Theories Fly: Was Epstein Running a Massive Blackmail Scheme -- And Was He An Intelligence Asset?https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2019/07/12/with-acosta-out-two-huge-epstein-mysteries-remain-n2549975
Guy Benson | Posted: Jul 12, 2019 11:30 AM
Excerpt:
His position untenable and his saga inflicting an endless parade of headache-inducing news cycles upon the White House, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta announced his resignation this morning. Some of the points he made in his own defense at a lengthy press conference this week seemed fair and valid, but his combination of buck-passing, contrived helplessness, and selective talking points left numerous questions unanswered. So he's out. The stomach-turning Epstein case is far from over, of course, and one gets the sense that there's much more sordidness lurking beneath its already-seedy and disturbing surface.
Without delving into every outrageous aspect of this mess, two questions continue to baffle: First, how did Epstein amass his fortune? Second, what was Sec. Acosta talking about when he reportedly told the Trump administration's vetting team that he was waved off of throwing the book at Epstein because of nebulous intelligence community interests? Let's begin with Epstein's money. The source of his prodigious resources is shrouded in confusion and opacity -- and has long been the subject of guessing games among New York's elite finance community. New York Magazine delves into one growing theory, fueled by the confounding reality that nobody within that plugged-in world seems to know virtually any Epstein investors, nor have they traded with him.
Kass was well-connected on Wall Street, where he’d worked for decades, so he began to ask around. “I went to my institutional brokers, to their trading desks and asked if they ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested,†he recalls. “Not one institutional trading desk, primary or secondary, had ever traded with Epstein’s firm.†When a reporter came to interview Kass about Bernie Madoff shortly before that firm blew up in the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Kass told her, “There’s another guy who reminds me of Madoff that no one trades with.†That man was Jeffrey Epstein. “How did he get the money?†Kass kept asking.
For decades, Epstein has been credulously described as a big-time hedge-fund manager and a billionaire, even though there’s not a lot of evidence that he is either...Naturally, this air of mystery has especially piqued the interest of real-life, non-pretend hedge-funders. If this guy wasn’t playing their game — and they seem pretty sure he was not — what game was he playing? ... Epstein was also missing another key element of a typical thriving hedge fund: investors. Kass couldn’t find any beyond Epstein’s one well-publicized client, retail magnate Les Wexner — nor could other players in the hedge-fund world who undertook similar snooping. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever invested in him; he’s never talked about by any of the allocators,†says one billionaire hedge-fund manager, referring to firms that distribute large pools money among various funds.
His career trajectory also makes little sense and offers few clues:
