Never heard of the filmmaker, but Thornley and his ilk were sacks of Fresh Fertilizer.

Sounds like this bag got torn open and enriched some unfortunate seedlings.

Best,

Dave

At least that’s the story we get, over and over, with each new federal award. And while experts observe that it’s US tax payers who are ultimately paying for these lucrative federal contracts, it’s worth noting another feature of 1789 Capital’s ‘patriotic capitalism’: roughly 40% of its raised capital have come from foreign investors, according to SEC filings. Which foreign investors? We don’t know for sure, But we can reasonably speculate given that 1789 Capital co-founder, Omeed Malik, was asked about the foreign investment during an event in May of this year and replied by challenging the event moderator to find “any asset manager that has over half a billion under management that doesn’t have money from the Gulf.” Although we shouldn’t assume it’s limited to Gulf money. Don Jr met with business or political leaders in more than a dozen countries in Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia as part of a 19-country global tour since the 2024.

We are also told Don Jr frequently pitched his proximity to the Trump administration as a feature of 1789 Capital. But, again, we’re just supposed to ignore that and accept the assurances that all of the federal contracts that have been pouring into 1789 Capital’s companies were awarded purely on merit. It’s a meritocracy, you see! 1789 Capital is just overflowing with merit!

It’s also worth noting that a number of the companies in 1789 Capital’s portfolio didn’t get their first federal contracts under the Trump administration. A large number of contracts had already been awarded under the Biden administration, although the $1.6 billion in federal contracts and grants in the first 500 days of Trump’s second term were still 79% greater than the amount federal awards and contracts obtained during the same time period at the end of President Joe Biden’s term. Which is a reminder that the economic wealth of the ‘TheoBro’ network really is heavily based on federal contracts that really are awarded by both Democrats and Republicans. Yes, the awards might be higher under Republican administrations, but Democrats have been effectively fueling this movement too. Peter Thiel’s Palantir, which has had is an obvious example, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. In fact, both Palantir and Anduril were a product of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel venture capital arm. And while SpaceX’s post-IPO stock has been on a bit of a rocky ride lately, it turns out a huge portion of 1789 Capital’s assets are tied up in pre-IPO SpaceX. We don’t know the price 1789 Capital paid, but we can be pretty confident the confident has done very well with that investment. An investment that, again, is heavily reliant on federal contracts, especially with the US military. That’s all part of the context of 1789 Capital’s model of ‘patriotic capitalism’. The company may not describe ‘patriotic capitalism’ as getting copious cushy federal contracts and raising undisclosed investments from governments and oligarchs around the world, but that’s what it is.

And that report on 1789 Capital’s extensive ‘patriotic’ foreign investments — the kind of investments that serve as obvious vehicles for influencing peddling with the Trump White House — brings us to another recent report on the ‘patriotism’ of a major TheoBro entity with extensive federal contracts: It turns out Palantir paid $0 in US federal taxes in 2025. In fact, the company reported $1.657 billion in pre-tax profit in 2025 and yet paid just $22.7 million in corporate taxes globally. That’s effective global tax rate of 1.4%. Who knows how exactly, but these companies seem to have managed to game the global tax system at the same time they’ve mastered the ‘art’ of government contracting. Not on are global democracies paying to slit their own throats through the enrichment of companies like Palantir, but they aren’t even collecting taxes on those payments. Which is also a reminder that the real ‘patriotism’ exhibited by these TheoBros firms is a patriotic fervor for the oligarch-run Network States they are planning on breaking away from the rest of society:

CNN

Trump Jr.’s investment firm has soared since his father’s election. So has federal funding to companies it backs

By Majlie de Puy Kamp, Curt Devine, Casey Tolan
July 20, 2026

A short drive from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, in a small office a block from the beach, sits the headquarters of 1789 Capital, a firm founded just a few years ago with plans to invest in businesses aligned with conservative values.

Since Donald Trump Jr. joined as a partner shortly after his father’s reelection, 1789 Capital has rapidly grown to manage billions of dollars in assets with a strategy that closely reflects the president’s policies.

Companies backed by 1789 Capital have also significantly increased their federal funding under the Trump administration, a CNN analysis of contracting data found.

Ten defense, space and software companies that Trump Jr.’s firm is invested in have been awarded over $1.6 billion from federal contracts and grants in the first 500 days of Trump’s second term – 79% more than the amount they were awarded during the same time period at the end of President Joe Biden’s term. That doesn’t include a handful of other federal loans and subcontracts worth more than $1 billion in total that other startups backed by the firm are on track to receive under the Trump administration.

1789 Capital leaders have also backed companies that could financially benefit from policy moves made by the administration – including a firm promoting direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical sales, a company that sells testosterone and a vaping manufacturer.

There’s no evidence that 1789 Capital or Trump Jr. have pushed for the companies they’ve invested in to get any federal funding. Asked whether anyone with 1789 Capital has ever discussed federal contracts involving those companies with the Trump administration, Thomas Clare, an attorney representing the firm, said in a statement “the answer is unequivocally no.”

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. also said he plays no role in the contracting process. And the companies receiving the contracts say they have no knowledge of anyone with the firm swaying public funds.

“Don does not interface with the Federal Government as part of his role with any company that he invests in or advises,” Trump Jr.’s spokesman told CNN, describing him as a “lifelong businessman and serial investor with the same Constitutional rights as any other law-abiding private American citizen.”

At the same time, the younger Trump has publicly pitched investors that his proximity to the administration gives 1789 Capital a leg up.

“We understand what the administration wants to do, because we helped craft some of that messaging,” Trump Jr. said at a Saudi business conference last fall, referencing his work with the fund. “So we can be on the outside but still have that understanding of what they plan to do.”

1789 Capital, which pitches itself as dedicated to “patriotic capitalism,” grew from less than a billion dollars-worth of assets under management last year to about $3.5 billion now, its leaders say. Records show a significant share has come from foreign investors.

Other firms have launched funds in recent years that similarly aim to boost US industries and have invested in some of the same companies winning federal contracts.

Still, government watchdogs say the rapid growth of 1789 Capital and its investments in companies benefitting from the Trump administration’s agenda could undermine public trust because of the prominent role of the president’s son.

“There’s money from my paycheck and your paycheck that is being taken out in the form of taxes and is going directly into the pocketbooks of these companies and by extension to the Trump family,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, an interim vice president at the Project on Government Oversight. “It casts a black cloud over all the decisions that are being made when it comes to contracts.”

...

Skyrocketing growth

Days after Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2024, Donald Trump Jr. appeared for an interview at a GOP donor retreat. In front of a few hundred conservative luminaries still buzzing over the big win, the presidential scion was asked whether he would work in his father’s administration.

Trump Jr. said he had other plans: joining a little-known Florida investment firm.

1789 Capital had been founded by a friend of Trump Jr., Omeed Malik, and two other financiers. Malik, a former Bank of America managing director, had left the Democratic Party during Trump’s first term after feeling abandoned and betrayed by the party’s support for the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and Covid policies, he told The Free Press. He met Trump Jr. in 2019, and later traded Manhattan for Palm Beach, Florida, where he became a Mar-a-Lago member.

In 2023, Malik and his cofounders announced the launch of 1789 Capital – named after the year the Bill of Rights was drafted – to invest in US companies. According to an SEC filing that year, the venture sought to raise $100 million.

At the Saudi investment conference last year, Malik said the firm aimed to “always look through a prism of how we can benefit the United States.”

The firm’s finances quickly spiked after Trump’s victory and Trump Jr.’s announcement about joining as a partner in November 2024. Less than a year later, 1789 Capital disclosed managing nearly a billion dollars in assets; Paul Abrahimzadeh, a partner in the firm, told the Financial Times in May that it now managed about $3.5 billion.

About 40% of the firm’s money comes from foreign investors, SEC filings show. The filings don’t disclose where the foreign investors are based.

Clare said other funds often have higher rates of foreign investors and noted that 1789 Capital only backs US companies.

That influx of money into the fund came as Trump Jr. embarked on a global tour, traveling to at least 19 foreign countries and territories since the 2024 election.

While a few of those trips appear to have been personal vacations, he met with business or political leaders in more than a dozen countries in Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia, according to social media posts and regional news reports. In some places, recordings show he specifically plugged 1789 Capital.

Malik has said the influx of foreign funds is normal for a growing investment group.

“It’s the same thing as what the Trump administration is doing with foreign direct investment,” he said at an event in May. “The idea is that if you have allied countries that want to help the United States, we’d be happy to take money from abroad and put it in America to create US jobs.”

He later challenged the event moderator to find “any asset manager that has over half a billion under management that doesn’t have money from the Gulf.”

But Hedtler-Gaudette said the fund could also give foreign entities a way to try to indirectly influence the administration.

“This is a way for large amounts of cash to be infused into the pockets of people who are close to the president without having to deal with all those pesky sort of disclosure and reporting rules you would have to if you were directly lobbying,” he said.

Federal funds increase

Since Trump’s reelection, 1789 Capital has invested in several government contractors that have succeeded in winning contracts and loans for more federal money.

Vulcan Elements, which manufactures rare-earth magnets for defense and other purposes, was selected for a $620 million loan from the Trump administration within months of 1789 Capital’s investment in the company. That loan came after Peter Navarro, a White House adviser and friend of Trump Jr., requested the loan be given to the company, ProPublica reported.

A Vulcan Elements spokesperson told CNN the company did not ask its investors to facilitate that loan, for which the company was picked after a year of diligence by multiple government agencies. Clare said that 1789 Capital had “zero knowledge any of these transactions were even contemplated” and learned about the loan from media reports.

The Pentagon denied in a statement that any company has received preferential treatment, and a spokesperson for Trump Jr. said he did not speak to Navarro about Vulcan. Navarro did not respond to requests for comment.

Separately, CNN’s analysis found that 10 federal contractors backed by 1789 Capital have been awarded slightly more funding in the year and a half of the Trump term than they did during all four years of the Biden administration, according to data from USAspending, the federal government’s contracting database. That includes federal obligations on both new and existing contracts and grants during the time periods.

One of the biggest recipients that 1789 Capital has invested in is Anduril, a defense contractor developing drones and other technology. The Trump administration has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the company to build autonomous munitions for the military and surveillance towers for US Customs and Border Protection. In total, the business was awarded about $1.25 billion during Trump’s first 500 days, compared with about $760 million under Biden’s last 500 days.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the Anduril headquarters in California last year, and the company quoted him in a social media post declaring his agency closely aligned with the company’s priorities: “We’re going to innovate, we’re going to scale, and we’re going to do it at cost. I think I just described the mission of Anduril,” Hegseth said.

Anduril did not respond to a request for comment. Founder Palmer Luckey has said the company “doesn’t get any special treatment” from the Trump administration and has argued it’s winning more contracts because “our products are better and faster and cheaper” than rival offerings.

Trump Jr.’s fund has also invested in Axiom Space, a Texas-based company working to build a commercial space station, which was awarded more than $300 million in government contracts under Trump’s first 500 days – up from about $153 million in the same period at the end of Biden’s term.

Axiom Space told CNN its most significant contracts have been awarded by NASA through open competition. “We are proud to have earned the confidence of NASA and the US government across multiple administrations,” the company stated.

PsiQuantum, a quantum computing company, signed a letter of intent with the Commerce Department in May for $100 million in funding, along with multiple other firms. A PsiQuantum spokesperson told CNN the company’s government partnerships have spanned multiple administrations, including as one of only two companies in an advanced stage of a defense research initiative.

One business that bucked the trend was Firehawk Aerospace, a rocket propulsion company. It was awarded about $4.5 million in federal contracts from the Trump administration, down from about $10.3 million during Biden’s last 500 days.

1789 Capital has also invested in Elon Musk’s companies, and a partner at the firm said at a forum in June that it counted SpaceX as its “biggest” holding. SpaceX, which has long received government contracts worth billions of dollars, has been awarded contracts worth a similar amount in Trump’s term to date as compared with the last part of Biden’s term. CNN excluded SpaceX from its analysis because it dwarfs the other contractors and is led by Elon Musk, who has his own connections to the Trump administration.

After a group of Democratic senators questioned the Pentagon about contracts and loans awarded to companies associated with Trump Jr. and 1789 Capital, the department stated in March that its Office of Strategic Capital “is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards and ensuring that its investment decisions are free from conflicts of interest” involving its personnel. Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez also told CNN that “outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.”

Many of those contracts came through a full competition, but some of the firms backed by 1789 Capital have seen an increase in no-bid deals as well since Trump returned to office. Altogether, about 18% of the funding awarded to 1789 Capital-associated companies during Trump’s first 500 days was tied to no-bid federal contracts, compared to about 7.5% of the funding under Biden’s last 500 days.

Clare said the companies 1789 Capital has invested in are “the hottest private companies in the market” and that they have also received investments from other major firms. “There is no possible basis to report that 1789 has done anything with respect to these private companies other than making the same smart investments as other well-respected funds and investors,” he said.

Testosterone, vapes and pharma

1789 Capital has also backed numerous companies that may stand to grow their businesses thanks to Trump administration policies.

BlinkRx, a 1789 Capital-backed company that has named Trump Jr. to its board, offers online prescription-drug delivery. Last July, President Trump called on pharmaceutical companies to embrace direct-to-consumer distribution. About a week later, BlinkRx announced an initiative to help pharmaceutical companies do just that. BlinkRx also hosted an event with drug company leaders and administration officials earlier this year.

A BlinkRx spokesperson said the company has not generated revenue from the administration’s drug-pricing orders or letters to manufacturers, adding, “We had no involvement with the development of any of those actions, and learned about them for the first time from press reports.”

1789 Capital has also invested in Enhanced Games, which hosted an athletic competition in May that allowed participants to use performance-enhancing drugs. Beyond its flagship event, the business also makes money by selling drugs such as testosterone injections and peptides to boost skin quality.

Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has acknowledged personally using testosterone, the administration has pushed to deregulate sales of those same types of products. A panel convened by the FDA last year called for loosening restrictions on testosterone to make it more widely available, and Kennedy said earlier this year the administration would allow some peptides to be “more accessible.” Enhanced CEO Maximilian Martin told CNN earlier this year, “We have nothing to do with politics. Where you sit on a political spectrum is independent of the fact that enhancements can help you.”

Another 1789 Capital-backed company is the vaping manufacturer Juul, which the FDA allowed last year to continue selling e‑cigarettes, following scrutiny that included a later-rescinded order during the Biden administration to stop product sales. Juul’s CEO referred to that FDA decision last year as a “big day for the company.” More recently, the FDA moved to allow companies like Juul to once again sell flavored e‑cigarettes, despite public health concerns about the flavors hooking teens on smoking.

Potential new scrutiny

As Trump Jr. has grown his financial empire, he’s rejected parallels to another presidential son who raised ethics concerns – Hunter Biden, who pursued foreign business deals and landed a lucrative gig as a board member for a Ukrainian energy company when his father served as vice president.

Trump Jr. has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has sought to profit from government connections in the way Republicans long accused the Biden family of doing.

“I get the ‘Don Jr. is the next Hunter Biden,’ and I say, it’s such a false equivalence,” Trump Jr. said at a forum in Qatar last year. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. We were businessmen both before, we will be businessmen after my father’s presidency.”

Trump Jr. may face increased scrutiny of those deals in the next two years, especially if Democrats regain control of the House or Senate and can launch committee inquiries with subpoena power. Some lawmakers have already called for investigations. After the House Oversight Committee’s top Democrat asked for a probe into defense contracts that may benefit the Trump family, the Defense Department’s inspector general met with committee staff and is preparing a response, a spokesperson for the office said.

...

METHODOLOGY

CNN reviewed data from the research firm PitchBook, which identified more than 35 companies backed by 1789 Capital. Of those, at least 11 have been awarded federal contracts and grants in recent years.

CNN’s analysis excluded several large loans and other funding awards that were not included in USAspending.gov data as of this week, either because they are not yet fully approved, because they were awarded under non-traditional contracting authority, or because of delays in public posting.

It also excluded federal contracts to SpaceX, which 1789 Capital executives have described as the firm’s largest holding, because it dwarfs the other contractors and is led by Elon Musk, who has his own connections to the Trump administration. SpaceX, which has long received government contracts worth billions of dollars, has been awarded similar amounts of federal funds during Trump’s term to date as compared with the last part of Biden’s term, according to the USAspending data.

———

“Trump Jr.’s investment firm has soared since his father’s election. So has federal funding to companies it backs” By Majlie de Puy Kamp, Curt Devine, Casey Tolan; CNN; 07/20/2026

“1789 Capital, which pitches itself as dedicated to “patriotic capitalism,” grew from less than a billion dollars-worth of assets under management last year to about $3.5 billion now, its leaders say. Records show a significant share has come from foreign investors.”

Yes, it turns out a large portion of the funds backing 1789 Capital’s dramatic growth has come from foreign investors, with roughly 40% of the firms cash coming from foreign investments. We aren’t allowed to learn the specific origins although it’s pretty clear that much of it is from Middle Eastern investors. It’s a very interesting feature for a company pitching itself as the modern day paragon of “patriotic capitalism”. And as Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, an interim vice president at the Project on Government Oversight, observes, the sudden surge of government contracts awarded to 1789 Capital’s many investments means it’s ultimately US tax payers that are going to be fueling the profits for 1789 Capital’s investors, domestic and foreign alike:

...

“There’s money from my paycheck and your paycheck that is being taken out in the form of taxes and is going directly into the pocketbooks of these companies and by extension to the Trump family,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, an interim vice president at the Project on Government Oversight. “It casts a black cloud over all the decisions that are being made when it comes to contracts.”

...

At the Saudi investment conference last year, Malik said the firm aimed to “always look through a prism of how we can benefit the United States.”

The firm’s finances quickly spiked after Trump’s victory and Trump Jr.’s announcement about joining as a partner in November 2024. Less than a year later, 1789 Capital disclosed managing nearly a billion dollars in assets; Paul Abrahimzadeh, a partner in the firm, told the Financial Times in May that it now managed about $3.5 billion.

About 40% of the firm’s money comes from foreign investors, SEC filings show. The filings don’t disclose where the foreign investors are based.

Clare said other funds often have higher rates of foreign investors and noted that 1789 Capital only backs US companies.

That influx of money into the fund came as Trump Jr. embarked on a global tour, traveling to at least 19 foreign countries and territories since the 2024 election.

While a few of those trips appear to have been personal vacations, he met with business or political leaders in more than a dozen countries in Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia, according to social media posts and regional news reports. In some places, recordings show he specifically plugged 1789 Capital.

Malik has said the influx of foreign funds is normal for a growing investment group.

“It’s the same thing as what the Trump administration is doing with foreign direct investment,” he said at an event in May. “The idea is that if you have allied countries that want to help the United States, we’d be happy to take money from abroad and put it in America to create US jobs.”

He later challenged the event moderator to find “any asset manager that has over half a billion under management that doesn’t have money from the Gulf.”

But Hedtler-Gaudette said the fund could also give foreign entities a way to try to indirectly influence the administration.

“This is a way for large amounts of cash to be infused into the pockets of people who are close to the president without having to deal with all those pesky sort of disclosure and reporting rules you would have to if you were directly lobbying,” he said.
...

And, again, as we’ve seen, while we are repeatedly given these absurd assurance from 1789 Capital that nothing untoward is happening with the awarding of all these federal contracts, those assurances stand in contrast to Don Jr touting his proximity to his dad to potential investors. They really do think we’re stupid. And why not? It’s not as if treating the public like a bunch of credulous buffoons has negative consequences. This is an age of elite impunity:

...
There’s no evidence that 1789 Capital or Trump Jr. have pushed for the companies they’ve invested in to get any federal funding. Asked whether anyone with 1789 Capital has ever discussed federal contracts involving those companies with the Trump administration, Thomas Clare, an attorney representing the firm, said in a statement “the answer is unequivocally no.”

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. also said he plays no role in the contracting process. And the companies receiving the contracts say they have no knowledge of anyone with the firm swaying public funds.

“Don does not interface with the Federal Government as part of his role with any company that he invests in or advises,” Trump Jr.’s spokesman told CNN, describing him as a “lifelong businessman and serial investor with the same Constitutional rights as any other law-abiding private American citizen.”

At the same time, the younger Trump has publicly pitched investors that his proximity to the administration gives 1789 Capital a leg up.

“We understand what the administration wants to do, because we helped craft some of that messaging,” Trump Jr. said at a Saudi business conference last fall, referencing his work with the fund. “So we can be on the outside but still have that understanding of what they plan to do.”
...

But it’s also worth noting that a number of 1789 Capital’s investments already had federal contracts that were gained under the Biden administration. They just have even more contracts now. Which is a reminder of the reality that these fascist-minded capitalists have long had their ambitions fueled through copious government financing, with Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Elon Musk’s SpaceX as prime examples. The US democratic institutions really have been slitting their collective throats for years by repeatedly cuddling up to and empower anti-democratic oligarchs:

...
Since Donald Trump Jr. joined as a partner shortly after his father’s reelection, 1789 Capital has rapidly grown to manage billions of dollars in assets with a strategy that closely reflects the president’s policies.

Companies backed by 1789 Capital have also significantly increased their federal funding under the Trump administration, a CNN analysis of contracting data found.

Ten defense, space and software companies that Trump Jr.’s firm is invested in have been awarded over $1.6 billion from federal contracts and grants in the first 500 days of Trump’s second term – 79% more than the amount they were awarded during the same time period at the end of President Joe Biden’s term. That doesn’t include a handful of other federal loans and subcontracts worth more than $1 billion in total that other startups backed by the firm are on track to receive under the Trump administration.

1789 Capital leaders have also backed companies that could financially benefit from policy moves made by the administration – including a firm promoting direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical sales, a company that sells testosterone and a vaping manufacturer.

...

Separately, CNN’s analysis found that 10 federal contractors backed by 1789 Capital have been awarded slightly more funding in the year and a half of the Trump term than they did during all four years of the Biden administration, according to data from USAspending, the federal government’s contracting database. That includes federal obligations on both new and existing contracts and grants during the time periods.

One of the biggest recipients that 1789 Capital has invested in is Anduril, a defense contractor developing drones and other technology. The Trump administration has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the company to build autonomous munitions for the military and surveillance towers for US Customs and Border Protection. In total, the business was awarded about $1.25 billion during Trump’s first 500 days, compared with about $760 million under Biden’s last 500 days.

...

Trump Jr.’s fund has also invested in Axiom Space, a Texas-based company working to build a commercial space station, which was awarded more than $300 million in government contracts under Trump’s first 500 days – up from about $153 million in the same period at the end of Biden’s term.

...

After a group of Democratic senators questioned the Pentagon about contracts and loans awarded to companies associated with Trump Jr. and 1789 Capital, the department stated in March that its Office of Strategic Capital “is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards and ensuring that its investment decisions are free from conflicts of interest” involving its personnel. Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez also told CNN that “outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.”

Many of those contracts came through a full competition, but some of the firms backed by 1789 Capital have seen an increase in no-bid deals as well since Trump returned to office. Altogether, about 18% of the funding awarded to 1789 Capital-associated companies during Trump’s first 500 days was tied to no-bid federal contracts, compared to about 7.5% of the funding under Biden’s last 500 days.
...

And lastly, it’s worth acknowledging that Don Jr does have a point when he assert that there’s no parallels to the corrupt nature of Hunter Biden’s deals with Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas giant. Hunter Biden was making roughly $1 million a year off of his Burisma work. Don Jr’s grift is orders of magnitude larger:

...
As Trump Jr. has grown his financial empire, he’s rejected parallels to another presidential son who raised ethics concerns – Hunter Biden, who pursued foreign business deals and landed a lucrative gig as a board member for a Ukrainian energy company when his father served as vice president.

Trump Jr. has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has sought to profit from government connections in the way Republicans long accused the Biden family of doing.

“I get the ‘Don Jr. is the next Hunter Biden,’ and I say, it’s such a false equivalence,” Trump Jr. said at a forum in Qatar last year. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. We were businessmen both before, we will be businessmen after my father’s presidency.”

Trump Jr. may face increased scrutiny of those deals in the next two years, especially if Democrats regain control of the House or Senate and can launch committee inquiries with subpoena power. Some lawmakers have already called for investigations. After the House Oversight Committee’s top Democrat asked for a probe into defense contracts that may benefit the Trump family, the Defense Department’s inspector general met with committee staff and is preparing a response, a spokesperson for the office said.
...

Now let’s take a look at a recent report by the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) which found that Palantir — a company that has long branded itself as being the ‘more patriotic’ counterpart to its Silicon Valley rivals — paid 0% in US federal taxes in 2025. In fact, the company paid hardly any taxes at all, with a global tax rate of just 1.4%. Despite that, the company kept getting more and more government contracts from governments around the world. Democracy really is financing its own demise, globally:

Common Dreams

Palantir: Surveillance State Profiteer Making Billions in Profits, But With an Effective US Tax Rate of... Zero

“The likes of Palantir need to stump up what’s due,” said one expert. “Tech giants raking off billions in profit can’t be free to pay what they please.”

Brett Wilkins
Aug 06, 2026

Palantir Technologies, one of the world’s most influential—and controversial—surveillance tech companies, enjoyed an effective tax rate of just 1.4% globally last year while paying no US federal income tax despite recording substantial profits, an analysis released on Wednesday revealed.

The study, Who Pays for the Surveillance State?, was written by the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) in partnership with the European Federation of Public Services Unions. The report “examines how Palantir is capturing ever-larger government contracts while paying no US federal corporate income tax and shifting much of its foreign profits back to the US, avoiding taxes in Europe.”

“In 2025 the company reported $1.657 billion in pre-tax profit, booked $22.7 million [in] corporate tax paid globally, and paid $0 in US federal income tax, resulting in an effective tax rate of just 1.4% globally,” CICTAR found.

“The report’s core claim of profit-shifting is based on the gap between revenue and profit location: 26% of Palantir’s revenue came from outside the US, but 96% of pre-tax profit was booked in the US,” the analysis states.

“The Trump administration has not only been granting record amounts in new contracts to Palantir but is running a global protection racket to help it—along with larger US tech giants—avoid paying tax both in the US and globally,” the report contends.

“In Europe, the report finds a pattern of subsidiaries providing services to the US parent on cost-plus terms, leaving low taxable margins locally while related-party payments move value back to the US,” CICTAR added.

Palantir maintains that it complies with applicable tax laws in every jurisdiction where it operates. Company representatives have said that transfer pricing arrangements and other accounting practices cited by critics are standard among multinational corporations and comply with existing regulations.

The Palo Alto, California-based company’s soaring revenues are partly driven by government contracts, with the US Department of Defense being the data analytics specialist’s biggest client. Palantir is also integral to the Trump administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, selling technology used by Department of Homeland Security agencies—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—to identify, track, and target people for arrest and deportation and manage their cases.

Palantir has also drawn scrutiny from Democratic US lawmakers, including Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who demanded answers following reporting last year that the company was “amassing troves of data on Americans to create a government-wide, searchable ‘mega-database’ containing the sensitive taxpayer data of American citizens.”

Palestine defenders have also denounced Palantir and other tech giants for selling technology to the Israeli government and military despite findings by rights groups, scholars, national governments, and a United Nations commission of inquiry that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

...

In Europe, advocacy groups have raised concerns about Palantir’s contracts involving sensitive medical records, immigration systems, and predictive analytics. Campaigners argue that centralized data platforms create attractive targets for misuse, unauthorized access, or mission creep beyond their original purposes.

CICTAR’s report concludes that “European public authorities should be able to exclude companies that take public money while shifting profits away from the national tax base that funds public services, and provide the basis for national security that Palantir claims to defend.”

Responding to the report, Andrea Egan, general secretary of UNISON, the largest trade union in the United Kingdom, said that “a big multinational aggressively avoiding tax and dodging its responsibility to pay a fair share is probably no surprise. But the fact the UK and other countries are rewarding Palantir with massive government contracts is what beggars belief.”

...

————–

“Palantir: Surveillance State Profiteer Making Billions in Profits, But With an Effective US Tax Rate of... Zero” by Brett Wilkins; Common Dreams; 08/06/2026

“Responding to the report, Andrea Egan, general secretary of UNISON, the largest trade union in the United Kingdom, said that “a big multinational aggressively avoiding tax and dodging its responsibility to pay a fair share is probably no surprise. But the fact the UK and other countries are rewarding Palantir with massive government contracts is what beggars belief.””

Yes, it is rather baffling how governments continue to shower a company as ethically dubious as Palantir with one government contract after another. But it keeps happening. Which makes this a good time to recall how Peter Thiel used a Roth IRA to dodge billions of dollars in taxes capital gains taxes he would have otherwise had to pay for the sales of his shares in both Palantir and PayPal. No matter how many stories come out about these billionaires dodging more taxes, they keep getting more and more federal contracts. That’s including stories about $0 in US federal taxes. Funny how that works:

...
“In 2025 the company reported $1.657 billion in pre-tax profit, booked $22.7 million [in] corporate tax paid globally, and paid $0 in US federal income tax, resulting in an effective tax rate of just 1.4% globally,” CICTAR found.

“The report’s core claim of profit-shifting is based on the gap between revenue and profit location: 26% of Palantir’s revenue came from outside the US, but 96% of pre-tax profit was booked in the US,” the analysis states.

“The Trump administration has not only been granting record amounts in new contracts to Palantir but is running a global protection racket to help it—along with larger US tech giants—avoid paying tax both in the US and globally,” the report contends.

“In Europe, the report finds a pattern of subsidiaries providing services to the US parent on cost-plus terms, leaving low taxable margins locally while related-party payments move value back to the US,” CICTAR added.

...

In Europe, advocacy groups have raised concerns about Palantir’s contracts involving sensitive medical records, immigration systems, and predictive analytics. Campaigners argue that centralized data platforms create attractive targets for misuse, unauthorized access, or mission creep beyond their original purposes.

CICTAR’s report concludes that “European public authorities should be able to exclude companies that take public money while shifting profits away from the national tax base that funds public services, and provide the basis for national security that Palantir claims to defend.”
...

“European public authorities should be able to exclude companies that take public money while shifting profits away from the national tax base that funds public services, and provide the basis for national security that Palantir claims to defend.”

Yep, it seems like European authorities should be a lot more concerned about the character of these service providers. US authorities too. But nope.

And in other news, the UN just renewed a 5‑year contract renewal with Palantir for services related to the UN’s World Food Programme despite ongoing privacy concerns related to the fact that UN program involves a vast biometric database. Yes, the company founded by Peter Thiel — someone who has been giving public speeches where he argues that the UN is a product of the Antichrist and should be replaced by “the secret coordination of the world’s intelligence services, as the decisive path to a truly global pax Americana.” This surveillance supersystem, Thiel wrote, could act as “a political framework that operates outside the checks and balances of representative democracy as described in high school textbooks.” — just had a 5 year contract renewed that would give the company access to a sensitive global biometric database. Again, funny how that works. Over and over.

Of course, as we’ve seen, secret Middle Eastern diplomatic negotiations were a defining feature of the 2016 Trump campaign, with George Nader playing a very prominent role. Recall how Nader clearly worked with the US government on sensitive matters going back to the 80s and was repeatedly caught with child pornography and yet kept getting lenient sentences (including a light sentence by the Czech government). Nader was described as a trusted middle-man who volunteered to act as a line of communication between the US and Middle Eastern governments. And then, in 2016, Nader served as the representative for the crown princes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia — UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) — during the Seychelles ‘back channel’ meeting between Erik Prince, Kirill Dmitriev, and Nader.  Nader and Prince also made the August 3, 2016 trip to Trump Tower with Joel Zamel, the CEO of the Israeli private intelligence firm PsyGroup, in order to inform the Trump campaign that MBZ and MBS wanted to help Trump win and pitched a social media manipulation campaign to be run by PsyGroup. But as we learned, Nader had actually started approaching the Trump campaign in early 2016, during the primaries, with offers of UAE assistance for Trump. Nader also reportedly held numerous meetings with Trump campaign officials in the final weeks of the campaign, which certainly suggests that the Trump team did indeed accept the offer of PsyGroup’s help even though that’s never been admitted.  Kathy Ruemmler — a high-powered lawyer revealed to be very close to Epstein — was George Nader’s lawyer back in 2018 when he was facing various ‘Russiagate’ related questions. And then, after Trump took office in 2017, Nader was hired by Elliot Broidy, the former finance chair for the RNC, to lobby the Trump administration and US congress on behalf of the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE during the first Trump administration. A major goal of this lobbying was to convince the US government to take a harder line against Qatar. Nader emerged as a figure whose role in the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair was both central and, somehow, never really elucidated by investigators and remains a mystery to this day, which is part of what makes questions about Epstein’s role in these secret diplomatic negotiations so fascinating.

While Epstein has described al Thani as his “Arab brother”, the emails from Epstein al Thani suggest Epstein was actually working on behalf of the Saudi, UAE, and Israeli governments in many of the emails and basically laying out terms for a diplomatic normalization at a time when tensions with the Saudis and UAE had boiled over into a full-blown blockade of Qatar that started in June of 2017 and lasted over three years. By July of 2017, Epstein was pitching himself as a mediator who could work out a deal for Qatar. For example, in one July 2017 email to al Thani, Epstein suggests that Qatar could normalize relations if it was able to normalize ties with Israel. “If the people would allow your country to recognize israel. ‚could be interesting to discuss. If not maybe consider putting 1 billion into a fund to benefit the victims of terrorist acts. asking the other gcc memebers to match it,” Epstein wrote in a July 9, 2017 email. Interestingly, Epstein suggests that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had successfully followed similar advice, writing, “The Indian Prime minisiter modi took advice. and danced and sang in israel for the benefit of the US president. they had met a few weeks ago.. IT WORKED.!” Was Modi taking advice from Epstein?

The Kuwaiti government was apparently also involved in these behind-the-scenes negotiations. In a July 4, 2017, email to Anas al-Rasheed, a Kuwaiti professor who also served as a government cabinet minister, Epstein indicates the former prime minister of Qatar would like to meet with MBS, with a reference to “our primary goal”: “I am keeping our primary goal in mind. in that regard I know that HBJ would like to sit with MBS in a face to face. . IF your guy can organize, i think it would be a good step,” Epstein wrote. HBJ is Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who served as prime minister of Qatar from 2007 to 2013.

It turns out former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak also played a role in these secret negotiations, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the extensive ties between Barak and Epstein. As we’ve seen, Epstein reportedly financed the bulk of Ehud Barak’s 2014 investment in Reporty, a technology start up. Ehud Barak’s name has already surfaced in the stories of Epstein following reports that Barak visited Epstein’s Manhattan residence and his private island. Barak asserts that he met Epstein 17 years ago after being introduced by Shimon Peres and has never attending any parties with him or seen him in the company of women or young girls. But Epstein’s Manhattan neighbors claim that Barak frequently stayed at Epstein’s place and photos have been released showing Barak entering Epstein’s place in the company of four women including one identified as an Epstein traveling companion. Barak and Epstein are so close it would almost be a surprise if Barak wasn’t involved in secret diplomatic initiatives Epstein was conduct on behalf of Israel. In a 10 November 2018 email to Barak, Epstein wrote, “just left hbj. He would like to sit with you.” Barak and HBJ ended up meeting the next month in a meeting reportedly arranged by Jabor Al Thani. “Please convey my thanks to HH HBJ for finding the time to m=et with me. I’ve enjoyed very much our exchange and=conversation. I hope to have more opportunities in the future,” Barak wrote to al Thani after the meeting, CCing Epstein on the email.

And this was all happening at the same time the Saudis and UAE were blockading Qatar and using Broidy and Nader to lobby the US government against Qatar. Which, again, raises the question of whether or not Epstein and Nader were effectively secretly working together. What are the odds that two of the most infamous high-powered pedophiles on the planet were secretly working on the same Qatar-focused diplomacy and didn’t know about each other’s involvement?

And that questions brings us to an interesting detail regarding the arrest of George Nader in June of 2019: The day after Nader’s arrest, Epstein emailed Steve Bannon about it. “Not cool,” Bannon replied to Epstein, with Epstein replying “Mandatory minimum 15.” Bannon went on to suggest that “MBZ must have coughed him up,” and Epstein replying “Nope”. Bannon ask how Nader got extradited, observing that he could have stayed in the UAE forever. Epstein replies that Nader was “duped”. So Nader — one of the key figures in the secret diplomatic overtures to the 2016 Trump campaign by MBZ and MBS — was somehow “duped” into leaving the UAE and returning to the US.

Was Epstein speculating or did he somehow know Nader was “duped”? We don’t know, but the fact that Epstein was apparently involved in the same, or at least heavily overlapping, secret Middle Eastern diplomatic overtures that Nader was managing in the years leading up to Nader’s arrest suggest that Epstein might very well have been privy to what led up to Nader’s arrest. As we’ll see, Nader’s lawyer claimed he was arriving in the US for treatment for a heart condition, so if he was indeed “duped”, the duping would presumably involve some sort of assurance from someone in the government that nothing would happen. We’ll likely never know if someone in the first Trump administration gave such an assurance, but the fact that Nader really was safe and sound in the UAE so Epstein’s ‘duping’ scenario doesn’t sound implausible.

Also keep in mind that when Nader returned to the US in January 2018, he was arrested by the FBI and questioned about his role in the ‘Russiagate’ affair. As we’ll see, FBI agents found 50 graphic images of children on his phone, included some that depicted sexual scenes and children “in pain”. And yet, he was allowed to leave the country, apparently thanks to his cooperation with the Russiagate investigation. So it wouldn’t be a shock if Nader thought it was safe for him to return to the US in June of 2019 given the fact that he was literally caught with child pornography on his phone by the FBI the prior year and allowed to leave.

It’s also worth noting that the fact that Nader had images of children “in pain” and toddler-aged males engaged in sexual acts with farm animals suggests he was also into the kind of ‘gore porn’ of the variety found on online forums of groups like The Com and 764, where extreme gore and violence are celebrated and fetishized. In fact, even Epstein criticized Nader in the emails to Bannon for possessing child pornography that included sexual acts with farm animals. Nader was apparently too obscene for Jeffrey Epstein’s taste. And that brings us to another very remarkable detail that came up during Nader’s legal defense over the child pornography charges: Nader’s lawyer also claimed his client’s pedophile ways were long in the past and nothing to worry about anymore. The judge rejected that claim, referring to the content found on Nader’s phone in his January 2018 arrest by the FBI. Nader’s lawyer then argued the child pornography images he was caught with weren’t truly pornographic in nature. At least not for Nader, because he didn’t use the images for sexual gratification. No, he had those images shared with him by his cohorts in the Middle East as part of a “dirty joke”. That’s right, Nader’s legal defense included the claim that all the child pornography he was caught with actually came from his Middle Eastern cohorts. Which raises the question: did he receive or share these images with “cohorts”? Might that, in part, explain his mysterious stature as some sort of behind-the-scenes diplomat? Was Nader’s trove of child pornography something that came in handy as part of the diplomacy he was secretly managing for decades? We’ll probably never know, but what are the odds that two of the most infamous high-powered pedophiles on the planet just randomly ended up secretly working as secret diplomats for the same Middle East governments? Is that just happenstance? And both were suddenly arrested by US authorities within a month of each other. Is that happenstance too?

Nader, of course, was ultimately sent to prison. Although, as we’ll see, it wasn’t the 15 year minimum Epstein predicted. The minimum he faced in his case was 10 years in prison, which is exactly what he got. In fact, the federal prosecutors asked for the 10 year minimum, arguing that 10 years was enough punishment for Nader, given his past cooperation with prosecutors (like a reference to ‘Russiagate’ cooperation) and his promise to compensate one of his victims, a 14 year old boy from the Czech Republic who was transported by Nader to the US in 2000 and sexually abused. Nader paid the victim $150,000 in compensation. And that was enough to merit the minimum 10 years for George Nader.

Not that he actually served the full 10 years. No, it turns out Nader was released from prison in early February 2025, just weeks into Trump’s second term. It’s unclear why Nader was released so early, especially since it turns out he was given an additional year and 8 months in prison in 2024 over campaign finance violations he engaged in while acting as a UAE lobbyist. So he had a nearly 12 year sentence and was released in less than 5 years. Mysteriously for no reason. The Newsweek article we’re going to look at doesn’t give a reason and that article is pretty much the only article on Nader’s release available. It’s as if it didn’t happen. But it did happen and George Nader has once again been allowed to leave the country, which sure looks like another federal sweetheart deal for George Nader. Maybe not as sweet as the deal Jeffrey Epstein got in 2008 or the deal Nader got in 1991, but still pretty sweet, all things considered. And this all mysteriously happened just weeks into the second Trump administration with almost no reporting and no explanation given. Was Nader released early by the Trump administration so he could once again act as some sort of Middle Eastern secret diplomat? We, by definition, won’t know. Or at least we’re not supposed to know. It’s supposed to be a secret. Kind of like all the child gore porn that’s apparently shared as a joke by Nader’s cohorts who will presumably also be engaged in these negotiations.

Ok, first, here’s a look at a BBC piece from back in February describing how Epstein was about to buy a Moroccan palace right before his July 2019 arrest, which is especially notable given that Morocco doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US. The article also notes how Epstein made periodic visits to Morocco starting in 2012, staying at the palace of Jabor al Thani, Epstein’s “Arab brother”:

BBC

Epstein tried to buy a palace in Morocco days before his arrest in 2019

Emir Nader and Samuel Owers, BBC Eye Investigations
27 February 2026

Jeffrey Epstein tried to buy a multimillion-dollar palace in Morocco the day before his arrest in 2019, according to documents released by the US Department of Justice last month.

Epstein had pursued acquiring Bin Ennakhil since 2011, but disputes with the seller over the price and purchase arrangement dragged on for years.

The grand palace in the luxury Palmeraie neighbourhood of Marrakech has been described as an architectural masterpiece, built by 1,300 craftsmen and featuring ornate carvings and mosaics.

Epstein signed a $14.95m (£11m) wire transfer on 5 July 2019, the day before his arrest, following an agreement to buy the offshore company that owned the property for €18m (£13.3m).

According to the released documents, the transfer was Epstein’s last major financial transaction in the period before his arrest by US authorities on sex trafficking charges upon his return to New York.

Three days after the arrest, Epstein’s accountant Richard Kahn cancelled the wire transfer and the purchase was ultimately never completed.

Morocco has no extradition treaty with the US and local media has speculated that one of Epstein’s motivations to purchase the property may have been to retreat to the country to avoid arrest, if new charges were brought against him.

However, a former associate of Epstein, who preferred not to be named, said the transaction showed Epstein “had no clue” about his imminent arrest.

They added that “it would make sense if he was thinking of a potential sanctuary where he could still live like a king”.

...

Epstein’s connections to Morocco go back to at least the early 2000s, with Virginia Giuffre, one of his most prominent accusers, recounting in her memoir of being flown to Tangier by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to inspect the interior design of a number of luxury properties.

...

In 2002, Epstein attended the wedding of Moroccan King Mohammed with Maxwell, having been invited by former US President Bill Clinton.

Epstein’s connections

Epstein was convicted in the United States of soliciting underage sex in 2008, and following his release from house arrest in 2010 his interest in Morocco seems to have grown.

The released files appear to show that in the same year, Epstein asked former Labour cabinet minister Peter Mandelson to find him an assistant who could “fin[d] a house in Marrakesh” for him.

The documents detail how Epstein made periodic visits to Morocco from 2012, staying in the exclusive Palmeraie district, home to a wealthy community of expatriates including Jabor al Thani of the Qatari royal family, a close associate whom he described as his “Arab brother”.

...

Bin Ennakhil and ‘Mr Kiss’

Epstein’s long-term girlfriend Karyna Shuliak began leading the search for a property in Marrakech, with numerous visits and negotiations documented in emails under her name.

Marc Leon, a partner of Kensington Luxury Properties, told the BBC that Epstein’s focus settled on their property Bin Ennakhil — Arabic for “between the palm trees” — as early as 2011.

At that time, Epstein thought the palace, owned by German waste magnate Gunter Kiss, was overvalued at €55m and his initial offer was so low that Kiss was offended and refused to deal with Epstein again, the source who was close to Epstein told the BBC.

Subsequently, Epstein used his girlfriend Shuliak and his network of contacts in Morocco to conduct further inspections of the property. In 2018, Epstein himself visited the property before Shuliak made final bids on the property while pretending to be acting on behalf of Leon Black, a billionaire investor friend of Epstein.

Ultimately, it became clear that Epstein was the real prospective buyer but the seller “Mr Kiss” — as he is known in the emails — agreed to continue the negotiations, according to the documents and the source close to Epstein.

Inside the Moroccan palace that caught Epstein’s eye:

The files show that, at one stage, Kensington Luxury Properties proposed to Epstein a “sale and tax strategy”, whereby the property would be registered with the Moroccan authorities as sold for €10m while a transaction of €20m would take place for the shares of an offshore company that owned the property.

The arrangement would have allowed Epstein to register his name on the title deeds of the property while reducing the tax he would pay to Moroccan authorities.

However, Kensington Luxury Properties denied to the BBC that there was an unethical or illegal attempt to minimise tax.

...

The property company was at the time the local real estate representative of the renowned UK-based auction house Christie’s.

Ultimately, Epstein decided to purchase the property solely by paying for the shares of the offshore company and was in the process of determining how to register it in Morocco at the time of his 2019 arrest.

———–

“Epstein tried to buy a palace in Morocco days before his arrest in 2019” by Emir Nader and Samuel Owers; BBC Eye Investigations; 02/27/2026

“Epstein signed a $14.95m (£11m) wire transfer on 5 July 2019, the day before his arrest, following an agreement to buy the offshore company that owned the property for €18m (£13.3m).”

A Moroccan palace, purchased just one day before his June 2019. Jeffrey Epstein’s was living the high life right up until the end. And with Morocco lacking an extradition treaty with the US, it’s not hard to suspect he was planning on preemptively dodging US law enforcement, despite the claims from unnamed associates that this wasn’t the case:

...
Three days after the arrest, Epstein’s accountant Richard Kahn cancelled the wire transfer and the purchase was ultimately never completed.

Morocco has no extradition treaty with the US and local media has speculated that one of Epstein’s motivations to purchase the property may have been to retreat to the country to avoid arrest, if new charges were brought against him.

However, a former associate of Epstein, who preferred not to be named, said the transaction showed Epstein “had no clue” about his imminent arrest.

They added that “it would make sense if he was thinking of a potential sanctuary where he could still live like a king”.
...

Interestingly, it appears Epstein initially attempted to make his bids on the property while pretending to be acting on behalf of Leon Black, one of the billionaires who maintained a still-unexplained close relationship with Epstein over decades. It raises the question of the extent to which Epstein was using the pretense of acting on behalf of one of the billionaire associates to conduct his business over the years. This presumably wasn’t the first instance of Epstein doing this:

...
Epstein’s long-term girlfriend Karyna Shuliak began leading the search for a property in Marrakech, with numerous visits and negotiations documented in emails under her name.

Marc Leon, a partner of Kensington Luxury Properties, told the BBC that Epstein’s focus settled on their property Bin Ennakhil — Arabic for “between the palm trees” — as early as 2011.

At that time, Epstein thought the palace, owned by German waste magnate Gunter Kiss, was overvalued at €55m and his initial offer was so low that Kiss was offended and refused to deal with Epstein again, the source who was close to Epstein told the BBC.

Subsequently, Epstein used his girlfriend Shuliak and his network of contacts in Morocco to conduct further inspections of the property. In 2018, Epstein himself visited the property before Shuliak made final bids on the property while pretending to be acting on behalf of Leon Black, a billionaire investor friend of Epstein.

Ultimately, it became clear that Epstein was the real prospective buyer but the seller “Mr Kiss” — as he is known in the emails — agreed to continue the negotiations, according to the documents and the source close to Epstein.
...

And then we get to this very interesting detail about Epstein’s relationship with Jabor al Thani of the Qatari royal family, who Epstein described as his “Arab brother”:

...
The documents detail how Epstein made periodic visits to Morocco from 2012, staying in the exclusive Palmeraie district, home to a wealthy community of expatriates including Jabor al Thani of the Qatari royal family, a close associate whom he described as his “Arab brother”.
...

And that intriguing “Arab brother” reference brings us to another report from back in February describing Epstein engaging in back-room diplomacy on behalf of Qatar in the country’s dealing with its Middle Eastern neighbors. Although it’s not actually clear who exactly Epstein was advocating for in these secret negotiations. Was he speaking on behalf of the Israelis? Saudis? Qataris? We don’t really know, in part because all of these negotiations were completely in secret:

Middle East Eye

Epstein said Qatar had to ‘sing and dance’ for Israel like Modi, to escape blockade

Convicted sex offender Epstein also brokered a secret Track II meeting between Israel’s Ehud Barak and former Qatari prime minister in London

Sean Mathews
Published date: 3 February 2026 19:25 GMT

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein told a Qatari businessman that Doha needed to “sing and dance” forIsrael to get on US President Donald Trump’s good side during a blockade of the small Gulf state.

The email, part of the US Justice Department’s tranche of documents released over the weekend, shows Epstein inserting himself into a rift that erupted in the Gulf between Qatar on one side and the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the other.

Epstein told a man identified as “Jabor Y” that Qatar could apparently come in from the cold if it was able to normalise ties with Israel.

“If the people would allow your country to recognize israel. ‚could be interesting to discuss. If not maybe consider putting 1 billion into a fund to benefit the victims of terrorist acts. asking the other gcc memebers to match it,” Epstein wrote on 9 July 2017.

In other emails, Jabor Y appears under the name Jabor Yousef Jassim Al Thani. He is a Qatari businessman and member of the royal family. In a 2016 document, he appears to ask for permission for Epstein’s plane to land in Doha.

...

Epstein suggested that Qatar’s problems could go away if it stopped “kicking and arguing” and forged closer ties to Israel. He said Qatar needed to follow India’s example, which has emerged as a close Israeli partner.

“The Indian Prime minisiter modi took advice. and danced and sang in israel for the benefit of the US president. they had met a few weeks ago.. IT WORKED.!” Epstein wrote to Jabar.

Turkey stops invasion of Qatar?

Epstein had ties to intelligence networks and arms dealers going back to the 1980s. He was particularly close to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Epstein in 2019 mysteriously died in his New York City jail cell, which was deemed a suicide, but he was following the blockade of Qatar closely and engaging in track II diplomacy with Barak right up until his death.

On 30 June 2017, he suggested that an invasion of Qatar was prevented because the Turkish military had deployed in force to the Gulf state.

“I think with the Turks inside, the military option is no longer viable,” Epstein wrote to a man named Anas al-Rasheed, who appears to be a Kuwaiti professor who also served as a cabinet minister.

Turkey established its first military base in Qatar in 2015, but expanded its presence massively in the summer of 2017 in defiance of the UAE and Saudi-led blockade.

By July 2017, Epstein was pitching himself as a mediator who could fix Qatar’s problems.

“I am keeping our primary goal in mind. in that regard I know that HBJ would like to sit with MBS in a face to face. . IF your guy can organize, i think it would be a good step,” Epstein wrote to Rasheed on 4 July. MBS is the acronym for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

HBJ is the acronym for Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who served as prime minister in the Gulf state from 2007 to 2013. Epstein claimed at the time that the leader was the only “adult” in the Gulf state.

While it’s not clear if the meeting between the former Qatari prime minister and Saudi crown prince took place, Epstein successfully brokered a meeting between Barak and his Qatari counterpart.

Epstein brokered Ehud Barak and Qatar meeting

“just left hbj. He would like to sit with you.” Epstein wrote to Barak on 10 November 2018.

The email exchange offers a rare glimpse into Epstein arranging what is effectively unofficial diplomacy between former senior Israeli and Qatari officials.

...

The meeting between the two former officials was facilitated on the Qatari side by Jabor Al Thani. The meeting took place in December 2018 at One Hyde Park, an ultra-posh apartment complex in London.

“Please convey my thanks to HH HBJ for finding the time to m=et with me. I’ve enjoyed very much our exchange and=conversation. I hope to have more opportunities in the future,” Barak wrote in an email to Jabor after the meeting, which cc’d Epstein.

The two men appeared to discuss a “security company”, according to a follow-up email by Jabor addressed to Barak.

...

———–

”
Epstein said Qatar had to ‘sing and dance’ for Israel like Modi, to escape blockade” by Sean Mathews; ; 02/03/2026

“The email, part of the US Justice Department’s tranche of documents released over the weekend, shows Epstein inserting himself into a rift that erupted in the Gulf between Qatar on one side and the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the other.”

Secret Middle Eastern diplomacy. It’s quite a remarkable discovery in our ongoing quest to understand the full scope of the role Jeffrey Epstein was playing in the world. And as we can see, it was none other than Epstein who was delivering the terms for Qatar normalizing relations with the Saudis and UAE. And this is all happening in 2016 and 2017, the same period of time when the Saudis, UAE, and Israel were engaged in all sorts of secret negotiations with what was first the 2016 Trump campaign and, eventually, the first Trump White House:

...
Epstein told a man identified as “Jabor Y” that Qatar could apparently come in from the cold if it was able to normalise ties with Israel.

“If the people would allow your country to recognize israel. ‚could be interesting to discuss. If not maybe consider putting 1 billion into a fund to benefit the victims of terrorist acts. asking the other gcc memebers to match it,” Epstein wrote on 9 July 2017.

In other emails, Jabor Y appears under the name Jabor Yousef Jassim Al Thani. He is a Qatari businessman and member of the royal family. In a 2016 document, he appears to ask for permission for Epstein’s plane to land in Doha.

...

Epstein suggested that Qatar’s problems could go away if it stopped “kicking and arguing” and forged closer ties to Israel. He said Qatar needed to follow India’s example, which has emerged as a close Israeli partner.

“The Indian Prime minisiter modi took advice. and danced and sang in israel for the benefit of the US president. they had met a few weeks ago.. IT WORKED.!” Epstein wrote to Jabar.

...

Epstein in 2019 mysteriously died in his New York City jail cell, which was deemed a suicide, but he was following the blockade of Qatar closely and engaging in track II diplomacy with Barak right up until his death.
...

Underscoring the stakes of the secret negotiations Epstein was conducting is his suggestion that Qatar would have been invaded (presumably by the Saudis and UAE) had it not been for a Turkish military base there, which is an interesting take given that the US also has a massive military base in Qatar which apparently wouldn’t have been an issue. That was the opinion he shared with Anas al-Rasheed, a Kuwaiti cabinet minister, in June of 2017. The next month, Epstein write to Rasheed about how “I am keeping our primary goal in mind,” while attempting to arrange a meeting with the former prime minister of Qatar and MBS. So in terms of who Epstein was ultimately working for, it would appear the Kuwaitis were at least one of his clients or at least part of the secret negotiations:

...
On 30 June 2017, he suggested that an invasion of Qatar was prevented because the Turkish military had deployed in force to the Gulf state.

“I think with the Turks inside, the military option is no longer viable,” Epstein wrote to a man named Anas al-Rasheed, who appears to be a Kuwaiti professor who also served as a cabinet minister.

Turkey established its first military base in Qatar in 2015, but expanded its presence massively in the summer of 2017 in defiance of the UAE and Saudi-led blockade.

By July 2017, Epstein was pitching himself as a mediator who could fix Qatar’s problems.

“I am keeping our primary goal in mind. in that regard I know that HBJ would like to sit with MBS in a face to face. . IF your guy can organize, i think it would be a good step,” Epstein wrote to Rasheed on 4 July. MBS is the acronym for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

HBJ is the acronym for Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who served as prime minister in the Gulf state from 2007 to 2013. Epstein claimed at the time that the leader was the only “adult” in the Gulf state.

While it’s not clear if the meeting between the former Qatari prime minister and Saudi crown prince took place, Epstein successfully brokered a meeting between Barak and his Qatari counterpart.
...

And as we can also see, this wasn’t all just bluster. A meeting between Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister from 2007 to 2013, and Ehud Barak, was brokered by Epstein had took place in December of 2018, just months before Epstein’s arrest. Keep in mind that the blockbuster “Perversion of Justice” series of articles in the Miami Herald about Jeffrey Epstein that reignited the investigation into him was first published in November of 2018. To learn he was engaged in secret Middle Eastern diplomacy at this time adds a fascinating new context to the Epstein’s 2019 arrest:

...
“just left hbj. He would like to sit with you.” Epstein wrote to Barak on 10 November 2018.

The email exchange offers a rare glimpse into Epstein arranging what is effectively unofficial diplomacy between former senior Israeli and Qatari officials.

...

The meeting between the two former officials was facilitated on the Qatari side by Jabor Al Thani. The meeting took place in December 2018 at One Hyde Park, an ultra-posh apartment complex in London.
...

But, of course, when we are talking about secret negotiations involving the UAE and Saudi governments in 2016 and 2017, we can’t ignore the many already well known stories involving another ‘international man of mystery’: George Nader, who was directly involved in a variety of ‘backchannel’ negotiations, first involving the Trump 2016 campaign and then, after Trump took office, as a secret lobbyist for the UAE alongside Elliot Broidy. So when we see how Steve Bannon and Epstein were commiserating about Nader’s June 2019 arrest on child pornography charges, it’s hard not to wonder if the secret Middle Eastern diplomacy both men were engaged in on behalf of the Saudi and UAE governments in 2016 and 2017 were the same secret diplomacy:

Middle East Eye

Epstein files: Bannon accused UAE’s MBZ of ‘coughing up’ paedophile George Nader

Former Trump strategist was discussing arrest of advisor to Abu Dhabi ruler on child sex charges with Jeffrey Epstein

MEE staff
Published date: 3 February 2026 15:45 GMT

Former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon accused the ruler of the UAE of “coughing up” convicted paedophile George Nader to US authorities, according tofiles newly released by the Department of Justice related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Bannon was messaging convicted sex offender and financier Epstein on 4 June 2019.

Epstein sent a link to Bannon of a CNN article about the arrest a day earlier of George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and former adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed, the leader of the UAE who was then the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

...

“Not cool,” Bannon says to Epstein reacting to the arrest, to which the financier responds, “Mandatory minimum 15.”

“MBZ must have coughed him up,” Bannon alleges in an apparent reference to the UAE leader who is commonly known by his initials.

Epstein responds “Nope.”

“How did he get extradited ?– could have stayed in UAE forever,” asks Bannon.

Epstein remarks that Nader was not extradited, but rather “duped”.

The financier appears to then criticise Nader over the charges of possessing child pornography showing young children being sexually abused, including by animals.

...

In 2020, Nader pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and bringing a 14-year-old boy into the US for sex in 2000. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Nader, 61, served as a key point of contact between members of US President Donald Trump’s inner circle and Mohammed bin Zayed in the leadup to and after Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.

...

He also arranged a meeting between Dmitriev and Erik Prince, the Trump-linked founder of the US private mercenary firm Blackwater, which has been accused of committing war crimes in Iraq.

In January 2018, Nader was caught with “visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct” on his phone after he landed in New York on a flight from Dubai, the US Justice Department said.

The guilty plea and 10-year sentence are mostly based on a 2000 incident when Nader brought a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic into the United States for sexual exploitation.

Nader had a long career as a businessman and dealbroker, despite a string of child sex offence allegations and convictions.

Prosecutors called Nader’s crimes “grave and dangerous,” fitting into a pattern that dated back to 1984 when he was investigated for child pornography obtained by mail. He “escaped responsibility” for this offence after a court in Washington ruled that the evidence was improperly obtained.

In 1991, he received a sentence of six months in prison for attempting to bring two films of young boys being abused into the United States. At the time, he was helping free American hostages in Lebanon as a broker.

He was also sentenced in the Czech Republic to one year in jail for sexually abusing minors.

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“Epstein files: Bannon accused UAE’s MBZ of ‘coughing up’ paedophile George Nader” by MEE staff; Middle East Eye; 02/03/2026

“Epstein sent a link to Bannon of a CNN article about the arrest a day earlier of George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and former adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed, the leader of the UAE who was then the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.”

As we can see, it was Epstein who sent the link to Bannon about Nader’s arrest, just a day after it happened. Cryptically, Epstein asserts that Nader wasn’t extradited. He was “duped”. How did Epstein know this and how exactly was Nader “duped” into returning to the US? Did the Trump administration dupe him? If not, who else could have possibly done the duping?

...
“Not cool,” Bannon says to Epstein reacting to the arrest, to which the financier responds, “Mandatory minimum 15.”

“MBZ must have coughed him up,” Bannon alleges in an apparent reference to the UAE leader who is commonly known by his initials.

Epstein responds “Nope.”

“How did he get extradited ?– could have stayed in UAE forever,” asks Bannon.

Epstein remarks that Nader was not extradited, but rather “duped”.
...

Lastly, note how Nader was given just a 6 month prison sentence in 1991 for similar charges, with the fact that he was helping free American hostages in Lebanon as a broker serving as the pretext for the light sentence:

...
Nader had a long career as a businessman and dealbroker, despite a string of child sex offence allegations and convictions.

Prosecutors called Nader’s crimes “grave and dangerous,” fitting into a pattern that dated back to 1984 when he was investigated for child pornography obtained by mail. He “escaped responsibility” for this offence after a court in Washington ruled that the evidence was improperly obtained.

In 1991, he received a sentence of six months in prison for attempting to bring two films of young boys being abused into the United States. At the time, he was helping free American hostages in Lebanon as a broker.

He was also sentenced in the Czech Republic to one year in jail for sexually abusing minors.
...

And that light sentence from 1991 — a federal ‘sweetheart deal’, it would appear — brings us to Nader’s sentencing for the new child abuse crimes carrying a minimum of 10 years in prison:

Courthouse News

Trump Campaign Adviser Pleads Guilty to Child Porn, Sex Trafficking

An informal adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign who testified in the Mueller probe pleaded guilty Monday to charges of child sex trafficking and possessing child pornography.

Brandi Buchman / January 13, 2020

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) – An informal adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign who testified in the Mueller probe pleaded guilty Monday to charges of child sex trafficking and possessing child pornography.

George Nader, 60, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia’s Eastern District.

...

Nader faces sentencing April 10 on the new conviction. The first count of possessing child pornography carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and 20 years maximum plus a $250,000 fine. He would also face a minimum of five years supervised release that could be extended for the duration of his life.

On the second count, transporting a minor for sex, Nader faces a minimum of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years. A $250,000 fine would also apply for this charge. He is also required to register as a sex offender for life.

Nader’s defense attorneys seek a 10-year sentence to run concurrently.

...

————

“Trump Campaign Adviser Pleads Guilty to Child Porn, Sex Trafficking” by Brandi Buchman; Courthouse News; 01/13/2020

“Nader faces sentencing April 10 on the new conviction. The first count of possessing child pornography carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and 20 years maximum plus a $250,000 fine. He would also face a minimum of five years supervised release that could be extended for the duration of his life.”

10 years minimum, 20 years maximum. That’s what Nader was facing. Guess what sentence he ultimately got:

Courthouse News

Child-Sex Trafficker From Trump Tower Meeting Gets 10-Year Sentence

Once an informal adviser to President Donald Trump and later a witness for the Mueller probe, George Nader was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday for possession of child pornography and transporting a minor into the United States for sex.

Brandi Buchman / June 26, 2020

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) — Once an informal adviser to President Donald Trump and later a witness for the Mueller probe, George Nader was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday for possession of child pornography and transporting a minor into the United States for sex.

...

Nader pleaded guilty in March, less than a year after federal prosecutors charged him over graphic images found on multiple devices belonging to Nader, including videos of toddler-age boys engaging in sex acts with young goats and other farm animals.

Prosecutors added the sex-trafficking charge in July, saying Nader had arranged in 2000 to transport a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to his home in Washington, D.C. Holding onto the minor’s passport, Nader had told the teen and his mother that they would go to prison if they tried to report him.

Two decades later, Nader’s victim is married with a young son and lives in the Czech Republic. His name was not revealed in court Friday as he teleconferenced into Nader’s sentencing hearing to read a roughly four-minute statement.

“It’s been a long journey,” the man said in Czech, his testimony read back to the court through an interpreter. “My health is bad. I have ulcers. I stopped eating. I had nightmares. I am still dealing with those now.”

...

Nader agreed to pay the victim $150,000 in restitution. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema also fined Nader $25,000.

Jay Prabhu, an assistant U.S. attorney and chief of his office’s Cybercrime Unit, told the court Friday that Nader is a repeat offender but that the minimum sentence of 10 years was enough punishment for Nader, given his past cooperation with prosecutors and his promise to compensate the victim.

Nader previously served six months in prison in 1991 after he was convicted of transporting child pornography in the United States.

...

According to his testimony before a grand jury during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Nader was tapped by Trump’s first presidential campaign team to offer his diplomatic and political insights into the Middle East.

Nader’s professional relationships with power players there, like Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates crown prince, was seen as a boon by the Trump transition team. Nader was eventually able to secure a Trump Tower meeting in December 2016 with the crown prince, President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the campaign’s chief strategist at the time, Steve Bannon.

The meeting’s focus was to convince Kushner and Bannon that, with Trump elected, America should cool its longtime alliance with Qatar, a longtime enemy of the U.A.E.

Trump’s then-finance chairman, Elliott Broidy, also promoted an anti-Qatar agenda.

Broidy ended up receiving a $2.5 million check from Nader in April 2018 that, according to an investigative report first published by the Associated Press, resulted in the bankrolling of anti-Qatar initiatives in Congress and later, donations to lawmakers like California Republican Ed Royce, who as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee at the time, backed the shift in foreign policy.

Nader awaits sentencing for separate federal charges in Washington related to his coordination of illegal foreign contributions to President Trump’s inaugural fund as well as Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Defense attorney Jonathan Jeffress told Judge Brinkema that Nader’s age and health merit consideration in sentencing. Nader is prediabetic and had a quadruple bypass just months before his arrest. When he was arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2018, he was coming to the U.S. to receive rehabilitative treatment for his heart, Jeffress said.

Given that 20 years has elapsed since Nader transported his victim, Jeffress said the potential for Nader repeating the conduct was “nonexistent.” He also said that the only fundamental disagreement between prosecutors and the defense was that Nader still exhibits a pattern or proclivity for child pornography.

“These are things Mr. Nader has largely put behind him,” Jeffress said.

Brinkema was not convinced, noting during the 2018 arrest that there were more than 50 graphic images found on Nader’s phone — images that prosecutor Prabhu said obviously depicted children sexually or “in pain.”

Prabhu pointed out that Nader’s criminality stemmed as far back as 1984 when he was investigated for receiving child pornography. That case was ultimately thrown out because the search that uncovered the porn was faulty.

“I raise these issues not to embarrass Mr. Nader or shock the court. I raise it because it shows he has a persistent issue with this,” Prabhu said before also calling the former Trump campaign adviser a “persistent and dangerous voyeur for years.”

Jeffress disagreed, saying that the images shared with Nader by his cohorts in the Middle East were widely regarded as “dirty jokes.”

“It meets the definition of obscenity but it’s not child pornography that someone would use to stimulate themselves,” Jeffress said.

———–

“Child-Sex Trafficker From Trump Tower Meeting Gets 10-Year Sentence” by Brandi Buchman; Courthouse News; 06/26/2020

“Jay Prabhu, an assistant U.S. attorney and chief of his office’s Cybercrime Unit, told the court Friday that Nader is a repeat offender but that the minimum sentence of 10 years was enough punishment for Nader, given his past cooperation with prosecutors and his promise to compensate the victim.”

A 10 year sentence was “enough punishment” for Nader. That as the opinion of the US federal prosecutors. We would expect his defense attorneys to argue for 10 years. But the prosecutors too? This sure looks like another federal ‘sweetheart deal’.

Intriguingly, as the article notes, the work Nader was doing as a lobbyist for the UAE government during Trump’s first term was work promoting an anti-Qatar agenda. In other words, Nader and Epstein were both engaged in secret diplomatic negotiations involving Qatar. Which raises the question: was this a kind of ‘good cop’/‘bad cop’ negotiation, with Epstein acting as the ‘good cop’ friend of Qatar? Because that’s the picture that emerges:

...
Nader previously served six months in prison in 1991 after he was convicted of transporting child pornography in the United States.

...

According to his testimony before a grand jury during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Nader was tapped by Trump’s first presidential campaign team to offer his diplomatic and political insights into the Middle East.

Nader’s professional relationships with power players there, like Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates crown prince, was seen as a boon by the Trump transition team. Nader was eventually able to secure a Trump Tower meeting in December 2016 with the crown prince, President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the campaign’s chief strategist at the time, Steve Bannon.

The meeting’s focus was to convince Kushner and Bannon that, with Trump elected, America should cool its longtime alliance with Qatar, a longtime enemy of the U.A.E.

Trump’s then-finance chairman, Elliott Broidy, also promoted an anti-Qatar agenda.

Broidy ended up receiving a $2.5 million check from Nader in April 2018 that, according to an investigative report first published by the Associated Press, resulted in the bankrolling of anti-Qatar initiatives in Congress and later, donations to lawmakers like California Republican Ed Royce, who as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee at the time, backed the shift in foreign policy.
...

Interestingly, given Epstein’s suggestion that Nader was “duped” in to returning to the US, it was treatments for his heart that was the alleged purpose of the visit. Was Nader tricked into thinking he was allowed to return to the US? If so, who tricked him?

...
Defense attorney Jonathan Jeffress told Judge Brinkema that Nader’s age and health merit consideration in sentencing. Nader is prediabetic and had a quadruple bypass just months before his arrest. When he was arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2018, he was coming to the U.S. to receive rehabilitative treatment for his heart, Jeffress said.
...

Finally, note this incredible line of defense of Nader’s attorney: Nader shared the pornographic images with his cohorts in the Middle East as a “dirty joke”, and therefore they weren’t pornographic! So Nader’s child pornography collection — which included children clearly in pain — wasn’t a depraved personal vice. No, his Middle Eastern “cohorts” shared the images with him. It was all just a dirty joke. That was literally his defense:

...
Nader pleaded guilty in March, less than a year after federal prosecutors charged him over graphic images found on multiple devices belonging to Nader, including videos of toddler-age boys engaging in sex acts with young goats and other farm animals.

...

Given that 20 years has elapsed since Nader transported his victim, Jeffress said the potential for Nader repeating the conduct was “nonexistent.” He also said that the only fundamental disagreement between prosecutors and the defense was that Nader still exhibits a pattern or proclivity for child pornography.

“These are things Mr. Nader has largely put behind him,” Jeffress said.

Brinkema was not convinced, noting during the 2018 arrest that there were more than 50 graphic images found on Nader’s phone — images that prosecutor Prabhu said obviously depicted children sexually or “in pain.”

Prabhu pointed out that Nader’s criminality stemmed as far back as 1984 when he was investigated for receiving child pornography. That case was ultimately thrown out because the search that uncovered the porn was faulty.

“I raise these issues not to embarrass Mr. Nader or shock the court. I raise it because it shows he has a persistent issue with this,” Prabhu said before also calling the former Trump campaign adviser a “persistent and dangerous voyeur for years.”

Jeffress disagreed, saying that the images shared with Nader by his cohorts in the Middle East were widely regarded as “dirty jokes.”

“It meets the definition of obscenity but it’s not child pornography that someone would use to stimulate themselves,” Jeffress said.
...

And that 10 year minimum sentence from June of 2020 brings us to the following update from early February of 2025, less than a month into Trump’s second term: Nader was about to be released and allowed to leave the US, meaning he was released after serving less than half the minimum sentence. No explanation for the release is given:

Newsweek

Judge Rebukes Lawyer Over ‘Outrageous’ Request to Keep Mueller Witness In US

By Sean O’Driscoll
Published Feb 05, 2025 at 01:19 PM EST

A judge sharply rebuked a lawyer for trying to keep a man in the U.S to give evidence in a criminal trial.

The man, George Nader, was central to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into foreign interference in U.S. elections.

...

Why It Matters

Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, a Lebanese American businessman, is awaiting trial in a Washington, D.C., federal court, accused of being at the center of a scheme to funnel foreign donations to U.S. presidential candidates.

According to a Justice Department statement, Khawaja is a fugitive from that indictment. He is also a fugitive from an additional indictment in Massachusetts, where he is accused of deceiving banks into processing $150 million worth of credit and debit card transactions for ultra-high-risk businesses such as payday loan companies.

What To Know

Nader, who was a donor to the presidential election campaigns of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, was compelled to give evidence to Mueller, who was investigating foreign interference in U.S. elections, with a special emphasis on Trump’s links to foreign donors and governments.

Nader also served as an informal foreign policy adviser to Trump. He was indicted and reached a plea deal in January 2020 related to charges of possessing child pornography and transporting a minor for sex. In June 2020, Nader was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge.

On July 18, 2024, largely because of the findings of Mueller’s investigators, Nader was sentenced to an additional year and eight months in prison for his role in funneling at least $3.5 million in unlawful contributions from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) “to unwitting political committees in the United States,” according to a Department of Justice statement at the time.

The Justice Department alleged that Nader “conspired with co-defendant Ahmad ‘Andy’ Khawaja to transfer $4.9 million to facilitate unlawful contributions to unwitting political committees in order to gain access to and influence with a then-candidate for President of the United States and others in connection with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

...

On February 4, just two days before Nader is due to be released from custody, Khawaja’s lawyer, Kenneth Julian, appeared before Washington, D.C., federal Judge Randolph Moss, asking Moss to compel Nader to stay in the U.S and become a defense witness for Khawaja when he goes on trial.

Moss said he would not detain Nader in the U.S. after he is released but could order him to attend a pre-trial deposition in which he would be interviewed by defense attorneys. In his February 4 order, Moss ruled that Nader’s deposition can be taken some time within the following two days, which suggests that he wants it completed before Nader is released from custody on Thursday.

The deposition would be contained to one day, lasting no longer than seven hours, Moss ruled, so Nadir would not be held in the U.S. indefinitely until Khawaja is located.

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“Judge Rebukes Lawyer Over ‘Outrageous’ Request to Keep Mueller Witness In US” By Sean O’Driscoll; Newsweek; 02/05/2025

“A judge sharply rebuked a lawyer for trying to keep a man in the U.S to give evidence in a criminal trial.”

A sharp rebuke over a request to keep George Nader in the US after his February 2025 release from prison. That 10 year sentence was reduced to less than 5 years, and that’s despite Nader being sentenced to an addition year and 8 months in prison in 2024 over campaign finance violations he engaged in as part of his work for the UAE:

...
On July 18, 2024, largely because of the findings of Mueller’s investigators, Nader was sentenced to an additional year and eight months in prison for his role in funneling at least $3.5 million in unlawful contributions from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) “to unwitting political committees in the United States,” according to a Department of Justice statement at the time.
...

It’s not actually clear why Nader was released so early. But the fact that almost no other news reports of Nader’s release from prison exist suggests that this release is a story the US government would prefer we not talk about. Nader is gone, end of story. Weeks into Trump’s second term, with no explanation.

Where is he now? Who knows. Maybe he’s hanging out with Epstein’s ghost somewhere. Although we can be pretty sure he’s back in the Middle East. Probably engaged in more secret diplomacy while he exchanges more child pornography with his cohorts. All as a joke, of course.

And as shocking as it is on the surface to announce a deal that transfers US nuclear technology to one of the regional archrivals of Iran right as hostilities between the US and Iran are reigniting under the pretext of thwarting Iranian nuclear ambitions, the details of the deal are even more shocking. Because it turns out the deal does NOT include a “123 agreement”, which is seen as the “gold standard” for ensuring nuclear energy technology doesn’t get retooled into a nuclear weapons program. Without such an agreement, there are no bans on the enrichment of nuclear fuel and not requirements for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Adding to the alarm is the fact that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has openly threatened that Saudi Arabia would obtain nuclear weapons if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon. It’s not a new threat, with Pakistan having long been suspected of having a nuclear weapon sharing agreement with the Saudis that goes all the way back to the Saudi role in Pakistan’s own nuclear technology proliferation network. So we’ve gone from a US-led war against Iran, ostensibly over a rogue nuclear program, that has not only failed thus far but has arguably made Iran even more likely to pursue nuclear weapons as soon as possible. And now Saudi Arabia will receive US nuclear technology that will very likely be used for nuclear enrichment purposes and the eventual development of a nuclear weapon.

And, again, none of this is new. At least when it comes to the Saudi desires for nuclear enrichment capabilities and the Trump administration’s desires to sell them that technology. It was a story that was intertwined with the whole ‘Russiagate’ fiasco and yet it was never really thoroughly explored despite all the media fervor over that story. First, recall the reports on Michael Flynn’s work in 2015 and 2016 as a lobbyist for a project to build nuclear power plants across the Middle East (but not Iran). Flynn was working for an American company, X‑Co/Iron Bridge and the plan appeared to be lead by another American company ACU Strategic Partners. Saudi Arabia would be financing the project and Russia would be involved providing services. The idea was that the US and Russia would jointly control the Arab world’s rush to obtain nuclear power.

Next, recall the scheme to upgrade Ukraine’s nuclear power plants hatched by Andrii Artemenko, Felix Sater, and Robert Armao. As we saw, Westinghouse is deeply involved in the Ukrainian nuclear power sector. Back in 2018, we were getting reports that Westinghouse was also involved in an push to build and service nuclear power plants for Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis are trying to avoid an agreement (the “123 measure”) that would prevent it from enriching nuclear material for use in nuclear weapons. And Energy Secretary Rick Perry was working on an agreement that would allow enrichment which could, in turn, trigger a clause in the 123 measure the UAE signed that would now allow the UAE to enrich nuclear fuel too. Yes, while the UAE did indeed agree to a “123 agreement” in its own nuclear program that would prevent nuclear enrichment, the UAE could arguably go ahead with its own enrichment if the Saudis do it first.

Now, as of 2019, the US was still insisting on a “123 agreement” with the Saudis. But that insistence has apparently been dropped. It took a while, but it happened, arguably at the worst possible time, diplomatically.

And if it’s not clear that the Trump administration is just kind of winging it on these negotiations, that became clear the day after this agreement was announced, with the Trump administration adding a new provision to the deal in the midst of heavy international criticism of the deal: the Saudis will also have to recognize Israel under the Abraham Accords. While the White House now insists that this is not a new provision to the deal, the Saudi response to this new demand remains unclear.

Will these new demands ultimately undo the deal? We’ll see, but it would appear that the Saudis finally to the US to agreement to a major nuclear technology transfer agreement without the “123 agreement” that the Trump administration insisted on during the first term. Patience pays off. Well, patience and all of the bribes and graft that presumably went into making this a reality:

National Public Radio

Trump administration signs commercial nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia

By Shannon Bond, Geoff Brumfiel
July 22, 2026 5:17 PM ET

The Trump administration has signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that would allow American companies to run commercial nuclear power plants on Saudi soil.

The agreement was signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Department of Energy announced on Wednesday. They also signed an accompanying agreement about safeguards. The deal must be reviewed by Congress, which has 90 days to consider it.

The cooperation agreement gives American companies priority access to the Saudi nuclear energy program, meaning they can supply nuclear reactors and fuel, according to an administration memo about the agreement seen by NPR. It’s expected to last decades and be worth billions of dollars, the Energy Department said.

...

However, the memo seen by NPR said the agreement does not include provisions known as the “gold standard” that would prohibit the kingdom from enriching uranium and reprocessing nuclear fuel, nor does it require Saudi Arabia to adopt terms that would lead to greater oversight from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The lack of those restrictions will raise concerns over providing the kingdom a pathway to weapons development. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would follow suit.

...

The memo says the U.S. does not support a Saudi nuclear weapons program, and that the agreement is limited to peaceful cooperation on nuclear energy.

The memo notes that the agreement includes nonproliferation terms under the Atomic Energy Act. It also says that while the agreement provides a legal pathway for cooperation on the nuclear fuel cycle, it does not obligate the U.S. to transfer any fuel cycle capabilities or technologies to Saudi Arabia.

“I think it may make negotiating a reasonable deal with Iran more difficult,” said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear proliferation expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered.

Bunn said that Iran was less likely to sign an agreement involving intrusive inspections of its nuclear program if Saudi Arabia was also not committing to such agreements.

—————-

“The cooperation agreement gives American companies priority access to the Saudi nuclear energy program, meaning they can supply nuclear reactors and fuel, according to an administration memo about the agreement seen by NPR. It’s expected to last decades and be worth billions of dollars, the Energy Department said.”

It’s not exactly a surprise to find that US companies will be given priority access. It would be shocking if that wasn’t the case. The surprise here is the lack of any “gold standard” provision that would prevent the Saudis from enriching the nuclear fuel or submit to international oversight. Which, of course, were the same demands the Saudis had back during the first Trump administration that the Trump administration seemed fine with at the time. And while the Saudis might insist that they have no plans to weaponize that enriched Uranium, it’s hard to know what else they would be planning on using it for. It’s not like they would need enriched Uranium for alternative nuclear energy technology:

...
However, the memo seen by NPR said the agreement does not include provisions known as the “gold standard” that would prohibit the kingdom from enriching uranium and reprocessing nuclear fuel, nor does it require Saudi Arabia to adopt terms that would lead to greater oversight from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The lack of those restrictions will raise concerns over providing the kingdom a pathway to weapons development. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would follow suit.
...

And as the following article notes, while Saudi Arabia may be insisting that it has no nuclear ambitions, the Saudis are also insisting that it has a right to acquire nuclear weapons should Iran do so first. It’s not an idle wish either, with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan having already signed a mutual defense pact in response to Israel’s attack on Hamas’s leadership in Qatar and Pakistan’s defense minister declaring that the country’s nuclear program “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia if needed:

Associated Press

Trump approves nuclear agreement that may allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium, 2 AP sources say

By AAMER MADHANI, MICHELLE L. PRICE and JON GAMBRELL
Updated 10:11 PM CDT, July 21, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has approved an agreement with Saudi Arabia that could potentially provide the kingdom with uranium enrichment capability for its civilian nuclear program, according to two people familiar with the matter.

...

The deal is expected to last 30 years and is also expected to involve U.S. firms in developing the program. The deal could allow for the building of a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia following a joint U.S.-Saudi study.

But the deal, which is expected to be submitted to Congress for review, could face headwinds among lawmakers who fear that helping the Saudis fulfill their long-standing desire to enrich their own uranium would open new rounds of nuclear proliferation and competition.

Saudi Arabia is a member state of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a Vienna-based agency which promotes peaceful nuclear work but also inspects nations to ensure they don’t have clandestine atomic weapons programs.

But the agreement is not expected to include the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which would allow for more monitoring, inspections and verification, according to one of the people.

...

Both Trump and former President Joe Biden tried to reach a nuclear deal with the kingdom to share American technology.

But nonproliferation experts warn any spinning centrifuges within Saudi Arabia could open the door to a possible weapons program for the kingdom, something its assertive de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has suggested he could pursue if Tehran obtains an atomic bomb.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to Saudi Arabia last year shortly before Trump visited the kingdom and discussed building out the kingdom’s commercial nuclear power industry with his Saudi counterpart. The U.S. Department of Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Tuesday.

Already, Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact after Israel launched an attack on Qatar targeting Hamas officials. Pakistan’s defense minister then said his nation’s nuclear program “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia if needed, something seen as a warning for Israel, long believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state.

Enrichment isn’t an automatic path to a nuclear weapon — a nation also must master other steps, including the use of synchronized high explosives, for instance. But it does open the door to weaponization, which has fueled the concerns of the West over Iran’s program.

The United Arab Emirates, a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, signed what is referred to as a “123 agreement” with the U.S. to build its Barakah nuclear power plant with South Korean assistance. But the UAE did so without seeking enrichment, something nonproliferation experts have held up as the “gold standard” for nations wanting atomic power.

—————-

“Trump approves nuclear agreement that may allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium, 2 AP sources say” By AAMER MADHANI, MICHELLE L. PRICE and JON GAMBRELL; Associated Press; 07/21/2026

“Already, Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact after Israel launched an attack on Qatar targeting Hamas officials. Pakistan’s defense minister then said his nation’s nuclear program “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia if needed, something seen as a warning for Israel, long believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state.”

The fact that the Saudis have informal access to Pakistani nuclear weapons isn’t exactly new news. But it’s pretty notable considering the context. A context that includes a US-led war against Iran over a nuclear weapons program. Again, don’t forget that, while the UAE agreed to a “123 agreement”, that agreement includes the provision that the UAE could considering enrichment if others in the region do it first. If this agreement results in a Saudi nuke, it’ll result in an UAE nuke too:

...
Enrichment isn’t an automatic path to a nuclear weapon — a nation also must master other steps, including the use of synchronized high explosives, for instance. But it does open the door to weaponization, which has fueled the concerns of the West over Iran’s program.

The United Arab Emirates, a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, signed what is referred to as a “123 agreement” with the U.S. to build its Barakah nuclear power plant with South Korean assistance. But the UAE did so without seeking enrichment, something nonproliferation experts have held up as the “gold standard” for nations wanting atomic power.
...

And that’s the declared deal. Or at least that was the declared deal at first. And then, a day later, there was an addendum: the Saudis had to recognized Israel, per the Abraham Accords:

BBC

Saudis must recognise Israel for nuclear deal, says Trump

Robert Greenall
07/23/2026

The deal between the US and Saudi Arabia to help the Gulf kingdom develop nuclear energy is dependent on Riyadh recognising the State of Israel, President Donald Trump has said.

“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!)... which pertains only to non-military use... will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump said on Truth Social.

It was not immediately clear if the condition of joining the accords was stipulated in the text of the nuclear deal — which has not been released — or that Saudi Arabia had agreed to that condition.

...

Trump’s comments come come after criticism from experts that the US-Saudi deal announced on Wednesday could run the risk of future nuclear proliferation in an already unstable region.

———–

“Saudis must recognise Israel for nuclear deal, says Trump” by Robert Greenall; BBC; 07/23/2026

““The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!)... which pertains only to non-military use... will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump said on Truth Social.”

There will be no enrichment of material! So declares President Trump, while he touts a deal that ... *checks notes* ... allows for the enrichment of nuclear material as the Saudis have long demanded.

Will these new demands about recognizing Israel somehow derail the deal? Time will tell. If so, keep in mind there’s still two and a half years left in the second Trump administration. Plenty of time for the Saudis, along with the US nuclear energy industry, to lobby for an even more corrupt deal.

Other components of the AfD’s platform include supporting large families of ethnic Germans and purging German education of what they describe as an unhelpful focus on national guilt over WWII. The the decades-long tradition of “Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”, or coming to terms with the past, has created a guilt complex and undermined national pride. The party has plans to impose a “patriotic cultural policy”, where schools focus more closely on medieval rulers and 19th-century giants of German history such as the “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck. Social and psychological support and integration measures would be scrapped. This is a good time to recall how, back in 2017, AfD leader Björn Höcke called for a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s attitude to the Second World War. These aren’t new views for the AfD. What’s new is the party winning the popular voting and taking control of a state.

And if it’s not clear what to expect when the AfD takes control of Saxony-Anhalt in a couple of months, note the story of Max Heckel, a public school teacher in the state who teaches craft and technical work has found himself in the middle of a political firestorm after a student asked him if he voted for the AfD. Heckel replied that no he had not and that the party had been labeled a right-wing extremist organization by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV). Weeks later, he got a formal warning for breaching rules that required teachers to remain politically neutral in the classroom. The AfD also touts the fact that it won an interim order for the BfV to suspend its judgement, although the Saxony-Anhalt branch of the BfV still classifies the party as extremist.

Heckel has gone on to be abused online, threatened with violence, had his car vandalized, and been verbally attacked by senior AfD politicians. He continues to challenge is reprimand. He points out that many colleagues are reluctant to speak out over fear of disciplinary actions and harassment directed at themselves.

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for premier in Saxony-Anhalt, has repeatedly brought the story up on the campaign trail and points to it as an example of the kind of thing the party will focus on purgin from education if elected. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an architect of the party’s cultural and education agenda in Saxony-Anhalt, said education would be one of the main focuses of an AfD government. “We want a completely new, a completely different education policy,” Tillschneider told journalists. “Political influence on children, as we experience it – political indoctrination – is not a job for schools.” It’s a message that isn’t scaring away voters. At least not enough, with the AfD at around 40 percent in recent polls.

The far right’s time has come in Germany. Again. The far right is going to have decisive control of state policy for the first time since WWII, and it’s gearing up to mass purge immigrants, strip non-ethnic German citizens of their citizenship and deport them too, provide extra state support for large families of ethnic Germans, and make education more Nazi friendly. And publicly harass and vilify random people like Max Heckel who don’t go along with the plan. There are consequences to not learning from history. And they include the consequence of having your history education foundations destroyed while everyday citizens are terrorized by fascists. Here we go again:

BBC News

Germany’s far-right AfD adopts ‘radical’ manifesto ahead of key polls

11 April 2026
Bethany Bell
Germany reporter

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is riding high in the opinion polls in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt and could win an outright majority in regional elections there in September.

It would be the first time a far-right party has held power in a German state since World War Two.

This weekend the AfD officially adopted what has been described as a “radical” and pro-ethnic German government programme for Saxony-Anhalt at a party conference in the central city of Magdeburg.

The AfD’s leading candidate in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, a TikTok star who was given a standing ovation by the delegates, said it was an historic moment, not just for Saxony-Anhalt.

...

He said his party had the courage to speak out about what was going wrong in Germany, “that we don’t feel safe anymore, that we scarcely feel at home anymore, that we don’t recognise our homeland anymore”.

“Let’s take back our country,” he added.

The programme, which is more than 150 pages long, contains wide-ranging plans to overhaul Saxony-Anhalt, clamping down on immigrants and supporting large families of German origin.

It also wants to improve relations with Russia, directly contradicting the policies of the federal coalition government, which is a key supporter of Ukraine.

“We say yes to consistent deportations, we say yes to free childcare facilities, we say yes to remigration,” Siegmund said.

Some of the proposals appear to be unworkable at a state level, requiring action by the federal government, but many others are feasible.

Eva von Angern, leader of the left-wing Linke Party parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt, earlier described the AfD’s plans as a “nightmare scenario for Saxony-Anhalt and for our democracy”.

She said the AfD was promoting an authoritarian state that would severely curtail fundamental rights.

Accusing the party of harbouring “inhuman fantasies of omnipotence”, von Angern said the public must be made aware of the AfD’s “ugly truths” and the “very negative consequences for them personally if the AfD were to govern”.

Saxony-Anhalt, like much of the former Communist East Germany, is an AfD stronghold, but the party is doing well all over the country.

It came second in federal elections in Germany last year, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 20.8% of the vote.

The state branch of the AfD has been classified in Saxony-Anhalt as a “far-right extremist organisation”

In 2023, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony-Anhalt classified the AfD branch in the state as a “far-right extremist organisation”.

...

The draft manifesto, seen by the BBC, says “a complete U‑turn” on migration policy is necessary. It calls for measures to put an end to what it calls “illegal, culturally alien and anti-native mass migration”.

These include plans to deport refugees and asylum seekers or to house them in central accommodation.

The draft contains a number of references to the controversial term “remigration” — the mass removal of people with “non-German” backgrounds from the country.

Two years ago, Germans were shocked by revelations that senior AfD figures attended a meeting in Potsdam where remigration or mass deportations were allegedly discussed. But now the term is a central theme of the government programme.

The manifesto specifically calls for the “remigration” or return of Ukrainians to their own country.

“Stop recognising Ukrainians as war refugees!” it says.

...

Central to the AfD’s plans are measures to support large families of people who are ethnically German.

Saxony-Anhalt has the oldest population in Germany, and the proportion of older people is increasing.

The AfD says it wants to fight against “the extinction of the German people” by giving tax breaks to large families and providing free childcare.

It espouses a very conservative view of the family, which it says should consist of “a father, a mother and as many children as possible”.

The party blames the low birth rate in part on what it calls “sexual deviations and non-reproductive lifestyles”. It plans to ban gay pride flags in schools.

The manifesto also says it plans to withdraw funding for public broadcasting in Saxony-Anhalt.

...

Last year the national party was also classified as “right-wing extremist” by the country’s domestic intelligence service, a decision criticised by the White House. The party challenged the move and a German court has now issued a temporary injunction stopping the use of the term until it has issued a ruling over it.

———–

“Germany’s far-right AfD adopts ‘radical’ manifesto ahead of key polls” by Bethany Bell; BBC News; 04/11/2026

“This weekend the AfD officially adopted what has been described as a “radical” and pro-ethnic German government programme for Saxony-Anhalt at a party conference in the central city of Magdeburg.”

A ‘pro-ethnic German’ policy agenda. That was what the AfD rolled out back in April for the state of for Saxony-Anhalt, where the party is on track to take power in September’s elections according to polls. And as we should expect, “remigration” is a core element of that agenda. As we’ve seen, it was back in November 2023 when Martin Sellner organized a secret conference in Potsdam, Germany, with neo-Nazis and members of the AfD where they discussed a plan to deport “unassimilated citizens” of non-German ethnicity to a a “model state” in North Africa. Remigration has long been a core part of the AfD agenda. But it wasn’t also so public. Interestingly, the AfD appears to have put a focus on remigrating Ukrainians, which presumably helps the party deflect charges of racism. But it’s also the kind of policy that, if implemented, would arguably be a ‘pro-Ukrainian’ policy in the sense that it would be sending all sorts of draft-age men back to Ukraine where they would likely be conscripted into the ongoing war:

...
The programme, which is more than 150 pages long, contains wide-ranging plans to overhaul Saxony-Anhalt, clamping down on immigrants and supporting large families of German origin.

It also wants to improve relations with Russia, directly contradicting the policies of the federal coalition government, which is a key supporter of Ukraine.

...

Some of the proposals appear to be unworkable at a state level, requiring action by the federal government, but many others are feasible.

...

The draft manifesto, seen by the BBC, says “a complete U‑turn” on migration policy is necessary. It calls for measures to put an end to what it calls “illegal, culturally alien and anti-native mass migration”.

These include plans to deport refugees and asylum seekers or to house them in central accommodation.

The draft contains a number of references to the controversial term “remigration” — the mass removal of people with “non-German” backgrounds from the country.

Two years ago, Germans were shocked by revelations that senior AfD figures attended a meeting in Potsdam where remigration or mass deportations were allegedly discussed. But now the term is a central theme of the government programme.

The manifesto specifically calls for the “remigration” or return of Ukrainians to their own country.

“Stop recognising Ukrainians as war refugees!” it says.
...

And when we see the pro-natalist policies — specifically just for ethnic Germans — that will provide state support for large families, but also blame for low birth rates on what the party calls “sexual deviations and non-reproductive lifestyles”, it’s not hard to see where this is heading. It starts with state support for large families but it’s just a matter of time before childless households and the LGBTQ community are directly targeted for state punishment:

...
Central to the AfD’s plans are measures to support large families of people who are ethnically German.

Saxony-Anhalt has the oldest population in Germany, and the proportion of older people is increasing.

The AfD says it wants to fight against “the extinction of the German people” by giving tax breaks to large families and providing free childcare.

It espouses a very conservative view of the family, which it says should consist of “a father, a mother and as many children as possible”.

The party blames the low birth rate in part on what it calls “sexual deviations and non-reproductive lifestyles”. It plans to ban gay pride flags in schools.
...

And when we see how the Trump White House criticized the move by the BfV classifying the AfD as a “right-wing extremist” party, recall how it was Trump’s own former US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief, Greg Bovino, who headlined the recent 2026 “Remigration Summit” in May along with US white nationalist leader Jared Taylor. Remigration isn’t just at the core of the AfD’s 2026 manifesto and demonstrably popular in Germany, with the AfD coming in second in last year’s federal elections. It’s the future of MAGA too:

...
Saxony-Anhalt, like much of the former Communist East Germany, is an AfD stronghold, but the party is doing well all over the country.

It came second in federal elections in Germany last year, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 20.8% of the vote.

...

In 2023, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony-Anhalt classified the AfD branch in the state as a “far-right extremist organisation”.

...

Last year the national party was also classified as “right-wing extremist” by the country’s domestic intelligence service, a decision criticised by the White House. The party challenged the move and a German court has now issued a temporary injunction stopping the use of the term until it has issued a ruling over it.
...

And that story from back in April brings us to the follow update on the AfD’s political successes: the party now has a 20 point lead over the CDU in the state of Saxony-Anhalt with the election just two months away, making it likely that a far right extremist party will take power at the state level for the first time since:

Times of Israel

Germany’s AfD vows to expel all migrants without legal status if it wins eastern region

Far-right party, which is leading rival conservatives in polls, says it aims to shift school curricula away from what it deems an excessive focus on Nazi-era guilt

By AFP 11 July 2026, 5:35 pm

MAGDEBURG, Germany — Germany’s far-right AfD party on Saturday unveiled a manifesto for its first 100 days in office if it wins control of an eastern region, pledging to immediately expel all undocumented immigrants.

The Alternative for Germany has a lead of nearly 20 points over the mainstream conservatives in opinion polls in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which votes for its government in September.

In an address to delegates in the city of Magdeburg, AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund set out the first 10 measures he promised to implement once in office, following the September 6 vote.

The 35-year-old said he would expel all irregular migrants from the state “from the very first minute.”

...

If the anti-immigration, pro-Russia, and pro-Donald Trump AfD wins, it would be the first far-right party to govern a German federal region since the end of World War II.

It has surged in popularity in recent years of economic turbulence, in line with far-right parties elsewhere in Europe.

Siegmund said the party would defend a traditional family model, made up of “a man, a woman and children from that couple.”

He vowed to ban the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag in schools and ensure instead that the national flag be flown in public establishments.

In the longer term, he aimed to change history curricula in schools, which he said were too focused on Germany’s Nazi-era guilt.

...

————-

“Germany’s AfD vows to expel all migrants without legal status if it wins eastern region” By AFP; Agence France-Presse via Times of Israel; 07/11/2026

“The Alternative for Germany has a lead of nearly 20 points over the mainstream conservatives in opinion polls in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which votes for its government in September.”

It’s hard to a 20 point lead dissipating this close to an election, especially for a party as infamous as the AfD. Sure, a scandal could erupt, but the party is already inherently scandalous and yet in the lead. An AfD-led Saxony-Anhalt is coming soon. And while the party won’t be able to keep all of its promises, it’s going to succeed where it can, with ‘culture war’ issues being a likely focus. And those culture war issues happen to include how they educate kids about the Nazi atrocities. This is a good time to recall AfD leader Björn Höcke and his calls for Germany to make a “180 degree turn” in Germany’s attitude to the Second World War. We know where this is heading. It’s not a mystery. And yet, the AfD is on track to win the popular vote:

...
In an address to delegates in the city of Magdeburg, AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund set out the first 10 measures he promised to implement once in office, following the September 6 vote.

The 35-year-old said he would expel all irregular migrants from the state “from the very first minute.”

...

It has surged in popularity in recent years of economic turbulence, in line with far-right parties elsewhere in Europe.

Siegmund said the party would defend a traditional family model, made up of “a man, a woman and children from that couple.”

He vowed to ban the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag in schools and ensure instead that the national flag be flown in public establishments.

In the longer term, he aimed to change history curricula in schools, which he said were too focused on Germany’s Nazi-era guilt.
...

And as the following article makes clear, the AfD and its supporters aren’t waiting to wage this culture war over schools. As one Saxony-Anhalt teacher has learned, criticizing the AfD in the classroom — including accurately stating that the BfV found the party to be “confirmed right-wing extremist” — will not only get you reprimanded by administrators but also harassed by the AfD supporters, including senior AfD politicians. He’s even had his car vandalized and experienced threats of violence. This is at the same time Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an architect of the party’s cultural and education agenda in Saxony-Anhalt, has already declared that education would be one of the main focuses of the upcoming AfD state government:

Reuters

Schools become battleground as Germany’s far-right AfD eyes regional election

By Tanya Wood and James Mackenzie
July 14, 2026 4:04 AM CDT
Updated July 14, 2026

Summary

* Polls show AfD near 40% in Saxony-Anhalt, ahead of Merz’s conservatives
* Election takes place on September 6
* Party wants “completely new” schools policy with focus on traditional values
* Critics say AfD stance could curb debate and weaken democratic safeguards

STENDAL, Germany, July 14 (Reuters) — A woodwork teacher in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt has triggered a dispute over political expression in the classroom ahead of a regional election in two months that could produce radical changes in schools if the far-right AfD wins.

...

Max Heckel, who teaches craft and technical work in the town of Stendal, was reported to Saxony-Anhalt’s Schools Office last year after a conversation with a pupil who he said had asked him as he was clearing up after a lesson whether he had voted for the AfD (Alternative for Germany).

Heckel said he had explained that he had not voted for the party, in part because the domestic security service had classified it as “extremist”.

TEACHER’S CHAT WITH PUPIL TRIGGERS THREATS AND ABUSE

Weeks later, he received a formal warning for breaching rules that require teachers to remain politically neutral in the classroom.

Since then, he says, he has been abused online, threatened with violence and had his car vandalised, and been been verbally attacked by senior AfD politicians, all while challenging the reprimand as unjustified.

Heckel, who said teachers have a responsibility to defend Germany’s democratic foundations, said many colleagues were reluctant to speak out for fear of disciplinary procedures as well as antagonism from outsiders.

He said the affair showed that schools were under pressure, even before the Sept. 6 election, not to allow criticism of the AfD, which surveys suggest could take around 40% of the vote. The centre-right CDU, headed nationally by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, stands at under 30%.

...

For the AfD, Heckel, a part-time musician who runs an informal cultural centre in Stendal and has clashed with the party in the past, exemplifies a left-wing culture it is determined to stamp out in schools.

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for premier in Saxony-Anhalt, who has raised the case repeatedly in the state assembly and elsewhere, said the party would remove political influence as part of a wider overhaul of education.

“We want lessons to remain neutral, so that pupils can form their own views of the political landscape in this country. We don’t need teachers who campaign in any particular direction,” he told Reuters.

He dismissed the security services’ evaluation of the AfD as politically motivated. The AfD won an interim order this year suspending an assessment by the BfV, the national domestic security agency, that the party was “confirmed right-wing extremist”.

AFD CLASSED AS EXTREMIST GROUP IN SAXONY-ANHALT

But the Saxony-Anhalt BfV still classifies the state branch of the party as extremist — meaning that it opposes the liberal-democratic foundations of the state, a characterisation the AfD rejects.

The AfD sees Saxony-Anhalt, where it hopes to form a regional government for the first time, as a stepping stone to winning a federal election, and the dispute over a conversation in a classroom in Stendal points to wider tensions ahead.

...

Education has particular resonance because the system was designed in part as a bulwark against the Nazi ideology of the 1930s and 1940s. Schoolchildren have for decades been required to learn about wartime atrocities committed in the name of racial purity and national supremacy.

The AfD believes the decades-long tradition of “Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”, or coming to terms with the past, has created a guilt complex and undermined national pride. It says the school system has been weakened by falling standards and functions that have nothing to do with education, such as integrating children from refugee families.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an architect of the party’s cultural and education agenda in Saxony-Anhalt, said education would be one of the main focuses of an AfD government.

“We want a completely new, a completely different education policy,” he told Reuters. “Political influence on children, as we experience it – political indoctrination – is not a job for schools.”

Under a “patriotic cultural policy”, schools would focus more closely on medieval rulers and 19th-century giants of German history such as the “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck. Social and psychological support and integration measures would be scrapped.

UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION

To the CDU and other mainstream parties, the AfD is threatening to undermine a post World War Two consensus aimed at reinforcing the foundations of a democratic society.

They have ruled out cooperating with the party under a so-called “firewall” policy aimed at isolating it and preventing it from forming a coalition if it does not win an overall majority.

For the party’s critics, the AfD’s interpretation of neutrality would effectively restrict informed debate and limit children’s ability to decide.

...

———–

“Schools become battleground as Germany’s far-right AfD eyes regional election” By Tanya Wood and James Mackenzie; Reuters; 07/14/2026

“For the AfD, Heckel, a part-time musician who runs an informal cultural centre in Stendal and has clashed with the party in the past, exemplifies a left-wing culture it is determined to stamp out in schools.”

As Max Heckel learned, acknowledging the fact that the AfD was labeled a right-wing extremist organization by the BfV is apparently the exemplification of a left-wing culture that the AfD is determined to stamp out in schools. And the ‘stamping out’ will include online harassment, vandalism, and even threats of violence:

...
Max Heckel, who teaches craft and technical work in the town of Stendal, was reported to Saxony-Anhalt’s Schools Office last year after a conversation with a pupil who he said had asked him as he was clearing up after a lesson whether he had voted for the AfD (Alternative for Germany).

Heckel said he had explained that he had not voted for the party, in part because the domestic security service had classified it as “extremist”.

TEACHER’S CHAT WITH PUPIL TRIGGERS THREATS AND ABUSE

Weeks later, he received a formal warning for breaching rules that require teachers to remain politically neutral in the classroom.

Since then, he says, he has been abused online, threatened with violence and had his car vandalised, and been been verbally attacked by senior AfD politicians, all while challenging the reprimand as unjustified.

Heckel, who said teachers have a responsibility to defend Germany’s democratic foundations, said many colleagues were reluctant to speak out for fear of disciplinary procedures as well as antagonism from outsiders.

He said the affair showed that schools were under pressure, even before the Sept. 6 election, not to allow criticism of the AfD, which surveys suggest could take around 40% of the vote. The centre-right CDU, headed nationally by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, stands at under 30%.
...

It’s the rejection of “Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”, or coming to terms with the past. As Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an architect of the party’s cultural and education agenda in Saxony-Anhalt, makes clear, education will be one of the main focuses of an AfD government. Teaching about the Nazis is “political indoctrination”. Instead, they’ll be given a “patriotic cultural policy” that emphasizes figures like Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor”:

...
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for premier in Saxony-Anhalt, who has raised the case repeatedly in the state assembly and elsewhere, said the party would remove political influence as part of a wider overhaul of education.

“We want lessons to remain neutral, so that pupils can form their own views of the political landscape in this country. We don’t need teachers who campaign in any particular direction,” he told Reuters.

...

The AfD sees Saxony-Anhalt, where it hopes to form a regional government for the first time, as a stepping stone to winning a federal election, and the dispute over a conversation in a classroom in Stendal points to wider tensions ahead.

...

Education has particular resonance because the system was designed in part as a bulwark against the Nazi ideology of the 1930s and 1940s. Schoolchildren have for decades been required to learn about wartime atrocities committed in the name of racial purity and national supremacy.

The AfD believes the decades-long tradition of “Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”, or coming to terms with the past, has created a guilt complex and undermined national pride. It says the school system has been weakened by falling standards and functions that have nothing to do with education, such as integrating children from refugee families.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an architect of the party’s cultural and education agenda in Saxony-Anhalt, said education would be one of the main focuses of an AfD government.

“We want a completely new, a completely different education policy,” he told Reuters. “Political influence on children, as we experience it – political indoctrination – is not a job for schools.”

Under a “patriotic cultural policy”, schools would focus more closely on medieval rulers and 19th-century giants of German history such as the “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck. Social and psychological support and integration measures would be scrapped.
...

A “patriotic cultural policy” for schools that, today, will casually gloss over the horrors of the Nazis. But how long before the lesson plan decides to refocus on WWII, but from a more ‘patriotic’ prism. It’s not hard to see where this is going.

Although there was that time last year when AfD candidate for chancellor Alice Weidel and Elon Musk mused about how ‘Hitler was actually a Communist’, so who knows what to expect from the AfD’s capture of German education policy other than that it will involve a gross distortion of history done on behalf of a bunch of fascists to the detriment of almost everyone.

The pushback in UK is being led by London Mayor Saddiq Khan, whose office blocked a new Palantir contract with Scotland Yard back in May, citing a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules. Basically, no other company was seriously considered for the contract, which would have involved Palantir automating intelligence analysis in criminal investigations. Scotland Yard, which is facing a £125 million budget shortfall this year and 1,150 job cuts, warned that it would be forced to lay off police officers if the contract wasn’t allowed, seemingly arguing that Palantir would be a cost-saving service. It was an ironic argument given the £50 million contract was going to cost £25 a year, at the top of the range of what was expected when they entered negotiations.

That £25 million per year price tag also stands in contrast to an earlier contract Scotland Yard signed with Palantir that was also made without any competition. In that case, the contract — which involved using AI to monitor staff behavior to root out corrupt officers — was just under the £500k threshold required for City Hall’s approval. And if it looks like Palantir was intentionally offering contracts that were below the threshold for scrutiny in order to gain a new client that could be gouged later, note that 2023, the UK government’s chief commercial officer warned about Palantir offering public services for a zero or nominal cost to gain a commercial foothold. This didn’t escape Khan, who observed how, “In general terms, what you’re allowing is these private companies to almost have a loss leader, so they give you a good deal or something for nothing for a short bit of time [and] you can become reliant upon them.”

So Palantir was about to expand its monitoring of Scotland Yard’s employees to also include access to Scotland Yard’s case intelligence files. It’s the kind of story that is disturbing enough on its own, but, of course, Scotland Yard is hardly the only UK agency to adopt Palantir’s services in recent years. Recall how the UK Navy has begun “forward deployments” of Palantir employees on ships as part of a trial program where Palantir would be engaged in long-term modeling of the career paths of the UK Navy’s officers. Oswald Mosley’s grandson, who heads up Palantir’s London office, is leading the effort. And then there’s the fact that Palantir has been deploying a strategy of buying its way into the NHS through the quiet acquisition of companies already provided services for NHS. And those are just examples of a much large Palantir encroachment into the UK’s national systems. Which brings us to another new Palantir contract that is coming under scrutiny: back in March, the the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) awarded Palantir access to UK financial regulation data as part of a trial 12-week test of Palantir’s technology in the area of financial crimes sleuthing. The contract pays Palantir £30k per week to analyze the FCA’s “data lake”, putting the total price tag at just £360k for the 12 week trial. Basically, Palantir is going to be given access to a trove of data, including highly sensitive financial crimes investigation data and investigative methods, in order to see if Palantir’s AI systems are able to identify financial crimes like fraud, money laundering, and insider trading. If the trial is considered a succeed, the FCA could fully adopt the system.

One eyebrow-raising aspect to the FCA contract with Palantir is the fact that the FCA chose to use real data at all given that the guidelines call for the use of simulated or dummy data when conducting a trial. The FCA decided real data would be the only worthwhile test. And that brings us to the crux of concerns over this trial: US law could compel Palantir to hand over that data to the US government. The Patriot Act explicitly covers financial data and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows for the monitoring of non-citizens’ digital communications outside the US without a search warrant. And then there’s the US Cloud Act that gives US authorities the right to access data held by businesses based in the US. These are some of the laws that have British MP Martin Wrigley demanding answers from the FCA about why the agency is convinced there’s no risk in handing all of this data over to Palantir. The FCA appears to be basing its confidence on the fact that Palantir does not “control” the data but is instead a “data processor”. Palantir, in turn, also argues that it would be impossible for the company to hand over the FCA’s data without the FCA’s consent because the FCA has exclusive control over the encryption keys for its data. It’s a rather puzzling argument, technically speaking, because Palantir’s systems will obviously have to receive access to the FCA’s data at some point for its services to work, at which point all of that data will be exposed to Palantir whether or not it’s a “data processor” or “data controller”. But that’s the semantic argument we’re getting in response to all the critics. Nothing to worry about. And the trial is proceeding along, regardless of these concerns.

And, of course, if data collected in the UK can be shared with the US government, so will the data collected everywhere else, which is why we should probably expect more pushback as Palantir continues to expand its global reach, gaining further access to even more sensitive data. Again, it’s a good problem to have, really. The kind of problem a fascist authoritarian company like Palantir will only have if it’s successful in convincing a large number of fools who should really know better to sign of for its services in the first place:

Sovereign Magazine

Spain Blacklists Palantir, the Sixth European Country to Turn on Karp’s Company This Year

Spain has quietly told state-backed firms to avoid Palantir, the sixth European government to pull back from the company in 2026.

Darie Nani
Editor-in-Chief
2 July 2026

Spain has told companies it partly owns to stop signing contracts with Palantir, according to reporting by El Confidencial, making it the sixth European government this year to quietly pull back from the American data firm.

No minister has said this publicly. Moncloa, the Spanish prime minister’s office, has not issued any statement on Palantir. But board members at several state-linked companies have been told, in private, to avoid new contracts with the firm over fears that sensitive national data could end up outside Spanish control.

Why Spain Is Restricting Palantir Government Contracts

The instruction runs through SEPI, the state holding company that manages Spain’s stakes in strategic firms. El Confidencial names three companies inside that perimeter: Telefónica, which controls national communications infrastructure; Indra, which builds defence, simulation and military intelligence systems; and Navantia, the state shipbuilder. The Civil Guard has also been named as a likely target of the instruction.

Spain’s Ministry of Defence sits outside that freeze. Its Armed Forces Intelligence Centre signed a €16.5 million contract with Palantir in 2023 that runs out this November, and the ministry is reportedly still negotiating with the company over a renewal.

Palantir Is Facing Growing Pushback Across Europe

...

France went furthest. On 16 June, prime minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that the DGSI, the domestic intelligence agency, would drop Palantir’s Gotham platform, which it had used since the aftermath of the 2015 Paris attacks, in favour of the French firm ChapsVision.

Germany has not gone that far but has drawn a hard line for its military. Police forces in Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia still run limited versions of Gotham, but the armed forces will not contract with Palantir or any other US company for its own systems. Thomas Daum, head of Germany’s cyber defence, said it was “simply inconceivable at the moment to grant industry staff access to the national database.” Germany is also looking at ChapsVision as an alternative supplier.

The UK has gone the other way in public but is under pressure to reverse. Palantir holds roughly £670 million across British civil and defence contracts, including a three-year, £240 million Ministry of Defence deal and the NHS federated data platform. A UK parliamentary committee has called that NHS position “an unacceptable point of weakness” and recommended ending the relationship when the contract comes up in 2027, as this publication reported in April.

The Netherlands has used Palantir in a narrower way since 2010, in what officials describe as small-scale, compartmentalised deployments. Dutch state secretary for defence Derk Boswijk has announced a two-year plan to reduce that dependency, after Dutch MP Michelle Jagtenberg publicly called on the government to end its Palantir relationship over the company’s politics.

Denmark, seven years into a surveillance and data analytics contract with Palantir, has said it is now looking for local alternatives. Switzerland has rejected Palantir bids at least nine times on security grounds.

Who Owns Palantir: Peter Thiel and Alex Karp

Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who chairs the board, and is run by chief executive Alex Karp. On a 2025 earnings call, Karp said Palantir exists to make its partner institutions “the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.” On the same call, welcoming Elon Musk’s government efficiency drive, he said “some people are going to get their heads cut off.” In March 2026 he told CNBC that AI would shrink the economic power of “humanities-trained, largely Democratic, voters” while increasing that of working-class, “often male” voters trained in vocational skills.

That record keeps surfacing in the reasons governments give for stepping back. In the Netherlands, Jagtenberg’s objection was about the company’s politics. In Germany, Daum’s objection was about database access. Six governments, citing different reasons, have reached the same decision inside a single year.

Palantir’s pitch to governments has always rested on being treated as critical infrastructure, embedded deep enough into intelligence and defence systems that walking away becomes impractical. Spain’s board members were told to avoid new contracts, not tear up old ones, and its Defence Ministry is still negotiating a renewal. Six European governments have now made the same call on new Palantir business within a single year.

...

———–

“Spain Blacklists Palantir, the Sixth European Country to Turn on Karp’s Company This Year” by Darie Nani; Sovereign Magazine; 07/02/2026

“Palantir’s pitch to governments has always rested on being treated as critical infrastructure, embedded deep enough into intelligence and defence systems that walking away becomes impractical. Spain’s board members were told to avoid new contracts, not tear up old ones, and its Defence Ministry is still negotiating a renewal. Six European governments have now made the same call on new Palantir business within a single year.”

Spain isn’t taking the bait. Knowing full well that Palantir’s business model revolves around making itself so deeply embedded in an entity’s knowledge-management systems that it becomes irreplaceable, Spain is taking steps to make sure that doesn’t happen, the sixth European government to take such steps this years. But there’s an outlier: the UK, which has been enthusiastically embracing Palantir across its IT infrastructure:

...
Spain has told companies it partly owns to stop signing contracts with Palantir, according to reporting by El Confidencial, making it the sixth European government this year to quietly pull back from the American data firm.</i

...

The UK has gone the other way in public but is under pressure to reverse. Palantir holds roughly £670 million across British civil and defence contracts, including a three-year, £240 million Ministry of Defence deal and the NHS federated data platform. A UK parliamentary committee has called that NHS position “an unacceptable point of weakness” and recommended ending the relationship when the contract comes up in 2027, as this publication reported in April.
...

And that brings us to the following story from back in May about the move by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to block a £50 million contract with Palantir just signed by Scotland Yard over concerns about a violation of Britain’s procurement rules, with Khan pointing out that Palantir appears to be the only bidder under serious consideration:

The Guardian

Sadiq Khan sparks row with Met after blocking £50m AI deal with Palantir

Exclusive: Scotland Yard criticises London mayor’s decision as disappointing and warns it could hit policing

Robert Booth UK technology editor
Thu 21 May 2026 14.07 EDT

Sadiq Khan has blocked a £50m Metropolitan police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir, sparking a bitter row between the London mayor and Scotland Yard.

After the UK’s largest police force had agreed to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, Khan intervened, citing “serious concerns” about how the deal had been struck.

The mayor’s office said there had been a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules and said police had only seriously considered one supplier (Palantir).

But after the Guardian reported the decision, Scotland Yard criticised the block as “disappointing”, saying that without new technology it would have to cut officer numbers, which would in turn affect the force’s ability to keep London safe.

The deal would have been Palantir’s largest yet in British policing, after others worth £330m and £240m with NHS England and the Ministry of Defence.

...

The row comes amid a growing public backlash over the British state’s use of services provided by Palantir, which was cofounded by the Donald Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and also serves the Israeli military and the US president’s ICE immigration crackdown operations.

Last month its chief executive, Alex Karp, published a mini-manifesto extolling the benefits of US power and implying some cultures were inferior to others, in what one MP called “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac), which has to approve large contracts, vetoed the deal citing Scotland Yard’s failure to obtain its approval for its procurement strategy.

In a letter to the Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, Khan’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, said: “I have not been provided with any acceptable explanation for this failure, which I regard as a clear and serious breach of the applicable procedural requirements.”

She said the process had created “legal and reputation risks” to Scotland Yard and the mayor and noted the Met originally costed the contract at £15m-£25m a year, putting the proposed deal at the top of that range.

“The decision by Mopac is disappointing,” said a Met spokesperson. “We need to modernise and use the very best technology available. We must be able to innovate at a faster rate than hostile states and organised criminals. For now, this decision prevents us using technology already available to the MoD, the NHS and other police forces.”

The Met is facing a £125m funding shortfall in the coming year and 1,150 job cuts. Scotland Yard said “without new technology, delivered at pace, we will be forced to make further tough choices that cannot avoid reducing officer numbers, impacting our service to London and our ability to keep the capital safe.”

The mayor’s spokesperson responded that tight budgetary constraints made it “even more important that robust processes are followed when awarding contracts as large as £25m a year”, adding the public would expect full scrutiny of whether such contracts provided value for money.

Chi Onwurah, chair of the Commons science and technology committee, welcomed the mayor’s decision, saying: “I’m pleased that procurement processes are being reviewed by City Hall as it seeks to address the issue of vendor lock-in and dependence on a small number of large, US-based providers.”

The row has cast fresh light on Palantir’s record of winning public contracts in the UK. Scotland Yard previously appointed Palantir on a much smaller contract to use AI to monitor staff behaviour in an bid to root out corrupt officers. This contract was awarded directly, without advertisement or open competition, because its value was just below the £500,000 threshold required for City Hall’s approval.

Khan said on Thursday: “In general terms, what you’re allowing is these private companies to almost have a loss leader, so they give you a good deal or something for nothing for a short bit of time [and] you can become reliant upon them.”

In 2023 the government’s chief commercial officer raised concerns with Palantir about the practice of offering public services for a zero or nominal cost to gain a commercial foothold.

Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at the tech equity campaign Foxglove, said: “Palantir is notorious for its ‘land and expand’ approach, in which it wins small contracts or even offers free services at first, then uses those to build a much wider role in our public services.”.

He said Khan had “seen through this practice, and put a stop to it – while rightly highlighting Londoners’ concerns over Palantir’s ethical record”.

Scotland Yard insisted it had conducted the procurement “diligently” using the crown commercial services framework – a list of government approved contractors including Palantir. City Hall said this did not allow bids from suppliers other than the one that was selected by the Met based on their desktop assessment (Palantir).

There does not appear to be any block on Palantir bidding for a future contract, and Mopac said it wanted to work with the Met on a new procurement plan. Scotland Yard said it would “continue to pursue every avenue to resolve this issue swiftly”.

...

Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons science and technology select committee said he was “delighted” by City Hall’s decision.

“To get another contract without competition would have been a disgrace,” Wrigley said. “Palantir have failed to deliver to their promises on too many projects. Buying projects through free trials to then write the contract spec should be banned from government procurement.”

...

———-

“Sadiq Khan sparks row with Met after blocking £50m AI deal with Palantir” by Robert Booth; The Guardian; 05/21/2026

“The mayor’s office said there had been a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules and said police had only seriously considered one supplier (Palantir).”

A “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules where Palantir was the only company under serious consideration. That’s the reason given for why Sadiq Khan’s office blocked the new Palantir contract with Scotland Yard. Incredibly, Scotland Yard appears to be arguing that it needs Palantir’s technology in order to avoid laying off police officers. Scotland Yard seems to be arguing that this £25m a year contract would result in a a net cost-savings:

...
But after the Guardian reported the decision, Scotland Yard criticised the block as “disappointing”, saying that without new technology it would have to cut officer numbers, which would in turn affect the force’s ability to keep London safe.

...

“The decision by Mopac is disappointing,” said a Met spokesperson. “We need to modernise and use the very best technology available. We must be able to innovate at a faster rate than hostile states and organised criminals. For now, this decision prevents us using technology already available to the MoD, the NHS and other police forces.”

The Met is facing a £125m funding shortfall in the coming year and 1,150 job cuts. Scotland Yard said “without new technology, delivered at pace, we will be forced to make further tough choices that cannot avoid reducing officer numbers, impacting our service to London and our ability to keep the capital safe.”

The mayor’s spokesperson responded that tight budgetary constraints made it “even more important that robust processes are followed when awarding contracts as large as £25m a year”, adding the public would expect full scrutiny of whether such contracts provided value for money.
...

And this canceled-deal with Palantir would have been just the latest in a rapidly growing number of contracts with the UK state, including the NHS and Ministry of Defence, where Palantir employees have even been “forward deployed” with the UK Navy. And as we can see, the awarding of the contract was done without advertisement or open competition because the value of the contract was just below the £500,000 threshold required for City Hall’s approval. But as critics warn, Palantir has a practice of “land and expand” offers, where the initial contracts are free or nearly free at first:

...
The deal would have been Palantir’s largest yet in British policing, after others worth £330m and £240m with NHS England and the Ministry of Defence.

...

The row has cast fresh light on Palantir’s record of winning public contracts in the UK. Scotland Yard previously appointed Palantir on a much smaller contract to use AI to monitor staff behaviour in an bid to root out corrupt officers. This contract was awarded directly, without advertisement or open competition, because its value was just below the £500,000 threshold required for City Hall’s approval.

Khan said on Thursday: “In general terms, what you’re allowing is these private companies to almost have a loss leader, so they give you a good deal or something for nothing for a short bit of time [and] you can become reliant upon them.”

In 2023 the government’s chief commercial officer raised concerns with Palantir about the practice of offering public services for a zero or nominal cost to gain a commercial foothold.

Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at the tech equity campaign Foxglove, said: “Palantir is notorious for its ‘land and expand’ approach, in which it wins small contracts or even offers free services at first, then uses those to build a much wider role in our public services.”.

He said Khan had “seen through this practice, and put a stop to it – while rightly highlighting Londoners’ concerns over Palantir’s ethical record”.

...

Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons science and technology select committee said he was “delighted” by City Hall’s decision.

“To get another contract without competition would have been a disgrace,” Wrigley said. “Palantir have failed to deliver to their promises on too many projects. Buying projects through free trials to then write the contract spec should be banned from government procurement.”
...

And that dispute of the Scotland Yard contract brings us to the ongoing fight over another Palantir UK contract: a trial program with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that would have Palantir investigating the FCA’s internal intelligence data, with the ostensible goal of discovering more fraud, money laundering, and insider trading. And, once again, the contract was awarded with just one other unnamed competitor. So Palantir will be allowed access to one of the most sensitive databases in the UK thanks to another highly questionable contract:

The Guardian

Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data

Exclusive: Allowing US tech firm to analyse intelligence in name of tackling fraud raises fresh concerns over privacy

* Campaign groups rail against Palantir, but the UK contracts keep coming

Robert Booth UK technology editor
Sun 22 Mar 2026 12.00 EDT

Palantir is to be granted access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data, in a deal that has prompted fresh concerns about the US AI company’s deepening reach into the British state, the Guardian can reveal.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a contract to investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data in an effort to help it tackle financial crime, which includes investigating fraud, money laundering and insider trading.

The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has been appointed for a three-month trial, paying more than £30,000 a week to analyse the FCA’s vast “data lake”, which could lead to a full procurement of an AI system.

...

There was only one other, unnamed competitor for the contract. Palantir already has more than £500m in UK public deals, including with the NHS, military and police.

The contract has prompted warnings of “very significant privacy concerns”. Palantir is expected to apply its AI system, known as Foundry, to huge quantities of information held by the watchdog, including case intelligence files marked highly sensitive; information on so-called problem firms; reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds; and data about the public, including consumer complaints to the financial ombudsman.

The data includes recordings of phone calls, emails and trawls of social media posts, the Guardian understands. The FCA is one of several UK agencies which aim to stop financial crimes that underpin harms such as the drug trade and human trafficking.

The deal has raised concerns inside the FCA. One source said: “Once Palantir understands how we detect money-laundering threats, how do we know that they are ethically reliable enough not to go to share that information?”

Palantir’s technology is used by the Israeli military and in the US president’s ICE immigration crackdown, leading to leftwing MPs in the House of Commons last month to call it a “highly questionable” and “ghastly” company. In 2023 it signed a £330m deal with the NHS, which has sparked resistance from doctors, and a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence in December 2025, which prompted MPs to highlight “reports of serious allegations of complicity in human rights violations and the undermining of democratic processes made against Palantir”.

...

Prof Michael Levi, an internationally recognised expert in money laundering at Cardiff University, said there was “serious under-exploitation” of data held by financial regulators, so AI is a potentially valuable technology to tackle financial crimes. But he said it was “a relevant question as to whether Palantir’s owners might tipoff their friends about methodologies”.

“What are the protocols agreed between the FCA and Palantir about the onward use of things that they have learned in that process?” he said.

The FCA said that the terms of the contract meant Palantir would be a “data processor” not a “data controller” – meaning that it could only act on instruction from the regulator, which said it would retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and the data would be hosted and stored solely in the UK. Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract and any intellectual property derived from the data trawling should be retained by the FCA.

The FCA considered using dummy data or scrambling company and individual names but decided using real data was the only worthwhile test, even though guidelines encourage the use of synthetic data in pilots.

“When the FCA carries out an enforcement investigation, it has powers to compel firms to hand over vast quantities of data,” said Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay, a partner and barrister at the law firm Hickman & Rose who specialises in defending serious and complex financial crime cases. “We could be talking about hundreds of whole email accounts and full financial records. Many innocent people will be caught up in that and the data may contain bank account details, email addresses, telephone numbers and other personal information.

“If you ingest that data and use it to train an AI system, there are very significant privacy concerns. There should be serious confidentiality requirements regarding what Palantir does with the data.”

The FCA said Palantir could not copy the data to train its products. Palantir referred a request for comment to the FCA.

...

———-

“Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data” by Robert Booth; The Guardian; 03/22/2026

“The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has been appointed for a three-month trial, paying more than £30,000 a week to analyse the FCA’s vast “data lake”, which could lead to a full procurement of an AI system.”

It’s just a three month trial, costing £30,000 a week, granting Palantir access to the FCA’s “data lake” of financial data. And with just one of unnamed competitor, all indications are this was a contract that also violated UK procurement rules:

...
There was only one other, unnamed competitor for the contract. Palantir already has more than £500m in UK public deals, including with the NHS, military and police.
...

But the concerns over this trial contract aren’t just about the lack of competition. There’s the fact that Palantir, a US firm notoriously close to the Trump administration, would be granted access to one of the most sensitive databases the UK government possesses. And beyond the access to that highly sensitive data is the highly sensitive methods used by the FCA for detecting fraud. What are the guarantees that Palantir isn’t going to share all this? Are confidentiality requirements regarding what Palantir does with the data in place? Experts don’t appear to think so:

...
The contract has prompted warnings of “very significant privacy concerns”. Palantir is expected to apply its AI system, known as Foundry, to huge quantities of information held by the watchdog, including case intelligence files marked highly sensitive; information on so-called problem firms; reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds; and data about the public, including consumer complaints to the financial ombudsman.

The data includes recordings of phone calls, emails and trawls of social media posts, the Guardian understands. The FCA is one of several UK agencies which aim to stop financial crimes that underpin harms such as the drug trade and human trafficking.

The deal has raised concerns inside the FCA. One source said: “Once Palantir understands how we detect money-laundering threats, how do we know that they are ethically reliable enough not to go to share that information?”

...

Prof Michael Levi, an internationally recognised expert in money laundering at Cardiff University, said there was “serious under-exploitation” of data held by financial regulators, so AI is a potentially valuable technology to tackle financial crimes. But he said it was “a relevant question as to whether Palantir’s owners might tipoff their friends about methodologies”.

“What are the protocols agreed between the FCA and Palantir about the onward use of things that they have learned in that process?” he said.

...

“When the FCA carries out an enforcement investigation, it has powers to compel firms to hand over vast quantities of data,” said Christopher Houssemayne du Boulay, a partner and barrister at the law firm Hickman & Rose who specialises in defending serious and complex financial crime cases. “We could be talking about hundreds of whole email accounts and full financial records. Many innocent people will be caught up in that and the data may contain bank account details, email addresses, telephone numbers and other personal information.

“If you ingest that data and use it to train an AI system, there are very significant privacy concerns. There should be serious confidentiality requirements regarding what Palantir does with the data.”
...

Then there’s the fact the FCA could have chosen to run this three month trial with simulated data, in keeping with the guidelines. But for some reason it determined that real data was the only worthwhile test. In other words, the massive security risks associated with this trial could have easily been avoided, but weren’t for mysterious reasons:

...
The FCA said that the terms of the contract meant Palantir would be a “data processor” not a “data controller” – meaning that it could only act on instruction from the regulator, which said it would retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and the data would be hosted and stored solely in the UK. Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract and any intellectual property derived from the data trawling should be retained by the FCA.

The FCA considered using dummy data or scrambling company and individual names but decided using real data was the only worthwhile test, even though guidelines encourage the use of synthetic data in pilots.

...

The FCA said Palantir could not copy the data to train its products. Palantir referred a request for comment to the FCA.
...

And that’s all part of why UK MPs are continuing to sound the alarm over the trial contract and demanding the FCA explain why it is that the watchdog isn’t concerned about laws like US Cloud Act, which could compel Palantir to turn over FCA data to the US government:

The Guardian

FCA’s Palantir deal could expose UK financial data to Trump’s US, critics fear

Exclusive: MP and campaigners say sensitive citizen and company data could be subject to US disclosure laws

Robert Booth UK technology editor
Mon 1 Jun 2026 00.00 EDT

The UK’s financial watchdog is being urged to prove its relationship with the US tech company Palantir will not provide the Trump administration with backdoor access to troves of sensitive citizen and commercial data.

A US law that can oblige tech companies to disclose information to American authorities may apply to Palantir’s deal to help the Financial Conduct Authority detect crime, Martin Wrigley MP, a member of the House of Commons science and technology select committee, has warned.

The $375bn tech company, co-founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, is expected to apply its AI systems to a wide range of the FCA’s information including case intelligence files, reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds, consumer complaints and trawls of social media posts. The arrangement is now at a 12-week trial stage.

...

Questioned over the Palantir deal, the FCA told the Commons Treasury select committee in March the US law in question – the US Cloud Act – does not apply and the regulator will remain the data controller at all times.

“There will not be any intelligence shared,” said Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, information and intelligence officer. Palantir does not “control” the data but is a “data processor”, the FCA has said.

But Wrigley said that “in the days of Donald Trump, control means whatever Trump thinks it means”. He has written to the finance watchdog demanding to “better understand on what legal basis the FCA believes that the US Cloud Act would not apply in these circumstances”.

One legal expert in data handling said the distinction between a controller and processor was misleading as data processors do not automatically fall out of scope of the US law. Instead, the surest way for a US company like Palantir to avoid having to provide information in response to a court order granted under the act is for the company to ensure it does not have access to any intelligible data.

Open Rights Group, a UK digital rights campaign, said the law “gives US authorities the right to access data held by businesses based in the US, such as Palantir”.

Mariano delli Santi, its legal and policy officer, said the US was not bound by UK legal frameworks which define the right of “data controllers” to decide how and why personal data is processed.

“By handing over data to Palantir, the FCA is pushing UK residents’ data into the meat grinder of the Trump administration,” he said, adding the data could also be subject to the USA Patriot Act, which explicitly covers financial data, and part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a US intelligence law allowing monitoring of non-citizens’ digital communications outside the US without a search warrant.

But Palantir cited three “glaring” reasons why what Wrigley fears “could never happen”.

“The Cloud Act does not give US law enforcement agencies unfettered access to data,” a spokesperson said. “It requires a serious criminal investigation and a judicial warrant before a request can even be made. In the event of such a request, US government guidance is clear that it should go to the organisations that control the data, not processors like Palantir. Because FCA data is encrypted with keys within the exclusive control of the FCA, it is not technically possible for Palantir to respond to such a request without the FCA’s direct involvement.”

...

———-

“FCA’s Palantir deal could expose UK financial data to Trump’s US, critics fear” by Robert Booth; The Guardian; 06/01/2026

“A US law that can oblige tech companies to disclose information to American authorities may apply to Palantir’s deal to help the Financial Conduct Authority detect crime, Martin Wrigley MP, a member of the House of Commons science and technology select committee, has warned.”

Will Palantir be obligated to share the FCA’s highly sensitive data with the US government? Maybe. Or, at a minimum, it’s unclear, hence the consternation on the part of UK MPs like Martin Wrigley. And the information that might have to be shared isn’t just information about consumer complaints. Case intelligence files are included:

...
The $375bn tech company, co-founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, is expected to apply its AI systems to a wide range of the FCA’s information including case intelligence files, reports from lenders about proven and suspected frauds, consumer complaints and trawls of social media posts. The arrangement is now at a 12-week trial stage.
...

And while the FCA argues that Palantir is a “data processor” and not a “data controller”, legal experts caution that the US is not bound by the UK legal frameworks defining these terms. Beyond that, the USA Patriot Act explicitly covers financial data. Beyond that, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows for the monitoring of non-citizens’ digital communications outside the US without a search warrant:

...
Questioned over the Palantir deal, the FCA told the Commons Treasury select committee in March the US law in question – the US Cloud Act – does not apply and the regulator will remain the data controller at all times.

“There will not be any intelligence shared,” said Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, information and intelligence officer. Palantir does not “control” the data but is a “data processor”, the FCA has said.

But Wrigley said that “in the days of Donald Trump, control means whatever Trump thinks it means”. He has written to the finance watchdog demanding to “better understand on what legal basis the FCA believes that the US Cloud Act would not apply in these circumstances”.

One legal expert in data handling said the distinction between a controller and processor was misleading as data processors do not automatically fall out of scope of the US law. Instead, the surest way for a US company like Palantir to avoid having to provide information in response to a court order granted under the act is for the company to ensure it does not have access to any intelligible data.

Open Rights Group, a UK digital rights campaign, said the law “gives US authorities the right to access data held by businesses based in the US, such as Palantir”.

Mariano delli Santi, its legal and policy officer, said the US was not bound by UK legal frameworks which define the right of “data controllers” to decide how and why personal data is processed.

“By handing over data to Palantir, the FCA is pushing UK residents’ data into the meat grinder of the Trump administration,” he said, adding the data could also be subject to the USA Patriot Act, which explicitly covers financial data, and part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a US intelligence law allowing monitoring of non-citizens’ digital communications outside the US without a search warrant.
...

But Palantir insists the scenarios experts warn about “could never happen”. Why? Because the FCA has exclusive control of the encryption keys. Palantir can’t just respond to a US demand for the FCA’s data without the FCA’s compliance. Of course, keep in mind that if FCA wants to use Palantir’s services as a “data processor”, it’s going to have to decrypt its data at some point and run it through Palantir’s analytical pipelines. In other words, the explanation that FCA’s exclusive control over the encryption keys of its data seems to assume that Palantir will NEVER be allowed to access that data, which is obviously not true. And if Palantir is allowed to access the data, even as a “data processor”, what’s to stop the company from secretly copying it and handing that over to US authorities? Palantir’s pinky swear?

...
But Palantir cited three “glaring” reasons why what Wrigley fears “could never happen”.

“The Cloud Act does not give US law enforcement agencies unfettered access to data,” a spokesperson said. “It requires a serious criminal investigation and a judicial warrant before a request can even be made. In the event of such a request, US government guidance is clear that it should go to the organisations that control the data, not processors like Palantir. Because FCA data is encrypted with keys within the exclusive control of the FCA, it is not technically possible for Palantir to respond to such a request without the FCA’s direct involvement.”
...

It’s also worth keeping in mind that, for all the valid concerns about Palantir’s legal obligations to hand data over to the US government, there are plenty of other entities that could potentially have an interest in accessing the secrets possessed by Palantir. The company might be legally obligated to share information with the US government, but it might simply want to share information with other entities. At least those entities that share its fascist agenda. Which, as we can see, is clearly a global agenda.

Reiter described first meeting Epstein in 2002 when the financier made a donation to a scholarship fund for the children of police department employees. In 2003, Epstein called the police about stolen money and a gun, but he solved the crime himself using his own cameras and found out it was a butler. Around September of 2004, there was a call about a suspicion vehicle in the driveway of Epstein’s Palm Beach estate, but an officer discovered it was a high school girl who said she was allowed to use Epstein’s pool and the property manager immediately recognized her. Reiter wasn’t even notified about the call by his department and only found out about it years later.

It’s the call the department got on November 28 2004 that is of interest when it comes to the question of whether or not Trump really did play a significant role in the initial investigation into Epstein, something long suspected. It was a complaint to the police that young women were coming and going from Epstein’s place during the day. We don’t know who made the complaint, but it’s the fact that Epstein and Trump were in a bidding war over a piece of real estate just two weeks earlier, a bidding war that appears to be the real source of the end of their friendship, that makes Trump a prime suspect for being the source of that complaint. Also, Mar-a-Lago was about a mile from Epstein’s mansion so he really was in a position to make a complaint like that about a neighbor.

The investigation into Epstein by the Palm Beach police got into full swing in March of 2005 when a mother made a complaint her underage daughter was molested by Epstein. That’s when Recarey was put on the case. More complaints about Epstein poured in and they assembled a powerful roster of evidence and prepared to lay charges against Epstein. Initially, State Attorney Barry Krischer was on board. But Epstein lawyered up, with Alan Dershowitz on the team, devising a strategy of demonizing the girls as money-hungry prostitutes, convincing Krischer it was a case the state couldn’t win. Krischer even told Reiter the girls could have been charged with child prostitution charges. Reiter also recounts how he is confident there was a mole in the department or state attorney’s office who was feeding tips to Epstein, citing an October 2005 raid of Epstein’s mansion where all the computers had already been removed. Reiter and Recarey continued their investigation and demanded Krischer charge Epstein but Krischer handed it to a state grand jury instead. Recall how the state prosecutors portrayed the girls as prostitutes to the grand jury, and, surprise, the grand jury chose to let Epstein off with a misdemeanor.

At that point, Reiter went to the FBI, asking them to investigate. As we’ll see, the federal prosecutors soon froze Reiter and Recarey out of their investigation too. The lead federal prosecutor, Marie Villafaña, told the FBI in 2020 that they kept the Palm Beach police out of the loop to keep their evidence confidential, which is a remarkable claim given that Reiter and Recarey were the ones who came to them with a trove of evidence. Although maybe it wasn’t such a corrupt move given the apparent mole who was feeding secrets to Epstein’s team. Either way, Villafaña started experiencing obstacle of her own, with her bosses beginning negotiations on a secret plea deal in July of 2007.

At that point, Reiter decided to meet directly with Villafaña’s boss, Alex Acosta. During that meeting, Reiter pointed out that he was actually at Acosta’s 2005 swearing in ceremony in Miami for his presidential appointment as a US Attorney. Reiter went on to lay out his argument for why Acosta had the authority to decide whether or not to prosecute Epstein, saying ‘I’m here to ask you to live up to the principles that you espoused when you were sworn in.’ Acosta gave a very measured response along the lines of ‘We have been receiving some guidance from main justice and the defense attorneys have done a very effective job in stalling the case.’ No mention of Epstein ‘belonging to intelligence’, but a hint of some kind of higher-up directive.

In 2019, Reiter called the FBI about two boxes of Epstein case files that were found by Recarey’s widow which included an imaged copy of a laptop, asking them to pick the boxes up. It was only then that the FBI interviewed Reiter about the case. Reiter told the agents about all the obstacles he ran into but they weren’t interested in getting an account of the past mishandling of the case and it’s unclear if the imaged laptop was ever examined. Instead, the agents were interested in any evidence Reiter might have about Ghislaine Maxwell’s involvement in Epstein’s crimes. This brings us to a very interesting set of details involving Donald Trump’s actions in trying to get Epstein investigated: Reiter recounted how, in July of 2006, after Epstein was first arrested, Trump called him to inform him that Epstein’s activities with teenage girls were well known in both New York and Palm Beach. Trump went on to describe Maxwell as Epstein’s “operative” and that “she is evil and to focus on her”. Trump even shared that “he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there.’ ” So Trump literally called up Reiter after Epstein’s arrest to encourage them to pursue the case and even involve Maxwell in the investigation. Also, he insisted that everyone in New York and Palm Beach knew about Epstein’s activities.

It’s a remarkable detail in the Trump/Epstein saga, made all the more remarkable by the fact that Trump clearly does not want to talk about this. Why would Trump be so reticent about touting his role as the guy who tried to take Epstein down? What’s hiding under this rock? This is a good time to recall that email exchange between Epstein and Maxwell in 2011 where Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. Virginia spent hours at my house with him „ he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” Maxwell replied, “I have been thinking about that.” And, of course, as we’ve also seen, Virginia Giuffre herself alleged that her father, who was also an employee of Mar-a-Lago, was even paid hush money by Epstein. A claim that becomes all the more intriguing when we learn about the hours Trump allegedly spent alone with Giuffre as Epstein’s home. And then there’s the fact that Trump has long claimed that he first broke ties with Epstein over Epstein’s recruitment of Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago, which happened in 2000, and yet there are public reports of Epstein and Trump hanging out post 2000, including the infamous 2002 by Trump about how Epstein was a “Terrific guy...He’s a lot of fun to be with...It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” And int 2003, New York Magazine reported that Trump dined at Epstein’s Upper East Side Manhattan. 2004 was the year Epstein and Trump were no long seen together, not 2000.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Epstein’s former Ponzi scheme partner, Steven Hoffenberg, once claimed that Trump was ‘crazy’ about Maxwell. “Donald liked Epstein,” according to Hoffenberg, “But he was crazy about Maxwell, a very charming lady.” Flash forward to 2006, and Maxwell is a “evil” and Trump is imploring the police to “focus on her”. Something change in Trump’s relationship with Epstein in 2004 and all indications are it was a real estate bidding war that went very sour. But, again, if Trump really did implore investigators to look at Epstein and Maxwell, why is Trump so scared to talk about it? It’s the kind of circumstance that points towards a very ugly explanation.

Ok, first, here’s a Washington Post report from July 31, 2019, a week and a half before Epstein’s ‘suicide’, describing how the friendship between Epstein and Trump appeared to collapse in 2004 in the wake of the bitter real estate feud. Not 2000 or 2002 or even 2003. The friendship ended in 2004, somewhat suddenly and seemingly precipitously. Because it was just two weeks after Trump won the property in the bidding war that the Palm Beach police got a complaint about all the young women coming and going from Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion:

The Washington Post

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partied together. Then an oceanfront Palm Beach mansion came between them.

By Beth Reinhard, Rosalind S. Helderman and Marc Fisher
July 31, 2019

For the better part of two decades starting in the late 1980s, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump swam in the same social pool. They were neighbors in Florida. They jetted from LaGuardia to Palm Beach together. They partied at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and dined at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.

And then, in 2004, they were suddenly rivals, each angling to snag a choice Palm Beach property, an oceanfront manse called Maison de l’Amitie — the House of Friendship — that was being sold out of bankruptcy.

Before the auction, Epstein and Trump each tried to work the ref; the trustee in the case, Joseph Luzinski, recalls being lobbied by both camps.

“It was something like, Donald saying, ‘You don’t want to do a deal with him, he doesn’t have the money,’ while Epstein was saying: ‘Donald is all talk. He doesn’t have the money,’ ” Luzinski said. “They both really wanted it.”

...

“They knew each other a long time,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide who said he pressed the candidate about his ties to Epstein in late 2014 as the real estate mogul considered a White House run. “Bottom line, Donald would hang out with Epstein because he was rich.”

...

Trump has not said why their relationship ruptured. “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly,” the president said.

Fifteen years ago, the two men squared off over the Palm Beach mansion. Just a few months later, local police began investigating allegations that Epstein was sexually abusing minors. Trump has also said — without providing details — that he at some point banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.

...

“Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with.”

Within two years, public sightings of the two had ended.

‘They were good friends’.

...

The Epstein-Trump relationship didn’t exist in isolation but as part of a larger Palm Beach social swirl. In the early years after Trump bought the private Mar-a-Lago estate in 1985, Epstein and Trump were spotted together at Palm Beach events, including a pre-pageant dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 1992, according to people in attendance.

“They were tight,” said one person who observed them together and requested anonymity to avoid retribution. “They were each other’s wingmen.”

...

“Donald liked Epstein,” said Steven Hoffenberg, a Trump acquaintance who was Epstein’s business partner at a New York private equity firm in the 1980s and ’90s, until Hoffenberg was convicted of running a massive Ponzi scheme. “But he was crazy about Maxwell, a very charming lady.”

...

Trump also dined at Epstein’s Upper East Side Manhattan mansion in 2003, according to New York magazine. “The dialogues are so engaging,” Epstein told the magazine, “that serving even the most extraordinary food sometimes seems inappropriate.”

But according to Stone, Trump turned down numerous invitations to Epstein’s private island and his Palm Beach home. In a 2016 book, Stone quoted Trump as saying that “The one time I visited [Epstein’s] Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls. ‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’ ”

‘Palm Beach egos going at it’

...

In November 2004, Trump, who was starring in NBC’s “The Apprentice” at the time, declared himself intent on winning “the finest piece of land in Florida and probably the U.S.,” an estate that had been seized as part of the bankruptcy of nursing home magnate Abe Gosman.

...

Epstein was also enraptured by the property, and he, in contrast to Trump, seemed interested in living at the place. Harley Riedel, an attorney for Gosman, said the previous owner had filled the mansion with pricey art and “really did have in his heart that it would be nice if someone moved in and lived there.”

...

As the competition heated up, Trump and Epstein began talking each other down to the trustee, Luzinski said.

On Nov. 15, 2004, the bidders, their representatives, and a small cavalry of lawyers representing the creditors and the Gosman family gathered in a courtroom at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in West Palm Beach. Trump was connected by phone.

...

Trump “had made up his mind to get it no matter the price,” said Charles Tatelbaum, a lawyer for one of Gosman’s creditors, JPMorgan Chase Bank.

...

It is unclear whether Trump and Epstein were in contact after the house sale. That month, Trump left two messages for Epstein at his home in Palm Beach, according to records obtained by Vice News — the last known interaction between the two men.

Four years after he bought the Gosman mansion, Trump sold it to Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, more than doubling his investment.

‘He’s a real creep’

It is unclear when Trump learned of allegations that Epstein was preying on teenage girls. In a 2002 interview, he gave no indication of concern, telling New York magazine that Epstein “enjoys his social life.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said.

On Nov. 28, 2004 — less than two weeks after the mansion auction — Palm Beach police fielded a tip that young women were seen coming and going from Epstein’s home, then-Police Chief Michael Reiter said in a deposition. Reiter declined to comment.

Four months later, in March 2005, police received a complaint from a woman who alleged that her 15-year-old stepdaughter had been paid $300 by Epstein to massage the financier while partially undressed, according to the police report. The Palm Beach police investigation identified more than a dozen possible victims, the report shows.

...

Nunberg said that when he quizzed Trump about his relationship with Epstein, Trump told him, “He’s a real creep, I banned him.” Trump told Nunberg that Epstein had recruited a young woman who worked at Mar-a-Lago to give him massages. Nunberg said Trump told him he issued the edict against Epstein years before the police investigation became public.

...

Trump also appears to have been helpful to Epstein’s accusers.

Brad Edwards, an attorney for some of the alleged victims, said in an interview last year that when he was seeking information from Epstein’s acquaintances in 2009, Trump was “the only person who picked up the phone and said: ‘Let’s just talk. I’ll give you as much time as you want. I’ll tell you what you need to know.’ ”

Edwards declined to say what Trump told him but said he was “very helpful in the information that he gave.”

...

————-

“Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partied together. Then an oceanfront Palm Beach mansion came between them.” By Beth Reinhard, Rosalind S. Helderman and Marc Fisher; The Washington Post; 07/31/2019

“Fifteen years ago, the two men squared off over the Palm Beach mansion. Just a few months later, local police began investigating allegations that Epstein was sexually abusing minors. Trump has also said — without providing details — that he at some point banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.”

It’s quite an interesting sequence of events: the police investigation into Epstein that started in late 2004 came shortly after Trump and Epstein seemed to have a falling out. And while Trump has long since insisted that his falling out with Epstein had to do with the recruitment of a young woman (Virginia Giuffre) from Mar-a-Lago, which happened years earlier, the reality that there was no indication of a falling out between Trump and Epstein until this real estate squabble in 2004:

...
“Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with.”

...

Trump also dined at Epstein’s Upper East Side Manhattan mansion in 2003, according to New York magazine. “The dialogues are so engaging,” Epstein told the magazine, “that serving even the most extraordinary food sometimes seems inappropriate.”

...

Nunberg said that when he quizzed Trump about his relationship with Epstein, Trump told him, “He’s a real creep, I banned him.” Trump told Nunberg that Epstein had recruited a young woman who worked at Mar-a-Lago to give him massages. Nunberg said Trump told him he issued the edict against Epstein years before the police investigation became public.
...

Intriguingly, while Trump and Epstein had long been each other’s ‘wingmen’, Steven Hoffenberg claimed that Trump was “crazy about Maxwell.” It’s an interesting detail when considering the evidence that Trump was the figure who likely instigated the investigation of Epstein:

...
“Donald liked Epstein,” said Steven Hoffenberg, a Trump acquaintance who was Epstein’s business partner at a New York private equity firm in the 1980s and ’90s, until Hoffenberg was convicted of running a massive Ponzi scheme. “But he was crazy about Maxwell, a very charming lady.”
...

And then we get to the timeline of the real estate fight. By November 2004, Trump and Epstein were fighting of the same property, which not only resulted in the pair trash talking each other and seemingly ending their friendship, but by the end of the month, less than two weeks after the completion of the auction, the Palm Beach police responded to a tip about young women seen coming and going from Epstein’s home, as then-Police Chief Michael Reiter recounted in a deposition:

...
In November 2004, Trump, who was starring in NBC’s “The Apprentice” at the time, declared himself intent on winning “the finest piece of land in Florida and probably the U.S.,” an estate that had been seized as part of the bankruptcy of nursing home magnate Abe Gosman.

...

As the competition heated up, Trump and Epstein began talking each other down to the trustee, Luzinski said.

On Nov. 15, 2004, the bidders, their representatives, and a small cavalry of lawyers representing the creditors and the Gosman family gathered in a courtroom at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in West Palm Beach. Trump was connected by phone.

...

It is unclear whether Trump and Epstein were in contact after the house sale. That month, Trump left two messages for Epstein at his home in Palm Beach, according to records obtained by Vice News — the last known interaction between the two men.

...

On Nov. 28, 2004 — less than two weeks after the mansion auction — Palm Beach police fielded a tip that young women were seen coming and going from Epstein’s home, then-Police Chief Michael Reiter said in a deposition. Reiter declined to comment.

Four months later, in March 2005, police received a complaint from a woman who alleged that her 15-year-old stepdaughter had been paid $300 by Epstein to massage the financier while partially undressed, according to the police report. The Palm Beach police investigation identified more than a dozen possible victims, the report shows.
...

It’s that timeline of events brings us to the recent interview of Michael Reiter, the former head of the Palm Beach police department who oversaw the initial investigation into Epstein back in 2004. And also oversaw how Epstein seemingly had a mole in the department and the legal system working on his behalf. But there was one factor not working in Epstein’s favor: Donald Trump, who contacted Reiter in July of 2006, imploring him to continue the investigation into Epstein and even look into Maxwell. In fact, Trump said “she is evil and to focus on her”:

The Miami Herald

Exclusive: The Palm Beach cop who Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t stop

By Julie K. Brown
Updated June 6, 2026 11:44 AM

Michael Reiter is one of the most important figures in the Jeffrey Epstein case who you’ve probably never heard of.

Yet if Reiter had never been born, or had never become a cop, Jeffrey Epstein would probably still be living his best life, behind the walls of his waterfront Palm Beach mansion, where the laws that protect children were inconveniences that could easily be fixed with a promise, a payoff or an army of lawyers.

...

Until now, Reiter has never fully told the story about the contentious — and ultimately unsuccessful — battle he waged to arrest and prosecute Epstein, or the powerful forces that tried to intimidate him, get him fired and threatened to harm him and his family.

...

As he read the files, he became appalled by how many people helped Epstein escape criminal prosecution — and the ongoing effort by the Justice Department to withhold the rest of the case files.

“This case, in many respects, felt like the people who work for our government were working more for Epstein than they were working for the victims and protecting the public,” Reiter says now.

...

“The biggest challenge in leading a professional police department usually isn’t the police work, it’s the politics,” Reiter said. “In the Epstein case, those obstacles proved insurmountable, even though we tried our very best.”

More than once, he was pressured by prominent leaders in the Palm Beach community to “leave it alone.” And there were times, after the story broke in 2005, that some people on the island would see him and cross the street just to avoid acknowledging him.

Palm Beach operates on two primary principles, “maintain the privacy and the pipeline at all costs,” writer Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, referring to a code of silence surrounding the misdeeds among the island’s wealthy.

Reiter, however, broke that code a long time ago. Of all the law enforcement agencies involved in the case, Reiter and his lead detective, the late Joe Recarey, stood alone in the battle to put Epstein behind bars for good. In some ways, he has paid the price ever since.

...

How Reiter First Met Epstein

Reiter (pronounced RYE-TER) first heard the name Jeffrey Epstein in April 2002, after Epstein donated money to a scholarship fund for the children of police department employees. As was his custom with donors, the chief wrote a letter thanking him for the contribution.

...

In 2003, the eccentric financier reported to police that thousands of dollars in cash and a gun were stolen from his mansion on El Brillo Way, a dead-end street that ended on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Epstein had done some of his own detective work by purchasing a spy camera to catch the culprit, who turned out to be a former butler. In the end, the butler agreed to pay back the money, and Epstein decided not to prosecute.

But during the probe, Epstein learned that the Palm Beach Police Department did not have the equipment to view his video. He donated $36,000 for a forensic video analysis system, which didn’t seem unusual at the time since residents often made contributions to boost the town’s crime prevention efforts.

Reiter wrote another thank you and offered Epstein a tour of the police station and a demonstration of how the new equipment worked. Epstein arrived on his bicycle, with an attractive blond woman who waited in the lobby when Epstein met Reiter in his office.

...

Then in the summer of 2004, police were summoned again to Epstein’s home on a report of a suspicious vehicle in his driveway. According to the police report, the driver of the vehicle, a 17-year-old girl, identified herself. The property manager immediately recognized the girl and quickly told cops he had forgotten she was coming to pick up an envelope that Epstein had left for her.

“I can’t talk, I can’t talk. I’m at school. I gotta go,” she told police, still sitting in her car. She explained that Epstein had let her come by to use his swimming pool, according to the report.

Two months later, in November 2004, Epstein cut police a check for a $90,000 firearms simulator. At the time, Reiter didn’t know about the girl in Epstein’s driveway; he didn’t learn about the call until years later.

Around the same time, detectives investigated another complaint — that young women were coming and going from Epstein’s home during the day. Unlike the prior incident, Reiter was told about this complaint.

“I remember receiving the information that the detectives stopped a few young females on the way to the house, got their identification, and they were over 18, so they were adults. They said they were paid by Epstein to answer phones,” Reiter said.

Reiter, however, began to suspect that Epstein’s altruistic endeavors had ulterior motives. He shared his concerns with the town manager, and they agreed to hang on to the money for the simulator and not purchase it for the time being.

His instincts proved prescient. In March 2005, a woman reported that her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been molested by a wealthy man who lived on El Brillo Way in the Town of Palm Beach. It didn’t take detectives long to figure out that it was Epstein.

From that one girl’s story, police learned that Epstein had been molesting dozens of girls from a West Palm Beach high school. One girl led them to another girl, and then another. They interviewed the girls on camera, and they collected evidence, including obtaining phone records to build a case against Epstein.

Epstein, suspecting that something was up, called Reiter to ask about his earlier donation and to offer them another $130,000 for a fingerprint system. Epstein also suggested paying for the services of a chiropractor for the officers.

...

Reiter Fights Back

One of the things that people outside of South Florida often get wrong about the Epstein case is where the crimes happened and which law enforcement jurisdictions were responsible for holding Epstein accountable.

Epstein lived in a mansion in the Town of Palm Beach, which is an island off the coast of Palm Beach County — separate from the City of West Palm Beach, which is over a bridge on the mainland. The Town of Palm Beach and the City of West Palm Beach each have their own police departments. Palm Beach County, which encompasses both the Town of Palm Beach and the City of West Palm Beach, has a county sheriff’s office with jurisdiction over towns and cities in the county that don’t have their own police departments.

Geography is important to understand how the case fell apart. For example, the sheriff’s department had oversight of Epstein’s incarceration because it operates the county jail, and the county stockade, where Epstein was eventually sentenced to be incarcerated.

The Palm Beach Police Department has no jurisdiction over the county jails.

Palm Beach County also has a state attorney who prosecutes cases for the entire county, including the Town of Palm Beach. At that time, State Attorney Barry Krischer was the most powerful figure in Palm Beach, having served for 13 years; the sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, who has now been in office for 22 years, was a close second.

Most of the girls who were victims lived in West Palm Beach and attended Royal Palm Beach High School. Epstein’s crimes, however, happened at his mansion on the island.

His operation was set up so that each girl was recruited from the mainland, mostly from West Palm Beach, and brought by car or taxi to Epstein’s house, ostensibly to give him “massages,” which were really a code word for sex. On their initial visits, most of the girls believed they were earning money to give him a massage.

Since the crimes happened at his mansion, the Palm Beach Police Department had jurisdiction to investigate it.

Reiter knew that Epstein had a lot of friends in high places. He assigned one of his top investigators, Recarey, to the case and notified Krischer that they were preparing a sexual battery case against an affluent resident who was molesting and sexually assaulting girls from West Palm Beach.

At first, Krischer was supportive. He told Reiter he had never heard of Jeffrey Epstein. He signed off on the investigation, telling Reiter that a man who was molesting so many girls should be put away for life.

But Epstein hired a powerhouse legal team, headed by some of the most aggressive lawyers in America. Alan Dershowitz, a friend of Epstein’s, met with Krischer and the lead assistant state attorney, Lanna Belohlavek, and launched a scorched-earth attack on the girls and their families.

It worked. Krischer came to believe it was a case that he couldn’t win, largely because Dershowitz claimed they were gold diggers who lied about their ages and been paid money by Epstein, court files show.

Their social media showed they smoked marijuana, drank alcohol and talked about sex with boys. By the laws that were still on the books in Florida at the time, the girls could have been charged with child prostitution, Krischer argued.

...

Recarey, who has since died, told the Miami Herald in 2018 that he unsuccessfully argued with Belohlavek that having sex with minors, regardless of whether money was exchanged, was still a serious crime. The age of consent in Florida is 18, and almost all the girls were 13–16 years old.

Epstein had also used fraud, luring them there under the false pretense that they were being hired to give him massages —and later that fraud turned to coercion, as he began threatening them and their families.

Reiter and Recarey were undeterred. They continued piecing together the case. Recarey drafted arrest warrants and probable cause affidavits, but the state attorney refused to sign off on them. Krischer informed Reiter he wanted to close the case by writing Epstein up on a misdemeanor.

Reiter refused to let up. He wrote a letter to Krischer demanding that the state attorney either sign the warrants or recuse himself from the case. Finally, Krischer decided to hand the decision over to a state grand jury to let them decide whether to indict Epstein on more serious criminal charges.

Even that process raised questions, as Belohlavek failed to present evidence showing Epstein had been sex trafficking dozens of underage girls. Instead, she called one victim to testify and made sure the grand jury knew the girl had committed the crime of prostitution.

Neither Krischer nor Belohlavek have ever explained why they didn’t present the case as a sex trafficking case, given that a new sex trafficking law was passed in Florida in 2004.

...

“No matter what we did, the fact of the matter was — in the state attorney’s mind — the view of the case was that these were prostitutes,” Reiter said.

...

Reiter in the Headlines

...

Epstein and his team went after Reiter with guns blazing. They had private investigators tail him. They dug into his garbage and planted stories about his divorce. They accused him of an anti-Semitic conspiracy against Epstein, who was Jewish, telling the New York Post he was a “born-again nut case.”

“In the case of Palm Beach financier Jeffrey Epstein, it seems at times as if two men are accused of wrongdoing: Epstein and Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter,” was the lead sentence in a Palm Beach Post story headlined “Palm Beach Chief Focus of Fire in Epstein Case.”

...

The pressure didn’t stop there, as things took a dark turn when Reiter found out that one of Epstein’s beefy bodyguards had moved into a house right next to his, as if to send a message “we are watching you.”

Reiter suspected — and still believes — that Epstein had a mole in the police department or the state attorney’s office who was leaking aspects of the case to him and his lawyers. He was so sure of this that he had Recarey move all their Epstein files to a separate computer server that could only be accessed by them.

When police showed up with search warrants at Epstein’s mansion in October 2005, it was clear he had been tipped off — all the computers had been removed.

Reiter wasn’t certain who was leaking information about the investigation. But in a 2009 civil court deposition, Reiter said C. “Gerry” Goldsmith, a prominent member of Palm Beach society who was also chairman of the police pension board, pressured him to stop investigating Epstein.

Reiter said Goldsmith, who died in 2021, told him that “in Palm Beach we wash our own laundry, and he said I made a huge federal case over this to the embarrassment of Palm Beach and I would always be remembered for that.”

...

When the state grand jury returned a decision to charge Epstein with one state felony charge of solicitation of prostitution, the New York tabloids characterized Epstein as the victim — without ever noting that the real victim, whom they called “a hooker,” was a 14-year-old girl.

“It looks like New York billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein got off easy when he was hit with a charge of soliciting a prostitute for a ‘happy ending’ in Palm Beach,” the New York Post announced on July 27, 2006.

“A state grand jury found the witnesses in the case were not credible and threw out all but the single charge of soliciting a hooker in his luxurious Palm Beach home. Epstein’s lawyers and friends now say he’s the hapless victim of a vendetta by Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter whom they describe as a ‘born-again nut case.”

...

Reiter only found out about Epstein turning himself in on the solicitation charge by reading the newspaper.

“Once that happened it was clear to me that justice would not be served by the state attorney, and we referred it to the FBI and then there were many, many more victims after that time,” Reiter told the Miami Herald in his first public interview on the case in 2018. The interview was part of a three-part series in the Herald about the case, “Perversion of Justice.”

...

Meets with U.S. Attorney in Miami

Even after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami began building a federal case against Epstein, Reiter and Recarey found themselves still on the outside. After spending 11 months gathering evidence, interviewing two dozen tearful girls and their parents, then being stonewalled by state prosecutors and attacked in the media, they were then ostracized by federal prosecutors, who took over the case in early 2007.

In the DOJ’s Epstein files released in January, documents revealed that this was by design. The lead prosecutor in the case, Marie Villafaña, later told federal investigators probing the case in 2020 that they felt the need to keep the Palm Beach police out of the loop because they wanted to keep their evidence confidential.

But as weeks turned to months, Reiter was facing questions from victims and their families. Many were angry that police had vowed to put Epstein behind bars, yet no one from the state attorney’s office or the FBI would even return their phone calls. Meanwhile, the victims were still being intimidated by Epstein’s private investigators.

“They had, you know, cars running them off the road, flashing headlights into their home and phone calls and people showing up at their door,” Reiter recalled.

...

At some point, some of the victims who were initially willing to cooperate had lost their patience and turned to private attorneys to sue Epstein.

Behind the scenes, Villafaña was encountering some of the same resistance about prosecuting Epstein. Her supervisors expressed doubts about a successful prosecution, once again noting that the girls had committed prostitution, even though a federal sex trafficking law was passed by Congress in 2000.

Behind her back, her bosses began negotiating a secret plea deal in earnest with Epstein’s lawyers in July 2007.

In a statement contained in the DOJ’s files, Villafaña listed 19 instances in which she disagreed with the decisions or was disturbed by the conduct of her supervisors. She singled out the Miami U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta, and the criminal chief, Matthew Menchel, as causing her the most concern, although she noted she found nothing illegal in what they did, and she felt duty bound to comply with their directives, according to the document.

...

As the case dragged on, Reiter finally took the unusual step of asking for a meeting with Acosta.

This is the first account of that meeting.

“Acosta was in his office, along with the first assistant U.S. attorney, Jeff Sloman. He started the meeting by saying, ‘This is the first time in my career that a law enforcement officer asked the U.S. attorney to meet with him concerning a case,” Reiter recalled.

Reiter began by recalling Acosta’s swearing-in ceremony that he had attended in Miami after Acosta’s appointment in 2005 by then-president George W. Bush. Reiter reminded Acosta of some of the promises he had made in his speech that day.

“He pledged to have honest and fair prosecutions of people that did things to harm citizens of South Florida, and he said that his co-workers called him ‘the last boy scout’ and he said all sorts of lofty things about how he was going to conduct his office as U.S. attorney.

“And I told him I remembered all that, and I said: ‘I’m here to ask you to live up to the principles that you espoused when you were sworn in,’ and then I asked him, ‘Who has the authority to make the decision of whether or not to federally prosecute Epstein?”

He reminded Acosta that Epstein could be still abusing young girls as the case languished in his office.

“‘We turned it over to you. We did most of the work, and the assistant U.S. attorney told us she usually gets 10 years for each count, and we had maybe 100 counts and probably 24 or so cooperating victims. So whose authority is it?’” Reiter asked.

Acosta didn’t respond.

“And so I said, ‘I’ll tell you the answer to that question. You are a presidential appointee, and my research is that it is your decision.’”

Reiter said he suspected that Epstein’s team was manipulating the U.S. Attorney’s Office the same way they had successfully manipulated Krischer.

“I basically told him to do his job. I knew it was his authority, and he answered that by saying a very measured response … He said, ‘We have been receiving some guidance from main justice and the defense attorneys have done a very effective job in stalling the case.’”

The deal that was negotiated gave Epstein and four named co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution. In exchange, Epstein agreed to plead guilty on June 30, 2008, to the state charge the grand jury had indicted him on: Solicitation of prostitution and an additional charge of procuring a minor for prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months. He was also required to register as a sex offender. The entire deal, however, was kept under seal so it took almost a year before anyone knew the details of Epstein’s plea.

By then, his sentence got watered down by Epstein’s lawyers. He served only 13 months and most of his jail time was spent on work release, which was approved by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

Acosta’s attorney, Jeffrey A. Neiman, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida decided that “the best resolution at the time was to get the certainty of a guilty plea and have Mr. Epstein serve prison time and register as a sex offender, both of which happened.”

...

But it soon became clear to Reiter that Epstein wasn’t letting the sentence get in the way of him continuing to corrupt the criminal justice system.

There were so many unusual privileges Epstein received from the sheriff’s office that Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into his incarceration after the Herald’s series. Ultimately, the probe cleared the agency — and the state attorney — of any wrongdoing.

In an interview with FDLE, Bradshaw claimed that Epstein didn’t receive any special treatment because at the time, sex offenders in Palm Beach were allowed work release.

...

The Lone Man

The FBI finally interviewed Reiter in 2019, but only because Reiter called them to pick up two boxes of Epstein case files that were found by Recarey’s widow years after his death.

Recarey, 50, died of natural causes in May 2018, and his widow moved out of the area. Reiter notified the FBI after the boxes were turned over to him. He told the FBI that one of the boxes contained an imaged copy of a laptop computer. It’s not clear whether the FBI ever examined the computer.

In his sworn 2019 FBI interview, he told agents all the obstacles he faced during the early probe, from someone tipping off Epstein before the search warrants to Krischer’s effort to slow walk the investigation. The agents weren’t focused on the early mistakes made in the case, however.

Instead, they asked about whether he found any evidence pertaining to Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and whether anyone else had reported her involvement to police.

Reiter recalled that in July 2006, after Epstein’s arrest, Donald Trump called him on the phone to inform him that Epstein’s activities with teenaged girls were well known in both New York and Palm Beach.

“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter, according to the FBI interview contained in the Justice Department’s Epstein case files.

Reiter told FBI agents that Trump also revealed that Maxwell was Epstein’s “operative,” and that Trump said “she is evil and to focus on her,” according to the report.

Trump told Reiter that “he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there,’” the report said.

Reiter never saw any evidence that Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago estate is about a mile from Epstein’s mansion, was involved in Epstein’s crimes.

But Reiter is nevertheless troubled that Epstein’s behavior went unchallenged by so many people in positions of authority for decades. He considers the case the worst failure of the criminal justice system in recent history — one that needs to be examined so that it never happens again.

...

This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 1:39 PM.

———–

“Exclusive: The Palm Beach cop who Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t stop” By Julie K. Brown; The Miami Herald; 06/04/2026

““This case, in many respects, felt like the people who work for our government were working more for Epstein than they were working for the victims and protecting the public,” Reiter says now.”

The people who work for the government were working more for Epstein than they were working for the victims and protecting the public. That’s how Michael Reiter, the head of the Palm Beach Police Department summarized his experiences with the Epstein investigation. As he recounted, he first heard of Epstein in 2002 when Epstein donated money to a scholarship fund for the children of police department employees, of all things. Then, in 2003, Epstein contacts the department about a stolen gun. But it turns out Epstein solved the crime with his own spy cameras, catching a butler. That incident then resulted in Epstein buying the department forensic video equipment. And despite being the head of the department, Reiter wasn’t even made aware of some of the calls to Epstein’s home in the following years. It’s all part of the context of Reiter’s suspicion that Epstein had a mole in the department who was tipping Epstein off. Reiter grew so paranoid about the mole that he and lead detective Joe Recarey actually moved the Epstein files to a separate computer that was only accessible by them:

...
Reiter (pronounced RYE-TER) first heard the name Jeffrey Epstein in April 2002, after Epstein donated money to a scholarship fund for the children of police department employees. As was his custom with donors, the chief wrote a letter thanking him for the contribution.

Even after that, Epstein’s name wasn’t on Reiter’s radar and, as head of the department, he wasn’t informed about some of the subsequent calls to Epstein’s waterfront home until a pattern emerged years later.

In 2003, the eccentric financier reported to police that thousands of dollars in cash and a gun were stolen from his mansion on El Brillo Way, a dead-end street that ended on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Epstein had done some of his own detective work by purchasing a spy camera to catch the culprit, who turned out to be a former butler. In the end, the butler agreed to pay back the money, and Epstein decided not to prosecute.

But during the probe, Epstein learned that the Palm Beach Police Department did not have the equipment to view his video. He donated $36,000 for a forensic video analysis system, which didn’t seem unusual at the time since residents often made contributions to boost the town’s crime prevention efforts.

...

Reiter suspected — and still believes — that Epstein had a mole in the police department or the state attorney’s office who was leaking aspects of the case to him and his lawyers. He was so sure of this that he had Recarey move all their Epstein files to a separate computer server that could only be accessed by them.

When police showed up with search warrants at Epstein’s mansion in October 2005, it was clear he had been tipped off — all the computers had been removed.

...

Reiter wasn’t certain who was leaking information about the investigation. But in a 2009 civil court deposition, Reiter said C. “Gerry” Goldsmith, a prominent member of Palm Beach society who was also chairman of the police pension board, pressured him to stop investigating Epstein.

Reiter said Goldsmith, who died in 2021, told him that “in Palm Beach we wash our own laundry, and he said I made a huge federal case over this to the embarrassment of Palm Beach and I would always be remembered for that.”
...

That apparent corruption of the Palm Beach police department brings us to the remarkable timeline around the investigation that led up to Epstein’s ‘sweetheart deal’. It started in the summer of 2004 (likely September), when police were summoned to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion over a report of a suspicious vehicle in his driveway, which turned out to be driven by a 17 year old who claimed she was there to use Epstein’s pool (which sound in line with Roger Stone’s recollections of Trump’s experience at the home). Then, in November 2004, the same month of the bidding showdown between Trump and Epstein, Epstein cuts a $90k check for a firearms simulator around the same time police were investigating complains about young women coming and going from Epstein’s home during the day. Was Trump the source of the complaint? Either way, it doesn’t appear the investigation into that specific complaint went far, with investigators discovering young women over the age of 18 were among those coming and going. Instead, it sounds like a March of 2005 complaint by a parent that her 14 year old had been molested by Epstein ended up snowballing into the discovery of the rampant under-age molestation:

...
Then in the summer of 2004, police were summoned again to Epstein’s home on a report of a suspicious vehicle in his driveway. According to the police report, the driver of the vehicle, a 17-year-old girl, identified herself. The property manager immediately recognized the girl and quickly told cops he had forgotten she was coming to pick up an envelope that Epstein had left for her.

“I can’t talk, I can’t talk. I’m at school. I gotta go,” she told police, still sitting in her car. She explained that Epstein had let her come by to use his swimming pool, according to the report.

Two months later, in November 2004, Epstein cut police a check for a $90,000 firearms simulator. At the time, Reiter didn’t know about the girl in Epstein’s driveway; he didn’t learn about the call until years later.

Around the same time, detectives investigated another complaint — that young women were coming and going from Epstein’s home during the day. Unlike the prior incident, Reiter was told about this complaint.

“I remember receiving the information that the detectives stopped a few young females on the way to the house, got their identification, and they were over 18, so they were adults. They said they were paid by Epstein to answer phones,” Reiter said.

Reiter, however, began to suspect that Epstein’s altruistic endeavors had ulterior motives. He shared his concerns with the town manager, and they agreed to hang on to the money for the simulator and not purchase it for the time being.

His instincts proved prescient. In March 2005, a woman reported that her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been molested by a wealthy man who lived on El Brillo Way in the Town of Palm Beach. It didn’t take detectives long to figure out that it was Epstein.

From that one girl’s story, police learned that Epstein had been molesting dozens of girls from a West Palm Beach high school. One girl led them to another girl, and then another. They interviewed the girls on camera, and they collected evidence, including obtaining phone records to build a case against Epstein.
...

And as we can see, while State Attorney Barry Krischer was initially supportive of prosecuting Epstein, that soon changed of Epstein’s lawyers launched a scorched-earth campaign on his victims and their families, portraying the girls as money-hungry prostitutes. The tactic worked:

...
At first, Krischer was supportive. He told Reiter he had never heard of Jeffrey Epstein. He signed off on the investigation, telling Reiter that a man who was molesting so many girls should be put away for life.

But Epstein hired a powerhouse legal team, headed by some of the most aggressive lawyers in America. Alan Dershowitz, a friend of Epstein’s, met with Krischer and the lead assistant state attorney, Lanna Belohlavek, and launched a scorched-earth attack on the girls and their families.

It worked. Krischer came to believe it was a case that he couldn’t win, largely because Dershowitz claimed they were gold diggers who lied about their ages and been paid money by Epstein, court files show.

Their social media showed they smoked marijuana, drank alcohol and talked about sex with boys. By the laws that were still on the books in Florida at the time, the girls could have been charged with child prostitution, Krischer argued.

...

Reiter and Recarey were undeterred. They continued piecing together the case. Recarey drafted arrest warrants and probable cause affidavits, but the state attorney refused to sign off on them. Krischer informed Reiter he wanted to close the case by writing Epstein up on a misdemeanor.

Reiter refused to let up. He wrote a letter to Krischer demanding that the state attorney either sign the warrants or recuse himself from the case. Finally, Krischer decided to hand the decision over to a state grand jury to let them decide whether to indict Epstein on more serious criminal charges.
...

And brings us to the handling of the federal side of the investigation, where Reiter and Recarey were systematically left out of the loop, ostensibly on the pretext that federal prosecutors needed to keep their evidence confidential according to the lead prosecutor in the see, Marie Villafaña. And yet Villafaña discovered that her own bosses at the DOJ had begun negotiating a secret plea deal in earnest with Epstein’s lawyers in July 2007. Villafaña ultimately singled out Alex Acosta, then a US Attorney, as one of people whose actions she was most concerned about:

...
Even after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami began building a federal case against Epstein, Reiter and Recarey found themselves still on the outside. After spending 11 months gathering evidence, interviewing two dozen tearful girls and their parents, then being stonewalled by state prosecutors and attacked in the media, they were then ostracized by federal prosecutors, who took over the case in early 2007.

In the DOJ’s Epstein files released in January, documents revealed that this was by design. The lead prosecutor in the case, Marie Villafaña, later told federal investigators probing the case in 2020 that they felt the need to keep the Palm Beach police out of the loop because they wanted to keep their evidence confidential.

...

Behind the scenes, Villafaña was encountering some of the same resistance about prosecuting Epstein. Her supervisors expressed doubts about a successful prosecution, once again noting that the girls had committed prostitution, even though a federal sex trafficking law was passed by Congress in 2000.

Behind her back, her bosses began negotiating a secret plea deal in earnest with Epstein’s lawyers in July 2007.

In a statement contained in the DOJ’s files, Villafaña listed 19 instances in which she disagreed with the decisions or was disturbed by the conduct of her supervisors. She singled out the Miami U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta, and the criminal chief, Matthew Menchel, as causing her the most concern, although she noted she found nothing illegal in what they did, and she felt duty bound to comply with their directives, according to the document.
...

And Villafaña wasn’t the only person who saw Acosta as the primary obstacle to a real federal prosecution. It turns out Reiter actually met with Acosta and basically told him how Reiter viewed Acosta as the person who had the ultimate power to decide whether or not to prosecute Epstein. Reiter also indicate that he suspected Epstein’s legal team was manipulating the federal prosecutors in the same way there manipulated Krischer locally. Acosta seemed to deflect all of these charges by suggesting that he had been receiving some guidance from main justice and the defense attorneys have done a very effective job in stalling the case. No mention of Epstein ‘belonging to intelligence’ as we were later told:

...
As the case dragged on, Reiter finally took the unusual step of asking for a meeting with Acosta.

...

“And I told him I remembered all that, and I said: ‘I’m here to ask you to live up to the principles that you espoused when you were sworn in,’ and then I asked him, ‘Who has the authority to make the decision of whether or not to federally prosecute Epstein?”

He reminded Acosta that Epstein could be still abusing young girls as the case languished in his office.

“‘We turned it over to you. We did most of the work, and the assistant U.S. attorney told us she usually gets 10 years for each count, and we had maybe 100 counts and probably 24 or so cooperating victims. So whose authority is it?’” Reiter asked.

Acosta didn’t respond.

“And so I said, ‘I’ll tell you the answer to that question. You are a presidential appointee, and my research is that it is your decision.’”

Reiter said he suspected that Epstein’s team was manipulating the U.S. Attorney’s Office the same way they had successfully manipulated Krischer.

“I basically told him to do his job. I knew it was his authority, and he answered that by saying a very measured response … He said, ‘We have been receiving some guidance from main justice and the defense attorneys have done a very effective job in stalling the case.’”
...

Lastly, we get to Reiter’s regarding the FBI’s questions of interest when they finally interviewed him in 2019. Not surprisingly, the FBI had no interest in the past investigative corruption that Reiter described in the sworn testimony he gave to the FBI. Instead, they were focused on Ghislaine Maxwell and whether or not there was a record of a police investigation into her. Interestingly, Reiter recalls a call he got from none other than Donald Trump in July of 2006, informing him that Epstein’s activities were well know in both New York and Palm Beach. Trump also revealed to Reiter that Maxwell was Epstein’s “operative” and that “she is evil and to focus on her”:

...
The FBI finally interviewed Reiter in 2019, but only because Reiter called them to pick up two boxes of Epstein case files that were found by Recarey’s widow years after his death.

Recarey, 50, died of natural causes in May 2018, and his widow moved out of the area. Reiter notified the FBI after the boxes were turned over to him. He told the FBI that one of the boxes contained an imaged copy of a laptop computer. It’s not clear whether the FBI ever examined the computer.

In his sworn 2019 FBI interview, he told agents all the obstacles he faced during the early probe, from someone tipping off Epstein before the search warrants to Krischer’s effort to slow walk the investigation. The agents weren’t focused on the early mistakes made in the case, however.

Instead, they asked about whether he found any evidence pertaining to Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and whether anyone else had reported her involvement to police.

Reiter recalled that in July 2006, after Epstein’s arrest, Donald Trump called him on the phone to inform him that Epstein’s activities with teenaged girls were well known in both New York and Palm Beach.

“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter, according to the FBI interview contained in the Justice Department’s Epstein case files.

Reiter told FBI agents that Trump also revealed that Maxwell was Epstein’s “operative,” and that Trump said “she is evil and to focus on her,” according to the report.

Trump told Reiter that “he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there,’” the report said.
...

So after Trump likely first contacted the Palm Beach police in November of 2004, weeks following the real estate dispute, he was was still pushing the police to investigate Epstein July of 2006, and even extended his wrath to Maxwell. He apparently wasn’t crazy about her anymore. What changed? And, more importantly, why isn’t Trump celebrating his role as Epstein’s eventual adversary? We don’t have an answer, although we can be pretty confident we would have that answer if it wasn’t horrible.

It’s not ambiguous. Emails provided by Rebecca Saltzburg, a former senior member of Butler’s Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) who was directly involved in the management of Gabbard’s political performance, don’t just show the group offering Gabbard advice on matters related to her office. They are effectively orders, typically delivered in messages with no attribution which former followers attribute to Butler’s fixation on secrecy and not leaving signs of his influence. And as the report also makes clear, Gabbard followed those orders. Time and again, a message demanding some sort of public statement, often with specific verbiage, or a proposed policy as a member of congress is followed by Gabbard doing exactly that days or weeks later.

But Butler’s influence of Gabbard’s political career wasn’t limited to secret demands and critiques from Butler and his coterie of senior advisers. There was a public dimension, albeit an anonymous one: teams of SIF members ran an array of social media profiles designed to run pro-Gabbard messages through internet comments. It was hardly a new tactic when this was taking place in the 2011–2017 time frame of the email, but it showed how the manpower of SIF was being deployed in ways to secretly assist Gabbard’s political ascent and manage her image.

Keep in mind that Gabbard was serving as the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2013 until she resigned in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary. All moves Butler presumably ordered. We don’t know, although Butler did reportedly order her to “stay out of the presidential race” after it came down to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And then she met with Trump in Trump Tower that November, which, again, was presumably Butler approved. We don’t know what exactly he was ordering during this period, but the report makes clear he was issuing orders and they were being followed. Which is also a reminder that Gabbard sure was in a great position to leak the DNC’s emails.

Also keep in mind that the social media management they were secretly doing manually back then is presumably much easier to do today in the age of AI. If teams of SIF members were managing large number of social media accounts back in 2014, before ChatGPT existed, imagine what they can do today? There could be thousands of pro-Gabbard AI-run bots operated by that same SIF team. And that possibility brings us to an important detail in this report: at least seven of the pro-Gabbard sock puppet accounts that were identified from the email trove were still in operation in 2025 as Gabbard was undergoing her Senate confirmation. In other words, the SIF network is still in operation, and presumably was delivering all sorts of secret directives throughout her term as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). What was Butler demanding of his disciple? We don’t know, but we can be confident he was making those demands.

Part of what makes the question of Butler demanded of Gabbard as DNI so intriguing is that he reportedly views the CIA as being behind all sorts of treachery including psychically In fact, it sounds like Butler believes the CIA and other spy agencies bugged his family home to monitor his father when he was a child and he has warned that the national security agencies are filled with demonic “power-hungry madmen.” Also, the spy agencies wanted to use psychic powers to control people. It’s not hard to imagine a cult guru making such claims. What’s harder to imagine is one of his disciples being appointed the Director of National Intelligence. Except it’s not hard to imagine. It just happened. Ironically, former followers of Butler describe him as being obsessed with politics and infused with ambitions to control the world. There’s undoubtedly too many power-hungry madmen. Chris Butler just happens to be one of them.

Which brings us to the fact that Gabbard’s resignation announcement as DNI came two days after the WaPo informed her office they were moving ahead with this story. We don’t know how Butler has been puppeteering Gabbard during her term as DNI but we can be confident it was happening. Her super secret political puppeteering didn’t just stop when Tulsi Gabbard became one of the US’s top spies:

The Washington Post

Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career

I obtained hundreds of confidential memos detailing politics and policy guidance for Gabbard from her years in Congress, then embarked on a quest to identify who was behind them.

By Jon Swaine
06/22/2026 5:00 am EDT

The first time I spoke with Rebecca Saltzburg, she told me Tulsi Gabbard was a freethinker who took orders from no one.

“I didn’t always agree with Tulsi on everything,” Saltzburg, who worked on digital strategy for several of Gabbard’s congressional campaigns, said in November 2024. “But as for the core of her life and political path? I can vouch 100 percent, that is her own.”

Saltzburg had heard I’d been asking people about Chris Butler, the eccentric religious leader Gabbard once described as her guru. Gabbard grew up in Butler’s breakaway Hare Krishna group. Her parents held senior positions in the organization. Saltzburg said that she herself had been a member since moving to Hawaii with a college friend in the 1990s.

Butler’s followers practice a form of Hinduism that involves devotion to a single deity, in their case Krishna, and certain expectations around meditation, yoga and diet.

Some former members, however, have called the group a cult and said disciples were isolated from the outside world, characterizations the group has denied. Former devotees had been telling me for weeks that Butler controlled his followers’ major life decisions and demanded total obedience and secrecy. They said he spent years working to extend his reach into politics — and they suspected Gabbard’s rise in Washington was the culmination of that effort.

Now that Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, had been picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be director of national intelligence, I wanted to understand: Just how much influence did Butler have on her?

Not much, Saltzburg told me in that first conversation. She also played down the importance of Butler’s organization, the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF). “I don’t even really see it as a real group,” she said.

Nine months later, Saltzburg, then 53, got back in touch. This time, she had a different story to tell. She didn’t want to say much on a regular phone line, so we switched to an encrypted messaging app.

Saltzburg told me she had worked for Butler as a secretary in the 1990s, and lived for a time with Gabbard’s parents and other devotees in a rented property. She said she had recently fallen out with the leaders of SIF, who she believed were mishandling allegations of physical and sexual abuse by some members of the organization. A few months earlier, she said, she had been arrested for briefly housing a teenage runaway who alleged abuse by a parent associated with the group. Saltzburg claimed SIF members had engineered her arrest.

It all seemed a little conspiratorial and hard to follow, and I was deep into another story. But there was a minor mystery that had been nagging at me since I had looked into SIF the previous year, a name I’d stumbled on deep within some records.

“One question,” I wrote to Saltzburg last September. “Do you know what Nine Isles is?”

Her answer surprised me, and it sent me on a nearly year-long quest to better understand Gabbard, who left office last week.

Saltzburg told me NineIsles.com was an email domain used by Butler’s office, one reserved for his secretaries and select disciples. She said she herself had received emails from Nine Isles addresses when she worked on Gabbard’s campaigns.

She thought she had deleted most of them, she said. But when Saltzburg logged into an old Gmail account, she found hundreds of emails from her SIF days, many from Nine Isles accounts. She shared some with me.

Their content was extraordinary.

Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress. Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority.

A memo about a proposal to partition war-torn Iraq into three states quoted an unnamed person as saying it was “time for TG to come up with this idea.”

Some of the language was harshly critical. One memo I found, from January 2015, contained a derisive assessment of a statement Gabbard was to give in response to President Barack Obama’s annual address to Congress.

“In the first place, nobody gives a shit what you think about his State of the Union speech, unless you’re going to say something of interest,” the memo quoted someone as saying. “You’re not even trying. You’ve become really intellectually lazy.”

...

I noticed that Gabbard for the most part was not listed as a recipient of these emails, though many went to people around her, including her parents. The attached memos appeared to be transcripts, often fragmentary, of spoken remarks or conversations.

Some of the memos had file names that included “Call with TG” and attributed remarks to Gabbard, while in others the spoken remarks referred to Gabbard in third person. But the main speaker in each memo — the person who appeared to be issuing directives and sometimes castigating Gabbard — wasn’t named. There was simply no attribution or mention of who they were.

When I asked Saltzburg about this, she seemed amused. It was Butler, of course, she said. No one else could speak to Gabbard like that, she added. Saltzburg said the memos were unattributed precisely to mask Butler’s identity if they ever became public.

Saltzburg kept searching her email and social media accounts, and sending documents. Eventually, the files she shared ran to more than 25,000 pages, including hundreds of memos reflecting guidance for Gabbard between 2011 and 2017, most from her first two terms in Congress.

In the months to come, the documents would reveal that some of the same SIF members who received the memos were involved in a separate effort that used fake social media accounts to boost and defend Gabbard online.

None of this, however, would turn out to be straightforward. One person close to both Gabbard and Butler would claim the words in the memos that focused on politics were not Butler’s. SIF’s president would decline to answer my questions, saying they were based on false premises. Gabbard’s team, without addressing specifics, would attack my reporting as amplifying “hostility against her Hindu faith.”

And Saltzburg’s history with SIF would be messier than it first appeared.

But before all of that occurred, I compared the content of the memos against Gabbard’s record in the House and I found unmistakable parallels. The main speaker in a 2014 memo pressed for her to propose legislation penalizing countries with citizens who had fought for the Islamic State, and to issue a statement about it.

“Get it started in the morning,” the person said. “You need to be the leader in this regard. Don’t dick around.” I found that Gabbard released a statement the following day. A week after that, she introduced a bill in the House.

An Oct. 12, 2015, memo labeled “CNN Wolf Blitzer Talking points (Final)” contained this language about reports that she had been asked by Democratic leadership not to attend a presidential debate: “It’s not a ‘boohoo, I don’t get to go to the party’ situation, Wolf.” I dug up the clip of her appearance that day and found that she had used the line almost verbatim: “The issue here is not about me saying boo-hoo, I’m going to miss the party.”

The limited remarks attributed to Gabbard in the memos appeared to show her enthusiastically embracing the guidance. “TG: That’s perfect, that line right there,” said one transcript labeled “Iraq notes — call.” A line attributed to “TG” in another transcript said, “That’s a great way to put it.”

The documents, together with Saltzburg’s explanation of them, raised remarkable questions: Had a reclusive guru been secretly trying to steer Gabbard’s actions as a public official? And could that shed light on the improbable arc traced by one of the most unconventional shape-shifters in modern American politics?

...

Gabbard, 45, was asked by one of my Washington Post colleagues in 2019 whether Butler had mentored her politically. Her answer was emphatic: “No, no, not at all.”

Either way, I thought, the documents suggested that someone had been telling Gabbard what to do. And at least in the few cases I had looked at, she appeared to have done it.

...

The son of a radical left-wing physician, Butler began teaching Krishnaism and meditation after dropping out of the University of Hawaii in the late 1960s. Tall, lean and charismatic, he attracted devoted followers who believed that he was in direct communication with Krishna. In 1970, two devotees told a reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser that they would do anything Butler asked, including kill themselves.

I found Butler had said in a 1975 pamphlet that “inept politicians should be removed from their seats.” He suggested they be replaced by what he called “saintly persons.”

The following year, a new political party, Independents for Godly Government, sprung up in Hawaii with 14 candidates for federal, state and local offices, records show. IGG claimed to be nonsectarian.

None of the IGG candidates won their elections. Afterward, an investigation by the Advertiser concluded that several were Butler followers, and all were Krishna devotees.

When asked by the newspaper why he and the others “ke[pt] quiet about the Krishna connection,” one candidate, Bill Penaroza, reportedly said: “It was a practical problem. Most people would misunderstand it.” It’s not clear from Advertiser stories how or whether Butler responded to the newspaper’s findings.

In 1977, Butler formally incorporated his own organization and eventually settled on the SIF name. His teachings belonged to no political tribe: He inveighed against Muslims, homosexuality, gun control and public schools, but also promoted environmentalism and anti-capitalism.

Among Butler’s disciples were Mike and Carol Gabbard, who moved to Hawaii in the early 1980s with their children, including young Tulsi. Mike Gabbard for a time also oversaw Butler’s personal affairs — until he was fired for lapses that included failing to ensure a supply of fresh mangoes for Butler’s breakfasts, according to an internal SIF memo.

In the early 1990s, the Gabbards stepped into the political spotlight. With SIF’s backing, the family launched a forceful campaign against same-sex marriage in Hawaii. It included a TV ad that featured Tulsi, then a teenager, and that warned legalization would lead to people marrying their dogs. (Tulsi later declared her support for same-sex marriage and apologized for her past stance.)

Carol Gabbard, who has described herself as Hindu, was elected to the Hawaii state education board in a nonpartisan contest in 2000. She acknowledged on an ethics form that she served as SIF’s secretary, but neither she nor her husband has said much publicly about their association with the group. Mike Gabbard, who has said he is Catholic, ran for a seat in the state Senate as a Republican six years later and then defected to the Democratic Party once in office.

Tulsi Gabbard, meanwhile, was elected to the state legislature in 2002. She then deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard and, after a short stint on the Honolulu City Council, was elected to the House in 2012. She took the oath of office on the Bhagavad-Gita and has said she was proud to be the first Hindu American member of Congress.

...

I also drove to the home of Kainoa Penaroza, a former Gabbard chief of staff and, former SIF members say, a Butler devotee. He is also the son of the 1976 IGG candidate Bill Penaroza.

A family member answered the door and said Penaroza wasn’t home. Later that day, Penaroza posted images of me from his doorbell camera to X. Penaroza wrote that I had flown to Hawaii to “harass and stalk” former Gabbard staffers.

“This is creepy, wrong, and disturbing,” he wrote.

Gabbard’s account reposted Penaroza’s tweet to her more than 3 million followers. Trump’s “War Room” account shared it, too.

Nine Isles first cropped up a few weeks later.

I was trying to figure out who was behind the company that had bought an Oklahoma home from Gabbard in 2012, a sale that Brown had noticed came just before Gabbard made $98,000 in loans to her first congressional campaign. I was deep down a rabbit hole of Australian corporate records when I came across an email address ending in “@nineisles.com.”

A Google search of “@nineisles.com” fetched just one result, but it made me sit up in my chair.

It was a site that listed people’s contact details, based on information harvested from the web, and it connected the email domain to a “Sunil Khemaney.”

I knew that name. Former SIF members had told me Khemaney was Butler’s “right-hand man.” News reports described him as a fundraiser or adviser to Gabbard. I had seen one report that Gabbard, speaking at an event for an Indian political party in 2014, likened Khemaney to an uncle.

Digging around more, I learned that “Nine Islands” in Hindi is Navadvipa, a city in India’s West Bengal region that serves as a pilgrimage site for Hare Krishna devotees. It was intriguing, and it made me wonder whether SIF and perhaps Butler were more deeply involved in Gabbard’s political life than was publicly known.

But I had reached a dead end — until Saltzburg got back in touch in August 2025 to air her concerns about SIF.

Many of the emails she shared had come from please.confirm@nineisles.com. Some were signed with initials that corresponded to the names of people Saltzburg identified as Butler secretaries. The emails typically included the memos as attachments but little else.

Saltzburg told me Butler did not use a computer. Instead, he delivered his advice for Gabbard verbally, she said, sometimes to her directly over the phone and other times to his secretaries or other followers. The secretaries transcribed his remarks and turned them into memos.

It was clear from the documents that the emails, with the memos attached, were often sent to a small group of people, in varying permutations, who I knew from my reporting were close to both Butler and Gabbard. They included Saltzburg, Gabbard’s parents and a few other devotees. Saltzburg said this group was known as Butler’s “political team.”

One frequent recipient was Allison Hoen. Saltzburg told me Hoen was the college friend with whom she had moved to Hawaii in the 1990s and was, in the years the emails were sent, Butler’s top aide. Hoen was also married during that period to Khemaney, court records show.

According to Saltzburg, everyone who received the memos knew that the voice behind them was Butler’s. They spoke about it openly but had been told by Butler to avoid writing his name down, she said.

The attachments to emails sent from the please.confirm account were encrypted — another measure intended to preserve secrecy, according to Saltzburg. With her help, I was able to read the decrypted files.

I dove in. I wanted to determine how often Gabbard followed the advice they recorded and whether Saltzburg’s assertion that Butler was the speaker could be verified.

...

The memos covered a dizzying range of matters. I found a 173-page dossier from 2014 titled “TG Issues.” It compiled advice for Gabbard on dozens of topics — from taxes to the mysterious disappearance that year of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and more. The document was peppered with imperatives. “Start introducing bills,” it said on one issue. “Need to get on it and hit hard. Stop being weak,” it said on another.

Syria was the subject of many of the memos, including one from August 2016 that documented tactical advice on one of Gabbard’s signature policies: preventing the United States from ousting then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The memo quoted an unnamed adviser saying she should reiterate her opposition to U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war, even as a shocking image of a wounded 5‑year-old made headlines. “The CIA is the one that started this thing,” the person said.

Gabbard made that claim publicly three years later.

As I examined the document, eight months after Gabbard’s confirmation as director of national intelligence, I found it striking that such deep suspicion of U.S. intelligence appeared to have been fed to someone who would later coordinate the CIA, the National Security Agency and more than a dozen similar agencies.

Butler had expressed similar skepticism of the national security establishment. I had been reading SIF transcripts of his lectures, an archive of nearly 7,000 pages that a former member had shared with me. Butler claimed the CIA and other spy agencies had bugged his family home to monitor his father when he was a child. In one lecture, he warned the agencies were filled with demonic “power-hungry madmen” and wanted to use psychic powers to control people.

Reading over the documents, I found more on Syria, including a directive Hoen sent to one of Gabbard’s personal email accounts in 2014.

“IMPORTANT TO DO: must tweet around 9am,” said the subject line. It contained a pre-written tweet, with a link to a video, on the plight of Kurdish fighters in the city of Kobane, which was under siege by the Islamic State.

“Every word of the tweet language is approved,” Hoen wrote. She added later that Gabbard should tag senior Obama administration officials in identical follow-up posts. “He’d like them to see the video,” she wrote. Once again, “he” was not identified.

I checked Gabbard’s page on Twitter, now known as X. I saw that she had posted the tweet verbatim that day and followed up with posts tagging the senior officials. Then she emailed Hoen.

“Sent tweet,” Gabbard wrote.

...

With Post colleague Aaron Schaffer, I compared Gabbard’s remarks in 32 TV interviews between 2014 and 2016 with the talking-points memos intended for them. On 24 occasions, Gabbard used language in the memos almost verbatim. In the eight other instances, Gabbard used different words but promoted some of the same ideas.

The memos reflected exacting judgment of Gabbard’s performances. The same unnamed speaker who vented about the “eye thing” also criticized her for seeming insincere, according to the transcript of those remarks. “It’s like she’s trying to express something, artificially. I don’t feel anything from her,” the speaker complained. “It’s more like kind of remembering talking points.”

Another memo, circulated to members of the team on the eve of a Fox News interview, documented a 75-minute call between an unnamed person and Gabbard that went until 10:46 p.m. in Washington, according to a transcript. “Now all you need is a good night’s sleep, knowing that no matter how badly you f— it up, that me and Krishna still love you,” the unnamed adviser told her.

...

As Gabbard, then 33, began her second congressional term in 2015, the unnamed speaker in one memo advised that “your position in general” should be to offer an alternative to other candidates in the “dishonest Democratic party.” Gabbard is not named in the memo, but the file name has “TG” in it.

Gabbard ultimately did not run for president that year and instead endorsed Sanders.

As the general election race got underway, transcripts show, an unnamed adviser spoke admiringly about Trump’s campaign messaging. In one, the unnamed speaker said Trump had staked out the kind of maverick position that Gabbard might have taken.

“This is right up your ally [sic],” the speaker said about some of Trump’s remarks on “Islamic extremists” in America. “Too bad you’re not running. It’s all falling into place, but for the wrong guy. Now Trump is going to be the one, and he’s a total idiot.”

Memos sent before Trump entered politics suggested an affinity for some of the ideas he would later adopt. In two of them, an unnamed adviser said the government needed to think “America first,” which famously became a slogan of Trump’s movement. Another recommended occupying inner cities with the National Guard.

During the 2016 campaign, Butler devotees researched senior Trump advisers, including Stephen Miller and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, emails show.

In July of 2016, Gabbard delivered the nominating speech for Sanders at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. It was a breakout moment for her, placing her in the national spotlight as a rising star — however briefly — in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.

Later that summer, Gabbard said that she would vote for Hillary Clinton, by then the Democratic nominee. That evening, a memo shows, an unnamed speaker advised against sharing a Facebook post that was critical of Trump — an unusual move for a Democratic member of Congress. “Just stay out of the presidential race,” the speaker in the memo said.

After Trump won in November 2016, Gabbard shocked Democrats by meeting him at Trump Tower.

Hundreds of other documents in Saltzburg’s trove told the story of the effort to inflate the appearance of public support for Gabbard on social media and in the comments sections of news websites.

Central to the commenting effort were dozens of social media accounts that were anonymized, and other accounts that one document referred to as “pseudonym profiles,” which displayed fake names. Some of those featured bogus biographies, including false education and job histories, or avatar photographs copied from elsewhere online, according to a report circulated among Butler devotees at the time.

The documents show, for instance, that profiles for “Sandy Thomas” and “Jeremy K” were actually controlled by someone named Anna. “James Cade” — a purported father, guitar player, woodworker and tree planter — was a woman named Becky. And accounts for a “Jason” and a “Sara” were both controlled by a person named Ellen. The three people behind the accounts did not respond to my questions.

Saltzburg told me she had a prominent role in the project, at times effectively leading it.

...

Saltzburg allowed me to view emails and Skype messages where she advised members of the commenting group on how to keep their efforts from being detected. “Whenever possible, use different/anonymous names for new accounts,” she wrote in one memo. For each post they made about Gabbard, they were to make two that were not about her. And if they lived abroad, they should use encrypted services to mask their locations.

The group energetically commented on stories about Gabbard on the websites of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii’s biggest newspaper, and Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit news organization. The effort grew to include other publications, along with posts about Gabbard on social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Medium.

Sometimes, Gabbard herself appeared to weigh in. In group chats, messages from her personal Skype account flagged online articles and social media posts as warranting replies. Some of those messages dictated what the comments should say and chided the group if it failed to defend her.

“Why didn’t we get our talkers to comment?” a message from her account asked in one chat, after no one replied to a 2018 article about what it called her “loony foreign policy positions.”

...

Gabbard contributed to Skype group chats where the use of pseudonymous profiles in the commenting effort was explicitly discussed, but it’s not clear from the chats whether she was aware of them. One message suggested to me that she may have been. In September 2014, Gabbard emailed Saltzburg from her congressional account to recommend adding an avatar to a Twitter account Saltzburg was using in the commenting operation. “The egg shape icon is a red flag that it’s not a real account,” Gabbard wrote.

The effort appears to have been overseen by a person occasionally referred to by the team as “he” or “him,” or sometimes “our friend,” messages show. Sometimes, commenters referred to the person as “S.” According to Saltzburg and four other former members, “S” is a shorthand for Butler, who is known as Srila Prabhupada and Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa. (Often, references to Butler also include the title “Jagad Guru,” which means spiritual teacher.)

In October 2014, the commenters feared reporters were about to expose their use of bogus profiles. A flurry of memos shows an unnamed person — an individual referred to as “our friend” — demanding answers from leaders of the commenting group about potential weaknesses in the biographies, including one that claimed the user attended the University of Hawaii, Butler’s alma mater. The person instructed Hoen to search the university’s online directory to see if it was complete, in which case reporters could use the absence of the fake name to disprove the attendance claim. “See if my name is in it,” according to a transcript.

“I found Kurt Butler, but not Kris or Chris Butler,” Hoen replied.

...

The memos told devotees how to defend Gabbard, SIF and Butler online, and provided them with language to use in their posts. Leaders of the commenting group “sent up” reports, sometimes daily, on comments they had posted. The reports were then sent back, from a Nine Isles address, unsigned but annotated with commentary — often scathing — about the quality of the work.

In a memo suggesting comments for the Fox News website, the unnamed speaker warned that since regular internet users “speak stupidly,” the group would need to dumb down approved posts to make them sound authentic. “I’m too smart, so it looks like it’s the same guy, a smart guy writing something here,” the speaker said. “Want to make some of the comments stupider too, like idiot talk rather than all thoughtful.”

A separate memo, after someone on Facebook questioned Gabbard’s credentials as a military expert, documented a complaint from an unnamed speaker that the commenters “didn’t f—ing do anything.”

“Why the hell did this go on and we don’t have any of our people responding, defending TG?” the speaker said. Records show that a bogus account then posted a defense of Gabbard using points the speaker had suggested.

And in a phone call, a person who was not identified harshly criticized Gabbard for allowing negative comments to sit uncontested on her official Facebook page, according to a transcript.

“Could you please explain that to me?” the person asked.

“I don’t have an explanation,” she replied.

...

In March, I wrote detailed letters to Butler, Gabbard and Khemaney, outlining the memos I had seen and what I had been told about them. Understanding that Butler doesn’t use a computer and has no email address, I sent the letter meant for him to SIF President Jeannie Bishop.

Neither Gabbard nor her spokeswoman answered my questions. Instead, the spokeswoman urged me to drop the story. “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith,” she wrote.

Bishop sent a letter saying that SIF would not answer my specific questions because they included “many embedded premises and characterizations that we do not accept.” She did not specify what she was disputing. She asked, though, that I make clear Butler “was following a different spiritual path” in 1970, when followers told a reporter they would kill themselves for him. Two years later, he was initiated as a disciple of the Hare Krishna movement’s founder and “began a fundamentally different chapter of his life,” Bishop wrote.

A vice president at a Manhattan-based public relations firm also contacted me on SIF’s behalf. He agreed to speak if he was not identified in the story, and he provided me with a statement: “Hinduphobia, anti-Hindu religious bigotry, that’s all this is,” the statement said. “When a Hindu public figure has a spiritual teacher or shares views with a Hindu religious figure, that alone is somehow evidence of sinister control.”

The statement claimed that the source of the story — Saltzburg — was a “malicious liar.”

...

While attacking Saltzburg’s motivations, SIF did not question the authenticity of any of the material she shared with me. I sent Gabbard’s parents and Hoen letters with detailed descriptions of and questions about the documents I had studied. None of them replied.

But then I heard from Khemaney. He offered an explanation that surprised me. In retrospect, perhaps I should have anticipated it.

Khemaney claimed that he, not Butler, was behind most of the memos.

“The vast majority of these materials from more than a decade ago came from me and other advisers, including her father, State Sen. Mike Gabbard. I worked with Congresswoman Gabbard on media, speeches, and policy messaging over many years,” Khemaney told me in an email. “One or two may have come from Chris Butler, specifically regarding the teachings of the Bhagavad-gita, Hinduism, and the Vedic guru system.”

Then Khemaney said something that highlighted how the unusual nature of the memos made his assertion hard to assess. “There is no evidence supporting the claim that this body of work can be attributed to Chris Butler,” he said. “File names, shorthand, and selective excerpts do not establish authorship.”

I thanked Khemaney and asked him to specify which man had written which memos. He did not reply. I asked again a couple of weeks later. He still didn’t respond.

Several things I had noticed over the past 18 months — about the documents, SIF and the organization’s unorthodox ways of communicating — seemed at odds with Khemaney’s explanation.

Deep within the 173-page compilation of policy advice for Gabbard, in a section on immigration and jobs, was a reminiscence about working as a teenager in Hawaii. Butler grew up in Hawaii. Neither Khemaney nor Mike Gabbard was raised there.

Other memos contained far more direct indications of authorship. In a March 2015 discussion about whether Gabbard should reveal in a press interview that she was a Butler disciple, the speaker expressed concern that she would be made to answer for Butler’s past controversies.

“Everything I have taught, said, lectures is going to all be laid on you. So that’s my concern,” the adviser said.

There were others like that. Eventually I found the adviser appeared to identify himself as Butler in 19 memos. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those memos tended to be about Gabbard’s faith — where the identity of her guru was an inevitable talking point — rather than matters of politics or policy.

Nothing in those documents distinguished them from the hundreds of others where the unnamed adviser did not self-identify. If, as Khemaney claimed, these files contained a mix of advice from different people including himself and Mike Gabbard, how were the recipients to know whose advice they were reading? A more logical explanation, it seemed, was that there was only one unnamed adviser.

Other clues pointed toward Butler, too. In a handful of the documents, team members referred to requests from “S,” the nickname for Butler. Despite his first initial being S, Khemaney is widely known within SIF as “Syd,” according to documents and former members. Syd is an abbreviation of Syamasundara Das, the “initiate name” he was given when he became a Butler disciple, according to former members. One memo I found about a SIF legal issue was addressed from Syd to S, indicating they are different people.

...

The anonymity in the memos was in keeping with the secrecy that former SIF members told me Butler demanded. By contrast, Khemaney openly advised Gabbard when she was in Congress. He accompanied her on official trips and on the campaign trail. He carried a Gabbard campaign business card. Similarly, Gabbard and her father had spoken candidly about their political discussions and disagreements. I could see in Saltzburg’s documents that Khemaney and Gabbard’s father both openly emailed Gabbard about politics. So why would they in other moments shield their private advice to her behind anonymity and encrypted documents?

...

There were people in Butler’s inner circle from that period who probably knew the truth. Almost all ignored my calls, and none agreed to speak. I expanded my search to earlier years, for people who might have known how Butler’s office operated, even if they weren’t present for Gabbard’s rise.

I spoke with a family member of one of the candidates who had run for Independents for Godly Government in 1976. She said she feared retribution from SIF and agreed to talk with me as long as I didn’t publish her name. She told me that Butler had advised the IGG candidates while working to hide his connections to them, and that he avoided written communications, instead using intermediaries to deliver his campaign advice. She said Butler was obsessed with politics.

He wanted, she said, “to rule the world.”

The time frame of documents we reviewed meant they could not show whether Gabbard continued receiving guidance after she left Congress and eventually joined the Trump administration. But I found echoes of years-old guidance in her more recent remarks. One phrase in particular stood out.

In 2014, Hoen emailed Gabbard a statement for posting online that said Gabbard made every decision through the prism of “the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.” She repeated that phrase in the first paragraph of her 2024 memoir, and after she was nominated by Trump, Gabbard made it her mantra, using it in her Senate confirmation hearing, her inaugural statement as DNI, her presentation of this year’s annual threat assessment and many other occasions.

On May 20, having received no answers from Gabbard to my questions for two months, I emailed her, her press secretary and her chief of staff. I let them know we planned to proceed with a story about her association with Butler. I again invited Gabbard to address my questions.

_Two days later, Fox News reported that Gabbard — whose departure had been rumored for months — would be leaving the position of DNI this month because her husband had been diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. Some commentators observed that she still had a promising political future, maybe even more so because she was not aligned with Trump on the Iran war and other unpopular policies.

...

As I had worked on this story, I had kept tabs on the social media accounts that had been part of the campaign to defend and boost Gabbard online while she was in Congress.

At least seven of those accounts were still posting about Gabbard on X in early 2025 as she went through the Senate confirmation process, I found. By following a link buried within the years-old Skype messages Saltzburg had provided, I also found a Google Doc where the commenting group flagged social media posts about Gabbard for potential response. The document was still being updated daily as recently as April of last year.

Some of the accounts piped up again in the days after Gabbard announced her resignation, posting a set of soundalike comments.

“DNI Gabbard is a true patriot and will be missed,” wrote @ImACruzn, who describes herself as “Just an island girl living the island dream.”

The Sandy Thomas account reposted a similar message: “Tulsi Gabbard is a Patriot. She will be greatly missed.”

A third account, named only as Dawn, echoed the sentiment: “Tulsi will be missed! She is truly one of a kind and a true patriot!”

———–

“Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career” By Jon Swaine; The Washington Post; 06/22/2026

“Some former members, however, have called the group a cult and said disciples were isolated from the outside world, characterizations the group has denied. Former devotees had been telling me for weeks that Butler controlled his followers’ major life decisions and demanded total obedience and secrecy. They said he spent years working to extend his reach into politics — and they suspected Gabbard’s rise in Washington was the culmination of that effort.”

A cult operating around demands of total obedience and secrecy, run by a man with ambitions to extend his reach into politics. That’s how former members of Chris Butler’s Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) characterized Tulsi Gabbard’s political career. It was the culmination of Butler’s cult guru ambitions. This isn’t a new revelation. What is new is the access to a trove of internal emails from the 2011–2017 period provided by former SIF member Rebecca Saltzburg. Emails from the NineIsles.com email domain used exclusively by Butler and his secretaries and select disciples that demonstrate just how extensive Butler’s puppeteering of Gabbard really was during her two terms in the House from 2013–2017:

...
The first time I spoke with Rebecca Saltzburg, she told me Tulsi Gabbard was a freethinker who took orders from no one.

...

Nine months later, Saltzburg, then 53, got back in touch. This time, she had a different story to tell. She didn’t want to say much on a regular phone line, so we switched to an encrypted messaging app.

Saltzburg told me she had worked for Butler as a secretary in the 1990s, and lived for a time with Gabbard’s parents and other devotees in a rented property. She said she had recently fallen out with the leaders of SIF, who she believed were mishandling allegations of physical and sexual abuse by some members of the organization. A few months earlier, she said, she had been arrested for briefly housing a teenage runaway who alleged abuse by a parent associated with the group. Saltzburg claimed SIF members had engineered her arrest.

It all seemed a little conspiratorial and hard to follow, and I was deep into another story. But there was a minor mystery that had been nagging at me since I had looked into SIF the previous year, a name I’d stumbled on deep within some records.

“One question,” I wrote to Saltzburg last September. “Do you know what Nine Isles is?”

Her answer surprised me, and it sent me on a nearly year-long quest to better understand Gabbard, who left office last week.

Saltzburg told me NineIsles.com was an email domain used by Butler’s office, one reserved for his secretaries and select disciples. She said she herself had received emails from Nine Isles addresses when she worked on Gabbard’s campaigns.

She thought she had deleted most of them, she said. But when Saltzburg logged into an old Gmail account, she found hundreds of emails from her SIF days, many from Nine Isles accounts. She shared some with me.

...

Saltzburg kept searching her email and social media accounts, and sending documents. Eventually, the files she shared ran to more than 25,000 pages, including hundreds of memos reflecting guidance for Gabbard between 2011 and 2017, most from her first two terms in Congress.

...

While attacking Saltzburg’s motivations, SIF did not question the authenticity of any of the material she shared with me. I sent Gabbard’s parents and Hoen letters with detailed descriptions of and questions about the documents I had studied. None of them replied.
...

Interestingly, while Butler was seemingly the author of many of these emails that delivered harsh criticisms and stern demands of Gabbard, Butler rarely signed his messages, which appears to be a reflection of his fixation on secrecy:

...
I noticed that Gabbard for the most part was not listed as a recipient of these emails, though many went to people around her, including her parents. The attached memos appeared to be transcripts, often fragmentary, of spoken remarks or conversations.

Some of the memos had file names that included “Call with TG” and attributed remarks to Gabbard, while in others the spoken remarks referred to Gabbard in third person. But the main speaker in each memo — the person who appeared to be issuing directives and sometimes castigating Gabbard — wasn’t named. There was simply no attribution or mention of who they were.

When I asked Saltzburg about this, she seemed amused. It was Butler, of course, she said. No one else could speak to Gabbard like that, she added. Saltzburg said the memos were unattributed precisely to mask Butler’s identity if they ever became public.

...

The limited remarks attributed to Gabbard in the memos appeared to show her enthusiastically embracing the guidance. “TG: That’s perfect, that line right there,” said one transcript labeled “Iraq notes — call.” A line attributed to “TG” in another transcript said, “That’s a great way to put it.”

The documents, together with Saltzburg’s explanation of them, raised remarkable questions: Had a reclusive guru been secretly trying to steer Gabbard’s actions as a public official? And could that shed light on the improbable arc traced by one of the most unconventional shape-shifters in modern American politics?

...

According to Saltzburg, everyone who received the memos knew that the voice behind them was Butler’s. They spoke about it openly but had been told by Butler to avoid writing his name down, she said.
...

Notably, it appears Butler’s group has effectively renounced his political leanings from decades ago when he first formed the Independents for Godly Government (IGG) political party in 1975. According to a family member of one of those IGG candidates, Butler was obsessed with politics and wanted “to rule the world”. And that was 1975. 50 years later, and one of his disciples was the DNI:

...
The son of a radical left-wing physician, Butler began teaching Krishnaism and meditation after dropping out of the University of Hawaii in the late 1960s. Tall, lean and charismatic, he attracted devoted followers who believed that he was in direct communication with Krishna. In 1970, two devotees told a reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser that they would do anything Butler asked, including kill themselves.

I found Butler had said in a 1975 pamphlet that “inept politicians should be removed from their seats.” He suggested they be replaced by what he called “saintly persons.”

The following year, a new political party, Independents for Godly Government, sprung up in Hawaii with 14 candidates for federal, state and local offices, records show. IGG claimed to be nonsectarian.

...

In 1977, Butler formally incorporated his own organization and eventually settled on the SIF name. His teachings belonged to no political tribe: He inveighed against Muslims, homosexuality, gun control and public schools, but also promoted environmentalism and anti-capitalism.

...

In March, I wrote detailed letters to Butler, Gabbard and Khemaney, outlining the memos I had seen and what I had been told about them. Understanding that Butler doesn’t use a computer and has no email address, I sent the letter meant for him to SIF President Jeannie Bishop.

...

Bishop sent a letter saying that SIF would not answer my specific questions because they included “many embedded premises and characterizations that we do not accept.” She did not specify what she was disputing. She asked, though, that I make clear Butler “was following a different spiritual path” in 1970, when followers told a reporter they would kill themselves for him. Two years later, he was initiated as a disciple of the Hare Krishna movement’s founder and “began a fundamentally different chapter of his life,” Bishop wrote.

...

I spoke with a family member of one of the candidates who had run for Independents for Godly Government in 1976. She said she feared retribution from SIF and agreed to talk with me as long as I didn’t publish her name. She told me that Butler had advised the IGG candidates while working to hide his connections to them, and that he avoided written communications, instead using intermediaries to deliver his campaign advice. She said Butler was obsessed with politics.

He wanted, she said, “to rule the world.”
...

Adding to the questions of how Butler might abuse his DNI guru authority is the fact that he apparently thought the CIA wanted to use psychic powers to control people. What kind of wild directives was he giving Tulsi during her time as DNI? What are the odds Butler wasn’t directing Tulsi when it came to her many public comments while DNI hinting at the existence of aliens? It’s hard to imagine Butler was asking Gabbard to give him access to all sorts of state secrets:

...
As I examined the document, eight months after Gabbard’s confirmation as director of national intelligence, I found it striking that such deep suspicion of U.S. intelligence appeared to have been fed to someone who would later coordinate the CIA, the National Security Agency and more than a dozen similar agencies.

Butler had expressed similar skepticism of the national security establishment. I had been reading SIF transcripts of his lectures, an archive of nearly 7,000 pages that a former member had shared with me. Butler claimed the CIA and other spy agencies had bugged his family home to monitor his father when he was a child. In one lecture, he warned the agencies were filled with demonic “power-hungry madmen” and wanted to use psychic powers to control people.
...

And then there’s the fact that Gabbard’s former chief of staff, Kainoa Penaroza, also happened to be a Butler devotee, which raises the question of how many more SIF members did she have in her congressional delegation?

...
I also drove to the home of Kainoa Penaroza, a former Gabbard chief of staff and, former SIF members say, a Butler devotee. He is also the son of the 1976 IGG candidate Bill Penaroza.
...

It’s also rather notable that Tulsi’s father, Mike Gabbard, had a political party switch of his own when he ran for a seat in the state Senate as a Republican but then became a Democrat once in office:

...
Among Butler’s disciples were Mike and Carol Gabbard, who moved to Hawaii in the early 1980s with their children, including young Tulsi. Mike Gabbard for a time also oversaw Butler’s personal affairs — until he was fired for lapses that included failing to ensure a supply of fresh mangoes for Butler’s breakfasts, according to an internal SIF memo.

In the early 1990s, the Gabbards stepped into the political spotlight. With SIF’s backing, the family launched a forceful campaign against same-sex marriage in Hawaii. It included a TV ad that featured Tulsi, then a teenager, and that warned legalization would lead to people marrying their dogs. (Tulsi later declared her support for same-sex marriage and apologized for her past stance.)

Carol Gabbard, who has described herself as Hindu, was elected to the Hawaii state education board in a nonpartisan contest in 2000. She acknowledged on an ethics form that she served as SIF’s secretary, but neither she nor her husband has said much publicly about their association with the group. Mike Gabbard, who has said he is Catholic, ran for a seat in the state Senate as a Republican six years later and then defected to the Democratic Party once in office.
...

Intriguingly, in 2016, Gabbard didn’t just resign her role as vice chair of DNC in order to endorse Bernie Sanders. Butler was effectively telling Gabbard to ‘stay out of the race’ in 2016 after it became clear it was a race between Hillary Clinton and Trump. And then Gabbard met with Trump at Trump Tower in November of 2016. Which is also a reminder that Gabbard was perfectly situation to serve as a mole who could have, say, leaked emails or other sensitive documents while she was in that senior DNC role:

...
With Post colleague Aaron Schaffer, I compared Gabbard’s remarks in 32 TV interviews between 2014 and 2016 with the talking-points memos intended for them. On 24 occasions, Gabbard used language in the memos almost verbatim. In the eight other instances, Gabbard used different words but promoted some of the same ideas.

...

As Gabbard, then 33, began her second congressional term in 2015, the unnamed speaker in one memo advised that “your position in general” should be to offer an alternative to other candidates in the “dishonest Democratic party.” Gabbard is not named in the memo, but the file name has “TG” in it.

Gabbard ultimately did not run for president that year and instead endorsed Sanders.

As the general election race got underway, transcripts show, an unnamed adviser spoke admiringly about Trump’s campaign messaging. In one, the unnamed speaker said Trump had staked out the kind of maverick position that Gabbard might have taken.

“This is right up your ally [sic],” the speaker said about some of Trump’s remarks on “Islamic extremists” in America. “Too bad you’re not running. It’s all falling into place, but for the wrong guy. Now Trump is going to be the one, and he’s a total idiot.”

Memos sent before Trump entered politics suggested an affinity for some of the ideas he would later adopt. In two of them, an unnamed adviser said the government needed to think “America first,” which famously became a slogan of Trump’s movement. Another recommended occupying inner cities with the National Guard.

...

In July of 2016, Gabbard delivered the nominating speech for Sanders at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. It was a breakout moment for her, placing her in the national spotlight as a rising star — however briefly — in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.

Later that summer, Gabbard said that she would vote for Hillary Clinton, by then the Democratic nominee. That evening, a memo shows, an unnamed speaker advised against sharing a Facebook post that was critical of Trump — an unusual move for a Democratic member of Congress. “Just stay out of the presidential race,” the speaker in the memo said.

After Trump won in November 2016, Gabbard shocked Democrats by meeting him at Trump Tower.
...

And then there’s the social media dimension to Gabbard’s role as a SIF operative, where teams of SIF members created an array of make online profiles designed to seem authentic but strategic serve as pro-Gabbard messengers. Importantly, at least seven of these known sock puppet accounts appeared to still be active in 2025. So while the email trove provided for this report only went up to 2017, we shouldn’t assume Gabbard’s role as a SIF operative suddenly ended:

...
In the months to come, the documents would reveal that some of the same SIF members who received the memos were involved in a separate effort that used fake social media accounts to boost and defend Gabbard online.

...

Hundreds of other documents in Saltzburg’s trove told the story of the effort to inflate the appearance of public support for Gabbard on social media and in the comments sections of news websites.

Central to the commenting effort were dozens of social media accounts that were anonymized, and other accounts that one document referred to as “pseudonym profiles,” which displayed fake names. Some of those featured bogus biographies, including false education and job histories, or avatar photographs copied from elsewhere online, according to a report circulated among Butler devotees at the time.

...

Saltzburg allowed me to view emails and Skype messages where she advised members of the commenting group on how to keep their efforts from being detected. “Whenever possible, use different/anonymous names for new accounts,” she wrote in one memo. For each post they made about Gabbard, they were to make two that were not about her. And if they lived abroad, they should use encrypted services to mask their locations.

...

The effort appears to have been overseen by a person occasionally referred to by the team as “he” or “him,” or sometimes “our friend,” messages show. Sometimes, commenters referred to the person as “S.” According to Saltzburg and four other former members, “S” is a shorthand for Butler, who is known as Srila Prabhupada and Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa. (Often, references to Butler also include the title “Jagad Guru,” which means spiritual teacher.)

...

The memos told devotees how to defend Gabbard, SIF and Butler online, and provided them with language to use in their posts. Leaders of the commenting group “sent up” reports, sometimes daily, on comments they had posted. The reports were then sent back, from a Nine Isles address, unsigned but annotated with commentary — often scathing — about the quality of the work.

In a memo suggesting comments for the Fox News website, the unnamed speaker warned that since regular internet users “speak stupidly,” the group would need to dumb down approved posts to make them sound authentic. “I’m too smart, so it looks like it’s the same guy, a smart guy writing something here,” the speaker said. “Want to make some of the comments stupider too, like idiot talk rather than all thoughtful.”

...

As I had worked on this story, I had kept tabs on the social media accounts that had been part of the campaign to defend and boost Gabbard online while she was in Congress.

At least seven of those accounts were still posting about Gabbard on X in early 2025 as she went through the Senate confirmation process, I found. By following a link buried within the years-old Skype messages Saltzburg had provided, I also found a Google Doc where the commenting group flagged social media posts about Gabbard for potential response. The document was still being updated daily as recently as April of last year.
...

Lastly, note how the announcement of Gabbard’s resignation as DNI came just two days after Jon Swaine notified Gabbard that he was going to proceed with the story:

...

On May 20, having received no answers from Gabbard to my questions for two months, I emailed her, her press secretary and her chief of staff. I let them know we planned to proceed with a story about her association with Butler. I again invited Gabbard to address my questions.

_Two days later, Fox News reported that Gabbard — whose departure had been rumored for months — would be leaving the position of DNI this month because her husband had been diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. Some commentators observed that she still had a promising political future, maybe even more so because she was not aligned with Trump on the Iran war and other unpopular policies.
...

Welp, she’s gone now, replaced with Trump shill Bill Pulte filling in her place. Someone who, incredibly, might be even more dangerous that Gabbard in that position. Maybe. Or maybe not. Only Chris Butler, and his NineIsles.com crew, really knows.

Yes, we’ve had another foiled Trump assassination attempt. And once again, it appears to be a far right assination plot. As we’ve seen, in addition to the Satanic Nazi plot Nikita Casap was involved with, the July 2024 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, was carried out by Thomas Matthew Crooks, someone whose online history didn’t just include extensive antisemitism and calls for murdering Democrats but also involved the exhortations by Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud, the Norwegian Nazi who went by the handle ‘Willy Tepes’. And while far right plots targeting far right leaders like President Trump should always be viewed with suspicion, part of what makes this such a grimly fascinating story is the fact that, based on the stated aims and ideology of the plotters, they may have some genuine grievances with the Trump administration.

In particular, it sounds like the network of plotters were deeply animated by a sense of betrayal over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, along with anger over the impact of Artificial Intelligence on small towns. In fact, we’re told that the group — which is apparently started with a TikTok group calling themselves The Vanguard of the Old Guard — includes individuals who claim to be ex-military and Christian and who believe the US is on the wrong track and needed to be torn down so it could be rebuilt. Which sure sounds a lot like the kind of accelerationist Christian Nationalist agenda we might expect from a group like the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), a mens-only project seemingly designed to prepare for the collapse of the US government and a period of warlordism, founded by millionaire Charles Haywood, who has expressed a desire to operate an ‘armed patronage network’ that will rebuild a new theocratic American society after everything collapses. So last year, we learned about a plot to kill President Trump using explosive drones coming from a network of Satanic Nazis. This time, another explosive drone plot involving multiple people, but it’s coming from a ‘Christian-based’ extremist network. Or at least that’s what we’ve been told.

Now, as we should also expect, just because this network claims to be Christian-based doesn’t mean it’s not also filled with Nazis. Which brings us to the alarming story we’re getting for how this plot was uncovered by authorities in the first place. Because it appears that the only reason federal authorities discovered the plot in the first place was due to the mother of one of the plotters, 19 year old Tycen Proper, contacting the local police about the people her son had recently started interacting with online. The parents referred to “concerning statements,” including “making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook.” Local police found weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition after searching the family home, including a recently purchased rifled with an American flag painted on it. The next day, they contacted the FBI. That was how federal authorities apparently learned about this plot, just four days before the UFC event. No FBI plants like Joshua Caleb Sutter — the FBI paid informant who spent two decades as one of the leading figures in the contemporary accelerationist Satanic Nazism movement — tipping off authorities. It was a concerned parent, who made the call just days before the plot was set to unfold.

As a result of the tip, we’re told an advanced threat interdiction team at the Secret Service sought a subpoena for an encrypt Signal chat threat that was being used by the group, where they found a discussion of the plans. But we’re told there were actually two Signal chats. One chat had 19 participants and was dedicated to discussing strategy and tactics. But then there’s a second Signal chat that included just four or five participants. We’ve been told nothing else about this second chat, what it was being used for or who the participants were.

And those questions about the nature of this second, smaller Signal group brings us to the remarkable details around the person identified by the FBI as the ringleader of the plot: Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, of the five individuals already arrested and who went by the handle “Shepherd” in the chat groups. Alvarez even identified an abandoned church in Nebraska, where he lives, that would be be used as a “fall back location”, which is an indication that the participants in this plot weren’t necessarily planning on dying.

Tycen Proper reportedly thought Alvarez was ex-military and “described him as aggressive in tactical planning.” And that questions about Alvarez’s status as ex-military becomes all the more interesting when we learn that he isn’t actually a US citizen. Instead, Alvarez came to the US from Mexico as a child on tourist visa in 2001, never left, and was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2014. So the guy apparently leading this group of potentially two dozen (or more) far right insurgents animated by a desire to spark a revolution was, himself, a DACA recipient. As we should expect, that detail is being heavily touted by federal officials.

But then we get to this very intriguing detail about the ‘tiered’ structure of the group: Alvarez devised a ‘tier 1′ through ‘tier 4’ membership structure, with tiers for those willing to put themselves in harm’s way; members who could be getaway drivers or drone operators; supply and logistics operators; and funders and influencers. Yes, there was a funders and influencers tier apparently. Which is the kind of tier that should raise major questions about who is actually behind this entire operation. Was a DACA recipient really the person orchestrating all of this?

On June 13, just one day before the UFC event, authorities arrested Proper and moved to immediately seal the case so they could continue investigating and identifying additional suspects. But then, on June 16, just two days after the UFC event, FBI director Kash Patel decided take to social media and triumphantly declare the thwarting of this plot, at a point when we are told 10 of the suspects had yet to be arrested an placed in custody. Keep in mind that we are told 5 people were arrested, 19 were roughly participating in the text chat, and roughly two dozen people are suspected of being involved overall. So if 5 people were arrested and 10 have yet to be arrested, that leaves around 9 people who have yet to even be identified. Investigators have acknowledged that more suspects could be identified. Normally, it would be tempting to suspect at least some of the remaining unidentified plotters are federal agents or informants. But we’re told the FBI only learned about this plot when the Proper family called the police on their son. The unidentified suspects are presumably real extremists who were involved in the plot.

Now, on the one hand, odds are the unidentified plotters would have known two days after the planned attack that things didn’t go as planned based on the fact that no attack happened regardless of Kash Patel’s social media posts. But they wouldn’t necessarily have known the whole thing was in the process of being uncovered, with members of the plot already arrested. Kash Patel was giving the remaining suspects an official warning to cover their tracks.

Also keep in mind that, when it comes to future attempts at similar plots, it appears that this network was largely comprised of people scattered across the US who didn’t know each other. Tycen Proper lived in Ohio. Alvarez was from Nebraska. Bryan Omar Roa and Michael Alan Thomas were friends from California who went shooting together, so they stand out as knowing each other. Thomas even reportedly admitted to the FBI that he encouraged others to participate in the plot. It’s unclear if that meant other people he knew offline. Then there’s Daniel K. Eskridge of Missouri, who told members he was preparing his garage to be their “safe house” and was building a “bunker” under the floorboards of his shed. Other than Roa and Thomas, these appear to be people who knew each other exclusively through the internet, first with the The Vanguard of the Old Guard TikTok group and later the Signal chats. Roughly two dozen people who didn’t know each other coming together for a plot like this. An internet-based social network of mostly strangers who shared a far right world and set of grievances, some very real grievances like the handling of the Epstein files, and who decided to ‘take action’ and ‘spark of revolution’ through a public mass casualty event targeting right-wing elites. Right-wing elites no less, based on what we’re learning. It’s not hard to imagine something like this getting organized again. The formerly MAGA-loving ‘red-pilled’ young men who have completely lost faith in everything, including Trump, has got to be one of the fastest growing demographics in the US today. This was a disturbingly potent terror template that’s only been quasi-busted, thanks, in part, to the incredible bungling by director of the FBI.

That’s the remarkable story that has been unfolding over the last few days. The kind of story that, on the one hand, isn’t really a surprise. Far right plots against Trump aren’t new. But this wasn’t your typical plot, with just one or two radicalized individuals, typically suicidal, who may have been motivated by a larger online network and plan on dying. This was a shockingly large plot, comprised of two dozen (or more) individuals animated by far right populist grievances, intent on sparking a revolution, and yet, seemingly, led by a DACA recipient. This is an odd one by many measures. Odd and shockingly close to coming to fruition. And with the Trump administration continuing its increasingly corrupt and blatant obstruction of the Epstein files and cowtowing to the AI industry, it’s not like these far right antipathies are going anywhere. Which is part of what makes Kash Patel’s public disruption of the investigation so grim. Some part of this network is likely to survive the investigation thanks to the director of the FBI. Might these be the funders and influencers? If so, we can’t exactly be shocked to one day learn they kept funding and influencing the increasingly jaded far right base with the aims of giving this plot a second try.

Ok, first, here’s a report from June 16, the day Kash Patel took to social media, describing how the families Tycen Proper first contacted their local authorities after getting concerned about the fact that Tycen had “recently begun interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based” and has also recently started saying positive things about Hitler:

NBC News

FBI arrests 5 in alleged plot to attack White House UFC event with explosives-laden drones and guns

Some of the suspects espoused fringe conspiracy theories, and their families had raised concerns about their recent actions, law enforcement said.

June 16, 2026, 6:38 AM CDT / Updated June 16, 2026, 4:54 PM CDT
By Megan Lebowitz, Gary Grumbach, Michael Kosnar and Tom Winter

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials disrupted a plot to attack the Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House over the weekend, according to court papers unsealed Tuesday that say the conspirators discussed flying drones loaded with explosives over the event and then shooting into the fleeing crowd.

Five people have been arrested across the country and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, among other counts. Investigators recovered firearms, ammunition and encrypted text messages of 19 people suspected to have taken part, who shared maps and photos of the area and who talked about the need for escape routes after the attack, according to court documents.

The investigation is ongoing.

Some of the suspects espoused fringe conspiracy theories and made antisemitic remarks, and their families had raised concerns about their recent actions, law enforcement said.

Fox News first reported the suspected plot.

...

Law enforcement learned about the threat Wednesday, four days before the mixed martial arts party on the White House South Lawn, FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday on X. “And thanks to the rapid action of the FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold,” Patel wrote.

Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement on X that his agency “worked closely with the FBI throughout this investigation.”

...

Among those arrested was Tycen Proper, 19, who was apprehended in Ohio, where authorities found thousands of rounds of ammunition and weapons. His mother called local police to express concerns about her son because of “recent conduct,” including firearms purchases and communications with “random” people online, according to court documents.

He was in custody, and his lawyer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Proper’s family also said he recently made “concerning statements,” including “making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook.”

When the Knox County sheriff’s officers arrived at the family home, they found thousands of rounds of ammunition, an assault-style rifle and a bullpup rifle — purchased June 5 — painted with an American flag, authorities said.

The sheriff’s office took Proper to a hospital for emergency admission “based on homicidal ideations,” FBI task force officer Christopher Betts wrote in court documents.

The next day, the sheriff’s office contacted the FBI.

Proper’s mother told law enforcement that her son had “recently begun interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based,” according to court documents.

After he was arrested, he identified the usernames of people in encrypted group chats, law enforcement said.

Federal authorities also arrested Daniel Eskridge, 32, of Missouri, charging him with conspiracy to commit murder after they searched his home over the weekend. According to chats reviewed by the FBI, Eskridge told members he was preparing his garage to be their “safe house” and was building a “bunker” under the floorboards of his shed.

Another suspect, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, is accused of sharing a screenshot that listed potential people for the group to target, including “1,” who the FBI says it believes is “likely identifiable with President Trump”; “2,” who the FBI says it believes is “likely referring to Vice President JD Vance”; “N,” who it believes was “referring to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”; and “Musk,” referring to Elon Musk.

...

Two men from California, Bryan Omar Roa and Michael Alan Thomas, were arrested Saturday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder after their homes were searched and evidence was found establishing their involvement, authorities said.

...

Roa’s family believed he intended to commit an act of violence during the trip because he had been increasingly shooting his weapons and there had been a marked change in his behavior, according to court documents.

“Family members also stated that within the last three months, Roa began spending more time with a new group of online friends,” FBI Special Agent Mark Prator said in court documents.

————

“FBI arrests 5 in alleged plot to attack White House UFC event with explosives-laden drones and guns” By Megan Lebowitz, Gary Grumbach, Michael Kosnar and Tom Winter; NBC News; 06/16/2026

“Five people have been arrested across the country and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, among other counts. Investigators recovered firearms, ammunition and encrypted text messages of 19 people suspected to have taken part, who shared maps and photos of the area and who talked about the need for escape routes after the attack, according to court documents.”

Five arrests in a plot to execute a mass casualty terror attack at the White House with at least 19 suspects involved. Five arrests is a start, but there’s clearly a much larger threat that needs to be handled. But perhaps the most disturbing detail we’ve learned is that the whole plot was apparently only discovered four days before the UFC event after the mother of the one of the suspects, 19 year old Tycen Proper, called the local police to express concern over the “random” people her son was interacting with online. There wasn’t some ongoing FBI investigation. This was sheer luck:

...
Law enforcement learned about the threat Wednesday, four days before the mixed martial arts party on the White House South Lawn, FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday on X. “And thanks to the rapid action of the FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold,” Patel wrote.

...

Among those arrested was Tycen Proper, 19, who was apprehended in Ohio, where authorities found thousands of rounds of ammunition and weapons. His mother called local police to express concerns about her son because of “recent conduct,” including firearms purchases and communications with “random” people online, according to court documents.

...

When the Knox County sheriff’s officers arrived at the family home, they found thousands of rounds of ammunition, an assault-style rifle and a bullpup rifle — purchased June 5 — painted with an American flag, authorities said.

...

The next day, the sheriff’s office contacted the FBI.
...

And as we should expect, one of the things that alarmed Proper’s mom was the “concerning statements” made by her son including “making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook.” Intriguingly, she went on to inform law enforcement that the online group her son recently started interacting with “was comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based.” So, at least on the surface, this online network is ostensibly some sort of radical violent Christian revolutionary group. In other words, this wasn’t Antifa. It’s also worth noting that this plot sounds A LOT like the plot Nikita Casap thought he was involved with, where attacks by that online network of extremists targeting figures like President Trump would hasten the collapse of the government. Blame would be pinned on Russia, with the goal of starting a US/Russian war. But Casap was immersed in Nazi Satanism. So when we see how the network behind this UFC event plot was apparently a “Christian-based” group of Hitler fans, it’s a reminder that Nazi accelerationist terror strategies aren’t limited to the Satanic wing of the broader movement:

...
Proper’s family also said he recently made “concerning statements,” including “making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook.”

...

Proper’s mother told law enforcement that her son had “recently begun interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based,” according to court documents.

After he was arrested, he identified the usernames of people in encrypted group chats, law enforcement said.
...

And as we can see from the following LA Magazine piece, Justice Department officials put the number of people involved in the plot at roughly two dozen, with an attack plan that involved first deploying armed explosive drones against the crowd on the White House lawn, with the goal of sending panicked spectators into the path of a firing squad. Snipers would also target high value targets like President Trump. That was the plan being organized by the Vanguards of the Old Guard TikTok group, which appears to be animated by an accelerationist desire to collapse society and rebuild it from scratch:

LA Magazine

Terror Plot To Attack White House UFC Event Thwarted

Two Riverside County men were allegedly among the five rounded up for a terrifying extremist plot to ‘jumpstart a revolution,’ by attacking the White House, Justice Department officials say

Michele McPhee
06/16/2026

FBI SWAT teams arrested five people – including two Riverside County men – in a series of coordinated raids across the country connected to a thwarted drone attack plot against White House UFC Freedom 250 event this past weekend, a terrifying plan that was spawned in part, prosecutors say, by fury at the Epstein files.

Roughly two dozen conspirators allegedly planned to deploy drones armed with explosives in and around the UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House lawn, which would send panicked spectators running into a firing squad, Justice Department officials said Tuesday. The group “planned to deploy snipers to fire upon high value targets within the fleeing crowd,” officials say.

******

The Californians, Bryan Omar Roa, 24, of Calimesa, and Michael Alan Thomas, 32, of Pinon Hills, were arrested on Saturday, the day before the fight, and have since made their initial court appearances in California’s Central District. Three other men have also been arrested. Others in an extremist TikTok group chat known as Vanguards of the Old Guard are being sought, officials say.

A search warrant executed on Roa’s home and vehicle led to the recovery on an AR-style rifle, a Glock 19 handgun, a tactical belt, an ammo can full of bullets, a two-way radio, and an infrared laser target pointer, court records show. Roa denied participating in the active murder conspiracy, but he reportedly admitted to investigators that he had planned to drive to Washington, D.C., to protest the UFC event.

Roa often practiced shooting with Thomas, who allegedly admitted his involvement in the plot to law enforcement when interviewed. Thomas said he also “encouraged others to take part in it.”

The terrifying and deadly plot unraveled, according to court records, when the parents of one of the conspirators in Ohio overheard his plans and called police. That man, 19-year-old Tycen Proper, used money he had received for his recent high school graduation to buy guns, tactical vests and thousands of rounds of ammunition for the attack, his parents told the FBI.

Proper’s father told investigators that he had met “random” people online and planned to leave the weekend of the UFC event to meet with the people he met online. He had been planning “recons” with these people, the father told authorities. Soon the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was fanning out across the country hunting members of Proper’s TikTok group, some of whom described themselves as ex-military. The chat called itself “Vanguard of the Old Guard,” and was about to launch a sophisticated attack on people they called “high value” targets.

The group, which included the friends from Riverside County, expressed the ideology that people involved with Jeffrey Epstein should be taken out, and were angry about Artificial Intelligence and its impact on small towns. “The members of the group stated that they wanted to protect the United States, which they believed was headed in the wrong direction,” the complaint said. “Members of the group believed that the United States needed to be torn down so that it could be rebuilt.”

...

————

“Terror Plot To Attack White House UFC Event Thwarted” by Michele McPhee; LA Magazine; 06/16/2026

” Roughly two dozen conspirators allegedly planned to deploy drones armed with explosives in and around the UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House lawn, which would send panicked spectators running into a firing squad, Justice Department officials said Tuesday. The group “planned to deploy snipers to fire upon high value targets within the fleeing crowd,” officials say.”

Roughly two dozen are suspected of being involved. With just five arrests. And when we see how the two California residents arrested were friends who often practiced shooting with each other, with one of the friends admitting that he also “encouraged others to take part in it,” it becomes apparent that the roughly two dozen estimate for the number of people involved might even be an undercount:

...
A search warrant executed on Roa’s home and vehicle led to the recovery on an AR-style rifle, a Glock 19 handgun, a tactical belt, an ammo can full of bullets, a two-way radio, and an infrared laser target pointer, court records show. Roa denied participating in the active murder conspiracy, but he reportedly admitted to investigators that he had planned to drive to Washington, D.C., to protest the UFC event.

Roa often practiced shooting with Thomas, who allegedly admitted his involvement in the plot to law enforcement when interviewed. Thomas said he also “encouraged others to take part in it.”
...

And when we see the apparent ideology of this group revolving around the notion that people involved with Jeffrey Epstein should be taken out and AI is destroying American towns, it also becomes apparent that this far right group might legitimately have a beef with the far right Trump administration. As we were recently reminded with the story of role Norwegian Nazi ‘Willy Tepes’ may have played in the online radicalization of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the far right goals of carrying out strategic political assassinations on figures like Donald Trump is far from new. Strategically assassinating ideologically aligned figures isn’t an unprecedented tactic, especially for accelerationist movements. But with the Trump administration’s blatant cover up of Epstein files and wholesale embrace of the AI oligarchy, it’s not hard to imagine that a number of far right groups really have turned against Trump in a very sincere way and really do view him as ‘the enemy’. That’s part of what makes this such a fascinating story. The grossly corrupt and hapless nature of the second Trump administration might actually be undermining the far right’s faith in Trump as an ally, at least among the Nazi ‘grassroots’. Most elite Nazis aren’t going to care about the fate of American small towns in the age of AI. But these guys do:

...
The Californians, Bryan Omar Roa, 24, of Calimesa, and Michael Alan Thomas, 32, of Pinon Hills, were arrested on Saturday, the day before the fight, and have since made their initial court appearances in California’s Central District. Three other men have also been arrested. Others in an extremist TikTok group chat known as Vanguards of the Old Guard are being sought, officials say.

...

The terrifying and deadly plot unraveled, according to court records, when the parents of one of the conspirators in Ohio overheard his plans and called police. That man, 19-year-old Tycen Proper, used money he had received for his recent high school graduation to buy guns, tactical vests and thousands of rounds of ammunition for the attack, his parents told the FBI.

Proper’s father told investigators that he had met “random” people online and planned to leave the weekend of the UFC event to meet with the people he met online. He had been planning “recons” with these people, the father told authorities. Soon the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was fanning out across the country hunting members of Proper’s TikTok group, some of whom described themselves as ex-military. The chat called itself “Vanguard of the Old Guard,” and was about to launch a sophisticated attack on people they called “high value” targets.

The group, which included the friends from Riverside County, expressed the ideology that people involved with Jeffrey Epstein should be taken out, and were angry about Artificial Intelligence and its impact on small towns. “The members of the group stated that they wanted to protect the United States, which they believed was headed in the wrong direction,” the complaint said. “Members of the group believed that the United States needed to be torn down so that it could be rebuilt.”
...

And as we’re going to see, it appears the suspected ring-leader of the plot to stoke a revolution, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, isn’t actually a US citizen. He’s someone who came to the US as a child and became obtained DACA status back in 2014:

Nebraska Public Media

Updated: Nebraska man was alleged ‘key ringleader’ in plot to attack White House UFC fight

By Molly Ashford
June 16, 2026, 11 a.m.

Federal prosecutors allege that a Nebraska man helped plan an attempted shooting and explosive drone attack at the White House UFC fight that took place on Sunday.

Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, who lives in Omaha, was charged via criminal complaint in federal court with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States. He appeared for an initial hearing Tuesday.

Alvarez is one of at least five people arrested in connection with the plot, according to reporting from CBS News. According to the complaint, the planned attack included snipers and explosive-laden drones, with the primary targets including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who did not attend the fight) and Elon Musk.

The complaint alleges that the attack was motivated by “ultra-religious and antigovernment sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.”

Investigators were tipped off to the plot after the family of 19-year-old Ohio man Tycen Proper became alarmed at his amassing of firearms and extensive communication with an online group. After Proper told his family that he planned to meet up with the online group last weekend, his family called the police, and a search warrant was executed at his home and electronic devices on June 11.

According to the complaint, the search revealed that Proper was communicating with a group on TikTok called “Vanguard of the Old.” The conversations then moved to Signal, an encrypted messaging app, where the plans were discussed in greater detail.

Investigators believe that Alvarez was known as ‘Shepherd’ on TikTok and Signal and was the “primary person” involved in the planning. Messages from ‘Shepherd’ included discussions of where snipers should be placed, the building of explosive drones and escape plans after the attack.

‘Shepherd’ also identified an abandoned Methodist church in the village of Western, Nebraska, as a “fall back location.” A photo was posted to Facebook on Monday of FBI agents searching the church.

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The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that Alvarez was in the country illegally, having come to the U.S. from Mexico as a child in 2001 on a tourist visa. He was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2014.

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“Updated: Nebraska man was alleged ‘key ringleader’ in plot to attack White House UFC fight” By Molly Ashford; Nebraska Public Media; 06/16/2026

“The complaint alleges that the attack was motivated by “ultra-religious and antigovernment sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.””

Ultra-religious and antigovernment sentiments. That’s the stated motive. Remarkably, we are told the suspected ring-leader behind this plot, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, is, himself, not actually a US citizen. Instead, he’s a someone who came the US from Mexico as a child and became a DACA recipient in 2014:

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Investigators believe that Alvarez was known as ‘Shepherd’ on TikTok and Signal and was the “primary person” involved in the planning. Messages from ‘Shepherd’ included discussions of where snipers should be placed, the building of explosive drones and escape plans after the attack.

‘Shepherd’ also identified an abandoned Methodist church in the village of Western, Nebraska, as a “fall back location.” A photo was posted to Facebook on Monday of FBI agents searching the church.

...

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that Alvarez was in the country illegally, having come to the U.S. from Mexico as a child in 2001 on a tourist visa. He was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2014.
...

And as the following article notes, Tycen Proper described Alvarez as “aggressive in tactical planning” and was apparently under the impression that Alvarez was ex-military. So was Alvarez a DACA recipient who served in the US military? That’s yet to be revealed. But it’s interesting to note that Alvarez conceived of a four ‘tier’ system for membership in the plot, with members being the put into different roles like those who were willing to put themselves in harm’s way; members who could be getaway drivers or drone operators; supply and logistics operators; and funders and influencers. The fact that there’s a “funders and influencers” ‘tier’ should raise significant questions about just who was actually leading this plot and was ultimately involved. So we have to ask, was Alvarez really the leader? Or just the guy being paid to lead it?:

CBS News

Feds reveal details of alleged plot to attack White House UFC event with explosive drones

By Sarah N. Lynch, Melissa Quinn, Jacob Rosen, Pat Milton, Kaia Hubbard
Updated on: June 16, 2026 / 7:41 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — The FBI said Tuesday that it disrupted an attempt to attack Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House. Court records detail an alleged plot to use small drones carrying explosives and snipers to target senior government officials and wealthy attendees.

Five people have been charged for their alleged roles in the scheme: Tycen Proper of Ohio, Daniel Eskridge of Missouri, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez of Nebraska, and Bryan Omar Roa and Michael Alan Thomas of California.

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The potential targets laid out in the court filings included President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Elon Musk. A number of elected officials were also named, including Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation.

The defendants have each been charged with at least one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Proper, 19, faces three additional charges, according to court filings.

Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that officials seized weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition and tactical gear from the suspects during the execution of search warrants. Sources said that no drones have actually been recovered. Use of the drones was believed to be in the discussion-and-research phases, the sources said.

Federal investigators became aware of the alleged plot based on a tip from Proper’s mother, who was concerned about his recent behavior, according to an affidavit submitted by an FBI agent in his case.

The alleged plot

The affidavit in the Proper case lays out the details of the alleged plot and the origins of how the FBI learned of it.

Proper told investigators that he began communicating with others via a TikTok group called “Vanguard of the Old” in March, whose members all said they wanted to protect the U.S. and believed the nation was headed in the wrong direction, according to the affidavit.

Communications among the group members continued on the encrypted messaging app Signal, where the FBI said they planned the attack for the UFC fight. There was one large chat, with approximately 19 individuals, dedicated to coordinating the attack, and smaller groups consisting of four or five users.

The FBI said discussions centered on the UFC event at the White House by early June. Eskridge allegedly said the group should obtain $1,300 to buy “drones and charges.”

The group was split up into tiers, ranging from “tier 1” to “tier 4.” The tiers included those who were willing to put themselves in harm’s way; members who could be getaway drivers or drone operators; supply and logistics operators; and funders and influencers.

The affidavit in Alvarez’s case said Proper identified a user known as “Shepherd” as the leader of the group. Proper “described him as aggressive in tactical planning” and said he believed him to be a former member of the military, according to the FBI.

The FBI included multiple messages from “Shepherd,” including maps of Washington, D.C., and instructions for carrying out the attack. The FBI said it traced a TikTok account back to Alvarez and identified him as “Shepherd.” Investigators said Alvarez devised the tier system.

The group’s plan to attack the UFC event involved staging a “demonstration” on the north side of the White House, the court filings said. The group would then fly drones “laden with unspecified explosive devices which would detonate over the north side of the UFC arena,” according to the filing in Proper’s case.

When the drones exploded, the group then planned to force attendees of the UFC event and “high value targets” to evacuate to the south, the affidavit said. Proper told investigators that the plan was for group members to “act as snipers and additional shooters,” shooting fight attendees and the “high value targets” as they fled from the explosions.

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“It was a serious threat,” U.S. Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn said during a briefing Tuesday morning. He said he could not provide too many details because it remains an active investigation, but said, “They were planning to attack the Freedom 250. ... There are still suspects at large, and we’re going to work it until everyone’s been identified.”

Quinn added, “The event itself, I am confident in saying, was never at risk due to the great investigative work.”

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“Feds reveal details of alleged plot to attack White House UFC event with explosive drones” By Sarah N. Lynch, Melissa Quinn, Jacob Rosen, Pat Milton, Kaia Hubbard; CBS News; 06/16/2026

“Communications among the group members continued on the encrypted messaging app Signal, where the FBI said they planned the attack for the UFC fight. There was one large chat, with approximately 19 individuals, dedicated to coordinating the attack, and smaller groups consisting of four or five users.”

So there were two Signal chat groups. A larger one involving 19 individuals and a smaller group of four to five users. What was the purpose of the smaller chat group and who was part of that group? We have no idea. But investigators have revealed the four ‘tiered’ system that Alvarez reportedly devised. A tier system that includes “funders and influencers”. Have any “funders” been identified?

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The group was split up into tiers, ranging from “tier 1” to “tier 4.” The tiers included those who were willing to put themselves in harm’s way; members who could be getaway drivers or drone operators; supply and logistics operators; and funders and influencers.

The affidavit in Alvarez’s case said Proper identified a user known as “Shepherd” as the leader of the group. Proper “described him as aggressive in tactical planning” and said he believed him to be a former member of the military, according to the FBI.

The FBI included multiple messages from “Shepherd,” including maps of Washington, D.C., and instructions for carrying out the attack. The FBI said it traced a TikTok account back to Alvarez and identified him as “Shepherd.” Investigators said Alvarez devised the tier system.
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And as we can see, the targets included a number of elected officials, including Senators Marsha Blackburn and Tom Cotton, both Republicans. This far right group appeared to have Republicans as their primary target:

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The potential targets laid out in the court filings included President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Elon Musk. A number of elected officials were also named, including Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation.

...

The group’s plan to attack the UFC event involved staging a “demonstration” on the north side of the White House, the court filings said. The group would then fly drones “laden with unspecified explosive devices which would detonate over the north side of the UFC arena,” according to the filing in Proper’s case.

When the drones exploded, the group then planned to force attendees of the UFC event and “high value targets” to evacuate to the south, the affidavit said. Proper told investigators that the plan was for group members to “act as snipers and additional shooters,” shooting fight attendees and the “high value targets” as they fled from the explosions.
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Remarkably, Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn, asserted that the event “was never at risk due to the great investigative work.” Again, the only reason this plot was reportedly uncovered was due to Tycen Proper’s relatives contacting the police:

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“It was a serious threat,” U.S. Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn said during a briefing Tuesday morning. He said he could not provide too many details because it remains an active investigation, but said, “They were planning to attack the Freedom 250. ... There are still suspects at large, and we’re going to work it until everyone’s been identified.”

Quinn added, “The event itself, I am confident in saying, was never at risk due to the great investigative work.”
...

And as we should expect, the Trump DACA status of the alleged ring-leader is the detail federal prosecutors are now publicly emphasizing, at the same time investigators acknowledge that additional suspects could be identified. How long before this gets spun as some sort of ‘illegal immigrant plot’?:

Newsweek

Alleged UFC 250 Attack Leader Abraham Alvarez Is Obama DACA Recipient—DHS

Billal Rahman
By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter

Published Jun 18, 2026 at 09:01 AM EDT
updated Jun 18, 2026 at 10:43 AM EDT

The alleged ringleader of a foiled plot targeting an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event at the White House is a Mexican national who received deportation relief under an Obama-era program after overstaying a tourist visa, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.

Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez entered the United States on a B‑2 visa but did not depart after it expired in December 2001, the DHS said in a press release on June 18. He was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2014, it added.

The FBI has accused the 31-year-old of Omaha, Nebraska, of leading a plan to attack the UFC “Freedom 250” event held on the White House grounds on June 14. The televised event drew thousands of attendees and included President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and other members of their family, secretaries of state and business leaders.

“This illegal alien from Mexico should never have been allowed in our country. He was the ringleader of a failed terror attack targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a press statement. “He and his co-conspirators now face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds. He will face justice and swiftly be removed from our country.”

The FBI assessed that Alvarez, also known as “Shepherd,” was responsible for planning, organizing, and directing the planned attack, allegedly posting in a group chat, “This is the best action I see. Position your teams in the purple dots (counter sniper and drones) Long range (circled area) (great shot) Easy out into the river.”

Kelly Steenbock, an attorney for Alvarez, told Newsweek her office does not comment on pending cases.

The investigation remains ongoing, and officials have said additional suspects could be identified. If convicted, Alvarez could face federal sentencing as well as removal proceedings under federal immigration law.

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“Alleged UFC 250 Attack Leader Abraham Alvarez Is Obama DACA Recipient—DHS” By Billal Rahman; Newsweek; 06/18/2026

“The FBI assessed that Alvarez, also known as “Shepherd,” was responsible for planning, organizing, and directing the planned attack, allegedly posting in a group chat, “This is the best action I see. Position your teams in the purple dots (counter sniper and drones) Long range (circled area) (great shot) Easy out into the river.””

As we can see, the FBI has concluded that Alvarez was indeed the leader of the group, responsible for planning, organizing, and directing the whole plot. Predictably, federal officials are publicly focusing on the alleged ringleader being a DACA recipient while ignoring the nearly two dozen co-conspirators who all appear to be US citizens. Or at least the co-conspirators who have been identified, but officials acknowledging that additional suspects could be identified:

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“This illegal alien from Mexico should never have been allowed in our country. He was the ringleader of a failed terror attack targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a press statement. “He and his co-conspirators now face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds. He will face justice and swiftly be removed from our country.”

...

The investigation remains ongoing, and officials have said additional suspects could be identified. If convicted, Alvarez could face federal sentencing as well as removal proceedings under federal immigration law.
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And that update on the still unfolding investigation into this plot brings us to another sadly predictable part of this story: the Secret Service is apparently livid with FBI director Kash Patel over his decision to announce the initial round of arrests, possibly thwarting the investigation into the rest of the network:

MS Now

Kash Patel ‘jumped the gun’ with announcement of UFC plot arrests, sources say

Secret Service officials are angered by the FBI director’s early morning social media post that was shared before some suspects were arrested.

By Carol Leonnig, Ken Dilanian, Marc Santia and Lisa Rubin
Jun. 16, 2026, 3:53 PM EDT

Secret Service officials are angered that FBI Director Kash Patel prematurely announced on Tuesday the details of a largely sealed and ongoing criminal investigation into an alleged plot to attack Sunday’s White House UFC event with drones, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Secret Service and FBI agents had been partnered on the investigation into a group of individuals discussing plans for a drone attack at the White House in the last week, and had discussed unsealing the case and making a joint announcement Tuesday afternoon, according to sources.

The problem with Patel’s social media announcement, the sources say, was that the case had been sealed in court and roughly 10 suspects had not yet been arrested and placed in custody at the time Patel shared his post. The people said Secret Service and FBI officials were surprised by Patel “jumping the gun.”

“We all woke up this morning to see this on Twitter,” said one administration official, who, like others, asked to speak confidentially to discuss sensitive matters.

The threat to the UFC event became known to the Secret Service and FBI in the last week when a relative of one of the suspects contacted local police in the Cincinnati area, according to two people briefed on the probe, and reported that their relative was talking about engaging in a vague plot in Washington.

An advanced threat interdiction team at the Secret Service, with the help of the FBI, began seeking a subpoena for an encrypted Signal chat thread and was able to identify the plot being planned and some of the people discussing using drones and possible snipers to attack the UFC fight event at the White House’s South Lawn.

Authorities then arrested one suspect, 19-year-old Tycen Proper of Ohio, on June 13 and moved immediately to seal the case so the FBI and Secret Service could continue investigating, identifying and arresting additional suspects.

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Before the UFC event, the Secret Service had dramatically increased its security plans as a precaution and issued an alert to its law enforcement partners to be on the lookout for people with drones in downtown Washington and other identifying information.

Matt Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, appeared to allude to Patel’s premature announcement in a Tuesday news conference but did not use his name and said the Secret Service made a conscious decision not to reveal the existence of the probe prematurely.

“I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s ‘Don’t choke on your own smoke,’” he said. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”

He said he was choosing not to discuss extensive details of the case because at least some charges remained sealed and ongoing.

Patel’s public announcement of the probe fits a trend in which the FBI Director has often rushed to make announcements that credit the FBI with stopping a possible attack or catching a criminal suspect in a high-profile case.

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“Kash Patel ‘jumped the gun’ with announcement of UFC plot arrests, sources say” By Carol Leonnig, Ken Dilanian, Marc Santia and Lisa Rubin; MS Now; 06/16/2026

“The problem with Patel’s social media announcement, the sources say, was that the case had been sealed in court and roughly 10 suspects had not yet been arrested and placed in custody at the time Patel shared his post. The people said Secret Service and FBI officials were surprised by Patel “jumping the gun.””

Kash Patel just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He just had to go onto social media while roughly 10 suspects had yet to be arrested. And as we can see, with authorities only learning about the plot four days before the attack, it’s not like there was a lot of time for investigators to establish the identities of the plotters. A Signal chat thread was targeted where discussion of the plot was happening. But the first arrest only happened on June 13, the day before the planned attack, and that was the arrest of Tycen Proper. And it was sealed immediately after his arrest that the case was seal so the FBI and Secret Service could continue investigating, identifying and arresting additional suspects. Kash Patel was effectively acting as a public warning system for the broader plot:

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The threat to the UFC event became known to the Secret Service and FBI in the last week when a relative of one of the suspects contacted local police in the Cincinnati area, according to two people briefed on the probe, and reported that their relative was talking about engaging in a vague plot in Washington.

An advanced threat interdiction team at the Secret Service, with the help of the FBI, began seeking a subpoena for an encrypted Signal chat thread and was able to identify the plot being planned and some of the people discussing using drones and possible snipers to attack the UFC fight event at the White House’s South Lawn.

Authorities then arrested one suspect, 19-year-old Tycen Proper of Ohio, on June 13 and moved immediately to seal the case so the FBI and Secret Service could continue investigating, identifying and arresting additional suspects.

...

Matt Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, appeared to allude to Patel’s premature announcement in a Tuesday news conference but did not use his name and said the Secret Service made a conscious decision not to reveal the existence of the probe prematurely.

“I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s ‘Don’t choke on your own smoke,’” he said. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”
...

Also keep in mind that we are only told that 5 had been arrested and roughly two dozen are known to have been involved, so if there were 10 suspects yet to be arrested that also suggests there were roughly 10 people who have yet to be identified and who now know the whole thing was busted and they had better cover their tracks.

What would have happened if Tycen Proper’s family hadn’t called authorities? Were we really this close to having the UFC event turn into a mass terror event with dozens of people behind it? Based on available evidence, yes, we were that close. And based on the pretty mainstream grievances of the plotters — Epstein file, AI, and the direction of the country — it’s hard to imagine this is going to be the last one. Although it isn’t hard to imagine this will be the last one seemingly led by a DACA recipient.