schoolgirls dorms and an old man groping a woman who he
[15:22] mistakenly believed was a call girl that had been gifted to him
[15:26] or mentioned in this letter from a man named Nick.
[15:30] Lord Mandelson, the recently sacked British ambassador to the
[15:33] United States who was nicknamed the Prince of Darkness in the
[15:37] UK, took up 9 entire pages of the Epstein book, wrapping up
[15:42] his contribution with the statement that Epstein remains
[15:46] his best pal. Now, Mandelson's nickname, the
[15:50] Prince of Darkness, is unrelated to this scandal.
[15:53] It's just a fairly standard John Milton reference, where in the
[15:57] poem Paradise Lost, Milton used the term to show Satan as the
[16:01] embodiment of evil. But it's also used for Peter
[16:05] Mandelson, who Milton wouldn't have known about when writing
[16:08] the poem. Lord Mandelson of Darkness came
[16:12] under pressure over his relationship with Jeffrey
[16:16] Epstein when the birthday book was released.
[16:18] And the scandal snowballed when Bloomberg published a trove of
[16:22] emails between Mandelson and Epstein in which Mandelson
[16:25] expressed support for his friend and offered to discuss his 2008
[16:30] Florida case with his political contacts.
[16:34] Mandelson's story about regretting having ever met
[16:37] Epstein and minimizing their closeness doesn't really align.
[16:41] What, referring to him as his best pal in this long note?
[16:45] You don't really write that in the birthday book of someone you
[16:48] aren't all that close to. Former US Senator George
[16:52] Mitchell, who played a critical role in Northern Ireland's peace
[16:55] process, described his friendship with Epstein as a
[16:58] blessing in the book. Mitchell was accused of
[17:01] wrongdoing by Virginia Jewfrey a few years ago.
[17:05] Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of
[17:08] Microsoft, wrote in his letter that he was ill prepared to
[17:12] comment on Epstein's lifestyle in any detail, which is probably
[17:17] a wise thing to say. But then he submitted pictures
[17:20] from a recent trip to Africa that showed zebras and lions
[17:24] having sex, along with images of aroused wild animals.
[17:28] It might say something when sending images of zoo porn as a
[17:32] birthday greeting is the most appropriate thing you can think
[17:35] of sending to one of your friends.
[17:37] It might imply that your friend is a bit of a wrong 1.
[17:41] Then we have this image, possibly the most disturbing
[17:45] image in the book, as it really tells you how aware some of
[17:49] Epstein's friends were of his behaviour.
[17:52] It's very wise of the artist to have left their masterpiece
[17:55] unsigned. It depicts Epstein in 1983,
[17:59] possibly as a school teacher or just some sort of playground
[18:03] pedo, offering a lollipop to a group of girls, one of whom is
[18:07] holding a bunch of balloons. It's the type of image used to
[18:10] warn children not to take candy from strangers.
[18:14] The next image shows Epstein 20 years later with his jet and
[18:19] island mansion, possibly naked, being massaged by 4 bikini clad
[18:23] young women, one with a heart tattoo with Epstein's initials.
[18:27] Instead, at the bottom it says what a great country.
[18:31] Now, a few commentators have suggested that this depicts the
[18:36] three children 20 years later, but let's be furious.
[18:39] They would have been around 10 years old in the first drawing
[18:42] and making them at least 30 by the second drawing, which is way
[18:46] too old for Jeff. The artist here isn't depicting
[18:49] the same people other than Jeffrey, who's gone from trying
[18:52] to lure children into his van with a lollipop while dressed in
[18:56] rags to basically the same thing but with a private jet.
[19:00] He's just drawn the kids so that we know it's Epstein, but his
[19:04] message is simply that Epstein now has a private jet and an
[19:08] island. And of course, the patriotic
[19:10] message. What a great country.
[19:13] Where's Donald Trump in all of this, I hear you asking.
[19:16] Well, he turns up on the next page.
[19:19] Now that we're desensitized. Here, we see Epstein holding a
[19:23] large novelty check made out to him for $22,500.
[19:28] And the signature on the check bears the name DJ Trump.
[19:32] The caption underneath says Jeffrey showing early talent
[19:36] with money plus women sells fully depreciated.
[19:40] Name redacted to Donald Trump. According to the BBC, the man in
[19:45] the photo next to Epstein is Joe Paschkow, a member of Trump's
[19:49] Mar a Lago club in Florida. And we don't know who the other
[19:52] two people are. The New York Times reports that
[19:56] the page was made by Pascal and the photo was taken at Mar a
[20:00] Lago. They say that it relates to a
[20:02] woman who dated both men in the 1990s.
[20:06] This picture has, of course, drawn a lot of press as it
[20:09] refers to someone buying a woman from Epstein, a man who's been
[20:13] accused of trafficking. When we get to the third volume
[20:17] of the Epstein birthday book, we start out with the series of
[20:20] limericks attributed to Stuart Piver, which I mentioned
[20:24] earlier, and then the doodle the Trump denies drawing of a
[20:28] possibly immature girl. Trump's doodle doesn't really
[20:32] stand out in a book filled with creepy innuendos and
[20:35] inappropriate drawings. It's really mostly notable
[20:39] because it was likely created by the current U.S.
[20:41] President who maintained A decades long friendship with
[20:45] both Epstein and Maxwell, who now appears to be trying to
[20:48] sweep the entire scandal under the rug.
[20:52] There's no real need for me to read the whole thing out, as I'm
[20:55] sure everyone has heard it already, but it's written as a
[20:58] sort of a strange play in which Trump and Epstein speak back and
[21:02] forth in a cryptic manner about there being more to life than
[21:06] having everything. Donald says we have certain
[21:08] things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey agrees.
[21:11] Trump says enigmas never age and wraps up saying may every day be
[21:17] another wonderful secret. And I'll allow you to interpret
[21:21] that however you wish. But I think that whether you're
[21:24] on the right or the left, we can all agree that had Trump not
[21:28] made it in politics, he definitely wouldn't have made it
[21:31] as a playwright. The book was, of course, put
[21:34] together in 2003, a few years before any charges had been
[21:38] pressed against Epstein and before Trump had achieved any
[21:42] real success as a reality TV star.
[21:45] At the time, both men were New Yorkers with residences in Palm
[21:49] Beach who regularly showed up in newspaper gossip columns.
[21:53] Trump had only gone bankrupt 4 times by that point, and
[21:56] wouldn't go bankrupt again for another year.
[21:59] He wasn't involved in politics at this time either, other than
[22:03] to make donations to various candidates on both the right and
[22:07] left. Next up are, of course, the tit
[22:11] prints, which were specially commissioned by the late
[22:14] economist Henry Rostovsky, who served as Dean of the Faculty of
[22:18] Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and occasionally as
[22:22] its acting president. A short handwritten note reads
[22:26] for the man who has almost everything, but never enough of
[22:30] these. And then on the next two pages
[22:32] are the tit prints. Now, a lot of the lazy news
[22:36] coverage is reporting that these are prints of a woman's breasts,
[22:41] but we actually have no way of knowing if this is true or not.
[22:44] Rudolfsky passed away almost three years ago and can't defend
[22:48] himself. If you Google him, you'll see
[22:51] that he was not a slim man, and he may well have just gone out
[22:54] to an art supply store in Cambridge, picked up some paint,
[22:58] and made his own tit prints, writing to Epstein for the man
[23:02] who was almost everything but never enough of these.
[23:05] For all we know, Rosovsky may have just been another one of
[23:09] Epstein's victims. The tit prints are disturbing
[23:13] one way or another, just in very different ways.
[23:17] Les Wexner a few pages later, doodled an image of what appears
[23:22] to be a woman's chest, but once again, we don't know.
[23:25] It might be another representation of Rostovsky's
[23:28] chest. This may have been a bit of an
[23:30] inside joke between Epstein and his friends, Who knows.
[23:35] Wexner was one of Epstein's clients and has previously
[23:38] denied having any knowledge of Epstein's crimes prior to the
[23:42] federal investigations, which came a few years after this
[23:46] book. The doodle can only be described
[23:49] as a poor effort from Wexner, who paid huge sums of money to
[23:53] Epstein for money management services and tax advice.
[23:57] But then he can't even go to the effort of making his own tit
[24:00] print like Rostovsky did. The guy was running Victoria's
[24:04] Secret at the time time, and this was the best that he could
[24:06] do. After that, we have the science
[24:10] section. Jeffrey Epstein was known to
[24:12] have spent time with a number of important scientists, as well as
[24:16] that Eric Weinstein guy who won't stop talking about it.
[24:20] Going through the science section, I didn't find any
[24:23] hugely inappropriate content. There was plenty of flattery,
[24:27] possibly because Epstein was a big donor, but the science
[24:30] section is maybe the tamest section in the whole book.
[24:34] After that we have the girl dash friends section which is just
[24:38] really strange as Jelaine Maxwell, who seems to have been
[24:42] a girlfriend of Epstein, was collecting all of these notes
[24:45] from other girlfriends which just had to be a bit weird.
[24:49] There are lots of redacted photos in this section, this one
[24:53] being a good example where the author includes a photo and
[24:56] writes Can't get a second of privacy with you and the camera
[25:00] around, ha ha. Some of the entries are quite
[25:04] weird. One contributor writes I want to
[25:07] cut you into bird head pieces and chew them between my molars
[25:11] until I suck all the blood and juice out of you.
[25:14] No Stew, just raw. In this section there are pages
[25:19] of redacted bikini photos and possibly nudes.
[25:22] The contributions from assistants were quite similar,
[25:26] with lots of bikini shots and hints at sexual relationships.
[25:30] They don't really seem like employer employee messages in
[25:34] the business. Section 1 standout message is
[25:37] from a guy named Elliot Wolk, who appears to have worked with
[25:40] Epstein at Bear Stearns, he writes.
[25:43] I was running an account for Bob Maxwell, Shulane Maxwell's
[25:47] father. You always had the ability to
[25:50] know everyone and be charming. Was that when you first
[25:53] discovered the Maxwell teenage daughter?
[25:57] Once again, really strange and stranger when you realize that
[26:01] Shulane collected these messages and put them to together in a
[26:04] book. ABBC article points out that
[26:08] there are ongoing questions about the timeline of when
[26:11] Epstein and Maxwell's relationship first began, and
[26:15] the birthday book adds just another layer of doubt to the
[26:18] story that they first met in 1991.
[26:22] The final chapter of the book is titled The Next 50 Years, and
[26:26] it's just two pages long. It wraps up with a photo of
[26:29] Epstein on a hammock on what appears to be his private
[26:32] island. Maxwell signs off with Know when
[26:35] you're winning. The next 50 years will be even
[26:39] more wonderful. That didn't turn out to be true.
[26:43] Jeffrey Epstein died under suspicious circumstances in a
[26:46] prison 16 years later, and Jelaine Maxwell is today serving
[26:50] a 20 year sentence sentence for conspiring to traffic minors.
[26:55] All in all, around 150 people contributed to the birthday
[26:59] book, from well known public figures to lesser known family
[27:03] members and friends. Each of the contributors has
[27:06] denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and
[27:10] many have expressed regret that they knew him at all.
[27:13] The White House has denied that Trump created the image that
[27:16] bears his name and signature. The book is not the proof that
[27:21] many were hoping it would would be, but one fairly obvious take
[27:24] away is that it doesn't appear that Epstein made much of an
[27:28] effort to hide his terrible behavior.
[27:31] I don't see the release of this book leading to any
[27:34] prosecutions, as all of the messages were written using
[27:37] innuendo with cryptic references rather than outright admissions
[27:41] of criminality. Reading the book, you get the
[27:44] distinct impression that his friends knew exactly what he was
[27:48] up to, but there's no smoking gun.
[27:51] A number of the contributors have already died, but the book
[27:54] shows us a wealthy clique who were aware of and possibly
[27:58] amused by, Epstein's interest in very young women.
[28:02] They were also aware of his generally awful behaviour.
[28:06] Reading the entries, I'm reminded of Father Mapple's
[28:10] sermon in Moby Dick when he tells the story of Jonah and the
[28:14] whale. In the sermon, the captain who
[28:17] ferries Jonah is described by Father Mapple as a man whose
[28:21] discernment detects crime in any but whose cupidity exposes it.
[28:26] Only in the penniless Melville continues.
[28:29] Sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport,
[28:34] whereas virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
[28:39] Epstein's fortune opened doors for him and silenced any doubts.
[28:43] The captain in Melville's tale tests Jonah's purse before
[28:48] judging his character. In the same way, Epstein's
[28:51] associates seemed more interested in the benefits of
[28:54] his company than the consequences of his actions.
[28:58] The book is filled with tributes that reflect admiration,
[29:02] indulgence and a willingness to overlook or even joke about
[29:06] behaviour that, amongst most people, would have raised real
[29:10] alarms. There's a misconception among
[29:13] certain people that the Epstein case is just a tabloid scandal,
[29:18] salacious, irrelevant and disconnected from the concerns
[29:21] of everyday people. That's definitely what's put
[29:25] forth by people who don't like that someone they admire is
[29:28] included. But the reason this scandal
[29:31] won't go away, and why people across the political spectrum
[29:35] continue to demand answers, is because at its core lies
[29:39] something far more serious than just gossip.
[29:42] The two tiered system of justice in America and the legal
[29:46] immunity that we seem to afford the nations elites Crimes are
[29:50] committed at every level of society.
[29:53] The issue isn't that elites commit more crimes, it's that
[29:57] they're often shielded from consequences when they do.
[30:00] If someone steals a loaf of bread to feed themselves,
[30:03] they'll be prosecuted. But billion dollar crypto scams
[30:07] involving celebrities or political insiders are routinely
[30:10] ignored by the legal system. And because those with wealth
[30:14] and influence have greater reach, the harm that they cause
[30:18] can ripple far beyond their immediate circles, affecting
[30:21] everyone. There's always been a strange
[30:25] gap in Epstein's story, which I covered in my earlier video,
[30:28] which I think was called Follow the Money.
[30:31] This gap is very noticeable in the birthday book too.
[30:35] His friends bring up his immense wealth over and over again, but
[30:39] there's no explanation or discussion of where it came from
[30:43] or how it appeared so suddenly. Epstein's resume is quite thin
[30:48] for someone of his wealth and influence.
[30:50] He had a brief stint at Bear Stearns, leaving under unclear
[30:54] circumstances, and never held a formal role at any other
[30:58] financial institution. He wasn't a hedge fund manager,
[31:02] he wasn't a tax expert, and he wasn't a lawyer.
[31:05] And yet he was supposed to be providing investment and tax
[31:08] advice to some of the wealthiest people in the world who could
[31:12] have hired the best advisors from much lower fees than they
[31:15] appeared to have been paying Epstein.
[31:17] He out of nowhere accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars,
[31:22] owned multiple properties in New York, Florida, New Mexico,
[31:25] Paris, and the Virgin Islands. The Internet is filled with
[31:30] theories of how we made this money.
[31:33] Some claim that he was a pimp, but pimping just isn't that
[31:36] profitable. It's not going to make you a
[31:38] billion. Others say that he was a
[31:40] blackmailer, but I would think that blackmailing billionaires
[31:44] and presidents would be a good way to get yourself killed.
[31:47] It also doesn't make sense that people would be friends with
[31:51] their blackmailer and write birthday greetings in a book
[31:54] that further incriminate themselves.
[31:57] Others claim that he was an intelligence asset, possibly a
[32:00] foreign spy running honeypots for foreign governments, or
[32:04] maybe they even worked for the CIA.
[32:07] This doesn't hold up either, as why would an intelligence agency
[32:11] give him so much money if Epstein was working for a
[32:14] government, He was the most overcompensated spy in history.
[32:19] There are other theories that he was an arms dealer, but if that
[32:22] was true, the government would know about it and there'd be no
[32:25] good reason to keep that a secret.
[32:28] I don't believe that he had dirt on all of his elite friends, or
[32:32] at least I don't believe that he was using the dirt he had as
[32:35] leverage, as if that was true, these people wouldn't so
[32:38] obviously enjoy hanging out with him.
[32:41] If he filmed people engaging in illegal activities with
[32:44] children, he would be just as incriminated as they were.
[32:48] After all, he arranged the meetings and hit the cameras.
[32:52] It's pretty obvious that the US government has the tools to
[32:56] trace all of his money. Banks are required to report all
[32:59] transfers above $10,000, and the IRS can track wire transfers.
[33:04] The SEC can also subpoena trading records, and the
[33:08] Department of Justice can compel testimony.
[33:11] If they wanted to know who paid Epstein and why, they could
[33:15] easily find out, but they say that they haven't found any
[33:19] anything, and that silence is quite telling.
[33:22] Now, some of this could be partially blamed on incompetence
[33:26] within these agencies. Some of the top law enforcement
[33:29] agencies are run by podcasters, drunks who wear novelty socks,
[33:34] and children's book authors with no prior law enforcement
[33:38] expertise. But we must remember that before
[33:41] being given these roles, these people all talked about how they
[33:45] were going to release the files, likely with the idea that doing
[33:49] so would expose their political rivals.
[33:52] After taking office, they suddenly got very quiet.
[33:56] There are claims that Epstein was unusually smart, but one
[34:00] thing that amused me in his address book was that he seemed
[34:03] to have had different e-mail addresses for each of his
[34:06] different homes. This was in 2003. e-mail wasn't
[34:11] exactly a new technology then people understood how it worked.
[34:15] I mean, the BlackBerry existed. How exactly did Epstein think
[34:19] e-mail worked? He's meeting up with Nobel Prize
[34:22] winning scientists, but somehow thinks that the postman brings
[34:26] his emails to a house and types them out for him.
[34:30] His address book is quite long, but on the same page that he
[34:33] keeps record of the e-mail addresses of his various homes.
[34:37] He also has notes about the Israeli Prime Minister's Secret
[34:41] Service personnel, the phone number of a scout for young
[34:45] females and the contact details of David Copperfield in
[34:50] brackets. Magician so as it won't be mixed
[34:53] up with David Copperfield. Dickensian character, I suppose.
[34:57] I guess stage magicians are just children's party entertainers
[35:01] who got a bit too successful. When we look at the information
[35:05] released by Bloomberg about Epstein's emails, they show the
[35:09] methodical and callous approach that he took to recruiting
[35:13] teenage girls. His usually female contacts,
[35:17] they report, sent him steady streams of photographs and
[35:21] descriptions of women like this one.
[35:23] Nice personality, student, a little curvy Russian, 2019.
[35:28] Epstein would then reply with a brief yes or no.
[35:32] In some cases he was more expansive, fat and Asian.
[35:36] Sorry, he wrote in one e-mail. The Epstein birthday book, his
[35:40] non prosecution agreement, his last will and testament, along
[35:44] with his address book are now part of the public record.
[35:48] The people who've been minimizing the nature of their
[35:50] friendships with him are less credible than ever before.
[35:54] I'm not sure that the government agencies will ever release the
[35:57] results of their investigations into Epstein, as the system that
[36:01] protected him still exists. In my opinion, the public
[36:05] deserves answers not just about Epstein, but about the system
[36:09] that made him possible. Thanks for tuning into this
[36:12] week's podcast, which is entirely financed by listeners
[36:16] like you on Patreon, where you can choose to pledge as little
[36:19] or as much as you want. Have a great week and talk to
[36:22] you again soon. Bye.

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