Epstein Connections

Not All Were Pedophiles

Also on today’s menu at the News Café:

The Unusual Suspects

Then There Is Trump

Dean Kamen speaks to employees and supporters of ARMI, the government-funded research project he oversees in Manchester. (Todd Bookman/NHPR)

Dean Kamen, despite having been cleared of any wrongdoing in his limited interactions with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, announced that he will be resigning from his position on the board of directors of FIRST, the youth science organization he founded in 1989. Board Chair Laurie Leshin said, “Dean made this decision in the best interest of FIRST to avoid potential distractions to its many stakeholders.” While an independent review “found no evidence of misconduct” by Kamen, she said, “Nonetheless, Dean has acknowledged errors in judgment by not avoiding any connection with Jeffrey Epstein and his associates after Epstein’s conviction in 2008.”

Kamen had voluntarily placed himself on leave from FIRST in January, after records and emails released by the US Department of Justice revealed that the men were in contact for more than a decade, with Kamen visiting Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. Kamen also was on leave from his job as executive director of ARMI, a government-funded biotech startup in Manchester, but ARMI announced on March 12 that it’s investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing and that he would return to his role. Sequel Med Tech, that builds technologies for people with diabetes, also announced that it had cleared Kamen of any wrongdoing and that he would return to its board of directors.

Among the documents prompting the investigations was correspondence that makes a reference to Kamen flying “the girls” to “PB from NY,” an apparent reference to Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein owned a mansion. There also was the reference in a newsletter published by the New York FIRST affiliate that, in 2013, Nadia Marcinko, who lived in a home in New Hampshire owned by Kamen, was providing flying lessons for employees of Kamen’s private company, DEKA. The released Epstein documents revealed that Marcinko was both a victim of Epstein’s sexual abuse as well as an enabler of it. Marcinko, however, has said Kamen was attempting to help her, and that he “should have the full support of the public, his board, and the entire FIRST community”.

The Unusual Suspects

There are good many names in the “Epstein files” that are likely innocent of any wrongdoing, but they do reveal the extent of Epstein’s network of contacts with wealthy people around the world. There has been a lot of focus on the US Department of Justice’s withholding of incriminating files on Donald Trump, but Marcos Paulo Candeloro points to someone else whose suspicious involvement with Jeffrey Epstein is getting almost no attention: “In February 2016, Jeffrey Epstein wrote an email to Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, with a sentence that should have made the front page of every newspaper in the Western world: ‘As you probably know, I represent the Rothschilds.’”

Candeloro has been tracing that connection, revealing that “one of [President Barack Obama’s] most trusted advisers”, Kathryn Ruemmler, who had served as White House Counsel to Obama between June 2011 to mid-2014, had been a partner at Latham & Watkins prior to her White House job, and when she left, she returned to the law firm. “On August 14, 2014, barely weeks after her return, Epstein emailed her about the Rothschild bank: “They have a justice department problem... like every other Swiss bank.” Obama’s Department of Justice had initiated its Swiss Bank Program, “the most aggressive crackdown on offshore tax evasion in American history” that ended Swiss banking secrecy and led 80 Swiss banks to sign non-prosecution agreements in which they avoided criminal prosecution in exchange for full disclosure and substantial penalties that exceeded $7.5 billion.

Ruemmler had been considered Obama’s top candidate to replace Eric Holder as US Attorney-General, but Epstein wrote to Ariane de Rothschild to say that Ruemmler was “declining the Attorney General position” and could now fulfill their “mission”. Ruemmler made Epstein a consultant on behalf of Edmond de Rothschild Holding S.A. for $25 million. “On December 10, 2015, the DOJ’s Non-Prosecution Agreement was finalized. The document was addressed directly to “Kathryn Ruemmler, Christopher Clark, Latham & Watkins LLP.” The bank paid a $45.245 million penalty. Within days, approximately $25 million was wired to Epstein’s accounts: $10 million from Edmond de Rothschild Suisse SA and $14,999,980 from Benjamin de Rothschild personally…. A convicted pedophile earned $25 million for connecting a Swiss bank to a former White House Counsel while the government she had served investigated that bank for tax fraud.”

Then There Is Trump

The Daily Beast announced in November that it had obtained recordings of Michael Wolff’s interviews with Jeffrey Epstein in which Epstein described himself as Donald Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed intimate knowledge of Trump’s sexual appetites, including cuckolding his best friends. He claimed that “the first time he slept with [Melania] was on my plane,” known as the Lolita Express.

WhileTrump supporters referred to the tapes’ release as “false smears” and “election interference”, the Justice Department’s slow release of files concerning Trump, coming only after reporters discovered they were missing, is lending credibility to the claims. The Iran War has been seen as an attempt to steer attention away from the Epstein files.

Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that it was unable to substantiate the claims of Never Trumper Juleanna Glover that her motivation for engaging with Epstein was aimed at unearthing information that could sink Trump’s reelection efforts. Instead, Politico took seriously her statement that she also had asked Epstein for help her client, Elon Musk, in dealing with Saudi Arabia. “In one Tesla-related email [with Epstein], Glover said that if Epstein was advising any sovereign wealth funds wanting to help ‘a prominent company go private,’ she could help. In the second email to Glover, Epstein criticized Musk for not being ‘fluent’ in how to deal with Middle Easterners’ ‘bluster’ and ‘bloviating bragging’ after Saudi funding did not come through.

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