patrick.net

the game theory of epstein

transgression as alliance strategy

there are a number of useful salients here:

when seeking power/influence/to win the game, it pays to form alliances.

early formation of open alliances is a high risk strategy as it forces others to ally against you.

secret alliances sidestep this issue: you can coordinate to victory without generating a threat signal that causes others to coordinate against you.

transgression is a powerful means to cement a secret alliance because everyone involved

wants to keep it a secret because the transgression is problematic if discovered

will support all others in the group because of a form of “mutually assured destruction.” if anyone defects from the alliance, they get ruined. each holds a hammer above the head of each other.

such an alliance will hold together in direct proportion to how bad the consequences of being outed for the transgression are and how ruthlessly the people within the group deal with anyone who talks.

the first rule of “cabal club” is “if you talk about cabal club, we end you.”

this has profound intersection with the implications of a game theory construct called “werewolf.”

(video)

the core takeaway from werewolf is that small groups working in concert with the benefit of asymmetric information can easily run rings around larger groups. the werewolves almost always win.

as one who has played that game many times, the key to being a good werewolf is to constantly sow confusion and accusation, to set people up, make them look guilty, and then have others from your group corroborate it. this makes the villagers think they are getting independent sources of information when, in fact, they are not and are just getting spoon-fed falsity by a concerted cabal.

see now how a group bound together by some sort of transgression could be at once highly cohesive and highly effective?

there is, of course, a problem: just as in the game of werewolf, when a group acts together too many times, you start to spot them. the core process of the villager looking for lycanthropes is pattern assessment: who keeps working together with whom to wrongly accuse others or to defray suspicion?

the werewolves respond by sowing confusion. you eat the one who defended you or make random, unpredictable alliances and defenses, but this is a difficult game. real life is far easier because two paths are open to you:

1. recruit new wolves from among the villagers. (and if you have lots of filthy lucre to share, this is easy)
2. deny that there is such a thing as a werewolf. no one looks for what they do not know to look for or do not believe to be real. ...

how can a villager be sure to win at werewolf? by cheating. at night, you don’t close your eyes, you peek. now you know who all the werewolves are. you could reveal them and start picking them off, and at summercamp where nothing but bragging rights for winning was at stake, you might, but in the case of a powerful real-world cabal, if you can name them but have not, yourself, transgressed, you are now in a position of great power. you can make the wolfies dance to your tune. and they have to. you possess asymmetric ability to reveal them.

of course, doing this starts to be a transgression in its own right. the longer you let the “bad people” keep winning and being powerful so that you can wield the power and the longer you refuse to hold them to account for doing some bad thing, the more you yourself are doing a bad thing. and before too long, you too will be caught up in the mutually assured destruction and become yourself also unable to defect. your power over the wolves will fade and your risk of being called out as culpable will rise. ...

so we got our bill in congress and we’ve had dump after dump of redacted who knows what, but as the dec 19th deadline for “full release” nears, i would not hold my breath on smoking guns and big reveals.

we’ll get some damp squib and a bunch of hangdog “see, it was always kind of a nothing burger” and the squids will disappear into that ink and try to tell you that there’s no such thing as a cephalopod.

The Russian authorities are begging Trump not to publish the files of the pedophile billionaire Epstein: several top oligarchs and officials from Russia have been revealed at once. According to insiders, Moscow has intensified its pressure campaign on the US president and his inner circle in an attempt to get the White House to refuse to publish documents related to the case of the now-deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein... The Russian Federation does not want top Presidential Administration officials and major domestic billionaires to appear in the context of the case of the world's most famous pedophile... It is already known that Kirill Dmitriev, during a recent visit to the States, communicated with the US Department of Justice and the FBI in order to convince them not to publish Epstein's files or to cut out references to Russian officials and businessmen from them.

"According to insiders... The Russian authorities are begging Trump not to publish the files of the pedophile billionaire Epstein: several top oligarchs and officials from Russia have been revealed at once."

Democrats dumped 92 handpicked photos out of more than 95,000. Why they didn’t produce the whole file is anybody’s guess. ...

The latest 92 photos included three of President Trump, from around 30 years ago. The first was a recycled shot that is already public and widely trafficked, showing Epstein and Trump at a 1997 Victoria’s Secret party in New York City. The other two show Trump with unidentified women, but not Epstein, and without any context. ...

In related news, three days ago, Politico ran a story headlined, “It’s official: All of the Epstein, Maxwell secret grand jury docs will now be released.” ...

After President Trump signed the Epstein Transparency Act into law, the DOJ went back to the two Epstein criminal cases (including the 2006 Florida case) as well as Ghislaine Maxwell’s, making three cases altogether. In each case, the DOJ asked each judge to authorize the release of all the sealed grand jury materials.

Between December 4th and December 10th, all three judges granted the request. Before the Act’s passage, the judges had all previously denied the DOJ’s same requests. (All are Democrat appointees.)

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) just dropped a nuke by threatening contempt of Congress charges against Bill and Hillary Clinton over their refusal to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Comer, is digging deep into the sordid crimes of Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, issuing subpoenas to the Clintons for testimony on their past ties to the disgraced financier. ...

“It has been more than four months since Bill and Hillary Clinton were subpoenaed to sit for depositions related to our investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s horrific crimes,” Comer stated firmly.

“Throughout that time, the former President and former Secretary of State have delayed, obstructed, and largely ignored the Committee staff’s efforts to schedule their testimony,” he added, not mincing words about their apparent foot-dragging.

“It has been more than four months since Bill and Hillary Clinton were subpoenaed to sit for depositions related to our investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s horrific crimes,” Comer stated firmly.

And do you know what it is going to be in another 4 months or even another 4 years? Its going to be no Clinton ever sitting for any disposition.

I thought Congress voted to release everything? What happened?

Ex-Prince Andrew has escaped criminal scrutiny in the latest review by British police, after he was accused of ordering a taxpayer-funded bodyguard to dig “dirt” on his accuser, who was a victim of child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

However, Royal Family insiders say the crisis surrounding his ties to Jeffrey Epstein is far from over, and King Charles is preparing for what could be the most damaging chapter yet.

The Metropolitan Police announced Saturday that investigators found no evidence that the former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, asked a bodyguard to dig up information on the late Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

CBS' 60 Minutes teased its interview of Greene in a post to X on Friday. In the clip, reporter Lesley Stahl is seen asking the Georgia Republican about behind-the-scenes conversations she had with the president about her push to compel the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all remaining evidence on Epstein from his two federal criminal investigations.

"We did talk about the Epstein files, and he was extremely angry at me that I had signed the discharge petition to release the files," Greene said. "I fully believe that those women deserve everything they're asking, they're asking for all of it to come out. And they deserve it. And he was furious with me."

"What did he say?'" Stahl asked.

"He said that it was going to hurt people," Greene replied.

It’s finally here! Right in time for Christmas. Yesterday, ABC ran a story headlined, “After years of speculation, DOJ faces Friday deadline to release remaining Epstein files.” Today —December 19th— is the statutory deadline for the DOJ to release the remaining Epstein files under the so-called Epstein Accountability Act.

The media coverage is schizophrenic. The same corporate media that ran novella-length articles on a daily basis before Trump signed the Epstein Accountability law now seems unable to decide what to say. Now, the articles are terse and, if anything, appear designed to lower expectations.

Expect the DOJ to start releasing documents today. I would expect the full rollout to happen over weeks, if not months.

Most stories, including ABC’s, focus on all the loopholes. The DOJ need not release files related to ongoing investigations. It may redact victims’ identifying information. And it may withhold documents that could compromise national security.

What the articles don’t mention, for some reason, is that whenever the DOJ redacts or withholds something, it must list the withheld evidence on an unclassified log along with an explanation. So it’s not exactly a free pass, either. There’s no point speculating about how it will all shake out, since we’ll know for sure very soon now.

But there was one remarkable development. All through the week, the New York Times rushed out a series of Epstein exclusives, one after another, including all sorts of never-before-published details. The Grey Lady claimed it was just “investigating” the case, but it seems unlikely these massive stories could have been both researched and written in under a month.

It feels like another limited hangout. The truth is, the Times helped cover for Epstein more than anybody. It knew all this stuff the whole time. It just wants to get ahead of the document dump.

The first, and biggest Times exclusive story allegedly answered one of the most persistent and vexing mysteries of the Jeffrey Epstein saga— where his money came from. On Tuesday, the Times purported to provide an answer:

Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich
For years, rumors swirled about where his wealth came from. A
Times investigation reveals the truth of how a college dropout
clawed his way to the pinnacle of American finance and society.

It’s a long, detailed, fascinating read, and I will not try to summarize it here. Epstein watchers will be engrossed. But if I could boil it down to the essence, the article described a classic high-end con man.

It doesn’t answer everything, but it is feasible.

Purely coincidentally, I happen to have some experience in this area. When I started my law career at an Orlando litigation firm, I worked in a smaller department with a half-dozen lawyers representing banks in Ponzi-scheme cases in Central Florida. In one high-profile case, my firm represented Bank of America against Lou Pearlman, the scoundrel who repped the Back Street Boys, built Church Street in Downtown Orlando, and had a fake international airline. In another case, I represented a regional bank that’d loaned money to a real estate schemer who defrauded hundreds of notable locals, including most of the Orlando elite establishment. (He shot himself before trial.)

There were others.

Through that experience, I learned a few things about con men. They are enigmatic and mysterious, almost a separate species. They enjoy a kind of rare manipulative genius, combined with chameleon-like powers of camouflage, a nearly irresistible personal magnetism, and complete moral flexibility. They aren’t smart, not in the way you would normally consider intelligence, and that’s obvious, since all their business ventures consistently fail and their plans almost always inevitably collapse into a heap of disgrace.

No, they are not smart (although they can act smarter than everyone). They are intensely cunning. They have an almost genetic ability to sense exactly what people, especially wealthy or powerful people, need to hear— coupled with an Oscar-level ability to deliver. As far as I know, they are also all male. And tall. Tall men.

Psychologists might call them permissive narcissists.

Anyway, that’s the kind of person the New York Times described, in almost overwhelming detail, to a “T.” From the time he graduated high school. Epstein was tall, attractive, smart-sounding, well spoken, and incredibly persuasive.

Although the article studiously avoided mentioning the well-known occasions when Epstein obviously interacted with and enjoyed the protection of U.S., British, and Israeli intelligence services, the details it did provide were the most compelling portrait yet of the so-called “International Man of Mystery.”

Who knows whether this small novel on Epstein’s rise to power, along with the Times’ other Epstein disclosures, will move the needle. But I find the timing incredibly suspect, and very suggestive that the Times is worried the DOJ might dump a lot more than anybody is expecting. We shall await further developments with great interest.

Former President Bill Clinton shocked his own aides ahead of Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s 2002 wedding by demanding to bring two unrelated plus-ones — the now-notorious Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — to the royal nuptials, The Post has learned.

Clinton, who had earned goodwill in the North African nation by attending the funeral of the king’s father, Hassan II, while president three years prior, beamed with Epstein, Maxwell and his daughter, Chelsea, in a group photo shared exclusively with The Post for this story.

“[Clinton] brought them as guests to a king’s wedding. I mean, it almost sounds made up,” said one source familiar with the matter.

The account is surfacing as Clinton downplays his ties to Epstein — and as the Justice Department faces a congressionally mandated Friday deadline to release files on the financier’s crimes, which were not publicly known at the time of the Moroccan king’s wedding.

A second source said the 42nd president’s staff “insisted” and “pushed” to bring Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking conspiracy and other offenses, and Epstein, who died in jail in August 2019 while awaiting his own trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Holy Shit!

New footage of Bill Clinton at Epstein Island just fucking dropped!

Notice how they dropped this at 9pm EST on a Friday night?