These critters were carrying the Sin Nombre variant of hantavirus, which can be spread from rodents to humans but not from one person to another

By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron

May21, 2026

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hantavirus-found-in-shocking-number-of-pacific-northwest-rodents/?utm_campaign=sprinklr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&fbclid=IwT01FWAR9zSpleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR6PAJ7o2VpSTZNBF_6Y1shtsNiQ4dz7kv6cCgRyspHKJLePDYBiknbmUhALhQ_aem_QpW0jUmwcpfI-ozPnQMm8g

A surprising number of rodents captured during a recent study in the Pacific Northwest were carriers of the Sin Nombre virus, a type of hantavirus that belongs to the same family as the Andes type behind an ongoing outbreak that has so far killed three people and sickened several others.

The number of rodent carriers were higher than previously suspected, says Stephanie Seifert, an assistant professor at Washington State University and co-author of the study, which was published in late April in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The research was conducted in the summer of 2023, predating the current hantavirus outbreak, which began on a cruise ship in April. The researchers collected fecal and tissue samples from a total of 189 rodents of various kinds, including several types of voles, mice and chipmunks, on farms and in other areas in eastern Washington State and western Idaho. The samples were tested for hantavirus antibodies, which can indicate if a rodent has ever carried the virus, and for viral RNA, a sign of active infection.

The results showed that around 10 percent of the animals had Sin Nombre at the time the samples were taken, while almost 30 percent had detectable antibodies.

Sin Nombre is not transmissible from human to human, unlike the Andes virus at the center of the cruise ship outbreak. Instead people become infected when they are exposed to rodents and their excretions, such as their feces and urine. That limitation has made Sin Nombre cases scarce, but it is still deadly: The virus was first identified in 1993 after 11 people died and almost two dozen more got sick in the Four Corners region of the U.S. It has a mortality rate between 35 and 50 percent.

Human cases of hantavirus are relatively rare in the U.S., with most cases occurring in the Southwest. But a disproportionate number of the total cases have been seen in the Pacific Northwest: Of the 864 cases in the U.S. between 1993 and 2022, 109 were in Idaho, Oregon or Washington State, according to the study. Even so, few studies have examined how common the viruses are in the area’s rodents. That makes it hard to say if the number of rodents carrying the virus there has grown over the years, Seifert says.

Still, climate change may play a role in the virus’s spread, Seifert says. Wetter winters can lead to increased vegetation, which, in turn, can support a larger rodent population. Warmer winters can also cause prolonged breeding seasons and improved odds of surviving the cold, which can also boost the population. The way humans use the land can also increase their exposure to the animals. Seifert notes that farmers in the area have begun using techniques that don’t employ tilling, which would scare the critters off.

“We know tilling is disruptive to rodents, which flee the croplands to surrounding refuge, including rural homes and outbuildings,” she says. “Will conversion to no-till lead to fewer human-rodent interactions or support more robust and diverse rodent communities that continuously expand outward to neighboring homes and support a higher baseline prevalence in [Sin Nombre virus]? I don’t know the answer.” But more research could promote a better understanding, she adds.

Whether such a study will take place is an open question, however. Seifert says her team’s current funding for the project has run out.

“If there is anything folks in the U.S. should take from this, it’s that expertise on infectious disease systems is not like a faucet that you can turn on and off when convenient,” she says. “If you want hantavirus or [Ebola-causing virus]experts to be here, ready to jump into action with answers and solutions, then we need to fund our public health research and basic science.”

But it’s important to keep in mind that groups like 764 or the Com aren’t necessarily only inspire acts of random terrorism. They’re focused on targeted political assassinations too. For example, recall Nikita Casap and the presidential assassination plot that he was enlisted into through members of the Maniac Murder Cult. These are accelerationist movements. Targeted destabilizing political assassinations are very much on the agenda. Which brings us to a recent update about an investigation into another act of high profile political violence: the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July of 2024 by Thomas Matthew Crooks. As we’ve seen, while the evidence strongly pointed towards Crooks as being animated by a far right political ideology, what was never clear was his motive for the actual shooting.

And yet, we did sort of get a clue regarding Crooks’s motive back in November of 2025, when Tucker Carlson released a video about the investigation that raised a host of new questions and pushed a narrative about Crooks undergoing some sort of political transformation into an anti-Trump leftist back in 2020. The narrative was based on an analysis of Crooks’s voluminous political online posts from a “Tomcrooks2178” Youtube account in 2019 and 2020, when Crooks was just 15–17 years old, and seemingly ignored by the FBI in its investigation. As this right-wing analysis observed, Crooks seemed to start off as vociferously pro-Trump in the 2019 comments, including a December 2019 call to “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS”. But that sentiment had shifted by early 2020, with Crooks growing increasingly critical of Trump’s pandemic response. It was a narrative that suggested Crooks had a political transformation into a left-wing sympathizer. But that narrative left out the fact that Crooks’s Youtube account went silent shortly after a series of interactions in the Youtube comments section with a member of the Norwegian neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement going by the name “Willy Tepes”, and who was very clear in his desire to promote assassinations across the political spectrum. And as we also saw, it was 2023 when Crooks started using a VPN to hide his internet traffic but also started using the encrypted email service Mailfence based out of Belgium. And that’s kind of where this investigation was left stuck. With the revelation about a series of ‘Willy Tepes’ interactions in August of 2020 touting the necessity of political assassination, shortly before Crooks’s online comments went quiet.

Well, it turns out ‘Willy Tepes’ decided to do an interview with the Daily Mail, where he confirms that his identity is that of Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud, a Norwegian member of the Nordic Resistance Movement who has been very prolific in his online promotion of terroristic violence over the years, earning him the label the ‘Osama bin Laden of the Nazi underworld.’ Hjelmerud insists he had no additional contact with Crooks after their brief series of Youtube comment interactions in August of 2020, while also suggesting that the Butler, PA, shooting was part of a deep state plot using a patsy to boosts Trump’s popularity.

And while it’s possible that Hjelmerud isn’t lying when he claims he had no additional contact with Crooks, it’s worth keeping in mind that Hjelmerud is part of an international network of neo-Nazis who are aggressively making connections with extremists around the world. In other words, there’s no reason to assume Hjelmerud was the only person in this extremist network how was in contact with Crooks. Especially when we know Crooks was using the Mailfence encrypted email service but still have no idea who he was communicating with.

In fact, as we’ll see in a 2021 piece below about the internationalist nature of the Nordic Resistance Movement, the group, which as estimated to have around 150–300 active members and many more supporters, actually split in August of 2019, with several leading members including the founder Klas Lund leaving the group to form Nordisk Styrka (Nordic Strength), a group even more elitist, violent, and clandestine. This split came six months after a March 2019 ruling by the Finnish Supreme Court that banned the Nordic Resistance Movement. So while we know Crooks was in contact with a prominent member of the Nordic Resistance Movement, we have to ask if he was in contact with Nordisk Styrka too.

It’s also worth recalling how, in October of 2019, 40 House Democrats submitted a letter to the State Department calling for the designation of both Azov and Nordic Resistance Movement, along with the UK-based National Action, as terrorist organizations. 2019 was rough year for the Nordic Resistance Movement, legally speaking.

Interestingly, as we’ll see, it was in the early months of 2019 that a delegation of Finnish Nordic Resistance Movement members traveled to Kyiv to visit with the Azov Regiment. Which isn’t the first time we’ve heard about links between the groups. Recall how, back in March of 2018, Azov’s “international secretary”, Olena Semenyaka, was interviewed by a Nordic Resistance Movement member and complained about how the Ukrainian government was hindering Azov’s attempt to bring in foreign recruits for the then-civil war, expressing hopes of creating a foreign legion someday. And Azov is just one of a number of European neo-Nazi organizations the Nordic Resistance Movement has been networking with in recent years. Which, again, is part of the reason we should really be asking who else Crooks may have been secretly in contact with.

Could Crooks have possibly been in contact with Azov? It’s a question we have to ask, in part because of who else unambiguous had ties to Azov: the second would-be Trump assassin of 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh. Did we have two Azov-connected near-assassination attempts on Trump in the span of just a couple of months in 2024? Maybe. We know at least one of them was Azov-connected.

But there’s another network here to keep in mind when considering the extremist links to the Nordic Resistance Movement: 764 or other accelerationist extremist groups like Atomwaffen. Because it appears that, between 2011 and 2017, around 20 members of Nordic Resistance Movement were also users of the Iron March online forum. And as we’ve seen, it was Iron March that played a key role in the popularization of both nihilistic violent satanism and James Mason’s accelerationist tome SIEGE and the rise of groups like Atomwaffen during this period. Was Crooks in contact with 764-style online nihilistic accelerationist communities? We still don’t know, and probably won’t even know for sure. But as more and more evidence slowly emerges, the more it points towards Crooks having the kind of far right accelerationist motives we might expect from a member of Atomwaffen. Or a member of 764. Or maybe a member of the Nordic Resistance Movement. Or their fellow travelers in Azov. Or maybe all of the above. This isn’t an either/or situation:

ABC7 Chicago

Teen suspects in San Diego Islamic Center shooting could be tied to online extremist groups

By Mark Rivera and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Tom Jones

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 7:08PM

CHICAGO (WLS) — For months, the ABC7 I‑Team has been reporting on sadistic online groups that sow chaos in communities across the globe. Sources tell ABC News the now-dead San Diego Islamic Center shooting suspects may have been connected to similar nihilistic violent extremism online. Those connections should have triggered immediate intervention according to a former Department of Homeland Security expert.

“As with most of these cases, these people were on the radar screen, meaning that their behaviors were being noticed, and often those behaviors of concern were being reported,” said John Cohen, Former Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary for Counterterrorism.

...

Sources say last year police in nearby Chula Vista made contact with one of the suspected shooters, Caleb Vazquez, who was then a juvenile, after someone who knew him raised concerns he was interested in extremist ideology and mass-casualty attacks.

An officer reviewed Vazquez’s social media accounts, allegedly finding neo-Nazi rhetoric.

But sources say the concerns did not rise to the level of an arrest and it is unclear whether there was any follow-up.

“The law enforcement organization that receives that information needs to not just determine whether there is an arrestable offense that’s taken place, but they need to conduct a threat assessment,” said Cohen.

The I‑Team recently traveled to US Secret Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., profiling the work of the National Threat Assessment Center whose research is designed to prevent targeted violence like the shooting in San Diego. NTAC trains law enforcement agencies, schools and communities across the country, including in the Chicago area, to identify troubling behaviors and intervene before it’s too late.

...

Investigators say they’ve now seized more than 30 firearms from two homes connected to the teen attackers.

———–

“Teen suspects in San Diego Islamic Center shooting could be tied to online extremist groups” By Mark Rivera and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Tom Jones; ABC7 Chicago; 03/20/2026

“For months, the ABC7 I‑Team has been reporting on sadistic online groups that sow chaos in communities across the globe. Sources tell ABC News the now-dead San Diego Islamic Center shooting suspects may have been connected to similar nihilistic violent extremism online. Those connections should have triggered immediate intervention according to a former Department of Homeland Security expert.”

It would hardly be a surprise to learn that the San Diego Islamic Center suspects were fans of 764 or a similar nihilistic online community. It would almost be a surprise if they weren’t at this point. And while we don’t have validation of what these sources are telling reporters, it does sound like at least one of the suspected shooters, Caleb Vazquez, was investigated just last year someone tipped off the police about his interest mass-casualty attacks, with an officer discovering neo-Nazi rhetoric in after a review of his social media accounts. It’s pretty clear the internet was playing a significant role. Was he encouraged by an online community to carry out this attack? We don’t know at this point, but, again, it would hardly be a surprise:

...
Sources say last year police in nearby Chula Vista made contact with one of the suspected shooters, Caleb Vazquez, who was then a juvenile, after someone who knew him raised concerns he was interested in extremist ideology and mass-casualty attacks.

An officer reviewed Vazquez’s social media accounts, allegedly finding neo-Nazi rhetoric.

But sources say the concerns did not rise to the level of an arrest and it is unclear whether there was any follow-up.
...

And that update on the San Diego Islamic Center shooting brings us to another recent update about an ongoing investigation into the motives of another high profile shooting: the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt of July 20224. An assassination attempt that was both preceded by a cascade of ‘security failures’ by the Secret Service and also followed up with a cascade of ‘investigative irregularities’. And as we saw, one of those investigative irregularities had to do with the FBI’s initial insistence that Thomas Matthew Crooks’s social media history showed no signs of extremism. And yet, it was Tucker Carlson who revealed in November of 2025 that Crooks had a Youtube account that directly interacted with a Norwegian neo-Nazi, ‘Willy Tepes’, back in August of 2019, shortly before Crooks went silent on social media, with the two sharing sentiments about the necessity of political assassinations in the YouTube comments section. Well, it turns out ‘Willy Tepes’ decided to do an interview with the Daily Mail, revealing himself to be Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud, a Norwegian member of the Nordic Resistance Movement, and someone who has been dubbed the ‘Osama bin Laden of the Nazi underworld’:

The Daily Mail

EXCLUSIVE Mystery online figure who contacted Trump shooter Thomas Crooks is finally UNMASKED... and his messages raise chilling questions about Butler

By DANA KENNEDY, SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER
Published: 11:55 EDT, 11 May 2026 | Updated: 11:56 EDT, 11 May 2026

The shadowy figure known as ‘Willy Tepes’ who made contact with wannabe Trump assassin Thomas Crooks is 55-year-old Norwegian neo-Nazi Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud, he confirmed exclusively to the Daily Mail.

...

Hjelmerud, who the Daily Mail learned is married with children and lives in Spydeberg, an Oslo suburb, reached out to Crooks four years before the attempt on President Donald Trump’s life at an event in Butler, Pennsylvania, after Crooks tagged Tepes in a YouTube comment section of a California gun control-related video.

‘If a gun and a badge is all that is needed,’ Hjelmerud told Crooks, ‘then authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun.

‘We have more guns than they do ;) There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you better just get used to the idea.’

Crooks’s YouTube went dark shortly thereafter, and he was deemed to have no other social media presence.

Hjelmerud, however, continued to freely post inflammatory, violent, often antisemitic messages on the Telegram app — as recently as last week — where he’s contributed between 4,000 and 5,000 posts since 2021.

He called for ‘drone swarms and assassins’ and intentions to kill ‘every single leader, politician, media personality and Jews.’

Dubbed the ‘Osama bin Laden of the Nazi underworld,’ the Norwegian even singled out Trump in one post, saying ‘Thank you Mr Trump. Those words will be used to hang you!’

Hjelmerud is a proud member of the neo-Nazi group, Nordic Resistance Movement — and is reportedly missing two fingers on his right hand possibly due to his interest in weaponry.

Investigators and online researchers have questioned whether Crooks may have been influenced by the Norwegian’s hate-spewing rhetoric on Telegram or some other app, though Hjelmerud disavowed any relationship with Crooks beyond brief comments between the two seen online.

‘No,’ he told the Daily Mail when asked if he and Crooks moved their online interaction to another, more untraceable app like Telegram after their communication in 2020.

‘I believe it was a US intelligence operation using a patsy to boost Trump’s popularity,’ he said. ‘Crooks was not censored but I was. YouTube does not allow calls for violence.’

Hjelmerud also downplayed his contact with and knowledge of Crooks in his text messages with the Daily Mail, calling it a ‘nothingburger.’

...

Hjelmerud’s admission comes as Helen Comperatore, the widow of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter killed at the Butler rally, and Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R‑Florida) have said separately in recent days that they believe the Trump rally shooting was an ‘inside job.’

He was on police radar at least as far back as 2022 when a Norwegian antifascist website identified him as a member of the NRM, a disseminator of Nazi propaganda, and said cops had at one point seized firearms that he had stored at home.

NRM was designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department one month before Crooks shot Trump — and the official designation was published into the federal register on July 9, 2024, just days before the shooting.

...

Many don’t believe the official version of the incident, especially since the FBI originally said Crooks had almost no online digital footprint — and certainly did not disclose that Crooks exhibited violent, radical tendencies online.

The FBI then had to walk that back in November 2025 when Tucker Carlson released a documentary ‘Who is Thomas Crooks?’ on November 14 with extensive and authenticated proof of Crooks’ radical online presence — and revealed the existence of ‘Willy Tepes’ for the first time.

Carlson said in the video that a source was able to retrieve Crooks’ social media accounts from his Google drive account after many if not all of them had been wiped off YouTube.

Right after Carlson’s video went up, on the same day, FBI Director Kash Patel released a statement describing what he said was an extensive investigation into ‘nearly 500,000 digital files’ from ’13 seized digital devices’ as part of the Crooks case.

The FBI also created what it called the ‘FBI Rapid Response’ on X in response to Carlson’s video.

In one of its first posts it wrote: ‘This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint ever.’

But a community note added to the post pointed out that during a Senate hearing shortly after the assassination attempt, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate did vaguely disclose a social media account believed to be associated with Crooks but went on to describe a ‘general absence of other information to date from social media.’

The FBI’s handling of the case has been confusing from the start.

On November 17, 2025, three days after Carlson’s video aired, Patel, then FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and a senior FBI official sat down with Fox News to reiterate that Crooks acted alone — and issued an official FBI statement that appeared to be from their website but has only ever been available on the Fox News website.

The FBI admitted that a Willy Tepes had mentioned Crooks in four YouTube comments but said that Crooks himself had never directly communicated with Tepes.

That statement was disproven by the discovery of a YouTube video comment on August 5, 2020 showing Crooks responding to Tepes in a lengthy post that included this statement:

‘IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building (and) set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders and try to assassinate them.’

Three weeks ago, an online activist organization called Citizens Commission released a video called ‘Who is Willy Tepes?’

It tracked Tepes’ full digital footprint, infiltrated the extremist Telegram channels he was active in, and recovered thousands of his messages — many of which explicitly encouraged political violence, including assassinations.

Citizens Commission used an online tracking tool, TGDB, to parse most of Tepes’ roughly 5,000 Telegram messages in 83 different channels on the app — the first one dating back to May 16, 2021.

‘What I don’t understand is how this guy is still able to keep posting violent stuff if the investigation into Crooks was thorough,’ said a spokesman for the group.

‘How was this Tepes character missed? Or if they knew about him why did they omit it in speaking about the investigation?

...

Comperatore’s widow, Helen, made it clear this week that she does not believe the official account either.

‘If you think that kid just got out of bed and went and shot the president and shot my husband you’re batshit crazy,’ she told the Daily Mail Monday.

Comperatore said she believes that two people ‘high up’ at the federal level who were there during the Biden Administration and are still in their positions, are responsible in some way for the assassination attempt.

‘I will find out what happened to him and I will continue focusing on this until the day I die.’

————-

“EXCLUSIVE Mystery online figure who contacted Trump shooter Thomas Crooks is finally UNMASKED... and his messages raise chilling questions about Butler” By DANA KENNEDY; The Daily Mail; 05/11/2026

“Hjelmerud, who the Daily Mail learned is married with children and lives in Spydeberg, an Oslo suburb, reached out to Crooks four years before the attempt on President Donald Trump’s life at an event in Butler, Pennsylvania, after Crooks tagged Tepes in a YouTube comment section of a California gun control-related video.”

It was Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud who first reached out to Thomas Matthew Crooks as ‘Willy Tepes’ back in August of 2020 in the Youtube comments section. We already knew he was a member of the Nordic Resistance Movement. But now we know his name and the fact that he’s a highly prolific online provocateur who has spent years promoting a strategy of targeted assassinations. He’s even been dubbed the ‘Osama bin Laden of the Nazi underworld.’ He has such a prolific pro-terrorism online in recent years we almost have to ask which other prominent shooters has he also interacted with and possibly influenced. Keep in mind that Hjelmerud presumably wasn’t just promoting targeted political assassinations. The kind of accelerationist Nazism he promotes would be very on board with mass shooting sprees:

...
‘If a gun and a badge is all that is needed,’ Hjelmerud told Crooks, ‘then authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun.

‘We have more guns than they do ;) There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you better just get used to the idea.’

Crooks’s YouTube went dark shortly thereafter, and he was deemed to have no other social media presence.

Hjelmerud, however, continued to freely post inflammatory, violent, often antisemitic messages on the Telegram app — as recently as last week — where he’s contributed between 4,000 and 5,000 posts since 2021.

He called for ‘drone swarms and assassins’ and intentions to kill ‘every single leader, politician, media personality and Jews.’

Dubbed the ‘Osama bin Laden of the Nazi underworld,’ the Norwegian even singled out Trump in one post, saying ‘Thank you Mr Trump. Those words will be used to hang you!’

Hjelmerud is a proud member of the neo-Nazi group, Nordic Resistance Movement — and is reportedly missing two fingers on his right hand possibly due to his interest in weaponry.
...

And let’s not forget that the only reason there’s any discussion at all about Crooks’s interactions with ‘Willy Tepes’ was due to a video released by Tucker Carlson back in November, when the interactions of Crooks’s Youtube account with Tepes was flagged. It was only after Carlson’s video that the FBI seemed to suddenly start an investigation into ‘nearly 500,000 digital files’ from ’13 seized digital devices’ involved with the Crooks investigation:

...
Many don’t believe the official version of the incident, especially since the FBI originally said Crooks had almost no online digital footprint — and certainly did not disclose that Crooks exhibited violent, radical tendencies online.

The FBI then had to walk that back in November 2025 when Tucker Carlson released a documentary ‘Who is Thomas Crooks?’ on November 14 with extensive and authenticated proof of Crooks’ radical online presence — and revealed the existence of ‘Willy Tepes’ for the first time.

Carlson said in the video that a source was able to retrieve Crooks’ social media accounts from his Google drive account after many if not all of them had been wiped off YouTube.

Right after Carlson’s video went up, on the same day, FBI Director Kash Patel released a statement describing what he said was an extensive investigation into ‘nearly 500,000 digital files’ from ’13 seized digital devices’ as part of the Crooks case.
...

Adding to the FBI’s suspicious behavior around this case is the fact that, three days after the Carlson video aired, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and a senior FBI official issued an official FBI statement that appeared to be from the the FBI’s website but has only ever been available on Fox News’s website. And then there’s the FBI’s claims that Crooks never responded to Tepes, which also isn’t true. The one time Crooks responded, it was to share his opinion that terrorism style attacks were the only option for fighting the government:

...
The FBI also created what it called the ‘FBI Rapid Response’ on X in response to Carlson’s video.

In one of its first posts it wrote: ‘This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint ever.’

But a community note added to the post pointed out that during a Senate hearing shortly after the assassination attempt, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate did vaguely disclose a social media account believed to be associated with Crooks but went on to describe a ‘general absence of other information to date from social media.’

The FBI’s handling of the case has been confusing from the start.

On November 17, 2025, three days after Carlson’s video aired, Patel, then FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and a senior FBI official sat down with Fox News to reiterate that Crooks acted alone — and issued an official FBI statement that appeared to be from their website but has only ever been available on the Fox News website.

The FBI admitted that a Willy Tepes had mentioned Crooks in four YouTube comments but said that Crooks himself had never directly communicated with Tepes.

That statement was disproven by the discovery of a YouTube video comment on August 5, 2020 showing Crooks responding to Tepes in a lengthy post that included this statement:

‘IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building (and) set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders and try to assassinate them.’
...

And then there’s the remarkable overlap in Hjelmerud, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, and Helen Comperatore, who all suspect the assassination attempt involved some sort of Deep State operation and ‘inside job’. And while it’s certainly the case that the Secret Service’s security failures were extensive enough to warrant serious suspicion of some sort of ‘inside job’, it’s rather notable how Comperatore believes responsibility lies with two people ‘high up’ at the federal level who were there during the Biden Administration and are still in their positions. It’s going to be interesting to see if Comperatore’s suspicions ever start to include suspicions over why those responsible for the assassination attempt retained their positions with the Trump administration. It’s not as if this has been an administration hesitant to fire people:

...
Investigators and online researchers have questioned whether Crooks may have been influenced by the Norwegian’s hate-spewing rhetoric on Telegram or some other app, though Hjelmerud disavowed any relationship with Crooks beyond brief comments between the two seen online.

‘No,’ he told the Daily Mail when asked if he and Crooks moved their online interaction to another, more untraceable app like Telegram after their communication in 2020.

‘I believe it was a US intelligence operation using a patsy to boost Trump’s popularity,’ he said. ‘Crooks was not censored but I was. YouTube does not allow calls for violence.’

Hjelmerud also downplayed his contact with and knowledge of Crooks in his text messages with the Daily Mail, calling it a ‘nothingburger.’

...

Hjelmerud’s admission comes as Helen Comperatore, the widow of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter killed at the Butler rally, and Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R‑Florida) have said separately in recent days that they believe the Trump rally shooting was an ‘inside job.’

...

Comperatore’s widow, Helen, made it clear this week that she does not believe the official account either.

‘If you think that kid just got out of bed and went and shot the president and shot my husband you’re batshit crazy,’ she told the Daily Mail Monday.

Comperatore said she believes that two people ‘high up’ at the federal level who were there during the Biden Administration and are still in their positions, are responsible in some way for the assassination attempt.

‘I will find out what happened to him and I will continue focusing on this until the day I die.’
...

And then we get this remarkable coincidence: Hjelmerud’s Nordic Resistance Movement was designated a terrorist organization by the US State Department a month before the Butler shooting, which was only published on July 9, 2024, four days before:

...
He was on police radar at least as far back as 2022 when a Norwegian antifascist website identified him as a member of the NRM, a disseminator of Nazi propaganda, and said cops had at one point seized firearms that he had stored at home.

NRM was designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department one month before Crooks shot Trump — and the official designation was published into the federal register on July 9, 2024, just days before the shooting.
...

So with Hjelmerud openly talking about how he communicated with Crooks, while denying he had any ongoing communications with Crooks, brings us to the following 2021 article describe the internationalist nature of Hjelmerud’s Nordic Resistance Movement. A group with a focus on creating an international fascist network, with ties to groups that include the Azov Regiment. Which, in turn, should raise serious question about who else from this international network Crooks may have been in contact with in the years leading up to the shooting. We know Crooks was in contact with someone using the Belgian-based encrypted Mailfence email service. But we still have no idea who that may have been. Was Crooks in secret communication with Hjelmerud? Another Nordic Resistance Movement member? Or maybe one of the group’s many fellow travelers:

Belltower News

The Pan-European “Ikea Fascism” of Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen

The Nordic Resistance Movement has an ambitious aim: to establish a pan-Scandinavian neo-Nazi state. The movement has chapters in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, and is well-networked internationally. It is responsible for numerous attacks and murders in Nordic countries in recent years. But the movement is in crisis: In Sweden, the group has split in two and in Finland, the NMR was banned by the Supreme Court last year.

Nicholas Potter 6. Januar 2021

This article was first published in German.

Jyväskylä, 2013: Three neo-Nazis stab a man in the Finnish student city after they are denied entry to an event on right-wing extremism at the city library. Stockholm, 2013: a peaceful anti-racist demonstration in the suburb of Kärrtorp is attacked by 40 armed neo-Nazis. They throw bottles and fireworks at demonstrators. Gothenburg, 2016: Two men carry out a bomb attack on the Syndikalistiskt Forum, a left-wing info store and antifascist hangout. Attacks on two asylum centres follow, one man is seriously injured. Helsinki, 2016: A Finnish neo-Nazi kicks an anti-racist activist to the ground. He dies six days later from head injuries. Oslo, 2019: Two neo-Nazis hijack an ambulance with an Uzi and shotgun and hit passers-by. Jämsä, 2020: Two right-wing extremists visit a local politician of the radical populist-right Finns Party at home and attack him with a hammer. He suffers broken ribs and head wounds. The authorities treat the attack as attempted murder.

Behind all of these attacks lies a pan-Scandinavian neo-Nazi network: the Nordic Resistance Movement, in Swedish Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen, abbreviated as NMR. The movement was founded in Sweden in 1997 by the neo-Nazi Klas Lund as Svenska Motståndsrörelsen, and later renamed to the more-inclusive Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen. Lund was already a well-known face in the Swedish far right – as a leading member of the violent neo-Nazi group Vitt Ariskt Motstånd (White Aryan Resistance).

Since then, chapters of the NMR have emerged in Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark, all of which are also called the Nordic Resistance Movement in their respective languages. Internationally, the group is often referred to by the English translation of their name. Their goal: to establish a Nordic neo-Nazi state for “white people”. Countless racist and homophobic acts of violence, attacks, and even some murders against perceived “political opponents” can be attributed to the movement. However, the NMR network is currently in the midst of a crisis: In Finland, the group was banned in 2019, and in Sweden, the movement is now split after a strategic dispute over the political direction of the group. Nevertheless, the NMR remains a very real threat.

“From 2015 to 2019, the NMR had a leading role in the Swedish far-right”, explains Morgan Finnsiö, a far-right researcher at the anti-racist Expo Foundation in Stockholm in interview with Belltower.News. “Their focus on violence, their openly Nazi ideology, their almost bureaucratic organisation, and their prolific propaganda output set the benchmark in the far-right scene.” In 2019, several leading activists including movement founder Klas Lund left the NMR to form the group Nordisk Styrka (Nordic Strength), a self-proclaimed paramilitary “fighting organisation” that is said to be more clandestine, elitist and radical than the NMR. Other new far-right groups have also emerged in Sweden, with a less overtly far-right outward appearance. “Even if these groups challenge the NMR’s monopoly on power, it remains the most dangerous and important far-right actor in Sweden”, Finnsiö concludes.

Propaganda rounds and parliamentary ambitions

Among the NMR’s various activities are the usual far-right hobbies: martial arts training, paramilitary exercises, walks in the woods with their brothers in arms, and marches in uniform. Distributing their propaganda also plays an important role: local chapters of the NMR plan, for example, outings to other towns where they spend hours sticking stickers, handing out leaflets, hanging banners and hoisting flags – all donning the movement’s logo and name. Some of these materials contain threats. One sticker, for example, depicts and a noose with the phrase: “This is what we will do to the traitors of the people”. Anyone who criticises or tries to prevent these far-right promo tours can often expect a violent confrontation.

According to the Expo Foundation, there were 2,801 such propaganda tours in 2018 alone. In 2019, there were 1,658. In addition, the movement organises 125 to 265 demonstrations and rallies annually in Sweden. Expo estimates that there were between 150 and 300 active members of the NMR before the split of the movement in 2019, as well as many other passive members and supporters. There are no official government figures on the size of the movement. “At the height of the movement, the NMR was able to mobilise 600 to 700 people for its demonstrations”, Morgan Finnsiö estimates.

The NMR in Sweden also has parliamentary ambitions: In 2014, two members of the movement were elected on the radical-right party Sweden Democrats‘ ticket in the municipal councils in Ludvika and Borlänge. In 2015, the NMR was registered as a political party. This change of course is thanks to Simon Lindberg, head of the NMR in Sweden since 2015 and a former member of the neo-Nazi party Nationalsocialistisk Front (NSF). However, the movement’s parliamentary breakthrough has so far failed to materialise: In the 2018 general election, the party received 0.03 percent with around 2,100 votes – less than all other splinter parties. This focus on parliamentary politics is also likely to have been one reason for the split of the movement. A year later, after the founding of Nordisk Styrka, the party received only 644 votes in the EU election.

The split may also have ideological reasons, however. Swedish historian, publicist and author of the book Älskade fascism (Beloved Fascism), Henrik Arnstad, describes Sweden as a fertile ground for fascism after 1945. In interview with Belltower.News, he explains: “After World War II, Sweden was one of the few countries where fascists could still meet and organise – for the most part quite openly. As a result, fascism flourished in the country.”

But unlike many nationalist variants of fascism around the world, Swedish fascism is characterised above all by transnationalism: it strives for a pan-European fascist nation. “I call this internationalisation ‘Ikea fascism’”, Arnstad explains. And that’s not just a play on words: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad was an active member of the fascist organisations Nysvenska Rörelsen (New Swedish Movement) and the neo-Nazi party Svensk Socialistisk Samling (Swedish Socialist Union), the successor party to the Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarepartiet (National Socialist Workers’ Party).

Too extreme for Hitler

Although Hitler is also idolised to some extent in the Nordic Resistance Movement, he is also seen as a loser, Arnstad explains. “He ultimately lost the war, then killed himself.” Rather than the NSDAP, the Romanian fascist Iron Guard movement led by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu serves as inspiration for the NMR. “Both movements use the colours green and white, both organise in so-called ‘nests’”, Arnstad notes. “The Iron Guard was even more antisemitic than the NSDAP. Hitler called them radicals; their antisemitism was even too extreme for him.” The cult of personality around Codreanu is also attractive for the NMR: “He died a heroic death: he was executed by the Romanian government in 1938 and is seen as a ‘saint’”.

...

But the pan-Scandinavian ideology of the NMR also has its limits: parts of the Swedish movement don’t see their Finnish comrades-in-arms as equal Aryans, but as “ethnic hybrids” who do not belong to Scandinavian culture. This attitude, in turn, leaves traces in the ideology of the Finnish chapter of the movement. Oula Silvennoinen, a historian at the University of Helsinki who studies right-wing extremism in Finland, explains in interview with Belltower.News: “This is another reason why the NMR in Finland doesn’t attach such great importance to a future Nazi state in Scandinavia. They also communicate only in Finnish, although Swedish is also a second official language in the country.” Still, the group has close ties with their Swedish counterparts. But there are also differences in political strategy: the Finnish offshoot thinks little of the parliamentary ambitions of its Swedish brethren.

...

Friends abroad

One of the greatest achievements of the movement in Finland has been the so-called “612 March” – an annual nationalist march in Helsinki on Finnish Independence Day. The demo route ends at Hietaniemi Cemetery, where a monument to the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen SS is located. Before the covid-19 pandemic, the demonstration used to attract up to 3000 participants annually. It functions as a meeting place for the far-right scene: not only Scandinavian neo-Nazis from the NMR and the Soldiers of Odin attend, but also international right-wing extremists, for example from the UK, Greece and Germany, flock to Helsinki for the demonstration.

Internationally, the Nordic Resistance Movement is extremely well connected: According to the broadcaster Yle, between 2011 and 2017, around 20 members of the movement were users of the international neo-Nazi forum Iron March. Here, the NMR came into contact with neo-Nazi parties such as Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) in Greece and Casa Pound in Italy, but also with far-right terrorist groups such as the now-banned National Action in the United Kingdom.

...

The NMR also has links to the Ukrainian Azov Regiment: The far-right podcast “FashCast” published an interview between a member of the Finnish NMR and Olena Semenyaka, the so-called “First Lady” and spokeswoman of the far-right paramilitary volunteer battalion in Ukraine. In the interview, Semenyaka mentions a “foreign legion” in Ukraine that international volunteers could join, as well as military training camps at the Azov camp in eastern Ukraine. A delegation of the Finnish NMR visited the Azov Regiment in Kyiv in 2019.

That’s not to say, however, that the NMR as a whole is partisan in the Ukraine conflict: Two members of the Swedish NMR, who were responsible for the series of bombings in Gothenburg in 2016 and 2017 mentioned at the beginning of this article, participated in a training camp organised by the far-right paramilitary and pro-Russian Russian Imperial Movement in 2016 in eastern Ukraine, which fought against Ukrainian forces – including the Azov Regiment.

In Germany, the neo-Nazi party Der III. Weg (The Third Way) is an important partner for the NMR. Members of the NMR have visited their far-right friends in Germany several times: At a demo of Der III. Weg in the Berlin district of Hohenschönhausen on October 3, 2020, Fredrik Vejdeland, a leading figure of the Swedish chapter, gave a speech in German. In Würzburg in 2017, NMR leader Simon Lindberg spoke at one of the party’s demonstrations.

The exchange has been mutual, with members of Der III. Weg also travelling to Finland: In 2019, party founder Klaus Armstroff visited the head of the Swedish NMR, Simon Lindberg, in Helsinki. Together with a delegation of his fellow party members, Armstroff took part in the “612 March” on Finnish Independence Day. Holiday snaps from their Helsinki trip are even on the party’s website: The delegation visited a tank museum and the Finnish-German military cemetery. There also appear to be links between the NMR and the Junge Nationalisten (Young Nationalists, JN), the youth organisation of the German far-right party NPD. In 2017, the JN also participated in the “612 March” in Helsinki.

Despite the successes of the NMR so far across Scandinavia, the future of the movement is uncertain. In 2019, the Finnish NMR suffered a major setback after they were banned by the Supreme Court. In September 2020, the ban was upheld by the court. How successful the ban will be, however, remains to be seen. The historian Olena Silvennoinen is sceptical – with good reason. The very day after the ban, the Finnish NMR held a demonstration in Tampere, southern Finland. The green and white flags were the same as always, only the logo of the now-banned group was missing. “To observers of the far-right scene, it was completely clear that this was the NMR marching”, Silvennoinen says frustratedly. Even before the court ruling, the Finnish NMR formed several new organisations with different symbols in case of a ban – such as Suomi Herää (Finland Wake Up), Kohti Vapautta (Towards Freedom) and Kansallisradikaalia Toimintaa (National Radical Action).

In Sweden, the split of the NMR has also weakened the group, but the newly formed Nordisk Styrka is considered more violent, more radical and operates underground. As right-wing extremism researcher Morgan Finnsiö sums up: “Even though the NMR appears to be in decline, it is still the most important and dangerous far-right actor in Sweden. But it remains an open question whether they will manage to adapt and retain their position of power on the far right.” Current trends in Sweden and Finland point to an end of an exportable “Ikea fascism” in Scandinavia. But even from the underground, the movement will continue to foster its close international ties

———–

“The Pan-European “Ikea Fascism” of Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen” by Nicholas Potter; Belltower News; 01/06/2021

“Internationally, the Nordic Resistance Movement is extremely well connected: According to the broadcaster Yle, between 2011 and 2017, around 20 members of the movement were users of the international neo-Nazi forum Iron March. Here, the NMR came into contact with neo-Nazi parties such as Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) in Greece and Casa Pound in Italy, but also with far-right terrorist groups such as the now-banned National Action in the United Kingdom.”

The Nordic Resistance Movement isn’t just a Scandavian neo-Nazi group. It has extensive international connections, some of which were presumably cultivated from the 20 or so members of the movement who frequented the Iron March online forum from 2011 to 2017. As we’ve seen, it was during this period that the Iron March forum played a key role in popularization of James Mason’s accelerationist tome ‘Siege’ among groups like Atomwaffen. Given everything we’ve seen from ‘Willy Tepes’, he’s clearly an accelerationist Nazi terrorist. As are, presumably, many of his fellow Nordic Resistance Movement members. But they aren’t operating alone. This is a global network:

...
Since then, chapters of the NMR have emerged in Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark, all of which are also called the Nordic Resistance Movement in their respective languages. Internationally, the group is often referred to by the English translation of their name. Their goal: to establish a Nordic neo-Nazi state for “white people”. Countless racist and homophobic acts of violence, attacks, and even some murders against perceived “political opponents” can be attributed to the movement. However, the NMR network is currently in the midst of a crisis: In Finland, the group was banned in 2019, and in Sweden, the movement is now split after a strategic dispute over the political direction of the group. Nevertheless, the NMR remains a very real threat.

...

Although Hitler is also idolised to some extent in the Nordic Resistance Movement, he is also seen as a loser, Arnstad explains. “He ultimately lost the war, then killed himself.” Rather than the NSDAP, the Romanian fascist Iron Guard movement led by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu serves as inspiration for the NMR. “Both movements use the colours green and white, both organise in so-called ‘nests’”, Arnstad notes. “The Iron Guard was even more antisemitic than the NSDAP. Hitler called them radicals; their antisemitism was even too extreme for him.” The cult of personality around Codreanu is also attractive for the NMR: “He died a heroic death: he was executed by the Romanian government in 1938 and is seen as a ‘saint’”.
...

Notably, the international nature of the Nordic Resistance Movement appears to be rooted, in part, in the fact that Swedish fascism has long had ambitions for a pan-Europe fascist state. And that internationalist focus brings us to another notable part of the history of this group: a more clandestine, elitist, and radical splinter group that is considered more violent, Nordisk Styrka (Nordic Strength), broke off in 2019. August of 2019, according to the US State Department. Hjelmerud is a self-proclaimed member of the Nordic Resistance Movement, but we have to ask if he hasn’t also maintained ties to Nordisk Styrka too, along with ties to all sorts of other fascist groups across the world:

...
“From 2015 to 2019, the NMR had a leading role in the Swedish far-right”, explains Morgan Finnsiö, a far-right researcher at the anti-racist Expo Foundation in Stockholm in interview with Belltower.News. “Their focus on violence, their openly Nazi ideology, their almost bureaucratic organisation, and their prolific propaganda output set the benchmark in the far-right scene.” In 2019, several leading activists including movement founder Klas Lund left the NMR to form the group Nordisk Styrka (Nordic Strength), a self-proclaimed paramilitary “fighting organisation” that is said to be more clandestine, elitist and radical than the NMR. Other new far-right groups have also emerged in Sweden, with a less overtly far-right outward appearance. “Even if these groups challenge the NMR’s monopoly on power, it remains the most dangerous and important far-right actor in Sweden”, Finnsiö concludes.

...

According to the Expo Foundation, there were 2,801 such propaganda tours in 2018 alone. In 2019, there were 1,658. In addition, the movement organises 125 to 265 demonstrations and rallies annually in Sweden. Expo estimates that there were between 150 and 300 active members of the NMR before the split of the movement in 2019, as well as many other passive members and supporters. There are no official government figures on the size of the movement. “At the height of the movement, the NMR was able to mobilise 600 to 700 people for its demonstrations”, Morgan Finnsiö estimates.

...

The split may also have ideological reasons, however. Swedish historian, publicist and author of the book Älskade fascism (Beloved Fascism), Henrik Arnstad, describes Sweden as a fertile ground for fascism after 1945. In interview with Belltower.News, he explains: “After World War II, Sweden was one of the few countries where fascists could still meet and organise – for the most part quite openly. As a result, fascism flourished in the country.”

But unlike many nationalist variants of fascism around the world, Swedish fascism is characterised above all by transnationalism: it strives for a pan-European fascist nation. “I call this internationalisation ‘Ikea fascism’”, Arnstad explains. And that’s not just a play on words: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad was an active member of the fascist organisations Nysvenska Rörelsen (New Swedish Movement) and the neo-Nazi party Svensk Socialistisk Samling (Swedish Socialist Union), the successor party to the Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarepartiet (National Socialist Workers’ Party).

...

In Sweden, the split of the NMR has also weakened the group, but the newly formed Nordisk Styrka is considered more violent, more radical and operates underground. As right-wing extremism researcher Morgan Finnsiö sums up: “Even though the NMR appears to be in decline, it is still the most important and dangerous far-right actor in Sweden. But it remains an open question whether they will manage to adapt and retain their position of power on the far right.” Current trends in Sweden and Finland point to an end of an exportable “Ikea fascism” in Scandinavia. But even from the underground, the movement will continue to foster its close international ties
...

And that internationalist focus brings us to another very notable affiliation of the group: the Azov Regiment, which had a delegations of Finnish Nordic Resistance Movement members visit Kyiv back in the early months of 2019. As we’ve seen, Azov has also had a very ‘internationalist’ outlook, with Azov spokesperson Olena Semenyaka playing a leading role in networking and promoting a trans-national fascist ideology with other fascist groups. As we also saw, Semenyaka was interviewed by a member of the Nordic Resistance Movement in 2018. Also keep in mind that Nordisk Styrka formed in August of 2019 and it was March of 2019 when the Finnish Supreme Court initially banned the Nordic Resistance Movement. So around the same time of the Finnish ban on the groups, months before the formation of the more radical and violent Nordisk Styrka, a delegation of Finnish Nordic Resistance Movement made a visit to Kyiv to meet with Azov. You have to wonder what kind of role that meeting with Azov played in the decision to form a more violent, clandestine splinter group like Nordisk Styrka:

...
The NMR also has links to the Ukrainian Azov Regiment: The far-right podcast “FashCast” published an interview between a member of the Finnish NMR and Olena Semenyaka, the so-called “First Lady” and spokeswoman of the far-right paramilitary volunteer battalion in Ukraine. In the interview, Semenyaka mentions a “foreign legion” in Ukraine that international volunteers could join, as well as military training camps at the Azov camp in eastern Ukraine. A delegation of the Finnish NMR visited the Azov Regiment in Kyiv in 2019.

That’s not to say, however, that the NMR as a whole is partisan in the Ukraine conflict: Two members of the Swedish NMR, who were responsible for the series of bombings in Gothenburg in 2016 and 2017 mentioned at the beginning of this article, participated in a training camp organised by the far-right paramilitary and pro-Russian Russian Imperial Movement in 2016 in eastern Ukraine, which fought against Ukrainian forces – including the Azov Regiment.

...

Despite the successes of the NMR so far across Scandinavia, the future of the movement is uncertain. In 2019, the Finnish NMR suffered a major setback after they were banned by the Supreme Court. In September 2020, the ban was upheld by the court. How successful the ban will be, however, remains to be seen. The historian Olena Silvennoinen is sceptical – with good reason. The very day after the ban, the Finnish NMR held a demonstration in Tampere, southern Finland. The green and white flags were the same as always, only the logo of the now-banned group was missing. “To observers of the far-right scene, it was completely clear that this was the NMR marching”, Silvennoinen says frustratedly. Even before the court ruling, the Finnish NMR formed several new organisations with different symbols in case of a ban – such as Suomi Herää (Finland Wake Up), Kohti Vapautta (Towards Freedom) and Kansallisradikaalia Toimintaa (National Radical Action).
...

And let’s not forget who had very direct ties to Azov: Ryan Wesley Routh. Was Crooks the first of two Azov-connected assassination attempts in the summer of 2024? It’s a possibility we can’t dismiss at this point. Then again, maybe he was being motivated by the nihilists of 764 or the Com. Or one of the many other online nihilistic accelerationist communities that has been inspiring one act of terror after another after another in recent years. Or maybe all of them. Thomas Matthew Crooks may not have had a lot of friends in real life. But it’s pretty clear at this point he would have been very popular with the kind of networks Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud runs in. Or at least would have become very popular had he not missed. Although helping propel Trump into the White House by shooting and missing was probably pretty popular with these networks too. There’s more than one way to accelerate the destruction of society, after all.

And while the impact on American democracy is bound to be highly negative, ensuring virtually every congressional race in the US turns into a gerrymandered joke, it’s important to keep in mind that gerrymandering isn’t just an issue for federal elections. Every single state legislature is about to become a gerrymandered joke too. In fact, a recent analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter that looked at 10 Southern sates found that Republican-controlled legislatures could eliminate nearly 200 legislative seats currently held by Democrats, with Black representatives currently in the vast majority of those seats. Nearly half of all majority-minority state legislative districts could disappear in those 10 states alone. And with Republican in ‘trifecta’ control of 23 states — where the governorship and both houses of the legislature are controlled by the party — it’s clear that a lot more than 200 majority-minority districts are slated for termination.

And that looming state-level gerrymandering bonanza makes this a good time to keep in mind that the theocratic oligarchic forces that brought us Project 2025 and spent decades working to stack the courts with the kind of corrupt jurists who would grant them these kinds of rulings — groups like the Council for National Policy (CNP), the Koch network, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — are also behind the ongoing efforts to trigger an Article V Convention of the States. And as we’ve seen, those ongoing efforts to trigger an Article V convention are already potentially on the cusp of succeeding. All that needs to happen now is a court ruling in favor of the legal efforts by David M. Walker to sue congress to force a convention on the grounds that the 34-state threshold needed to trigger a convention has already been met. Just one corrupt court ruling away. It’s not exactly a stretch at this point.

Adding to the constitutional danger is the fact that the rulings for an Article V convention are hardly laid out in the constitution and widely up for debate. Who gets to decide the membership of the state delegations? And should it be a one-state-one-vote scenario, where California and Wyoming get one vote each? Or will there be proportional representation? All of that is up for debate. And according to a study released in March of 2025 by the group Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy, the if the one-state-one-vote scenario plays out, Republicans would just need to have control over 28 out of the 50 state delegations to have unilateral control over the amendment-writing process. In other words, if Republicans can rig the convention rules in their favor, the convention would be turned into an exclusively far right convention. There wouldn’t be some conservative and progressive amendments. It would be exclusively conservative. As former Sen. Rick Santorum (R‑Pa.) put it durning an ALEC gather, “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority,” Santorum said at an ALEC event, “even though…we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.” Yep. Republicans could easily end up with super-majority control of an Article V convention without necessarily even having a majority of public support.

At the same time, the fact that none of these rules are at all hammered out and it’s very possible that a far right minority could control the entire process points towards a scenario where a new constitution is created that has almost no legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Or maybe even competing new constitutions. No one really knows how this will play out. But with Republicans having a corrupt grip on nearly all of the institutional power in the US today, it’s not hard to predict how this will generally go.

And as we’ll also be reminded oF by another recently release report by Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy, the agenda of the groups behind this Article V push is the same agenda behind Project 2025 but far more extreme. Environmental regulations will be gutted. Federal lands will be privatized and sold off. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 will be overturned, a balanced budget amendment will be imposed that mandates draconian cuts, while taxes will be effectively impossible to raise. It will be Project 2025, but permanent.

Sure, we don’t know how this will play out. Just as we didn’t know if conservatives would ever succeed in overturning the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Or succeed in implementing Project 2025. Despite all the warnings for years that this was going to happen. We can’t say for certain how this will play out. But with one side spending decades to achieve these goals, and achieving one after another in due time, it’s going to be extremely hard to be shocked when this ‘unthinkable’ Article V scenario finally starts playing out. Hollowing out the constitution and permanently crippling what’s left of the US’s democratic institutions is kind of the next step in this decades-old agenda, after all:

The Guardian

The supreme court’s takedown of American democracy is complete

Since the Citizens United decision of 2010, the justices have dismantled Americans’ voices. The only solution is at the ballot box

Austin Sarat
Tue 12 May 2026 08.00 EDT

Writing in 1943, the historian Henry Steele Commager delivered both a stern history lesson and a warning about the United States supreme court. The court, he said, had never been a friend to US democracy, and it never would be. For anyone committed to the advancement of majority rule, he added, judicial review “is wrong in theory and dangerous in practice”.

The danger that Commager noted was on full display on 29 April 2026, when the supreme court eviscerated section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As the Department of Justice explains, section 2 “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups … or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group”.

But the Voting Rights Act decision is only the latest in a string of decisions in which the conservative-dominated supreme court has used its version of constitutional interpretation to wage war on constitutional democracy. Those decisions have opened the floodgates to the corrupting influence of money in politics, removed the federal government from the business of ensuring that states do not draw legislative districts in ways that disadvantage minority voters, and given the green light to partisan gerrymandering.

As we try to come to terms with what the court did to section 2, we need to keep those other decisions in mind. They show what Commager long ago observed: that the only reliable way to preserve and improve US democracy is to act democratically by winning at the ballot box and prevailing in the legislative process.

...

In 2010, the court took a truly significant step in that direction when it handed down its ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. That case arose, as the Brennan Center for Justice notes, “when a conservative nonprofit organization challenged campaign finance rules that stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton”.

...

The majority held that under the first amendment, “corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited … [and] that political speech is indispensable to a democracy, which is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation”.

As the Brennan Center observes: “The justices who decided Citizens United held that independent spending could not pose a substantial risk of corruption … [and] that existing transparency rules would require all the new spending they were permitting to be fully transparent.”

Both assumptions, it adds, “have proven to be incorrect”, with Super Pacs playing key roles in recent presidential campaigns and even leading voter outreach operations.

In 2013, the court took the next step in its campaign against democracy, declaring two key provisions of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. One of them, section 4, contained a formula for determining which states had to obtain preclearance from the justice department before making any changes to their voting laws. The other, section 5, described the preclearance requirements.

Writing for the majority, the chief justice, John Roberts, found that the Voting Rights Act was “no longer responsive to the current conditions” in the voting districts to which they were applied. He argued that sections 4 and 5 “represent an unconstitutional violation of the power to regulate elections that the Constitution reserves for the states”.

The result was a rash of new efforts to make voting burdensome for the very groups whose voting rights had been protected by the preclearance requirements of sections 4 and 5.

Step 3 in the court’s effort to turn the constitution into a weapon against democracy came in 2019, when it said that states were free to engage in partisan gerrymandering and to draw legislative districts with the express purpose of giving electoral advantages to the party in power.

Here again, Roberts led the way, turning to history to argue that, “aware of electoral districting problems”, the Framers “chose a characteristic approach, assigning the issue to the state legislatures, expressly checked and balanced by the Federal Congress”, with no “suggestion that the federal courts had a role to play”.

The court, as the attorney Emmet Bonderant argues, disregarded “thirty years of [its own] precedent” and reached a result that allows politicians to pick their voters and limits the ability of voters to pick those whom they prefer to represent them. It also allowed state legislatures to engage in racial gerrymandering if they claim it is motivated by partisan, not racial, considerations.

So it should not have been surprising that the court would do what it did on 29 April, when it made it almost impossible for anyone to prove that race plays a role in redistricting decisions.

The court found that the only way to do so is to provide convincing evidence that the legislatures intended to discriminate when they made those decisions – and it disregarded a clear congressional statement to the contrary.

In 1982, Congress enacted legislation to make clear that “a plaintiff could establish a violation of the section if the evidence established that … [a] standard, practice, or procedure being challenged had the result of denying a racial or language minority an equal opportunity to participate in the political process”.

The court swept aside what Congress did and decided that section 2 protected minority voters only from what Justice Samuel Alito called “present-day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting” and nothing more.

Reacting to Alito’s reasoning, the Georgia senator Raphael Warnock said that the court’s attack on section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “is nothing less than a massive and devastating blow – not only to our democracy, but particularly to people of color in the south … This question about intent is … misleading, and it ignores our history.”

In the end, the court may have ignored our history, but we should not ignore its history. Commager would not have been surprised by what has unfolded since 2010, but he would have warned Americans against despair. He would want us to get busy trying to save what is left of our democracy by using our votes and our voices.

...

———–

“The supreme court’s takedown of American democracy is complete” by Austin Sarat; The Guardian; 05/13/2026

“As we try to come to terms with what the court did to section 2, we need to keep those other decisions in mind. They show what Commager long ago observed: that the only reliable way to preserve and improve US democracy is to act democratically by winning at the ballot box and prevailing in the legislative process.”

The days of hoping for the US courts to protect citizens from rampant abuses of power are over. This is a court loyal to powerful networks that spent years working diligently to ensure a far right Supreme Court majority of their choosing was secured. By 2010, big money interests were wildly empowered with Citizens United. Then the Roberts court proceeded to systematically gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act, with a 2013 ruling that effectively got rid of preclearance, followed by the 2019 Rucho that opened the floodgates to unlimited partisanship in gerrymandering. That all paved the way for the recent ruling that puts the nail in the coffin of what was left of the VRA. Protecting democracy isn’t on the Roberts Court’s priority list. Quite the opposite:

...
The danger that Commager noted was on full display on 29 April 2026, when the supreme court eviscerated section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As the Department of Justice explains, section 2 “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups … or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group”.

...

In 2010, the court took a truly significant step in that direction when it handed down its ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. That case arose, as the Brennan Center for Justice notes, “when a conservative nonprofit organization challenged campaign finance rules that stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton”.

...

In 2013, the court took the next step in its campaign against democracy, declaring two key provisions of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. One of them, section 4, contained a formula for determining which states had to obtain preclearance from the justice department before making any changes to their voting laws. The other, section 5, described the preclearance requirements.

...

Step 3 in the court’s effort to turn the constitution into a weapon against democracy came in 2019, when it said that states were free to engage in partisan gerrymandering and to draw legislative districts with the express purpose of giving electoral advantages to the party in power.

Here again, Roberts led the way, turning to history to argue that, “aware of electoral districting problems”, the Framers “chose a characteristic approach, assigning the issue to the state legislatures, expressly checked and balanced by the Federal Congress”, with no “suggestion that the federal courts had a role to play”.
...

But, of course, with winning at the ballot box now more important than ever, it’s also going to be more rigged than ever. And not just in the House of Representatives. As the following TPM piece reminds us, congressional districts aren’t the only kind of district that can be gerrymandered. State legislatures are set to be a focal point of the gerrymandering bonanza about to unfold, with expectations that it’s just a matter of time before nearly half of all black state representatives in the South will be replaced by white conservatives. According to an analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter, 10 Southern states along nearly 200 state legislative seats currently held by Democrats slated to be eliminated as result of this ruling, with the vast majority held by Black representatives. And that’s just 10 out of the 23 states where Republican hold a ‘trifecta’ of the governorship and both houses the state legislatures. In other words, state legislature are about to become a lot more radical and, in the case of MAGA-captured states, far more willing to further break democracy:

Talking Points Memo
Cafe

We Aren’t Paying Enough Attention to What the SCOTUS VRA Decision Means for State Legislatures

The Supreme Court’s ruling impacts much more than control of Congress.

by Gaby Goldstein
05.06.26 | 1:49 pm

In the fog of the redistricting wars to come, it may be easy to remember the audacity of President Trump demanding state legislatures immediately redraw maximally rigged maps. But this didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the next logical step in decades-long sequence of events that have led, rather predictably, to this moment.

In 2021, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich v. DNC deeply eroded the Voting Rights Act, I wrote with FairVote’s David Daley that “a central goal of conservative jurisprudence is the carving back of federal protections, and the empowerment of states over vast swaths of social and civil life.” We warned that Chief Justice John Roberts had been “patiently preparing to dismantle Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act for 40 years,” and that “his careful long game may end in checkmate for majority rule as we know it.”

That checkmate has arrived. In Louisiana v. Callais, the Court’s 6–3 ruling gutted Section 2 — the last enforceable provision of the Voting Rights Act — by requiring plaintiffs to prove intentional racial discrimination while allowing partisan gerrymandering as a defense. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, the “decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

The immediate headlines focused on Congress: the potential loss of as many as 19 House seats held by Democrats, including as much as 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus. These consequences are grave. But an equally consequential and far less discussed impact is what Callais means for state legislatures — the overlooked institutions that have quietly been growing in power over the past few decades, and that now hold more of it than ever, with even fewer guardrails.

The Venue Is the Strategy

The conservative strategy for consolidating state-level power has never been a secret. In March 2010, Karl Rove penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed literally titled “The GOP Targets State Legislatures.” The sub-head: “He who controls redistricting can control Congress.” The piece laid out the whole playbook for Project REDMAP: by flipping a few handfuls of state legislative seats in the 2010 midterms, Republicans could redraw congressional and state legislative maps for a generation. Democrats either did not believe them or had nothing to counter it. That year, Republicans gained control of 11 additional state legislatures and ran the table on redistricting. Today, they hold 23 trifectas — a net loss of just two in 15 years.

But REDMAP was only one part of a larger architecture. The deeper strategy has three moves. First, build and solidify power in state legislatures. Second, strip away federal protections — through the courts, and by dismantling federal regulations, funding, and programs. Third, devolve that authority to the states where you’ve already built structural advantages through gerrymandering, voter suppression and long-term policy infrastructure. The linchpin of the whole operation is control of state legislatures.

The Court has been an essential partner. As Mother Jones’ Ari Berman and FairVote’s Daley have both exhaustively chronicled, Roberts’ entire career could be characterized as a crusade against the Voting Rights Act. On his watch, Shelby County removed federal preclearance. Rucho declared partisan gerrymandering beyond judicial review, leaving states free to draw lines advantaging the party already in power. Brnovich chipped further away at Section 2. And now Callais eliminates the last federal check on racially discriminatory redistricting, freeing the very legislatures that draw the maps from accountability for the maps they draw.

...

The Scale We’re Not Talking About

Most analysis since Callais has focused on Congress. But the devastation in state legislatures may be as bad or worse, and the consequences even more immediate for people’s daily lives.

A recent analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter examined 10 Southern states and found that Republican-controlled legislatures could eliminate nearly 200 state legislative seats currently held by Democrats — the vast majority held by Black representatives. Nearly half of all majority-minority state legislative districts in the South could simply disappear. And those 10 states are less than half of the 23 Republican trifectas nationwide. The full scale of the looming Republican gerrymandering monster will be vast.

This will be, first and foremost, a decimation of Black political representation — likely the largest reduction since the end of Reconstruction. And that representational decimation will be tied to policy decimation. State legislatures draw district lines for Congress and for themselves. They set election rules. They determine whether to expand Medicaid, fund public schools, protect reproductive freedom, or safeguard workers’ rights. As the Court rolls back federal protections and the administration slashes programs, these decisions increasingly fall to the states. The legislators who champion these issues — including Black lawmakers in majority-minority districts — are exactly the ones whose seats will be on the chopping block.

...

The Overlooked Arena

In 2021, Daley and I concluded our piece with a warning: “On voting rights and so much more, the buck does and will continue to stop with state legislatures. We must elect legislators who will fight to protect voting rights — down-ballot, where it matters most and is too often overlooked — or risk becoming a nation filled with democracy deserts, where your right to vote depends on where you live and your access to the polls depends on the color of your skin.”

That warning has been borne out with punishing precision. Americans can name their U.S. senators. But few can name their state representative or correctly identify what state legislators do. Yet it is that state representative who will determine whether their district is drawn fairly, whether their vote counts equally, and increasingly, whether their fundamental rights are protected at all.

The conservative movement understood this decades ago. The American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, and Americans for Prosperity have treated state-level coordination as a core organizing principle, drafting model bills, convening officials, and spreading policy from statehouse to statehouse with discipline. Pro-democracy allies are beginning to build comparable infrastructure, with states finding ways to coordinate through interstate compacts, pooled purchasing power, and shared strategies. But the gap remains enormous, and the clock is running.

What Comes Next

Callais did not create the crisis of lopsided, weaponized state legislative power. It completed a long trajectory, one that has systematically dismantled federal protections and concentrated authority in the institutions least subject to public scrutiny and most vulnerable to structural manipulation: state legislatures.

...

————

“We Aren’t Paying Enough Attention to What the SCOTUS VRA Decision Means for State Legislatures” by Gaby Goldstein; Talking Points Memo; 05/06/2026

“The immediate headlines focused on Congress: the potential loss of as many as 19 House seats held by Democrats, including as much as 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus. These consequences are grave. But an equally consequential and far less discussed impact is what Callais means for state legislatures — the overlooked institutions that have quietly been growing in power over the past few decades, and that now hold more of it than ever, with even fewer guardrails.”

State legislatures are about to become just as gerrymandered, if not more so, than congress. It’s like the term ‘one party state’ is poised to become reality in one state after another. Most especially in the South where nearly half of present-dat majority-minority districts are expected to soon disappear. But this coming wave of state-level gerrymandering isn’t going to be limited to the South. Hyper-partisan gerrymandering at the federal and state level is inevitably going to be the New Normal everywhere. Thanks, in large part, to a corrupt Supreme Court majority that is still just getting started in its quest to hand as much power and control to private interests possible. The far right lock on the Supreme Court is likely to last decades, after all. They have plenty more damage to do:

...
Most analysis since Callais has focused on Congress. But the devastation in state legislatures may be as bad or worse, and the consequences even more immediate for people’s daily lives.

A recent analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter examined 10 Southern states and found that Republican-controlled legislatures could eliminate nearly 200 state legislative seats currently held by Democrats — the vast majority held by Black representatives. Nearly half of all majority-minority state legislative districts in the South could simply disappear. And those 10 states are less than half of the 23 Republican trifectas nationwide. The full scale of the looming Republican gerrymandering monster will be vast.

This will be, first and foremost, a decimation of Black political representation — likely the largest reduction since the end of Reconstruction. And that representational decimation will be tied to policy decimation. State legislatures draw district lines for Congress and for themselves. They set election rules. They determine whether to expand Medicaid, fund public schools, protect reproductive freedom, or safeguard workers’ rights. As the Court rolls back federal protections and the administration slashes programs, these decisions increasingly fall to the states. The legislators who champion these issues — including Black lawmakers in majority-minority districts — are exactly the ones whose seats will be on the chopping block.

...

In 2021, Daley and I concluded our piece with a warning: “On voting rights and so much more, the buck does and will continue to stop with state legislatures. We must elect legislators who will fight to protect voting rights — down-ballot, where it matters most and is too often overlooked — or risk becoming a nation filled with democracy deserts, where your right to vote depends on where you live and your access to the polls depends on the color of your skin.”

That warning has been borne out with punishing precision. Americans can name their U.S. senators. But few can name their state representative or correctly identify what state legislators do. Yet it is that state representative who will determine whether their district is drawn fairly, whether their vote counts equally, and increasingly, whether their fundamental rights are protected at all.
...

And when we have to ask ourselves if the Democrats are adequately aware of the scope of this looming threat to democratic representation, keep in mind that the Project REDMAP agenda launched in 2010 with the goal of maximizing Republican gains in the 2010 redistricting cycle wasn’t a secret. Karl Rove even wrote an op-ed about it at the time. And yet made basically no preparations of their own. Who knows, maybe now that redistricting has gone from a once-a-decade affair to a ‘whenever possible’ scenario, Democrats will actually give this threat the sustained attention it needs. But it’s hard to be optimistic:

...
The conservative strategy for consolidating state-level power has never been a secret. In March 2010, Karl Rove penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed literally titled “The GOP Targets State Legislatures.” The sub-head: “He who controls redistricting can control Congress.” The piece laid out the whole playbook for Project REDMAP: by flipping a few handfuls of state legislative seats in the 2010 midterms, Republicans could redraw congressional and state legislative maps for a generation. Democrats either did not believe them or had nothing to counter it. That year, Republicans gained control of 11 additional state legislatures and ran the table on redistricting. Today, they hold 23 trifectas — a net loss of just two in 15 years.

But REDMAP was only one part of a larger architecture. The deeper strategy has three moves. First, build and solidify power in state legislatures. Second, strip away federal protections — through the courts, and by dismantling federal regulations, funding, and programs. Third, devolve that authority to the states where you’ve already built structural advantages through gerrymandering, voter suppression and long-term policy infrastructure. The linchpin of the whole operation is control of state legislatures.

...

The conservative movement understood this decades ago. The American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, and Americans for Prosperity have treated state-level coordination as a core organizing principle, drafting model bills, convening officials, and spreading policy from statehouse to statehouse with discipline. Pro-democracy allies are beginning to build comparable infrastructure, with states finding ways to coordinate through interstate compacts, pooled purchasing power, and shared strategies. But the gap remains enormous, and the clock is running.
...

And that warning about the upcoming radicalization of one state legislature after another bring us to a report from back in March of 2025 that serves as a reminder that control of state legislatures likely translates into control of the state delegations that would be sent to carrying out an Article V constitutional convention:

Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy

The Right’s Vision of a Constitutional Convention Would Sideline Voters and Spark a Constitutional Crisis

By ExposedByCMD Editors
| March 14th, 2025
at 1:51 PM (CDT)

The Center for Media and Democracy released a revised and updated edition of its report today documenting how a constitutional convention would give hand-picked GOP delegates supermajority control over any proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Right-wing groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Convention of States have been ramping up their campaigns in recent years to force the first constitutional convention since 1787 as a way to sidestep Congress and radically rewrite the Constitution, often using populist rhetoric about the need for people to take back control from “big government” and politicians.

However, CMD’s report, “Convention of State Politicians,” takes a deep dive into the states’ delegate selection laws across the country to reach a startling conclusion: If the Right gets its way, American voters will have no role to play in a constitutional convention.

Who would decide on what amendments get adopted and sent out to the states? Politicians chosen by — you guessed it — politicians.

The report finds that:

* To date, 22 states have enacted resolutions or legislation detailing delegate selection procedures. In 18 of those states, the legislature as a whole or legislative leadership would pick the delegates. Another three states divide that power between legislative leaders and the governor.

* Only one state, Rhode Island, includes a role for voters in choosing delegates to a constitutional convention. Indeed, eight states automatically make politicians, typically legislators or the governor, their convention delegates.

In addition, the right-wing, dark money groups lobbying for a convention take the position that each state would get one vote in the proceeding, like a super-sized U.S. Senate. That approach — already embraced by 14 states in their constitutional convention applications — would give Wyoming the same weight as California in deciding what amendments get proposed for ratification, despite California having about 70 times more people.

And it would give Republican politicians control over 28 of 50 votes at the convention. Democrats would control only 18 votes, with the remaining four likely split between the parties, the report finds.

This well-kept secret lies behind the enthusiasm for a convention shown by con con leaders like former Sen. Rick Santorum (R‑Pa.). “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority,” Santorum said at an ALEC event, “even though…we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”

...

Proponents’ method of choosing delegates and voting on amendments is not a given, as Article V of the Constitution is silent on the matter. When Congress last debated the issue in the 1970s and 80s, the prevailing view was the opposite: that delegates should be popularly elected by congressional district, with each delegate getting one vote, the report finds. And prior Supreme Court decisions suggest that Congress has the power to decide.

Nonetheless, Congress has not enacted any legislation on point, and could easily switch gears to embrace whatever set of rules offered the most advantage to the party in control at the time.

CMD’s report concludes that convening the first constitutional convention since 1787 without consensus in advance on the rules would spark a constitutional crisis where the power of the courts or Congress to intervene is unclear. And the manner in which delegates are chosen for that convention will have a significant impact on its outcome.

Absent prior resolution of these questions, the nation could face the prospect of a convention whose legitimacy is rejected by much of the populace, or even two dueling conventions, each purporting to promulgate amendments to the Constitution.

...

———–

“The Right’s Vision of a Constitutional Convention Would Sideline Voters and Spark a Constitutional Crisis” By ExposedByCMD Editors; Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy; 03/14/2025

“Absent prior resolution of these questions, the nation could face the prospect of a convention whose legitimacy is rejected by much of the populace, or even two dueling conventions, each purporting to promulgate amendments to the Constitution.”

An Article V Convention doesn’t just risk re-writing the US Constitution according to the corporate interest behind the Republican Party. The lack of any clear rules and possibility for ‘make-it-up-as-you-go’ scenarios risks creating a farce of a convention that preemptively destroys the credible whatever emerges. And as we can see from the 22 states that that actually have spelled out how the delgate selection process would go, they overwhelmingly handed that power over to state legislatures. Beyond that, there’s question of ‘one-state-one-vote’ or a proportional system, with 14 states having already embraced the ‘one-state-one-vote’ model. Taken together, between the one-state-one-vote scenario and state legislatures choosing the delegates, it’s possible that Republicans could dominate the amendment-writing at the convention without any need for compromise by controlling just 28 out of the 50 votes at the convention:

...
Who would decide on what amendments get adopted and sent out to the states? Politicians chosen by — you guessed it — politicians.

The report finds that:

* To date, 22 states have enacted resolutions or legislation detailing delegate selection procedures. In 18 of those states, the legislature as a whole or legislative leadership would pick the delegates. Another three states divide that power between legislative leaders and the governor.

* Only one state, Rhode Island, includes a role for voters in choosing delegates to a constitutional convention. Indeed, eight states automatically make politicians, typically legislators or the governor, their convention delegates.

In addition, the right-wing, dark money groups lobbying for a convention take the position that each state would get one vote in the proceeding, like a super-sized U.S. Senate. That approach — already embraced by 14 states in their constitutional convention applications — would give Wyoming the same weight as California in deciding what amendments get proposed for ratification, despite California having about 70 times more people.

And it would give Republican politicians control over 28 of 50 votes at the convention. Democrats would control only 18 votes, with the remaining four likely split between the parties, the report finds.

This well-kept secret lies behind the enthusiasm for a convention shown by con con leaders like former Sen. Rick Santorum (R‑Pa.). “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority,” Santorum said at an ALEC event, “even though…we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”...

And that 2025 warning from the CMD brings us to the following recent update from the CMD. A warning that is much more apparent now that Project 2025 has had over a year to play out: the impact of an Article V convention controlled by these movement could make Project 2025 look like child’s play:

Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy

An Article V Convention Would Supercharge Project 2025

By David Super
| March 10th, 2026
at 10:26 AM (CDT)

Several groups affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been waging a well-funded campaign to call a convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to amend our Constitution. The Heritage Foundation, the prime force driving Project 2025, has strongly endorsed the effort to call an Article V convention.

A study by the Center for Media and Democracy concluded that Republicans would have sole control over the membership of at least 28 of the 50 state delegations – with another four likely split between the parties – meaning that they could write amendments as they pleased without any need to compromise with Democrats or independents.

Although ALEC and its allies speak in generalities about what they would seek to accomplish in a convention — using vague terms such as “fiscal responsibility” and limiting “federal overreach” — they clearly see an Article V convention as a crucial vehicle for enacting the same radical agenda that drove Project 2025 and that President Trump is seeking to impose now. These intentions are evident from the enormous resources ALEC and its allies are devoting to pushing for an Article V convention. Indeed, ALEC served on the advisory board for Project 2025.

Proponents’ intentions also are apparent from the amendments proposed by the mock conventions they have convened. The most recent of these was held in August 2023 by the Convention of States Foundation (COSF) in Williamsburg, Virginia, bringing together mostly Republican legislators from 49 states:

* Echoing the Project 2025’s radical proposals (at pp. 531–32) to transfer federal wildlife habitats to extractive industries, COSF’s “Federal Legislative and Executive Jurisdiction Proposal 3” would compel the federal government to transfer large swaths of federal lands to the states. Under this constitutional amendment, the federal government would require past or future permission from state legislatures to retain almost any of the land it holds within their boundaries apart from national parks, monuments and wilderness areas that have existed since at least 1976. President Trump has taken steps in this direction, but the filibuster has prevented him from seeking sweeping legislation. Amending the Constitution would eliminate any limits on handing over federal lands.

* Project 2025 seeks to undermine civil rights, demanding an end to energetic enforcement of the rights of people seeking to access abortion clinics (at pp. 557–58) and redirecting the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to attack diversity programs (at pp. 560–62). President Trump has done so, closing numerous civil rights investigations and wielding civil rights crudely against universities, law firms, and other institutions he dislikes. COSF’s “Federal Legislative and Executive Jurisdiction Proposal 1” goes even farther, eliminating the constitutional authority for most civil rights laws by sharply restricting Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce to “buying, selling, or transportation of commercial goods and services across state lines.” All existing laws and regulations exceeding this authority, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, would be nullified in two years.

* This same COSF proposal to radically restrict Congress’s authority to legislate under the Commerce Clause would realize Project 2025’s goal (at pp. 60–61, 422–40, and 533–36) to gut federal environmental protection. Much or all of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act, and other major environmental laws that Project 2025 targets are grounded in the Commerce Clause and would be abolished in two years under COSF’s proposal.

* Numerous proposals in Project 2025 seek to maximize the impact of recent decisions by the stacked U.S. Supreme Court or demand further radical changes to empower the president that the Trump administration has been seeking from the Court (e.g., at pp. 560 and 586). CoSP’s “Federal Term Limits and Judicial Jurisdiction Proposal 2” would permanently limit the Court to nine justices, precluding any legislation to expand the Court and restore its balance. (This proposal also shows that a convention cannot be trusted to adhere to any limits on its scope as it has nothing to do with limiting federal power, fiscal responsibility, or term limits, the three purposes that CoSP claims will be the exclusive subjects of the convention it seeks.)

* Project 2025 demands that a balanced federal budget be a paramount objective (at p. 702), while proposing numerous tax changes that would reduce what the affluent pay (at pp. 695–701). This would require staggering reductions in domestic spending. Project 2025 (at p. 379) also seeks to allow the president to unilaterally rescind appropriations for programs he dislikes. President Trump has leaned into this proposal, destroying the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies. President Nixon tried this and lost repeatedly in court, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Train v. City of New York. The Supreme Court has placed procedural obstacles in the way of challenges to President Trump’s impoundments, but has not said that the substantive law has changed. COSF’s “Fiscal Restraints Proposal 1” would cap federal spending at the average of the previous three years’ revenues, requiring these same massive cuts and providing a possible constitutional basis for unilateral presidential rescissions.

* Project 2025 proposes that 3/5 majorities of both chambers of Congress be required to increase taxes (at p. 698). This same COSF proposal outdoes Project 2025 by locking into the Constitution a requirement of 2/3 majorities in both chambers of Congress to increase taxes.

...

The key to preventing congressional Republicans from acting is to deny them enough state applications for an Article V convention to be able to make a credible claim that two-thirds of the states have applied for one, as the Constitution requires. If convention proponents can increase the number of states with Article V applications from the current 33 to the constitutionally mandated 34, the Republican Congress could seek to call an immediate Article V convention.

Although the ALEC-allied groups are well short of two-thirds of the states on any honest measure, one of the lawyers involved in the 2020 fake electors scheme has been devising exotic legal theories that would allow them to count states with old, moot, and unrelated convention calls toward the 34-state threshold. Removing as many actual applications as possible is therefore crucial and extremely urgent to block an even more radical, and permanent, version of Project 2025.

———–

“An Article V Convention Would Supercharge Project 2025” By David Super; Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy; 03/10/2026

“A study by the Center for Media and Democracy concluded that Republicans would have sole control over the membership of at least 28 of the 50 state delegations – with another four likely split between the parties – meaning that they could write amendments as they pleased without any need to compromise with Democrats or independents.”

As we saw, Republicans control just 28 out of 50 state delegations at a constitutional convention would grant unilateral control over the amendment process in an Article V convention. In other words, the Article V convention would exclusively be a choice between far right-inspired new amendments or not. It might be a ‘runaway’ convention, but it’s only going to run in one direction. It was the kind of warning that became an blaring alarm following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. And with 23 states already under a Republican ‘trifecta’, it’s not hard to imagine at least 28 states would have Republican-dominated delegations. And with the same powerful oligarchic interests behind Project 2025 — including the Heritage Foundation and ALEC — having long backed an Article V convention, it’s not hard to imagine these same forces that spent years planning Project 2025 have big plans already in place for an Article V scenario:

...
Several groups affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been waging a well-funded campaign to call a convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to amend our Constitution. The Heritage Foundation, the prime force driving Project 2025, has strongly endorsed the effort to call an Article V convention.

...

Although ALEC and its allies speak in generalities about what they would seek to accomplish in a convention — using vague terms such as “fiscal responsibility” and limiting “federal overreach” — they clearly see an Article V convention as a crucial vehicle for enacting the same radical agenda that drove Project 2025 and that President Trump is seeking to impose now. These intentions are evident from the enormous resources ALEC and its allies are devoting to pushing for an Article V convention. Indeed, ALEC served on the advisory board for Project 2025.
...

And as we can see from the 2023 mock convention, the kind of ‘beyond-Project 2025’ outcomes we should expect from a Republican-dominated convention include an end the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Along with almost all federal regulations. And in a major win for ALEC and their fellow forces behind the ‘Bundy ranch’ showdowns with the federal government, federal lands would likely have to be handed over to states where they would be rapidly privatized:

...
* Echoing the Project 2025’s radical proposals (at pp. 531–32) to transfer federal wildlife habitats to extractive industries, COSF’s “Federal Legislative and Executive Jurisdiction Proposal 3” would compel the federal government to transfer large swaths of federal lands to the states. Under this constitutional amendment, the federal government would require past or future permission from state legislatures to retain almost any of the land it holds within their boundaries apart from national parks, monuments and wilderness areas that have existed since at least 1976. President Trump has taken steps in this direction, but the filibuster has prevented him from seeking sweeping legislation. Amending the Constitution would eliminate any limits on handing over federal lands.

* Project 2025 seeks to undermine civil rights, demanding an end to energetic enforcement of the rights of people seeking to access abortion clinics (at pp. 557–58) and redirecting the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to attack diversity programs (at pp. 560–62). President Trump has done so, closing numerous civil rights investigations and wielding civil rights crudely against universities, law firms, and other institutions he dislikes. COSF’s “Federal Legislative and Executive Jurisdiction Proposal 1” goes even farther, eliminating the constitutional authority for most civil rights laws by sharply restricting Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce to “buying, selling, or transportation of commercial goods and services across state lines.” All existing laws and regulations exceeding this authority, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, would be nullified in two years.

* This same COSF proposal to radically restrict Congress’s authority to legislate under the Commerce Clause would realize Project 2025’s goal (at pp. 60–61, 422–40, and 533–36) to gut federal environmental protection. Much or all of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act, and other major environmental laws that Project 2025 targets are grounded in the Commerce Clause and would be abolished in two years under COSF’s proposal.
...

As the CMD cautions, the key to avoiding this whole Article V disaster scenario is preventing an Article V convention in the first place, followed by a warning that appears to be a reference to David M. Walker’s ongoing legal efforts to sue to force an Article V convention under the legal theory that the 34-state threshold has already been reached:

...
The key to preventing congressional Republicans from acting is to deny them enough state applications for an Article V convention to be able to make a credible claim that two-thirds of the states have applied for one, as the Constitution requires. If convention proponents can increase the number of states with Article V applications from the current 33 to the constitutionally mandated 34, the Republican Congress could seek to call an immediate Article V convention.

Although the ALEC-allied groups are well short of two-thirds of the states on any honest measure, one of the lawyers involved in the 2020 fake electors scheme has been devising exotic legal theories that would allow them to count states with old, moot, and unrelated convention calls toward the 34-state threshold. Removing as many actual applications as possible is therefore crucial and extremely urgent to block an even more radical, and permanent, version of Project 2025.
...

As we can see, the forces behind this Article V push are the same forces that spent years planning Project 2025, pretty openly, and yet it was a scenario that wasn’t really taken seriously until it was too late, with almost nothing having been done to prevent it. Which sounds like the perfect recipe for more of the same, but much worse.

Sure, President Trump seems to desperately want to end the conflict as soon as possible, seemingly having been suckered into thinking this could be some sort of ‘shock and awe’ operation that would be wrapped up quickly. But he also desperately wants a clear ‘win’. And the longer this goes, the clearer that win has to ultimately be for him to safe face. And for the US’s partners in this operation — Israel and the Gulf Kingdoms in particular — anything less than regime change will be a major let down. The stakes started off incredibly high, and only seem to keep climbing.

And while regime change could involve US ‘boots on the ground’, it’s worth keeping in mind that a much more drawn out ‘arming the opposition’ regime change template is something the US is very familiar with, most notably with the US’s backing of the Saudi-led mujahedeen forces following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the civil war in Nicaragua that become a focal point of the Iran Contra affair. Years of ‘arming the opposition’ that ultimately resulted in the creation of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

It’s possible that the Trump administration could accept some sort of ‘win’ short of Iranian regime change that includes some sort of promise to abandon any nuclear ambitions, it’s hard to imagine the Iranian government isn’t more intent then ever on achieving a nuclear deterrent after everything that has happened. So with the Trump administration having seemingly led the US into a new military quagmire, possibly leading up to a regime change under the pretext of ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all, perhaps now is a good time to reflect back on the incredibly corrupt history of the US-backed ‘Islamic bomb’ covert nuclear procurement program that eventually resulted in Pakistan’s nuclear weapon. A history that makes clear that, while Pakistan may have been the primarily beneficiary of this covert agenda, it was very much a multi-national effort, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE playing especially significant roles. And the whole time, the US either turned a blind eye or actively facilitated the secret nuclear program. A new, wildly corrupt bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was formed and allowed to finance the secret nuclear program through Ponzi scheme accounting and the laundering of illicit profits from extensive arms and drugs trafficking.

As we’ll see in a New York Times piece below from back in 1998, it’s not that the US government didn’t have concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. Those concerns existed. But they somehow evaporated after Pakistan agreed to play a central role in the arming and funding of the Afghan mujahedeen. In fact, two retired Pakistani intelligence officials told the NY Times that, when Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, was approached by US officials in the early 80s to express their concerns about the nuclear program, Zia told them he had the blessings of President Reagan and CIA director William Casey to build the bomb. In fact, not only did Pakistan have the Reagan administration’s blessings, but the US was also aware that it was China that was providing much of the technical know how to build the bomb. The US’s awareness of this Chinese-designed bomb was so extensive that a replica of the Pakistani bomb was built and stored in the Pentagon. In 1985, the US Congress passed a law requiring the president to certify that Pakistan was not building nuclear weapons in order to remain eligible for continuing military and economic aid. Reagan and George Bush signed that certification every year from 1985, until 1990, the year of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. All of a sudden, the US discovered Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Next, we’ll take a look at a pair of excerpt from a book published in 2023, The Bomb, The Bank, The Mullah and The Poppies by Iqbal Chand Malhotr, which lays out the history of BCCI’s key role in the Pakistani nuclear procurement program. A program that started back in 1972, when President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto arranged for a meeting of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists to put the nuclear procurement agenda in motion. By the end of the meeting, Butto decided to tap the Muslim Brotherhood to fund the secret program, and then left for a tour of Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Arab nations to quietly seek out support. The tour ended with the a trip to China. Two leaders who openly expressed a desire help were Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, then the first president of the UAE. This is a good time to recall how Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan’s son, the UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), who made a joint offer, along with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), to the 2016 Trump campaign to assist in Trump’s presidential election using the services of the Israeli private intelligence firm Psy Group. It was apparently Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan who conceived of the need for a Ponzi-like financial institution that would ostensibly be financed by oil-rich Arab leaders but would, in reality, be secretly controlled by the governments of Pakistan and Abu Dhabi. It was at this point that Agha Hasan Abedi became seen as the person who could run this operation. But in order to do so, Abedi needed to distance himself from the Pakistani government was establishing credentials as a high profile banker. That’s where Dick van Oenen, the head of Bank of America’s Karachi office, comes into the picture, with Oenen invest $625,000 in the planned new financial institution in exchange for a 30% stake. In September of 1972, months after Bhutto’s initial meeting, BCCI was formally launched and the financial vehicle that would finance the covert creation of the ‘Islamic bomb’ was in place.

It was during this same period in the early 1970s that India-born Pakistani Muhajir called Abdul Qadir Khan (A.Q. Khan) was writing letters to Bhutto, expressing a desire to share his nuclear knowledge with the Pakistani government. In 1974, Khan met with Bhutto, sharing plans for a bomb that would cost only $60,000 to build and could be use the uranium ore that had been discovered in Pakistan’s Suleiman Mountains a decade earlier.

In June of 1976, Pakistan and China signed a secret nuclear protocol. Months later, in September, another organization joined in the effort: the Safari Club was formed after a meeting of the heads of intelligence for France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and Iran. Yes, it turns out pre-revolution Iran was a participant in the Safari Club, an organization that could be seen as a kind of outsourcing of US foreign policy. BCCI was tapped for the funding of the Safari Club’s covert operations.

It was in the late 70s and early 80s when the drug trafficking component of this illicit financing machine started manifesting in the form of large amounts of hashish and heroin hitting US streets. By 1984, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) identified Pakistan as the source of 31 per cent of the heroin in the US markets. This is, of course, a good time to recall the cocaine-trafficking component of the overlapping Iran Contra scandal that was playing out at the same time. There was A LOT of illicit narcotics trafficking during this period. To finance mujahedeen and the Pakistani bomb. Some might call that drug abuse.

But it wasn’t just that the US was turning a blind eye to all of this activity. The State Department had been actively facilitating the back-door procurement of nuclear technology through the issuance of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that the Commerce Department refused to approve over proliferation concerns. It turns out the Pakistani government was being tipped off by the State Department about CIA and US Customs operations that were set up to catch Pakistan in this technology trafficking. Of course, with the CIA being one of the main actors in the whole mujahedeen effort and Bill Casey having given his blessings, it’s hard to imagine the agency was actually irked by this.

None of this is new. It’s all review at this point. But it’s a chapter in history that has an abundance of lessons to be heeded today given the reality that the US appears to have bogged itself down into a quagmire that has long been sought by the US’s allies in the region. A history of the US passively and actively facilitating an international covert nuclear proliferation network heavily orchestrated by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the large Muslim Brotherhood international movement. And tolerating massive drug trafficking and financial crimes in the process.

But let’s not forget about another side of this larger story: the BCCI/Safari Club/Islamic bomb story isn’t just interwined and overlapping with the Iran Contra scandal. Let’s not forget that the 1980s was the same decade the whole PROMIS scandal played out. A scandal that, as we’ve seen, included Ghislaine Maxwell’s father and sister, Robert and Christine, who targeted the key US nuclear research institutions like Los Alamos Laboratory and Sandia National Labs with bugged versions of PROMIS that likely ultimately ended up feeding key nuclear secrets back to Israel. Now, it’s true that Israel is thought to have acquired its first nuclear device in the early 1970s, but that doesn’t mean that US’s nuclear secrets wouldn’t have been extremely valuable. That’s also all part of the context of this sordid chapter in history: at the same time the Reagan administration was turning a blind eye toward the outrageous conduct of this covert Pakistani nuclear proliferation network, the administration was also engaged in the PROMIS scandal and seemingly turning a blind eye to the activities of Robert and Christine Maxwell that seemingly involved the pilfering of the US’s nuclear secrets for the benefit of Israel.

It’s all just wildly corrupt. Too wildly corrupt to be digested and taken seriously, apparently. Oh, and keep in mind that, since the ‘Pakistani bomb’ was actually an international effort, we have every reason to suspect that the acquisition of a nuclear weapons by Saudi Arabia or the UAE is probably A LOT easier to accomplish at this point than anyone would like to admit. Especially today, when the technology needed to build a bomb is likely much more accessible. So while it remains whether or not the Trump administration will be able to extract something that could be called a ‘win’ as the war with Iran continues to plays out,
try not to be surprised if it’s the kind of ‘win’ that results in a much more nuclear-armed Middle East. The covert work building towards a kind of mass-proliferation clusterf#ck started over 50 years, after all:

The New York Times

U.S. And China Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb

By TIM WEINER
June 1, 1998

WASHINGTON — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a future prime minister of Pakistan, declared in 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves — even go hungry — but we will get one of our own.”

It required more than three decades, a global network of theft and espionage, and uncounted millions for Pakistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, to explode that bomb. But it could not have happened without smuggled Chinese technology and contradictory shifts in U.S. policy, according to present and former U.S. officials.

China, a staunch ally of Pakistan’s, provided blueprints for the bomb, as well as highly enriched uranium, tritium, scientists and key components for a nuclear weapons production complex, among other crucial tools. Without China’s help, Pakistan’s bomb would not exist, said Gary Milhollin, a leading expert on the spread of nuclear weapons.

But the United States, a Cold War friend that turned its back on Islamabad when that long battle was over, pursued policies that proved almost as essential to the Pakistani bomb program as the uranium and tritium, some present and former government officials say.

The United States provided Pakistani nuclear scientists with technical training from the 1950s into the 1970s. /And it turned a blind eye to the nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, because Pakistan was providing the crucial link in the CIA’s effort to smuggle billions of dollars of weapons to Afghan guerrillas attempting to drive out Soviet invaders.

But when that covert operation ended, the United States cut off a multi-billion military aid program by imposing sanctions in the 1990s — leaving Pakistan feeling defenseless.

...

Pakistan’s efforts to build the bomb began in the 1950s. Under the “Atoms for Peace” program, the United States agreed to train Pakistani scientists in nuclear-reactor technology. Washington also provided Pakistan’s first research reactor and fuel. The training continued until 1972.

That year, shortly after a crushing defeat in its third war with India since the two nations were cut free from British colonial rule in 1947, Pakistan resolved never to suffer such humiliation again. In January 1972, Bhutto, by then prime minister, summoned his nation’s best nuclear physicists and ordered them to build a bomb. Pakistan set up a world-wide smuggling ring to buy, copy or steal nuclear weapons technology, according to U.S. officials and declassified government documents.

India tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, and Pakistan greatly intensified its efforts in response. The program was closely monitored by the U.S. military, intelligence and law-enforcement services — so closely that President Jimmy Carter cut off all military and economic aid to Pakistan in April 1979, citing U.S. laws aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

That decision was reversed nine months later, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which lies on Pakistan’s border.

Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, agreed to smuggle weapons to the Afghans on behalf of the CIA. Suddenly Pakistan was the recipient of a six-year, $3.2 billion American aid package — half cash, half high-tech weapons.

But in 1983, a secret State Department report said there was “unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.” The report detailed how Pakistan had bought or stolen nuclear weapons technology around the world.

The report, based on information gathered by the CIA and recently declassified, also said flatly that “China has provided assistance to Pakistan’s program to develop a nuclear weapons capability.”

The “unambiguous evidence” included Pakistan’s secret blueprint for a nuclear bomb. That blueprint was made in China.

Pakistan had obtained the plans from the Chinese government in the early 1980s. The bomb was simple and efficient, based on highly enriched uranium, and it had been tested by the Chinese in 1966. U.S. government physicists built a model of the bomb and reported that it was a virtually foolproof design.

“The United States approached the Pakistani government at the highest levels to communicate its extreme concern” over the nuclear-weapons program, the report said.

...

But Zia indicated his belief that he had the blessings of President Ronald Reagan and the director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, to go ahead and build the bomb, according to two retired Pakistani military intelligence officials. The general clearly stated his intent in a 1986 interview. “It is our right to obtain the technology,” Zia said.

In 1985, Congress enacted a law requiring the president to certify that Pakistan was not building nuclear weapons and thus eligible for continuing military and economic aid. And every year from 1985 to 1990, Presidents Reagan and Bush certified just that.

“Reagan and Bush said it ain’t a bomb until they turn that last screw and paint B‑O-M‑B on the side,” Bearden said.

Everything changed after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, when Pakistan was no longer needed as the key link in the CIA’s arms pipeline to Afghan rebels. In 1990, the United States finally acknowledged that the Pakistani nuclear weapons program existed — and, under the law, cut off military aid.

This left Pakistan’s armed forces, facing an Indian army twice their size, without a reliable source of conventional weapons, such as tanks and jets. It is still waiting for 28 F‑16’s, for which it paid the United States $650 million.

Beginning in 1990, Pakistan is believed to have built between 7 and 12 nuclear warheads — based on the Chinese design, assisted by Chinese scientists and Chinese technology. That technology included Chinese magnets for producing weapons-grade enriched uranium, a furnace for shaping the uranium into a nuclear bomb core, and high-tech diagnostic equipment for nuclear weapons tests, according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which tracks the spread of nuclear weapons and technology.

Now, with last week’s weapons tests, Pakistan faces fresh sanctions from the United States.

...

————

“U.S. And China Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb” By TIM WEINER; The New York Times; 06/01/1998

“The United States provided Pakistani nuclear scientists with technical training from the 1950s into the 1970s. And it turned a blind eye to the nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, because Pakistan was providing the crucial link in the CIA’s effort to smuggle billions of dollars of weapons to Afghan guerrillas attempting to drive out Soviet invaders.”

It’s not a secret. We’ve known about the US involvement in the Pakistani nuclear procurement network for decades. An arrangement directly tied to Pakistan’s key role in the CIA-backed efforts to back the jihadist in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions were seen as a huge problem by the US national security state. Until the circumstances changed and suddenly the problems just went away:

...
Pakistan’s efforts to build the bomb began in the 1950s. Under the “Atoms for Peace” program, the United States agreed to train Pakistani scientists in nuclear-reactor technology. Washington also provided Pakistan’s first research reactor and fuel. The training continued until 1972.

That year, shortly after a crushing defeat in its third war with India since the two nations were cut free from British colonial rule in 1947, Pakistan resolved never to suffer such humiliation again. In January 1972, Bhutto, by then prime minister, summoned his nation’s best nuclear physicists and ordered them to build a bomb. Pakistan set up a world-wide smuggling ring to buy, copy or steal nuclear weapons technology, according to U.S. officials and declassified government documents.

India tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, and Pakistan greatly intensified its efforts in response. The program was closely monitored by the U.S. military, intelligence and law-enforcement services — so closely that President Jimmy Carter cut off all military and economic aid to Pakistan in April 1979, citing U.S. laws aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

...

Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, agreed to smuggle weapons to the Afghans on behalf of the CIA. Suddenly Pakistan was the recipient of a six-year, $3.2 billion American aid package — half cash, half high-tech weapons.
...

And as we can see, when the State Department issued a report in 1983 showing unambiguous evidence that Pakistan was working with China in the development of a nuclear bomb and US government officials approached General Zia to express their extreme concern over this activity, Zia apparently indicated that he had the blessings of Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey to go ahead with the program. A claim seemingly backed up by the fact that the Reagan and George Bush repeatedly certified to Congress that Pakistan wasn’t building a bomb every year from 1985–1990. The US government wasn’t just aware of Pakistan’s nuclear program. It was complicit:

...
But in 1983, a secret State Department report said there was “unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.” The report detailed how Pakistan had bought or stolen nuclear weapons technology around the world.

The report, based on information gathered by the CIA and recently declassified, also said flatly that “China has provided assistance to Pakistan’s program to develop a nuclear weapons capability.”

The “unambiguous evidence” included Pakistan’s secret blueprint for a nuclear bomb. That blueprint was made in China.

...

“The United States approached the Pakistani government at the highest levels to communicate its extreme concern” over the nuclear-weapons program, the report said.

...

But Zia indicated his belief that he had the blessings of President Ronald Reagan and the director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, to go ahead and build the bomb, according to two retired Pakistani military intelligence officials. The general clearly stated his intent in a 1986 interview. “It is our right to obtain the technology,” Zia said.

In 1985, Congress enacted a law requiring the president to certify that Pakistan was not building nuclear weapons and thus eligible for continuing military and economic aid. And every year from 1985 to 1990, Presidents Reagan and Bush certified just that.
...

And that rather shocking 1998 piece in the New York Times — 5 years after the first attack on the World Trade Center and three and a half years before 9/11 — brings us top the following excerpt from a book published in 2023, The Bomb, The Bank, The Mullah and The Poppies. As the except makes clear, while BCCI was a key institution in facilitating this secret nuclear proliferation agenda, it was far from the only one. Other supporters inlcude Muammar Gaddafi and Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan, the first president of the UAE. And the head of the Bank of America’s Karachi branch even ended up investing in BCCI, acquiring a 30% stake and a seat on the board:

The Print

Pakistan was almost bankrupt post 1971 but Bhutto went hat in hand for his nuclear quest

In The Bomb, The Bank, The Mullah and The Poppies, Iqbal Chand Malhotra analyses how Pakistan innovatively used a dodgy bank, poppy cultivation & trade to fund its nuclear programme.

Iqbal Chand Malhotra
31 July, 2023 12:09 pm IST

On 20 January 1972, within a month of Lt Gen. Niazi’s inglorious surrender, Bhutto called all the eminent physicists and scientists in Pakistan to convene in Multan under a shamiana, or multi-coloured tent, pitched in the lush gardens of the home of Nawab Sadiq Hussain Qureshi, a wealthy landlord and close friend of Bhutto. This meeting brought together Pakistan’s scientific elite to discuss how to make a nuclear bomb. A year later, Qureshi would be appointed as the chief minister of Punjab. A key invitee to the meeting in Multan was Ghulam Ishaq Khan. In an inspiring speech, Bhutto captivated his audience. He stressed on avenging Pakistan’s humiliation. He wanted to take Pakistan nuclear.

...

Bhutto soon brought the meeting to a close. He had decided to tap the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world for funds. Pakistan was a defeated nation tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. That same day, Bhutto left on a whirlwind tour of Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Arab nations. His last port of call was China. Bhutto went hat in hand looking for coppers to fill his coffers with so that he could embark upon his nuclear quest. Out of all the leaders he met, two responded with warmth and empathy towards another ‘brown Muslim’ whom they felt ought to be helped. These were Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi. The latter was also the first president of the newly minted United Arab Emirates, or UAE.

Bhutto’s fellow traveller on this tour was Ghulam Ishaq Khan, whose role was to establish contact with the top-ranking financial minister/official in each of these countries.

Abu Dhabi was the largest and wealthiest member of the UAE, an oil-rich federation of sheikhdoms formed in 1971, whose constituent rulers had absolute ownership of all the land and natural resources of their nations with no distinctions being made among the wealth of the ruler, the wealth of his family and the wealth of the nation itself. Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi was installed as the head of the newly wealthy oil kingdom of Abu Dhabi after a British-led coup against his brother in 1966. It was here that Bhutto and Ishaq Khan struck gold, so to speak.]

...

Once again, in March 1972, Ishaq Khan thought about Abedi and his capabilities. Sheikh Zayed had made a return trip to Islamabad. Abu Dhabi was willing to support Pakistan in creating a financial vehicle that would ostensibly be private and at arm’s length from the governments of both Pakistan and Abu Dhabi. In reality, it would be secretly controlled by both governments but run by Pakistan. It would be built on the fiction that it was heavily capitalised by oil-rich Arab leaders, while the reality was that all of them would only be acting as nominees, providing either only their names to the proposed entity or their names plus funds in the form of deposits to get a guaranteed no-risk return rather than fund the bank as actual investors at risk.

Who could head such an institution and successfully run it through a web of deception and deceit? Who could spread authentic-sounding disinformation about the true intentions of such an entity? One name stood out repeatedly. It was that of Abedi. Ishaq Khan had lengthy chats with Awan, who too endorsed Abedi’s name. Finally, the job was to convince Bhutto and have Abedi released from detention. Abedi, it is said, jumped at the idea of realising his dream of becoming a major player in global banking. But first, according to Awan, an international profile had to be built for Abedi, who had to be seen as wooing Sheikh Zayed. Awan was of the view that it was imperative for Abedi to appear credible as well as distant from the government of Pakistan.

...

It is still unclear and probably will remain forever unclear as to what covenants Abedi had executed in secret with the Pakistan government that permitted him to establish and independently run BCCI and also aggrandise himself with untold wealth in the process. Apart from Sheikh Zayed’s help, the enterprise needed credibility in order to crash into the world of global banking, which was still a White man’s club. Abedi had only one contact he could use to crash into this exclusive club. That was a Dutchman named Dick van Oenen, who ran Bank of America’s (Bank Am) representative office in Karachi during the time that Abedi ran UBL. Coincidentally, both had offices in the same building. It is unclear what incentives Abedi offered Van Oenen, but right after he had secured his release from house arrest, Abedi flew with Van Oenen to San Francisco for a lunch meeting with Bank Am’s legendary chairman A.W. ‘Tom’ Clausen.

The wily Abedi literally promised Clausen the keys to the kingdom of Abu Dhabi and beyond it, to introductions to members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). What resulted brings to mind Lord Acton’s saying ‘greed corrupts and absolute greed corrupts absolutely’. Clausen agreed to invest $625,000 for a 30 per cent equity stake in BCCI and a seat on its board. Abedi now had his bank in place. Abu Dhabi was the other provider of capital for BCCI. It was BCCI’s largest depositor and borrower, and for most of BCCI’s existence, its largest shareholder. The relationship between the two entities was, as the famous accounting and audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) told the Bank of England (BoE) days before BCCI’s closure, ‘very close’, with BCCI providing services to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi far beyond what an ordinary relationship between a bank and its shareholders or depositors entailed.

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, holder of a 10 per cent interest in BCCI beginning in 1980, appears to have made some cash payments for its interest in BCCI, which had a book value of approximately $250 million as of 31 December 1989. An unknown but substantial percentage of the shares acquired by Abu Dhabi overall in BCCI appears to have been acquired on a risk-free basis – either with guaranteed rates of return, buy-back arrangements or both.

As a result, BCCI never had a substantial capital base and was forced from the beginning to use deposits to meet its operating expenses rather than to properly invest capital in extending legitimate loans or other financing. Not having an actual capital base, BCCI simply pretended it had one and relied on the reputation of its shareholders to assist it in doing so in order to lure others to deposit their funds with it. As BCCI officers later revealed, the bank in effect had to create retained capital out of its operating profits by juggling its books because of the lack of real capitalisation. And because there were not real profits either, the supposed profits too had to be manufactured by means of juggling the books pertaining to deposits. These deposits, in turn, could only be given a good return on investment by means of using the funds from new deposits, requiring BCCI to grow at a frenzied pace in order to avoid collapse. It was a classic Ponzi scheme designed to finance Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme.

...

In September 1972, at the five-star Phoenicia hotel in pre-Yom Kippur–war Beirut, Abedi launched his new venture, the BCCI. The bank was launched in the Phoenicia’s ballroom in the presence of a group of a hundred Pakistani Muhajirs, or refugees, like Abedi himself, who had their roots in north- central India. BCCI S.A. (owned directly by its shareholders) was incorporated in Luxembourg. In a matter of eight quick months, Bhutto had his financial structure in place to pursue his dream of going nuclear. However, by 18 May 1974, when India detonated its first nuclear device at Pokhran in the Rajasthan desert, nothing had been achieved on the nuclear front in Pakistan. The PAEC had drawn a blank in going down the plutonium route and was engaged in circular arguments with the international community over the terms for the purchase of a French reprocessing plant.

During this period, an India-born Pakistani Muhajir called Abdul Qadir Khan, or A.Q. Khan, was writing letters to Bhutto, wishing to share his nuclear knowledge with the Pakistani government. In August 1974, after having him vetted by the ISI, Bhutto sent for Khan. He was born in Bhopal in 1936 and migrated to Pakistan in 1952. From there, Khan made his way to Holland (the Netherlands) in 1961, where he finally obtained his Ph.D in metallurgy from the University of Leuven in Flanders in 1971. Following his doctorate, Khan got a job at FDO, a Dutch engineering firm. FDO supplied parts and expertise to Ultra Centrifuge Nederland (UCN), the Dutch partner in the uranium-enriching British-Dutch-German consortium URENCO. UCN’s plant at Almelo in Holland was running one of the most secretive projects in Europe.

...

In December 1974, Khan, his Dutch–South African wife and their two daughters arrived in Islamabad for the Christmas holidays. Khan had a meeting with Bhutto and patiently explained how superior and cost-effective centrifuge technology was over the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s plutonium programme. Khan’s back-of-the-envelope calculations showed Bhutto that each bomb typically required 15 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and that this would cost only $60,000 to manufacture. The icing on the cake was the discovery of a vein in the foothills of Pakistan’s Suleiman Mountains range in 1963; the country was found to have an enormous stockpile of uranium ore. Bhutto sent Khan back to Holland to collect all the data on the breakthroughs made in Germany on centrifuge design and simultaneously instructed Munir Khan to begin research on building a uranium enrichment plant.

Meanwhile, any such operation involving large-scale smuggling of technology and equipment also required an efficient logistics network. Three brothers – Abbas, Mustafa and Murtaza Gokal – had set up the Gulf Group (officially Gulf International Holdings) in Karachi. In 1969, they started Gulf Shipping Lines, the flagship company of the Gulf business group. Gulf Shipping Lines was registered and headquartered in Geneva. By 1975, the brothers were in charge of a fleet of at least 240 ships, ninety-seven of which were owned and the rest chartered. They distinguished themselves in the shipping world and began to be accepted.

However, they were not averse to breaking the law, and there is a reported case of 1983 where they attempted to bribe a British captain of a chartered cargo vessel to ‘falsify his log book’. The captain would not be bribed, but he discovered that his signature had been forged and that duplicate documents that altered the original entries in his log book had been filed with the necessary authorities. For all clandestine trade, the Gokal brothers used their Swiss company called Tradinaft. It is reported that the Gokals were involved in a highly secretive BCCI deal that bankrolled a consortium made up of Libya, Pakistan and Argentina in its quest for nuclear weapons.

By 1976, the Gokals were borrowing heavily from BCCI for reasons best known to them and to Abedi. By 1978, the brothers were in financial trouble and BCCI loans weren’t being repaid. BCCI continued lending to them anyway. To make it appear that the Gokals were repaying their loans, audit reports showed that BCCI applied unrecorded deposits – other people’s money – to their account. It also created phoney loan accounts in the names of other Middle Eastern investors and drew money from there. Money was shifted among BCCI’s lightly regulated affiliates. Sometimes the bank simply faked the paperwork to assist the Gokals. Gulf Group created seventy-one shell companies to which BCCI made ‘loan after loan after loan’ as Masihur Rahman, BCCI’s former chief financial officer, testified before a 1991 US Senate subcommittee investigating the BCCI case, despite what he called threats to his life.

Although the bank started as BCCI S.A., within a couple of years, Abedi decided to restructure it. A holding company called BCCI Holdings was created. And the bank underlying it, BCCI S.A., was split into two parts: one with its head office in Luxembourg, called BCCI S.A., and the other with its head office in Grand Cayman, the largest of the three Cayman Islands, which constitute a British Overseas Territory and are also a well-known tax haven. The BCCI S.A. bank mostly had its presence in European and Middle Eastern locations, and BCCI Overseas Bank was mostly present in Third World countries.

...

This excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra’s ‘The Bomb, The Bank, The Mullah and The Poppies’ has been published with permission from Bloomsbury India.

———–

“Pakistan was almost bankrupt post 1971 but Bhutto went hat in hand for his nuclear quest” by Iqbal Chand Malhotra; The Print; 07/31/2023

“Bhutto soon brought the meeting to a close. He had decided to tap the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world for funds. Pakistan was a defeated nation tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. That same day, Bhutto left on a whirlwind tour of Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Arab nations. His last port of call was China. Bhutto went hat in hand looking for coppers to fill his coffers with so that he could embark upon his nuclear quest. Out of all the leaders he met, two responded with warmth and empathy towards another ‘brown Muslim’ whom they felt ought to be helped. These were Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi. The latter was also the first president of the newly minted United Arab Emirates, or UAE.”

The plan hatched in 1972 wasn’t just a Pakistani plot. This was a multi-national affair that relied on funds from both the Muslim Brotherhood but also Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan, then the first president of the UAE. Keep in mind that it was Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan’s son, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), who appears to have been actively involved with trying to tip the 2016 US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor, along with MBS of Saudi Arabia, and who has an infamously close relationship with the Trump family. And as we can see, the UAE played a key role in laundering the financial assets used to capitalize the secret Pakistani nuclear program, with Agha Hasan Abedi, the banker who went on to found and run BCCI, serving as a central organizer of maintaining the necessary financial fictions:

...
Once again, in March 1972, Ishaq Khan thought about Abedi and his capabilities. Sheikh Zayed had made a return trip to Islamabad. Abu Dhabi was willing to support Pakistan in creating a financial vehicle that would ostensibly be private and at arm’s length from the governments of both Pakistan and Abu Dhabi. In reality, it would be secretly controlled by both governments but run by Pakistan. It would be built on the fiction that it was heavily capitalised by oil-rich Arab leaders, while the reality was that all of them would only be acting as nominees, providing either only their names to the proposed entity or their names plus funds in the form of deposits to get a guaranteed no-risk return rather than fund the bank as actual investors at risk.

Who could head such an institution and successfully run it through a web of deception and deceit? Who could spread authentic-sounding disinformation about the true intentions of such an entity? One name stood out repeatedly. It was that of Abedi. Ishaq Khan had lengthy chats with Awan, who too endorsed Abedi’s name. Finally, the job was to convince Bhutto and have Abedi released from detention. Abedi, it is said, jumped at the idea of realising his dream of becoming a major player in global banking. But first, according to Awan, an international profile had to be built for Abedi, who had to be seen as wooing Sheikh Zayed. Awan was of the view that it was imperative for Abedi to appear credible as well as distant from the government of Pakistan.
...

But, of course, BCCI didn’t manage to pull of its years of mass fraud on its own. It had help from institutions look the Bank of America, with Dick van Oenen, the head of BoA’s Karachi office and ended up investing for a 30% stake in BCCI and a seat on the board, putting a BoA officer right in the middle the BCCI Ponzi scheme that was ultimately facilitating the clandestine nuclear program:

...
It is still unclear and probably will remain forever unclear as to what covenants Abedi had executed in secret with the Pakistan government that permitted him to establish and independently run BCCI and also aggrandise himself with untold wealth in the process. Apart from Sheikh Zayed’s help, the enterprise needed credibility in order to crash into the world of global banking, which was still a White man’s club. Abedi had only one contact he could use to crash into this exclusive club. That was a Dutchman named Dick van Oenen, who ran Bank of America’s (Bank Am) representative office in Karachi during the time that Abedi ran UBL. Coincidentally, both had offices in the same building. It is unclear what incentives Abedi offered Van Oenen, but right after he had secured his release from house arrest, Abedi flew with Van Oenen to San Francisco for a lunch meeting with Bank Am’s legendary chairman A.W. ‘Tom’ Clausen.

The wily Abedi literally promised Clausen the keys to the kingdom of Abu Dhabi and beyond it, to introductions to members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). What resulted brings to mind Lord Acton’s saying ‘greed corrupts and absolute greed corrupts absolutely’. Clausen agreed to invest $625,000 for a 30 per cent equity stake in BCCI and a seat on its board. Abedi now had his bank in place. Abu Dhabi was the other provider of capital for BCCI. It was BCCI’s largest depositor and borrower, and for most of BCCI’s existence, its largest shareholder. The relationship between the two entities was, as the famous accounting and audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) told the Bank of England (BoE) days before BCCI’s closure, ‘very close’, with BCCI providing services to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi far beyond what an ordinary relationship between a bank and its shareholders or depositors entailed.

...

As a result, BCCI never had a substantial capital base and was forced from the beginning to use deposits to meet its operating expenses rather than to properly invest capital in extending legitimate loans or other financing. Not having an actual capital base, BCCI simply pretended it had one and relied on the reputation of its shareholders to assist it in doing so in order to lure others to deposit their funds with it. As BCCI officers later revealed, the bank in effect had to create retained capital out of its operating profits by juggling its books because of the lack of real capitalisation. And because there were not real profits either, the supposed profits too had to be manufactured by means of juggling the books pertaining to deposits. These deposits, in turn, could only be given a good return on investment by means of using the funds from new deposits, requiring BCCI to grow at a frenzied pace in order to avoid collapse. It was a classic Ponzi scheme designed to finance Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme.
...

And as we’ll see in a second excerpt from The Bomb, The Bank, The Mullah and The Poppies, not only was there no disentangling of this covert nuclear agenda from the Afghan mujahedeen support efforts that got underway following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, neither was there any separate the extensive heroin trafficking that was playing a major role in providing the funding for these agendas. With the US turning a blind eye the entire time as new sources of heroin flooded US streets. Pakistan’s nuclear bomb was paid for with heroin:

New Indian Express

Unholy Nuclear Nexus: Pakistan’s Story on how it built Islamic Bomb with the help of China and rogue US elements

Fresh revelations expose how Pakistan, the world’s biggest drug supplier, used money from the narcotics trade to finance and build its Islamic Bomb with the help of China and rogue US elements.

Express News Service
Updated on:
14 Jul 2023, 6:25 am

AB Awan, an officer of the Indian Police before 1947 and now director general of the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau, stood on the porch of then Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s house on the mall in Rawalpindi, waiting for his car. He wondered if his cheeks stung more from the loo or from Bhutto’s bitter tongue. Awan had just attended two back-to-back meetings of the ‘Kashmir cell’ and the ‘Liberation Cell’, both chaired by Bhutto.

Awan was unhappy because he feared all of his hard work would go to waste. How would he be able to kick-start the insurgency without a promoter to catalyse it? Awan was an old-school officer, upright and loyal to his master President Ayub Khan. Would Ayub listen to him rather than to Bhutto? As Awan debated these questions, his Austin Cambridge car drew up and he instructed his driver to take him to the PIB safe house on Convoy Road. He had a meeting with a banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, who ran the United Bank Limited (UBL), Pakistan’s second-largest bank. Abedi was supposed to activate the hawala channels that Awan was going to use to fund the planned insurrection in the Valley.

Abedi was very obsequious before Awan and understood what was needed to expand the funding being provided by the PIB to the nascent Master Cell operation in the Valley since March 1964. Abedi was now part of Pakistan’s deep state and became the first banker to Pakistan’s jihad against India. The PIB already had accounts operating with UBL. Abedi set up what he called the ‘black network’ within UBL to handle each and every demand of the PIB. The black network of UBL was to further the bank’s interests and aims in Pakistan. In later years, when UBL was nationalised and Abedi had launched BCCI, he carried the black network across to his new institution. The black network was launched to provide the Pakistani government with every kind of service it needed and involved the single-minded pursuit of cultivating key individuals who were in power.

On 20 January 1972, within a month of Lt Gen. Niazi’s inglorious surrender, Bhutto called all the eminent physicists and scientists in Pakistan to convene in Multan under a shamiana, or multi-coloured tent, pitched in the lush gardens of the home of Nawab Sadiq Hussain Qureshi, a wealthy landlord and close friend of Bhutto. This meeting brought together Pakistan’s scientific elite to discuss how to make a nuclear bomb.

During this period, an India-born Pakistani Muhajir called Abdul Qadir Khan, or AQ Khan, was writing letters to Bhutto, wishing to share his nuclear knowledge with the Pakistani government. In August 1974, after having him vetted by the ISI, Bhutto sent for Khan.

...

Meanwhile, on 1 September 1976, a covert group called Safari Club was created at a meeting at the famous Mt Kenya Safari Club resort in Nanyuki, about 200 kilometres from Nairobi. This resort was then owned by the British conglomerate Lonrho. The participants in this top-secret meeting formed a syndicate. They consisted of the following key heads of intelligence in five countries: 1. France—Alexandre de Marenches, director of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionage (SDECE), France’s external intelligence agency 2. Saudi Arabia—Kamal Adham, director of intelligence, Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah (Saudi Intelligence) 3. Egypt—Gen. Kamal Hassan Ali, director of intelligence, Mukhabarat (Egyptian Intelligence) 4. Morocco—Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, director of intelligence and commander of the Royal Moroccan Army 5. Iran—Gen. Nematollah Nassiri of SAVAK (Iranian Intelligence).. The Safari Club played a secret role in political intrigues involving many countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, while being primarily funded through secret back-door deals, government banks and independent operations. One of the primary sources of funds for the club’s secret operations and tasks was the BCCI.

AQ Khan had calculated that he would need at least 10,000 centrifuges for a viable bomb programme. He had selected the CNOR-designed centrifuge prototype as it was simpler to build and, most importantly, had lost the race in favour of the G‑2 centrifuge design adopted at URENCO. There were dozens of suppliers with vast stockpiles of thousands of components that they wanted to sell. However, despite the easy availability of components, the CNOR prototype had an unresolved design flaw. The attempt to resolve this was classified, and Khan was unable to access these papers. Khan had no choice but to work on removing this flaw, and he undertook several personal trips to Holland for this. All this while, Swaleh Naqvi and the BCCI branches across Europe wrote out all the cheques that Khan needed. Prime Minister Bhutto was chuffed with the progress Khan was making. He ordered several underground test tunnels to be constructed at two locations in Baluchistan—five in the Ras Koh range on the Baluchistan plateau and one 160 kilometres west of this range, beneath the sands of the Kharan Desert, also in Baluchistan. Each tunnel was capable of withstanding a 20-kiloton explosion, equivalent to the magnitude of the Nagasaki bomb.

...

Days later, at 1.45 am on 4 April 1979, Lt Gen. Arif oversaw the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto by hanging. That same month, material handwritten by Bhutto while he was on death row surfaced at a printing press in London. The manuscript was labelled ‘If I am Assassinated’. The Indian typesetter at the press found the manuscript intriguing and made copies, one of which landed in the hands of Gary Modwell, then Indian external intelligence agency RAW’s station chief in London. The manuscript, which was later published, revealed that Bhutto had signed a secret nuclear protocol with China in June 1976. This protocol enabled Pakistan to rely on China to fill in all the knowledge, process and technology gaps to weaponise its nuclear bomb after it was built and tested.

...

The Herald of Pakistan in its September 1985 issue had reported that at least from 1982 onwards, the logistics of ferrying drugs from the heroin refineries in Baluchistan and NWFP was under the control and operation of the ISI. The trucks of the Pakistan Army’s National Logistics Cell (NLC) arrived in NWFP with arms from Karachi unloaded from ships chartered by the CIA and returned laden with heroin under ISI protection back to Karachi for global distribution. Legal cover for this activity was provided by the CIA, as a result of which this trade mushroomed to gigantic levels never before conceived. The BCCI was primus inter pares among the bankers to the jihad.

The only relationship that overshadowed this was the BCCI-Pakistan relationship. Gen. Zia was in charge of Pakistan during the boom years of BCCI, and he did the most for the bank. According to former BCCI executive Nazir Chinoy, every time Abedi visited Pakistan, he would make it a point to meet Gen. Zia, but only in the dead of the night. Abedi created the Pakistan BCCI Foundation in 1981 as a tax dodge, and his old friend Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who was then finance minister, awarded it tax-free status. In return, BCCI provided $10 million in 1985 for the establishment of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology in NWFP. Dr AQ Khan was appointed director of this institute and carried on part of his nuclear research over here. In the same period, other BCCI officials were assisting agents of the ISI in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by ISI front companies through BCCI Canada.

The Chinese were supplying technical expertise and uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to Pakistan and violating the NPT. Voluminous data on the Pakistani nuclear programme with the US Atomic Energy Commission enabled it to replicate the Pakistani bomb, which was the size of a soccer ball. This was kept in a vault in the Pentagon. Computer simulations of the warhead showed it worked perfectly. Intelligence reports also revealed that the Chinese had shipped enough weapons-grade enriched uranium to enable Pakistan to detonate a device whenever Gen. Zia would want to do so, unhindered by whether or not AQ Khan had generated enough uranium for such a test. Apparently, the Kahuta technicians had converted this uranium into a metal core which would fit into the Chinese design of the bomb that Kahuta had received. There were significant numbers of Chinese technicians at Kahuta working on triggering mechanisms, centrifuges, vacuum systems, etc. The Chinese also brought rocket propellants and super-hard metals like maraging steels.

A 1984 report by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) identified Pakistan as the source of 31 per cent of the heroin in the US markets. The US Congress was so alarmed that it dispatched a special delegation led by Senator Paul Hawkins to visit Pakistan in February 1984. Hawkins was the author of special legislation stipulating a drastic reduction of foreign aid to those nations allegedly supplying narcotics to the US and who would not wholeheartedly cooperate with the DEA. By 1985, drug trafficking was estimated to be a $100 billion industry, out of which the Pakistani mafia’s share was in the region of $30 billion. Senator Hawkins’s trip to Pakistan… was preceded by certain events that pointed to overt official complicity in Pakistan in its runaway boom in illegal and clandestine heroin exports to the US. During an official Pakistan tour in 1982, US Attorney General William French Smith and his aides discovered heroin being openly sold in a market near the Khyber Pass.

In addition to keeping back intelligence, the (US) State Department had been facilitating back-door procurement, issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment for its bomb. The commerce department had refused to licence such equipment for export for proliferation reasons. Barlow kept digging. His analysis of US cable traffic in and out of Pakistan revealed that sensitive details about the CIA or US customs operations were somehow always discovered by Pakistan before the trap was sprung. Matching incidents with the cables, Barlow discovered that the State Department had been sending detailed demarches, treacherously tipping off contacts in the Pakistan government.

Dr AQ Khan had pressed the right buttons and got Hamid Gul really worked up. In the spring of 1989, Hamid Gul, the ISI chief, began plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He approached a mujahedeen fighter and financier based in Peshawar, who was as yet unknown in West or South Asia. This was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi dissident whose family had made their fortune in construction and had many prosperous and powerful political connections.

...

Excerpted from Iqbal Chand Malhotra’s The Bomb, The Bank, The Mullah and The Poppies: A Tale of Deception with permission from Bloomsbury.

———–

”
Unholy Nuclear Nexus: Pakistan’s Story on how it built Islamic Bomb with the help of China and rogue US elements” by Express News Service; New Indian Express; 07/14/2023

“Meanwhile, on 1 September 1976, a covert group called Safari Club was created at a meeting at the famous Mt Kenya Safari Club resort in Nanyuki, about 200 kilometres from Nairobi. This resort was then owned by the British conglomerate Lonrho. The participants in this top-secret meeting formed a syndicate. They consisted of the following key heads of intelligence in five countries: 1. France—Alexandre de Marenches, director of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionage (SDECE), France’s external intelligence agency 2. Saudi Arabia—Kamal Adham, director of intelligence, Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah (Saudi Intelligence) 3. Egypt—Gen. Kamal Hassan Ali, director of intelligence, Mukhabarat (Egyptian Intelligence) 4. Morocco—Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, director of intelligence and commander of the Royal Moroccan Army 5. Iran—Gen. Nematollah Nassiri of SAVAK (Iranian Intelligence).. The Safari Club played a secret role in political intrigues involving many countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, while being primarily funded through secret back-door deals, government banks and independent operations. One of the primary sources of funds for the club’s secret operations and tasks was the BCCI.”

As we can see, Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear program had A LOT of help. It wasn’t just BCCI, or the CIA and BoA turning a blind eye. The Safari Club, formed in 1976, established another clandestine multinational intelligence effort whose covert agendas included both Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and, eventually, the CIA-backed mujahedeen support network in Afghanistan. A club consisting of the intelligence chiefs from not only France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco, but also pre-revolutionary Iran. And as we’ve seen, the Safari Club could be seen as a kind of outsourcing of US intelligence to Saudi Arabia. With BCCI serving as the group’s primary source of funds. And it gets worse. Because BCCI’s Ponzi-like operations weren’t the only sources of funding for this array of overlapping intelligence agendas, from the nuclear program to the arming of the Afghan mujahedeen. By the early 80s, large amounts of heroin were flowing out of Afghanistan and into US markets, with the Pakistani mafia ultimately controlling a third of that trade. Remarkably, the US State Department appears to have faciliated Pakistani diplomatics in their efforts to procure the hi-tech equipment needed to build the bomb, with the State Department repeatedly tipping off the Pakistani government about customs operations being run by US customs or the CIA:

...
The Herald of Pakistan in its September 1985 issue had reported that at least from 1982 onwards, the logistics of ferrying drugs from the heroin refineries in Baluchistan and NWFP was under the control and operation of the ISI. The trucks of the Pakistan Army’s National Logistics Cell (NLC) arrived in NWFP with arms from Karachi unloaded from ships chartered by the CIA and returned laden with heroin under ISI protection back to Karachi for global distribution. Legal cover for this activity was provided by the CIA, as a result of which this trade mushroomed to gigantic levels never before conceived. The BCCI was primus inter pares among the bankers to the jihad.

...

A 1984 report by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) identified Pakistan as the source of 31 per cent of the heroin in the US markets. The US Congress was so alarmed that it dispatched a special delegation led by Senator Paul Hawkins to visit Pakistan in February 1984. Hawkins was the author of special legislation stipulating a drastic reduction of foreign aid to those nations allegedly supplying narcotics to the US and who would not wholeheartedly cooperate with the DEA. By 1985, drug trafficking was estimated to be a $100 billion industry, out of which the Pakistani mafia’s share was in the region of $30 billion. Senator Hawkins’s trip to Pakistan… was preceded by certain events that pointed to overt official complicity in Pakistan in its runaway boom in illegal and clandestine heroin exports to the US. During an official Pakistan tour in 1982, US Attorney General William French Smith and his aides discovered heroin being openly sold in a market near the Khyber Pass.

In addition to keeping back intelligence, the (US) State Department had been facilitating back-door procurement, issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment for its bomb. The commerce department had refused to licence such equipment for export for proliferation reasons. Barlow kept digging. His analysis of US cable traffic in and out of Pakistan revealed that sensitive details about the CIA or US customs operations were somehow always discovered by Pakistan before the trap was sprung. Matching incidents with the cables, Barlow discovered that the State Department had been sending detailed demarches, treacherously tipping off contacts in the Pakistan government.
...

By the mid-80s, BCCI was not only sponsoring the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, but BCCI officials were assisting ISI agents in the acquisition of nuclear technology through BCCI Canada. The US was well aware of this progress, even building a replicate of the Pakistani bomb that was kept at the Pentagon:

...
The only relationship that overshadowed this was the BCCI-Pakistan relationship. Gen. Zia was in charge of Pakistan during the boom years of BCCI, and he did the most for the bank. According to former BCCI executive Nazir Chinoy, every time Abedi visited Pakistan, he would make it a point to meet Gen. Zia, but only in the dead of the night. Abedi created the Pakistan BCCI Foundation in 1981 as a tax dodge, and his old friend Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who was then finance minister, awarded it tax-free status. In return, BCCI provided $10 million in 1985 for the establishment of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology in NWFP. Dr AQ Khan was appointed director of this institute and carried on part of his nuclear research over here. In the same period, other BCCI officials were assisting agents of the ISI in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by ISI front companies through BCCI Canada.

The Chinese were supplying technical expertise and uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to Pakistan and violating the NPT. Voluminous data on the Pakistani nuclear programme with the US Atomic Energy Commission enabled it to replicate the Pakistani bomb, which was the size of a soccer ball. This was kept in a vault in the Pentagon. Computer simulations of the warhead showed it worked perfectly. Intelligence reports also revealed that the Chinese had shipped enough weapons-grade enriched uranium to enable Pakistan to detonate a device whenever Gen. Zia would want to do so, unhindered by whether or not AQ Khan had generated enough uranium for such a test. Apparently, the Kahuta technicians had converted this uranium into a metal core which would fit into the Chinese design of the bomb that Kahuta had received. There were significant numbers of Chinese technicians at Kahuta working on triggering mechanisms, centrifuges, vacuum systems, etc. The Chinese also brought rocket propellants and super-hard metals like maraging steels.
...

How many nukes does Pakistan have to spare today? It’s no longer a hidden nuclear program, after all. With approximately 170 nuclear weapons, Pakistan isn’t exactly lacking in nukes. It would be nice to think that Pakistan wouldn’t think of giving such a weapon to a group like al Qaeda, but what about all those sponsor states? If Saudi Arabia asked for a nuke, would Pakistan refuse? How about the UAE? Let’s hope we never have to find out. But with Iran probably more intent than ever on its own nuclear ambitions, it’s hard to see how the ‘Pakistani bomb’ doesn’t suddenly turn into the ‘BCCI investor bomb’ sooner or later. It always was, after all.

We know there’s a lot more under this rock, even if we aren’t allowed to know the details. Epstein’s entire career as some sort of financial advisor to billionaires (with Les Wexner being the only known client) remains almost completely opaque to this day, along with the role he played in the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme that, as Ed Opperman has talked about, appears to be the original source of Epstein’s vast wealth. We also know about Epstein’s keen interest in cultivating ties to elite scientists, including plans to turn his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico into some sort of eugenic breeding experiment that involved him impregnating large numbers of women. And then there’s the incredible role Ghislaine Maxwell’s father and sister, Robert and Christine Maxwell, played in the PROMIS affair, with Christine going on to co-found Chiliad in the late 90s, a company that provided PROMIS-like data-integration capabilities to the US national security state in the post‑9/11 era, with the FBI serving as Chiliad’s flagship client! This is a wild story by any standard. And yet, when it comes to what we’ve actually been allowed to learn, almost everything we’ve learned has been focused on the sex crimes, a singular focus that is understandable from a public interest standpoint but also serves the purpose of ensuring many of Epstein’s co-conspirators remain entirely off the radar.

And when it comes to the under-explored aspects of the Epstein story, few places better exemplify that reality than Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico. A location that has never been searched by state or federal authorities. Yes, there was a brief attempt by state authorities to search the ranch in the 2019, but that was ended thanks to the demands of federal prosecutors in September of 2019. And while it’s true that the state of New Mexico has recently established a ‘Truth Commission’ ostensibly dedicated to finally getting to the bottom of Epstein’s activities in the state, it turns out the ‘Truth Commission’ is panning out much like the previous ‘investigations’ into Epstein. That’s the depressingly predictable update we recently got from journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.

For starters, it turns out Gerardo “Jerry” Antonio Paredes Jr., the person who current serves as New Mexico’s Chief Procurement Officer of the Legislative Council Service, has an interesting tangential tie to the political career of Don Huffines, the Texas Republican who bought Zorro Ranch in 2023 in what was then a secret deal. As we’ve seen, Huffines is the Trump-backed Texas Republican who is currently running for the office of Texas Comptroller, with a history of working with Texas’s MAGA-aligned theocratic billionaire GOP king-maker Tim Dunn and white nationalist activists in Dunn’s orbit. His son, Russell Huffines, is currently the Associate Director of Agency Outreach in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs. To discover of a MAGA-aligned political family purchase Zorro Ranch was one of those ‘surprises’ we should probably expect at this point. Well here’s another surprise: Paredes Jr, as Chief Procurement Officer of the Legislative Council Service, controls the contract selection process for the legal team and any other outside help hired to run the Epstein Truth Commission’s investigation. And it also turns out that Paredes Jr previously worked as a Tax Analysts II under Glenn Hagar, Texas’s current MAGA-backed comptroller. So the guy who is in control of the resources available to the Truth Commission previously worked for the guy currently holding the job Don Huffines is trying to win. And while that fact in and of itself doesn’t necessarily mean that Paredes Jr is somehow sabotaging the commission, there’s also the fact that the commission had until April 10 to award a law firm with the contract to lead the investigation, and yet as of April 18 no announcement had been made. Surprise!

Then there’s the investigation into the allegations of bodies being buried on the site, which does appear to have resulted in a search by cadaver dogs. But that search appears to be more theater than anything else, with far too little time or resources to realistically find anything. The state-owned lands that had been leased by Epstein for grazing rights for cattle he didn’t own will not be searched despite New Mexico Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard calling the land a buffer zone that was used “almost as a shield to hide what activity was occurring on the ranch.”

The land of Epstein’s neighbors has also not been searched. And while that might seem like a reasonable decision in most investigations, these weren’t exactly normal neighbors. One of the neighboring ranches is owned by the family of former New Mexican government Bruce King. It was King who sold the Zorro Ranch plot to Epstein in the first place back in 1993 when he was New Mexico’s governor. King’s son, Gary, went on to become New Mexico’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015. Recall how it was 2007 when that ranch came under the scrutiny of the FBI as part of the original federal investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking. The FBI went as far as interviewing the ranch manager but seemed to lose all interest in the property after someone called the staff and instructed them they were not allowed to speak with the FBI. As we’ll see below, Gary King’s ties to Epstein include accepting intentionally-hidden campaign contributions for Epstein after Epstein was convicted as a sex offender.

And then there’s Epstein’s other very noteworthy neighbor: the San Cristobal ranch, owned by the family of Henry Singleton. It turns out Singleton has an exceptionally interesting background that ties into one of the under-explored chapters of the Epstein saga. A form OSS veteran, Singleton went on to co-found Litton and Teledyne, two major US defense contractors. Litton was bought by Northrop Grumman in 2001. Teledyne remains a major defense contractor to this day. Singleton died in 1999, but his family still own the property. This is a good time to recall another OSS veteran who plays a significant role in Epstein’s biography: Bill Barr’s father Donald Barr, who offered Epstein his first real job as a teacher at the prestigious Dalton private school.

So what makes Henry Singleton such an interesting neighbor for someone like Epstein? Well, for starters, there’s Epstein’s apparent keen interest in cultivating ties to the many scientists located in New Mexico who worked on the US’s nuclear weapons program, with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories being prime targets. As we saw, Zorro Ranch is actually geographically positioned roughly in between those two nuclear weapons research hubs. And as we’ll see below, Epstein apparently told Steve Bannon in a 2019 interview that the reason he bought the Zorro Ranch property in the first place was because of all the scientists from Los Alamos and Sandia who were leaving those institutions, post-1990, to join a growing number of private research outfits in the area. Recall how Bannon started interviewing Epstein in 2018 for what he later claimed was intended to be a documentary on Epstein, although, as Mark Epstein asserted, Bannon’s original plans for that documentary was intended to repair his reputation. Also recall how Bannon was reportedly convinced Epstein was an intelligence asset and even reportedly became interested in Epstein as a source for intelligence after he was kicked out of the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. Bannon was also a frequent visitor to Epstein’s Manhattan estate. Far right activist Charles Johnson even claimed he was invited by Bannon to meeting Epstein. While Johnson says he turned down the invitation, he also stated “What I was told about that meeting by people close to Bannon was that he was trying to replace Epstein as a source for information from various intelligence networks. He saw Epstein as a rival or a partner but he wanted what Epstein had.”. It’s hard to take Epstein’s claims to Bannon at face value, but there’s no denying cultivating ties to nuclear scientists would have been very much in line with Epstein overall pattern of behavior. It also wouldn’t be particularly surprising of Epstein decided to share an interest with nuclear scientists with Bannon during a series of interviews that were ultimately intended to help rehabilitate Epstein’s reputation, especially if Bannon want to eventually assume a similar role himself. Anything that can be said about Epstein’s mysterious background wasn’t about child sex trafficking is a reputational benefit in that sense.

But Singleton isn’t just an interesting neighbor because he happens to be an OSS veteran who went on to become a major defense contractor whose ranch borders Zorro Ranch for over two miles. It turns out the San Cristobal ranch ties in to that story about the private communications tower installed at Zorro Ranch back in 2016. As we saw, one of the ongoing mysteries of Zorro Ranch is the fact that a bidirectional private communications tower was set up at the ranch in 2016 with a connection to the Sandia Crest communications hub, which potentially allowed Epstein to communicate with all sorts of parties in an extremely private manner. And the FCC licenses for this bi-directional communications set up continued to be maintained even after the sale of the ranch to the Huffines despite three other FCC licenses having been terminated. We have more context on the set up that communications tower. It turns out Epstein’s initial desires were to have the Zorro Ranch use a similar private communications feed that already existed at the neighboring San Cristobal ranch. In fact, Epstein had Gordon contact a man named “Vito” at San Cristobal to inquire of the possibility of some sort of cost-sharing agreement to allow for the use of a feed line at the ranch that connected to its own private wireless communications infrastructure. Notably, Epstein asked that Gordon, “please push. dont wait, call again,” according to released files.

Why the urgency? We have no idea, but the fact that this was all happening in March of 2016, right as Donald Trump was securing his lock on the Republican nomination, does point towards a possible explanation. At a minimum, Epstein had to realize that he was about to come under significant public scrutiny at that point in time. Which makes this a good time to recall another Epstein story involving curious timing: the 2018 theft of a large gun safe that allegedly happened just days after we learned that the victims of the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme were going to sue Epstein for $1 billion in his role in that scheme. As we saw in that story, in addition to the theft at the Zorro Ranch we are told that two nearby cabins were also broken into. It would be very interesting to know if those nearby cabins happened to be located on the estates of either the King family’s ranch or San Cristobal ranch.

Another notable detail regarding the setup of this private communications tower is the fact that Gordon reportedly also contact the staff at Epstein’s Little St. James island property to obtain technical specifications for the microwave communications system already running there. So Epstein’s private communications network wasn’t limited to Zorro Ranch. Keep in mind that it’s presumably trivial to identify the source of communications emanating from a private island, so on one level it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that ‘Epstein Island’ was taking pains to keep its communications private. But it also points towards a paranoia about being spied on that, itself, is an under-explored aspect of this overall story. If Epstein really was a spy running a sexual blackmail operation for multiple intelligence networks, he was probably surrounded by all sorts of other spies and likely paranoid about being spied on himself.

But the timing of the Zorro Ranch’s inquiry into a cost-sharing agreement, coming right as Donald Trump was securing the GOP nomination, isn’t the only aspect of this story that is highly intriguing. The fact that someone with Epstein’s financial resources even cared about some sort of cost-sharing arrangement is remarkable in a of itself, especially considering that Epstein clearly could afford the cost as demonstrated by the fact that Zorro Ranch never arrived at an agreement with San Cristobal ranch and ultimately paid for what was described as an industrial and military grade communications tower. Something made Epstein urgently want much more private communications. It also turns out that Epstein’s black book contained a record for Singleton’s modem number, something that hasn’t been found for any of his other contacts. It’s the kind of detail that suggests some sort of data sharing with Singleton was happening well before that 2016 request. Why would Singleton and Epstein have had any need to communicate via modem? It’s a question that is only compounded by Epstein’s long-standing interest in apparently gathering intelligence, or blackmail, from the New Mexican defense contracting community.

And, of course, when it comes to questions about what shared interests Epstein and Singleton may have had, there’s the Epstein affair’s ties to the PROMIS scandal, which was ultimately a scandal around the mass theft of some of the most closely held government and industry secrets on the planet. Which brings us to another dimension to this story that only adds to the mystery of Epstein’s decision to set up Zorro Ranch as one of his main cases of operation in the first place: Ghislaine Maxwell apparently told the FBI that it was she first identified the Zorro Ranch who convinced Epstein to make the purchase. So Robert and Christine Maxwell help to effectively bug Los Alamos and Sandia labs in the mid 80s and, less than a decade later, Ghislaine just happens to discover Zorro Ranch, convenient located nearby both institutions.

And then there’s the fact that both Robert Maxwell and Epstein made large donations to the Santa Fe Institute, a private research organization set up in 1984, primarily by scientists from Los Alamos Lab. Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who discovered quarks, was a co-founder. In 1990, the Maxwell Foundation endowed a $300,000 professorship at the institute. The chair was named for Robert Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell claimed during a deposition that it was she who connected Epstein to the Santa Fe Institute in 1993. Epstein donated at least $680,000 to the institute over the following decade. Ghislaine sure seems to have played an important role in the

That’s the remarkable set of updates we recently got from Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez on the ongoing Zorro Ranch investigation, with Valdes-Rodriguez arriving at an overall framework for viewing both the Epstein scandal and the PROMIS affair as part of larger, decades old parallel intelligence network established by the OSS veterans like Singleton, who went on to inhabit wildly lucrative roles in the US military industrial complex in the post-war era. A network dedicated to learning key national security secrets through any means necessary, including sexual blackmail. And a network that wasn’t limited to US intelligence veterans, eventually leading to some sort of nuclear secrets sharing agreement with Israel via the PROMIS affair. Valdes-Rodriguez doesn’t use to term “Deep State” to describe this network, but that’s basically what she’s describing. A decades-old US-based deep state with roots in the OSS that has gone international and has no plans on being revealed by a pesky ‘Truth Commission’ or anyone else any time soon:

The Pugilist with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Update on the New Mexico Truth Commission’s Investigation into Zorro Ranch

Don’t get too excited.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Apr 18, 2026

The New Mexico Epstein Survivors Truth Commission is 8 weeks into existence. So, what do we know?

We know the names of the cadaver dogs. And that’s about it.

Shamus. Gingersnap. Greta. Mini. Four dogs, names released to the press, deployed to Jeffrey Epstein’s former Zorro Ranch on March 9 and 10. Drones, too. Two days. That’s it. A press release’s worth of activity on 7,500 acres of high desert where, according to a 2019 anonymous email buried in federal files for six years, two foreign girls were strangled and buried somewhere in the hills.

The New Mexico Department of Justice declined to comment on the outcome of the search, saying only that it was ‘one component of the ongoing investigation.’ It was left to the ranch’s current owner’s attorney, Rick Illmer, to fill the silence: “To our knowledge, no physical evidence was found suggesting criminal activity by the prior owner.”

...

Here is what we do know about the search. Investigators covered the main ranch property. They did not search the state land that Epstein leased under a cattle grazing lease for cows he did not own — the same land that New Mexico Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard specifically identified as a buffer zone, saying it was used “almost as a shield to hide what activity was occurring on the ranch.”

They did not search the adjacent King family ranch land belonging to the family that sold Zorro to Epstein, despite Gary King failing to launch any investigation in Epstein as New Mexico Attorney General and accepting intentionally-hidden campaign contributions from Epstein after Epstein’s conviction as a sex offender.

The commission did not search San Cristobal Ranch, either, which shares more than 2 miles of fence line with Zorro Ranch and whose former owner Henry Singleton — a defense contractor with OSS ties and Sandia National Laboratories connections — had his modem number in Epstein’s personal files. The San Cristobal Ranch’s manager also in 2016 discussed sharing cost of a build-out of a massive industrial and military grade microwave communications network with Epstein.

...

Anyone with knowledge of how cadaver dog searches actually work will tell you: a thorough search of 7,500 acres of rough New Mexico terrain, with multiple structures and outbuildings, requires not days but weeks. It requires ground-penetrating radar. It requires excavation where dogs alert. One alert, one dig. That is the protocol. There is no public record of any digging having occurred.

There is also this: the current owners of Zorro Ranch — the Huffines family, whose patriarch Donald Huffines is the Trump-endorsed Republican frontrunner for Texas State Comptroller — have stationed masked armed guards, dressed all in black, along the property’s fence line, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Totally normal.

The same Donald Huffines, it should be noted, is running for the Texas office previously held by Glenn Hegar — another Trump-endorsed comptroller under whom Gerardo “Jerry” Antonio Paredes Jr. worked as a Tax Analyst II before moving to New Mexico. Paredes now serves as Chief Procurement Officer of the Legislative Council Service. In that role, Paredes controls the contract selection process for the legal team and any other outside help hired to run the Epstein Truth Commission’s investigation. Meaning? The office Donald Huffines is running to lead is the same office that produced the man now gatekeeping the investigation into the property Donald Huffines owns.

The Pugilist has previously reported on this apparent conflict of interest in detail. The commission has not addressed it. Well, that’s not entirely true. We sent a text to state representative Marianna Anaya about the appearance of a conflict of interest and she responded by saying Paredes did not make the final decision about who gets hired, the commission does. I replied by saying it is still an apparent conflict of interest, as Paredes is tasked with screening the applications prior to handing the finalists to the commission. I heard nothing back.

Meanwhile, the Truth Commission — created by the New Mexico House with subpoena power and a $2.5 million budget, charged with delivering an initial report by July — has yet to publicly name the law firm it hired to lead its investigation. The contract award deadline was April 10. It is now April 18. Still nothing. Eight days of silence. When the Santa Fe New Mexican asked how many applications the commission received, a spokesperson declined to say.

...

I contacted the New Mexico Department of Justice, the Truth Commission, and U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury — who attended the commission’s inaugural meeting and made public statements about the investigation — and received no response from any of them.

We know the dogs’ adorable names. We don’t know who is running the investigation. We don’t know what the drones recorded. We don’t know what law firm was hired, nor which law firms applied. We don’t know why the state lease land was not searched. We don’t know why the adjacent ranches were not searched. We don’t know why armed men in tactical gear are guarding the fence line of a property whose owner’s attorney just declared it clean.

...

———–

“Update on the New Mexico Truth Commission’s Investigation into Zorro Ranch” by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez; The Pugilist with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez; 04/18/2026

“The commission did not search San Cristobal Ranch, either, which shares more than 2 miles of fence line with Zorro Ranch and whose former owner Henry Singleton — a defense contractor with OSS ties and Sandia National Laboratories connections — had his modem number in Epstein’s personal files. The San Cristobal Ranch’s manager also in 2016 discussed sharing cost of a build-out of a massive industrial and military grade microwave communications network with Epstein.”

It was the kind of update on the New Mexico Epstein ‘Truth Commission’ that we should probably expect by this point: a search for bodies has indeed happened, but it was a inadequate search lacking the necessary resources and didn’t include any of the land in the adjacent plots. And while the adjacent plots might seem irrelevant to this search, it’s a lot harder to dismiss their relevance when we learn the identities of those adjacent owners: the King family — who sold Zorro Ranch to Epstein in the first place, and the San Cristobal Ranch, owned by Henry Singleton, a figure whose proximity to Epstein adds a new dimension to the many questions swirling around Zorro Ranch. The more we learn, the more the cover up continues:

...
Here is what we do know about the search. Investigators covered the main ranch property. They did not search the state land that Epstein leased under a cattle grazing lease for cows he did not own — the same land that New Mexico Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard specifically identified as a buffer zone, saying it was used “almost as a shield to hide what activity was occurring on the ranch.”

They did not search the adjacent King family ranch land belonging to the family that sold Zorro to Epstein, despite Gary King failing to launch any investigation in Epstein as New Mexico Attorney General and accepting intentionally-hidden campaign contributions from Epstein after Epstein’s conviction as a sex offender.

...

Anyone with knowledge of how cadaver dog searches actually work will tell you: a thorough search of 7,500 acres of rough New Mexico terrain, with multiple structures and outbuildings, requires not days but weeks. It requires ground-penetrating radar. It requires excavation where dogs alert. One alert, one dig. That is the protocol. There is no public record of any digging having occurred.
...

And that ongoing cover up brings us to the following pair of details: first, it turns out the Huffines family has been stationing masked armed guards along the property’s fence line. We don’t know how many armed guards, exactly, but that can’t be cheap. Nor do we know when exactly these armed guards were first posted. But as we’ve saw with the 2018 theft of gun safe containing roughly 33 guns from the ranch, this is hardly the first time Zorro Ranch had armed guards. Interestingly, it turns out the person who controls the contracting process for the Truth Commission, New Mexico’s Chief Procurement Officer of the Legislative Council Service, Antonio Paredes Jr, previously worked as a Tax Analyst for the Texas Comptroller’s office, the same office Don Huffines is currently campaigning to fill. Small world:

...
There is also this: the current owners of Zorro Ranch — the Huffines family, whose patriarch Donald Huffines is the Trump-endorsed Republican frontrunner for Texas State Comptroller — have stationed masked armed guards, dressed all in black, along the property’s fence line, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Totally normal.

The same Donald Huffines, it should be noted, is running for the Texas office previously held by Glenn Hegar — another Trump-endorsed comptroller under whom Gerardo “Jerry” Antonio Paredes Jr. worked as a Tax Analyst II before moving to New Mexico. Paredes now serves as Chief Procurement Officer of the Legislative Council Service. In that role, Paredes controls the contract selection process for the legal team and any other outside help hired to run the Epstein Truth Commission’s investigation. Meaning? The office Donald Huffines is running to lead is the same office that produced the man now gatekeeping the investigation into the property Donald Huffines owns.

...

Meanwhile, the Truth Commission — created by the New Mexico House with subpoena power and a $2.5 million budget, charged with delivering an initial report by July — has yet to publicly name the law firm it hired to lead its investigation. The contract award deadline was April 10. It is now April 18. Still nothing. Eight days of silence. When the Santa Fe New Mexican asked how many applications the commission received, a spokesperson declined to say.
...

And that predictably disappointing update on the status of the New Mexican ‘Truth Commission’ brings us to another report by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez shedding further light on the mysterious wireless private communications infrastructure set up at Zorro Ranch and that was maintained even after the Huffines family purchased the property. An update that raises further questions about not just the nature of Epstein’s relationship with his neighbor, OSS veteran Henry Singleton, but also the nature of the overall goals of the Epstein affair. Why was Epstein so keenly interested in the nuclear scientists in New Mexico? And then there’s all the questions about how might this all relate to the PROMIS affair? Questions compounded by the fact that Ghislaine claims to have identified and convinced Epstein to buy the ranch in the first place:

The Pugilist with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

The Terrifying Real Reason For Jeffrey Epstein’s Remote Zorro Ranch Emerges When You Examine the Ranch Next Door

Part 2 of a series of articles looking at the relationship between Epstein and the San Cristobal Ranch, owned by former OSS member Henry Singleton.
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Apr 08, 2026

Please note: What follows is analysis and hypothesis based upon available facts. To “prove” all of it would require a level of security clearance and access to classified intelligence documents I do not possess.

In September 1945, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9621 and abolished the Office of Strategic Services — the wartime intelligence agency that had run covert operations across Europe and Asia for the duration of World War II. Truman was a plain-spoken man from Missouri who did not believe a democracy needed a secret intelligence apparatus in peacetime. He dissolved the OSS and sent its men home.

Not all of them were happy about it.

The OSS had attracted a particular kind of American — young, educated, ambitious, comfortable with secrecy, thrilled by consequence. Many had, for the first time in their lives, felt both the specific gravity that comes from operating outside normal rules in service of large stakes. It was addictive, as was the sense of belonging this secret brotherhood conferred. Some of these men were brilliant. Some were ruthless. Many had to be both. What most of them shared was that the war that horrified the world had given them something they’d never had before: Importance. And they did not want it to end.

So they did not let it end. Not in reality. In law, sure. But they continued on, likely with a certain bitterness towards Truman. They reorganized. They planned. In secret. As they’d been trained to do. And as soon as they saw an opening, they took it.

The opening came when Truman had created a new organization called The Central Intelligence Group. He saw it as a small presidential newspaper of sorts, that could brief him, personally, on important issues of the day. The OSS veterans — who had never really stopped working — flooded back in, to make themselves indispensable. What Truman had envisioned as having 100 employees soon had 1,800. He watched, somewhat helplessly, as the men of the OSS outmaneuvered him.

The Cold War gave them the justification they needed. Within four years of Truman abolishing the OSS, OSS veterans Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles effectively controlled the new CIA’s covert operations, and the agency had reassembled everything Truman had tried to dismantle, and more. But the formal CIA was only part of what emerged from the dissolution of the OSS. The other part was informal — a network of men who had trained together, trusted each other, and understood that the real levers of postwar American power would run through not through government, but through the defense industry. Through weapons science. And through land.

They knew exactly where the land was, and it wasn’t Washington D.C..

They had watched, in July 1945, as the early morning sky over the New Mexico desert turned white as a second sun.

The Ground

The Trinity Site, where the world’s first nuclear weapon was detonated, sits in the high desert of south-central New Mexico, roughly equidistant between Albuquerque and El Paso. Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the bomb was designed and built, sits on a mesa above Santa Fe. Sandia National Laboratories, where nuclear weapons components are engineered and tested, sits on the eastern edge of Albuquerque. Kirtland Air Force Base, which houses the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, occupies the same footprint. To this day, the world’s largest collection of nuclear warheads is based here, beneath Kirtland Air Force Base, next door to Sandia Labs.

No other geography on earth concentrates so much of the infrastructure of American nuclear and intelligence power in so small an area. The newly created and unleashed men of the OSS understood this. After the war, some of them began to acquire land in New Mexico. Others followed. Political figures. Newsmen. All intelligence adjacent. Not all at once. Over decades. Quietly.

In the 1960s, a man named Carl H. Ingwer Jr. acquired 9,150 acres in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of San Miguel County, near Las Vegas, New Mexico. Ingwer was not a rancher by background. He was a former fighter pilot from Cleveland. He ran Mercury Aviation in Phoenix and Tucson — a fixed-base operation with documented ties to the Flying Tigers network, which after the war became the backbone of CIA proprietary aviation. He owned a decommissioned Navy PBY amphibious bomber he told the press he had converted for “personal use,” and traveled extensively through regions of Cold War intelligence interest: North Africa, the Middle East, India, Australia. His New Mexico land sat in mountain country, well-positioned relative to the national laboratories corridor.

In May 1981 — two months after Dan Rather replaced Walter Cronkite as anchor of CBS Evening News, making him the most powerful broadcast journalist in America — Ingwer sold and transferred his New Mexico acreage to an entity called Tecolote Partnership. County deed records show no reception number on the transaction, an anomaly in standard property transfers.

The partners in Tecolote Partnership were Donald Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense and was by 1981 a senior figure in Ronald Reagan’s national security orbit, and Dan Rather, who was simultaneously covering the Reagan administration’s foreign policy on CBS. Rumsfeld and Rather held that land together — through Iran-Contra, through Gulf War I, through September 11, through the Iraq War that Rumsfeld ran and Rather reported — until September 2007, within months of both men losing their respective positions. In journalism school, I was taught it was unethical to even accept so much as a cup of coffee from a source. The ethical violation of the nation’s top news anchor owning a secret ranch with the architect of the Iraq war is mind-boggling.

This is all documented in San Miguel County deed records.

Robert Maxwell Comes to New Mexico

In 1984, a British media mogul named Robert Maxwell — a Czech-born WWII veteran who had worked in parallel intelligence structures to the OSS and who former Mossad officers have described as a long-standing Israeli intelligence asset — traveled to New Mexico on behalf of his company Pergamon International.

According to declassified FBI documents, Maxwell’s purpose in New Mexico was to sell a piece of software called PROMIS to American defense installations.

The FBI’s Albuquerque field office, alerted to the problem by three whistelblowers at Sandia Labs, opened a foreign counterintelligence investigation. According to those same documents, Maxwell successfully sold an Israeli-modified version of PROMIS — which contained a surveillance backdoor — to Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. United States Dept. of Justice officials in Washington, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, quickly shut down the Albuquerque investigation.

PROMIS did not just track criminals and intelligence targets. Whoever held the backdoor key could surveil whoever was using it — reading their files, their cases, their contacts. Planted in the computers of the two most important nuclear weapons facilities in the United States, it was among the most consequential intelligence penetrations of the Cold War era.

Which means: The Reagan Justice Department opened an investigation into the sale of Israeli-backdoored software to America’s most sensitive nuclear weapons laboratories — and then closed it without charges. The documents were later reclassified when a private party tried to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act. Israel had been secretly developing nuclear weapons since the late 1950s, diverting American weapons-grade uranium as early as the 1960s. By the mid-1980s — the same Reagan-era period when Maxwell was selling surveillance software into Sandia and Los Alamos — Israeli scientists were visiting those same laboratories at an extraordinary rate, treated, according to a government watchdog report, more openly than visitors from other allied nations. By 1986, a former Dimona technician revealed that Israel possessed not just fission bombs but thermonuclear weapons.

In 1990, the Maxwell Foundation endowed a $300,000 professorship at the Santa Fe Institute — a private research organization founded six years earlier, primarily by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The chair was named for Robert Maxwell.

Robert Maxwell died in 1991, his body found floating near his yacht off the Canary Islands. His death has never been conclusively explained.

Two years later, his daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell, convinces her “boyfriend” Jeffrey Epstein to buy a ranch 65 miles from Los Alamos National Laboratories and 45 miles from Sandia Labs.

Henry Singleton and the Ranch Next Door

In the mid-1980s, a man named Henry Singleton began quietly assembling one of the largest private land portfolios in the American West. Starting with his 81,000-acre San Cristobal Ranch south of Santa Fe — a property that would eventually share nearly two miles of fence line with what would become Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch seven years later.

Singleton ultimately purchased more than 28 ranches in New Mexico, most of them strung along the U.S. Route 285 corridor from Santa Fe to Roswell, accumulating nearly one million acres in total. People in the ranching industry noticed. The American Quarter Horse Association, in giving Singleton Ranches its most prestigious award, noted that people who knew Henry Singleton were puzzled by the ranch purchases. He was an engineer who ran a defense conglomerate. The land didn’t fit the pattern.

During World War II, Singleton served with the OSS in Europe, remaining until the organization was disbanded in the fall of 1945. After the war, he worked at Hughes Aircraft, then helped found Litton Industries before departing to establish Teledyne, the defense and aerospace conglomerate that would become (and continues to be) one of the most powerful contractors in the American military-industrial complex. Teledyne’s product line included inertial navigation systems — the guidance technology at the heart of ballistic missiles and precision munitions. Singleton’s National Academy of Engineering citation honors him specifically for his contributions to “lightweight inertial navigation systems.”

Singleton was also, while running Teledyne, a co-trustee of Ronald Reagan’s personal blind trust — meaning he held discretionary control over the president’s financial assets while simultaneously holding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal defense contracts. The enormous conflict of interest this arrangement represented was noted at the time and never fully investigated.

In 1989, two years after Singleton bought San Cristobal Ranch, Teledyne pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud as part of Operation Ill Wind — the FBI’s massive investigation into Pentagon procurement corruption — having bribed a senior Navy engineer to steer defense contracts worth up to $174 million to Teledyne’s electronics division. In a separate case, Teledyne’s relays unit later admitted to falsifying test results on components supplied to the U.S. military.

Sandia National Laboratories, the same labs to which Maxwell had sold the compromised PROMIS software, designs the non-nuclear components of America’s nuclear weapons stockpile — the very systems Teledyne’s electronics divisions supplied.

Henry Singleton’s defense conglomerate had been caught defrauding the Pentagon while its founder’s new ranch sat an hour’s drive from the laboratories his company supplied.

Ghislaine Delivers Epstein to the Scientists

In 1993, Jeffrey Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch — 7,600 acres in southern Santa Fe County, directly adjacent to Henry Singleton’s San Cristobal Ranch, sharing nearly two miles of fence line. Epstein bought the property from Bruce King, who was the governor of New Mexico at the time. The purchase price was approximately $12 million, and the property was a portion of the larger ranch the King family still owns to this day.

According to a deposition Ghislaine Maxwell gave the FBI, found in the latest DOJ files, it was she herself who found the New Mexico ranch for Epstein and encouraged him to purchase it.

...

In the deposition, Ghislaine Maxwell stated that it was she who connected Epstein to the Santa Fe Institute and to its co-founder Murray Gell-Mann — through her father, Robert Maxwell, who had endowed a professorship there three years earlier. Santa Fe Institute records confirm the Maxwell Foundation’s $300,000 gift. Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, acknowledged Epstein’s financial support in his 1994 book. Financial records in the DOJ files show Epstein donated at least $680,000 to the Santa Fe Institute over the following decade, though the institute has publicly acknowledged only $275,000.

Epstein was direct, on the record, about why New Mexico interested him. In a 2019 interview with Steve Bannon, included in the DOJ files, he explained that after 1990, scientists who had worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Labs were dispersing into private research firms in the Santa Fe area — what locals called the “info mesa.” That, Epstein said, was the attraction.

He arrived in New Mexico through Robert Maxwell’s daughter, onto land adjacent to Robert Maxwell’s former intelligence network partner’s neighbor, to cultivate scientists from the laboratories where Robert Maxwell had planted a surveillance backdoor a decade earlier.

By 1996, victims, survivors and witnesses to child sex trafficking and, in one former employee’s case, murder, at Zorro Ranch, were pouring into New Mexico police departments. Nothing was done. The police investigated nothing. This is likely related to the fact that then governor Bill Richardson was among those the survivors named as their rapists. Also, then Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano and then attorney general Gary King were both recipients of campaign financing from Epstein.

A local New Mexico investigation into Zorro Ranch only arrived, however briefly, after an investigative series by Julie K. Brown was published about Epstein’s pedophile ring in the Miami Herald in 2018. After reading it, then-New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas opened an investigation. But he halted it shortly afterwards at the request of federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and gave them all his files. This was likely done as a professional courtesy, but Balderas was never legally required to halt his department’s investigation and he could have reopened it at any time. He didn’t.

The ranch remained untouched by law enforcement, unsearched and uninvestigated until this year, when the New Mexico state legislature created the Epstein Survivors’ Truth Commission, with $2.5 million in funding and subpoena power, to try to get to the bottom of what happened at Zorro Ranch and why it was never properly investigated. The commission plans to release its first report in July 2026. Whatever is left to be found might be long gone, however, as the Epstein estate held onto the property for four years after his death and the new owners, who are Trump allies, have been conducting massive excavation projects and unlicensed construction there in the past year.

What it Was All For

My opinion, stated plainly: None of this is coincidence. I fully believe Epstein’s operation was, and possibly remains, a tool of an intelligence operation, likely rooted in the men of the OSS during WWII, expanding over time to include more than one government, with continuity of purpose across decades and generations.

The former OSS men and their heirs appear over and over again in the Epstein saga, including former OSS man Donald Barr, who offers Epstein his first real job, as a teacher at a prestigious prep school in Manhattan, despite Epstein lacking a college degree. Later, is is Donald Barr’s son, William “Bill” Barr, who in 2009 joins the same legal firm representing Epstein in his Florida case at that time.

Bill Barr goes on to become United States Attorney General under Donald Trump, overseeing all federal prosecutors investigating Epstein in 2018. He is still in that role when Epstein dies in prison.

Continuity of purpose.

...

That purpose, I believe, for many of the original OSS men and their heirs, is a perpetual continuation of the American war machine and its nuclear military industrial complex that made and continues to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, off of government contracts that use our taxpayer dollars.

And adjacent to that purpose was another purpose, for Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Their purpose was likely to do whatever it took — even using a pedophilia blackmail operation — to wrench the nuclear military industrial machine endless weapons technology secrets from the New Mexico based scientists who held them, and pass those secrets to Israel, while making sure the county, state and federal government looked the other way.

...

Epstein’s Neighbor and His Modem

Henry Singleton died in 1999, six years after Epstein arrived next door. In the years they were neighbors, something unusual was documented: Epstein’s personal address book — portions of which are included in the DOJ files — contains a listing for San Cristobal Ranch that includes a modem number. A review of comparable entries found no other listing in Epstein’s address book that included a modem number for any other person or property. Neighbors do not typically share modem access. Epstein, who ran a child pornography operation that collected compromising evidence of powerful people’s participation in serious crimes, was notoriously careful about his communications.

...

The modem number share suggests a data connection between Zorro Ranch and San Cristobal Ranch that predates emails from 2016, released the DOJ Epstein file dump in 2026, that more clearly establish efforts by Epstein to share a communications network with San Cristobal Ranch.

That 2016 negotiation is documented in internal emails now part of the DOJ files. As the Southern District of New York deepened its investigation of Epstein, his ranch manager Brice Gordon contacted a man named “Vito” at San Cristobal — by then managed by the Singleton family heirs — to discuss sharing the cost of a major communications buildout. The proposed system was not residential internet. A contractor later involved in its construction described it as military and industrial grade. Gordon also contacted Epstein’s Little St. James island property to obtain technical specifications for the microwave system already operating there. Epstein’s reply to Gordon’s updates was unusually terse: “please push. dont wait, call again.”

A fiber feed site — a technical installation where fiber terminates and connects to wireless transmission equipment — already existed on San Cristobal Ranch, predating the 2016 negotiation. It had been built by the Singleton operation. Epstein’s people discovered it and sought to formalize a cost-sharing arrangement. Given that Epstein had nearly limitless funds, the request is striking.

The negotiation apparently stalled. Gordon pivoted. In July 2016, FCC licenses were issued to Zorro Development Corp. for a bidirectional military-grade microwave system linking Zorro Ranch to the Sandia Crest tower. Sandia Crest is unrelated to Sandia Labs. It’s just the top of the Sandia Mountains that flank Albuquerque’s eastern border. Many radio and communications towers are located there.

Those FCC licenses remain active today, in Brice Gordon’s name, maintained by the Huffines family — Trump allies from Dallas who purchased the Zorro Ranch property in 2023 and whose son Russell currently holds a position in the Trump administration. At the time the Huffines purchased the ranch, there were 5 FCC licenses listing Zorro Development Corp. and Brice Gordon still active. The Huffines terminated all but two. This seems to indicate they knowingly kept the massive industrial-grade microwave radio communications towers operating, in the Zorro name.

The Infrastructure Remains

In December 2025 — the same month the first batch of Epstein files was released under the newly passed Epstein Files Transparency Act — the Singleton heirs sold 937,000 acres of New Mexico ranchland to billionaire Stan Kroenke, almost their total New Mexico holdings. They retained only one parcel: the 81,000-acre San Cristobal Ranch, the property that shares nearly two miles of fence line with what was Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch. Three million more pages of Epstein files followed on January 30, 2026.

The fiber feed site is still there. The FCC licenses are still active. The fence line between San Cristobal and what is now the Huffines family’s San Rafael Ranch still runs for nearly two miles through the high desert outside tiny Stanley, New Mexico.

And Teledyne, according to a simple Google news search of financial markets updates, is still one of the best global investments a person can make. This quote from a March 24, 2026 Trading View article sums it up perfectly:

“Teledyne is witnessing strong demand from the defense sector, particularly in Europe, driven by rising regional defense spending. A favorable macroeconomic environment and the current U.S. administration’s inclination toward increased defense spending, with the nation being the largest weapons exporter, have been aiding the growth.”

———-

“The Terrifying Real Reason For Jeffrey Epstein’s Remote Zorro Ranch Emerges When You Examine the Ranch Next Door” by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez; The Pugilist with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez; 04/08/2026

“No other geography on earth concentrates so much of the infrastructure of American nuclear and intelligence power in so small an area. The newly created and unleashed men of the OSS understood this. After the war, some of them began to acquire land in New Mexico. Others followed. Political figures. Newsmen. All intelligence adjacent. Not all at once. Over decades. Quietly.”

It’s another remarkable detail in this story: Zorro Ranch happens to be at the geographic epicenter for the US’s nuclear weapons research complex. A fact underscored by the reality that his next door neighbor at the time of the purchase of Zorro Ranch, Henry Singleton — an OSS veteran who went on to help found both Litton and Teledyne and was a co-trustee of Ronald Reagan’s personal blind trust — is another person who doesn’t exactly fit the traditional profile of a New Mexican rancher:

...
In the mid-1980s, a man named Henry Singleton began quietly assembling one of the largest private land portfolios in the American West. Starting with his 81,000-acre San Cristobal Ranch south of Santa Fe — a property that would eventually share nearly two miles of fence line with what would become Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch seven years later.

Singleton ultimately purchased more than 28 ranches in New Mexico, most of them strung along the U.S. Route 285 corridor from Santa Fe to Roswell, accumulating nearly one million acres in total. People in the ranching industry noticed. The American Quarter Horse Association, in giving Singleton Ranches its most prestigious award, noted that people who knew Henry Singleton were puzzled by the ranch purchases. He was an engineer who ran a defense conglomerate. The land didn’t fit the pattern.

During World War II, Singleton served with the OSS in Europe, remaining until the organization was disbanded in the fall of 1945. After the war, he worked at Hughes Aircraft, then helped found Litton Industries before departing to establish Teledyne, the defense and aerospace conglomerate that would become (and continues to be) one of the most powerful contractors in the American military-industrial complex. Teledyne’s product line included inertial navigation systems — the guidance technology at the heart of ballistic missiles and precision munitions. Singleton’s National Academy of Engineering citation honors him specifically for his contributions to “lightweight inertial navigation systems.”

Singleton was also, while running Teledyne, a co-trustee of Ronald Reagan’s personal blind trust — meaning he held discretionary control over the president’s financial assets while simultaneously holding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal defense contracts. The enormous conflict of interest this arrangement represented was noted at the time and never fully investigated.

In 1989, two years after Singleton bought San Cristobal Ranch, Teledyne pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud as part of Operation Ill Wind — the FBI’s massive investigation into Pentagon procurement corruption — having bribed a senior Navy engineer to steer defense contracts worth up to $174 million to Teledyne’s electronics division. In a separate case, Teledyne’s relays unit later admitted to falsifying test results on components supplied to the U.S. military.

Sandia National Laboratories, the same labs to which Maxwell had sold the compromised PROMIS software, designs the non-nuclear components of America’s nuclear weapons stockpile — the very systems Teledyne’s electronics divisions supplied.

...

And Teledyne, according to a simple Google news search of financial markets updates, is still one of the best global investments a person can make. This quote from a March 24, 2026 Trading View article sums it up perfectly:

“Teledyne is witnessing strong demand from the defense sector, particularly in Europe, driven by rising regional defense spending. A favorable macroeconomic environment and the current U.S. administration’s inclination toward increased defense spending, with the nation being the largest weapons exporter, have been aiding the growth.”
...

And, of course, there’s the reality that two of the core institutions in the US’s nuclear weapons research and development program, Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory, were both successfully targeted by Robert Maxwell back in 1984 for the sale of compromised versions of PROMIS, an intelligence operation seemingly protected by the Reagan era Justice Department. But as we saw, it wasn’t just Robert Maxwell running this PROMIS-peddling operation. His daughter, Christine Maxwell was helping to manage this operation by 1985. Christine, of course, went on to co-found Chiliad in the late 90s, a company offering PROMIS-like data-integrating capabilities to agencies like the FBI and ODNI in the post‑9/11 environment. So when we see how it is apparently Ghislaine Maxwell who ‘found’ and convinced Jeffrey Epstein to purchase Zorro Ranch in 1993, we have to ask if her enthusiasm for the property had anything to do with her father’s and sister’s roles in the PROMIS affair and a desire to extend those efforts somehow:

...
In 1984, a British media mogul named Robert Maxwell — a Czech-born WWII veteran who had worked in parallel intelligence structures to the OSS and who former Mossad officers have described as a long-standing Israeli intelligence asset — traveled to New Mexico on behalf of his company Pergamon International.

According to declassified FBI documents, Maxwell’s purpose in New Mexico was to sell a piece of software called PROMIS to American defense installations.

The FBI’s Albuquerque field office, alerted to the problem by three whistelblowers at Sandia Labs, opened a foreign counterintelligence investigation. According to those same documents, Maxwell successfully sold an Israeli-modified version of PROMIS — which contained a surveillance backdoor — to Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. United States Dept. of Justice officials in Washington, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, quickly shut down the Albuquerque investigation.

PROMIS did not just track criminals and intelligence targets. Whoever held the backdoor key could surveil whoever was using it — reading their files, their cases, their contacts. Planted in the computers of the two most important nuclear weapons facilities in the United States, it was among the most consequential intelligence penetrations of the Cold War era.

Which means: The Reagan Justice Department opened an investigation into the sale of Israeli-backdoored software to America’s most sensitive nuclear weapons laboratories — and then closed it without charges. The documents were later reclassified when a private party tried to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act. Israel had been secretly developing nuclear weapons since the late 1950s, diverting American weapons-grade uranium as early as the 1960s. By the mid-1980s — the same Reagan-era period when Maxwell was selling surveillance software into Sandia and Los Alamos — Israeli scientists were visiting those same laboratories at an extraordinary rate, treated, according to a government watchdog report, more openly than visitors from other allied nations. By 1986, a former Dimona technician revealed that Israel possessed not just fission bombs but thermonuclear weapons.

...

Robert Maxwell died in 1991, his body found floating near his yacht off the Canary Islands. His death has never been conclusively explained.

Two years later, his daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell, convinces her “boyfriend” Jeffrey Epstein to buy a ranch 65 miles from Los Alamos National Laboratories and 45 miles from Sandia Labs.

...

According to a deposition Ghislaine Maxwell gave the FBI, found in the latest DOJ files, it was she herself who found the New Mexico ranch for Epstein and encouraged him to purchase it.
...

And then there’s the Maxwell Foundation’s $300,000 gift in 1990 to the Santa Fe Institute and its co-founder Murray Gell-Mann, the theoretical physicist who discovered quarks. Epstein went on to donate at least $680k to the Santa Fe Institute over the following decade. And as Epstein told Steve Bannon in 2019, what attracted Epstein to the area was the fact that the Santa Fe area was filled with scientists who had previously worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Labs. It’s a remarkable continuity of interests between the PROMIS activities of Robert and Christine Maxwell and the influence peddling of Ghislaine and Epstein that was already underway less than a decade later. A continuity of interests that had the researchers at key national security institutions in their crosshairs. We don’t know why exactly Epstein had this focus on nuclear weapons related research, but that was clearly a priority:

...
In 1990, the Maxwell Foundation endowed a $300,000 professorship at the Santa Fe Institute — a private research organization founded six years earlier, primarily by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The chair was named for Robert Maxwell.

...

In the deposition, Ghislaine Maxwell stated that it was she who connected Epstein to the Santa Fe Institute and to its co-founder Murray Gell-Mann — through her father, Robert Maxwell, who had endowed a professorship there three years earlier. Santa Fe Institute records confirm the Maxwell Foundation’s $300,000 gift. Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, acknowledged Epstein’s financial support in his 1994 book. Financial records in the DOJ files show Epstein donated at least $680,000 to the Santa Fe Institute over the following decade, though the institute has publicly acknowledged only $275,000.

Epstein was direct, on the record, about why New Mexico interested him. In a 2019 interview with Steve Bannon, included in the DOJ files, he explained that after 1990, scientists who had worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Labs were dispersing into private research firms in the Santa Fe area — what locals called the “info mesa.” That, Epstein said, was the attraction.

He arrived in New Mexico through Robert Maxwell’s daughter, onto land adjacent to Robert Maxwell’s former intelligence network partner’s neighbor, to cultivate scientists from the laboratories where Robert Maxwell had planted a surveillance backdoor a decade earlier.
...

It’s that remarkable history of Epstein effectively extending the Maxwell family’s business of spying on the New Mexican nuclear research community that brings us to a remarkable update on the mysterious private direct communications infrastructure that wasn’t just set up at Zorro Ranch in 2016 but even continued to operate after the sale of the ranch to the Huffines family: Epstein’s personal black book happens to contain the modem number for Henry Singleton, who died in 1999. The fact that Epstein has Singleton’s modem number is somewhat fascinating in and of itself and raises all sorts of questions about the nature of Epstein’s relationship with Singleton. But it’s the negotiations that took place in early 2016 between the Zorro Ranch and San Cristobal ranches that adds a new level of intrigue to the modem mystery. Something prompted Epstein to order the Zorro Ranch manager, Brice Gordon, to urgently try to arrange some sort of cost-sharing agreement that would allow Epstein to use a San Cristobal ranch fiber feed that connected to the same kind of wireless transmission system that was ultimately installed at Zorro Ranch after those negotiations broke down. It’s hard to imagine Epstein was concerned about the cost of installing such a system, especially considering that the system that was ultimately installed was described as “military and industrial grade”, making the apparent urgency all the more intriguing. Keep in mind that March of 2016 was the period when Donald Trump’s lock on the Republican nomination was becoming apparent. Epstein had to know he was going to be under a lot more scrutiny if Trump became the Republican nominee. Also note how a wireless private transmission system was already installed at Little St. James island at this point. So at least two of Epstein’s properties had non-internet private communications established...private communications that seemed to be urgently needed right when it was clear Trump was going to be the Republican nominee:

...
Henry Singleton died in 1999, six years after Epstein arrived next door. In the years they were neighbors, something unusual was documented: Epstein’s personal address book — portions of which are included in the DOJ files — contains a listing for San Cristobal Ranch that includes a modem number. A review of comparable entries found no other listing in Epstein’s address book that included a modem number for any other person or property. Neighbors do not typically share modem access. Epstein, who ran a child pornography operation that collected compromising evidence of powerful people’s participation in serious crimes, was notoriously careful about his communications.

...

The modem number share suggests a data connection between Zorro Ranch and San Cristobal Ranch that predates emails from 2016, released the DOJ Epstein file dump in 2026, that more clearly establish efforts by Epstein to share a communications network with San Cristobal Ranch.

That 2016 negotiation is documented in internal emails now part of the DOJ files. As the Southern District of New York deepened its investigation of Epstein, his ranch manager Brice Gordon contacted a man named “Vito” at San Cristobal — by then managed by the Singleton family heirs — to discuss sharing the cost of a major communications buildout. The proposed system was not residential internet. A contractor later involved in its construction described it as military and industrial grade. Gordon also contacted Epstein’s Little St. James island property to obtain technical specifications for the microwave system already operating there. Epstein’s reply to Gordon’s updates was unusually terse: “please push. dont wait, call again.”

A fiber feed site — a technical installation where fiber terminates and connects to wireless transmission equipment — already existed on San Cristobal Ranch, predating the 2016 negotiation. It had been built by the Singleton operation. Epstein’s people discovered it and sought to formalize a cost-sharing arrangement. Given that Epstein had nearly limitless funds, the request is striking.

The negotiation apparently stalled. Gordon pivoted. In July 2016, FCC licenses were issued to Zorro Development Corp. for a bidirectional military-grade microwave system linking Zorro Ranch to the Sandia Crest tower. Sandia Crest is unrelated to Sandia Labs. It’s just the top of the Sandia Mountains that flank Albuquerque’s eastern border. Many radio and communications towers are located there.

Those FCC licenses remain active today, in Brice Gordon’s name, maintained by the Huffines family — Trump allies from Dallas who purchased the Zorro Ranch property in 2023 and whose son Russell currently holds a position in the Trump administration. At the time the Huffines purchased the ranch, there were 5 FCC licenses listing Zorro Development Corp. and Brice Gordon still active. The Huffines terminated all but two. This seems to indicate they knowingly kept the massive industrial-grade microwave radio communications towers operating, in the Zorro name.

...

In December 2025 — the same month the first batch of Epstein files was released under the newly passed Epstein Files Transparency Act — the Singleton heirs sold 937,000 acres of New Mexico ranchland to billionaire Stan Kroenke, almost their total New Mexico holdings. They retained only one parcel: the 81,000-acre San Cristobal Ranch, the property that shares nearly two miles of fence line with what was Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch. Three million more pages of Epstein files followed on January 30, 2026.

The fiber feed site is still there. The FCC licenses are still active. The fence line between San Cristobal and what is now the Huffines family’s San Rafael Ranch still runs for nearly two miles through the high desert outside tiny Stanley, New Mexico.
...

Finally, we get to Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s overall assessment of where the Epstein scandal fits into the larger landscape of the US national security state: Epstein’s operation was likely some sort of extension of the parallel world of quasi-private intelligence operations that emerge in the post-War era as OSS veterans went on to occupy wildly important and lucrative roles in the military industrial complex. And as part of that parallel intelligence apparatus, the passing of nuclear secrets to Israel became one of the goals. It’s a framework that places both the Epstein affair and the PROMIS affair into the same larger network spanning decades. A network that remains almost entirely in the shadows to this day:

...
The OSS had attracted a particular kind of American — young, educated, ambitious, comfortable with secrecy, thrilled by consequence. Many had, for the first time in their lives, felt both the specific gravity that comes from operating outside normal rules in service of large stakes. It was addictive, as was the sense of belonging this secret brotherhood conferred. Some of these men were brilliant. Some were ruthless. Many had to be both. What most of them shared was that the war that horrified the world had given them something they’d never had before: Importance. And they did not want it to end.

So they did not let it end. Not in reality. In law, sure. But they continued on, likely with a certain bitterness towards Truman. They reorganized. They planned. In secret. As they’d been trained to do. And as soon as they saw an opening, they took it.

The opening came when Truman had created a new organization called The Central Intelligence Group. He saw it as a small presidential newspaper of sorts, that could brief him, personally, on important issues of the day. The OSS veterans — who had never really stopped working — flooded back in, to make themselves indispensable. What Truman had envisioned as having 100 employees soon had 1,800. He watched, somewhat helplessly, as the men of the OSS outmaneuvered him.

The Cold War gave them the justification they needed. Within four years of Truman abolishing the OSS, OSS veterans Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles effectively controlled the new CIA’s covert operations, and the agency had reassembled everything Truman had tried to dismantle, and more. But the formal CIA was only part of what emerged from the dissolution of the OSS. The other part was informal — a network of men who had trained together, trusted each other, and understood that the real levers of postwar American power would run through not through government, but through the defense industry. Through weapons science. And through land.

They knew exactly where the land was, and it wasn’t Washington D.C..

They had watched, in July 1945, as the early morning sky over the New Mexico desert turned white as a second sun.

...

My opinion, stated plainly: None of this is coincidence. I fully believe Epstein’s operation was, and possibly remains, a tool of an intelligence operation, likely rooted in the men of the OSS during WWII, expanding over time to include more than one government, with continuity of purpose across decades and generations.

The former OSS men and their heirs appear over and over again in the Epstein saga, including former OSS man Donald Barr, who offers Epstein his first real job, as a teacher at a prestigious prep school in Manhattan, despite Epstein lacking a college degree. Later, is is Donald Barr’s son, William “Bill” Barr, who in 2009 joins the same legal firm representing Epstein in his Florida case at that time.

Bill Barr goes on to become United States Attorney General under Donald Trump, overseeing all federal prosecutors investigating Epstein in 2018. He is still in that role when Epstein dies in prison.

Continuity of purpose.

...

That purpose, I believe, for many of the original OSS men and their heirs, is a perpetual continuation of the American war machine and its nuclear military industrial complex that made and continues to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, off of government contracts that use our taxpayer dollars.

And adjacent to that purpose was another purpose, for Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Their purpose was likely to do whatever it took — even using a pedophilia blackmail operation — to wrench the nuclear military industrial machine endless weapons technology secrets from the New Mexico based scientists who held them, and pass those secrets to Israel, while making sure the county, state and federal government looked the other way.
...

Whatever it took to keep the money and technology flowing. And, presumably, keeping the wars flowing too.

And in related news, the Trump administration just proposed the largest year-over-year increase in defense spending in the post-War era. It’s not great news overall, but major defense contractors should make a killing.

It’s those questions about the true nature of Epstein’s decades of ‘work’ that bring us to a fascinating string of stories about one of the many mega-crimes Epstein managed to get away with. Starting with a remarkable story that hit the news back in August 22, 2018, just a few months before the Miami Herald’s explosive reports refocused global scrutiny on Epstein’s history child sex trafficker and the oddly lenient punishment dealt out over it. A story about a putative class action lawsuit filed against Epstein by the victims of the Towers Financial fraud from the late 1980s. A fraud that was, at the time, the largest Ponzi scheme in US history. A $473 million Ponzi scheme that Epstein was never charged over despite playing a central role, according to the victims who filed the suit. Many others were charged, including the ringleader behind the scheme, Steven Hoffenberg, who was convicted in 1997 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Keep in mind what we’ve learned from the Patreon interviews with Ed Opperman: Epstein’s Southern Trust Company somehow came into possession of hundreds of millions of dollars in assets follow the Towers Financial collapse. That’s part of the context of this class action lawsuit threat. It’s very possible the Towers Ponzi scheme was in fact source of Epstein’s original fortune.

Another remarkable detail in the Towers Ponzi scheme is the fact that it was part of a takeover attempt of Pan Am airlines. That takeover ultimately failed due, in part, to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, an event mired in unanswered questions and evidence implicating elements of Western intelligence in facilitating the bombing. It’s a pretty amazing coincidence given Epstein’s still-mysterious possible ties to multiple intelligence agencies.

As we’re going to see, Hoffenberg not only describes Epstein has having been his best friend during those years, but he makes very clear that Epstein was deeply involved in the orchestrating the fraud, stating how he hired Epstein in 1987 to help commit the fraud. But at the time of the investigation in the early 90s, Hoffenberg never mentioned to investigators the role Epstein played, with Epstein having left the company, or was in the process of leaving, by the time the investigation got underway. Why did Hoffenberg protect Epstein? Was it just that they were such good friends? Well, it turns out Hoffenberg gave an interview just days after Epstein’s alleged ‘suicide’, where he admits that he did not want to take the risk of fighting Epstein in court, mainly due to Epstein’s powerful relationships and political connections. So it would appear that Epstein had some kind of powerful political and legal protection going all the way back to the 90s. In other words, the federal ‘sweetheart deal’ Epstein got in 2008 over his child sex trafficking charges was arguably his second sweetheart deal. This is a good time to recall that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell apparently first met in 1991, the year of Robert Maxwell’s alleged suicide. Given the role Robert and Christine Maxwell played in the PROMIS scandal in the 80s, the question is raised of whether or not Epstein had some degree of protection through his association with the Maxwell family.

Hoffenberg filed lawsuits against Epstein in 2016 and 2018, both of which listed Epstein as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Towers Financial crime. When interviewed in the days following Epstein’s ‘suicide’, Hoffenberg claimed a statute of limitations barred him from proceeding with the lawsuits and he was waiting to refile if the SEC or another government agency takes legal action against Epstein’s estate. He died in 2022.

Now, given that Hoffenberg described Epstein as his best friend during those years, which overlaps with Epstein’s early friendship with President Trump and their infamously chummy relationship, we have to ask whether or not Hoffenberg and Trump ever crossed paths. Which brings us to a very interesting story from April of 2016, when Donald Trump was securing the Republican nomination for the first time. Hoffenberg, having been released from prison in 2013, formed a pro-Trump super-PAC, Get Our Jobs Back Inc., and publicly announced his intent on raising $1 billion to help Trump get elected. Now, it doesn’t appear he actually raised this money. In fact, while Hoffenberg filed a report with the Federal Election Commission (FCC) declaring that he PAC was going to execute a $50 million digital media campaign, no such campaign ever appears to have taken place. When a reporter pointed out to Hoffenberg that filing false reports to the FEC is a crime, Hoffenberg threatened to sue the reporter and later had a spokesman declare that Hoffenberg wouldn’t lie because he’s a born-again Christian. So, at a minimum, it would appear Hoffenberg was very pro-Trump in 2016.

But there’s another very intriguing follow up to that August 22, 2018, announcement about the $1 billion class action lawsuit against Epstein: we’ve recently learned that Epstein’s Zorro Ranch experienced an anomalous burglary on August 26 or 27, 2018, when a large gun safe was stolen from a garage on the property. Around 33 guns were in the same at the time. Or at least that’s what the staff told the police. But when the police asked for serial numbers on the stolen guns, the staff refused to hand over that information and eventually stopped answering the officers’ calls. The case was formally closed the following month. The following month, Epstein’s pilot, who has a home on the Zorro Ranch property, warned Epstein that the ranch manager’s story kept changing and that the manager suspected one of the employees was involved with the theft. Two nearby cabins were also robbed.

So just days after we learn about a potential $1 billion class action lawsuit filed against Epstein over the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme, an anomalous burglary takes place on Zorro Ranch where an entire large gun safe, filled with guns, is stolen entirely off the property. This wasn’t the only reported robbery, with two nearby cabins apparently also being hit. Still, it’s the kind of remarkable timing that forces us to ask: was this an attempt to destroy, or at least hide, evidence? Was anything else in the gun safe at the time? Keep in mind that the evidence Epstein may have wanted to hide wouldn’t necessarily be evidence involving Towers Financial. The lawsuit implicitly threatened to shine a public light on Epstein which could rekindle interest in sorts of other crimes. Also keep in mind that, if Epstein was in the possession of a large trove of blackmail materials and was worried about authorities finding the material, he wouldn’t necessarily want to destroy the material. He would have to relocate and hide it. And don’t forget that Zorro Ranch, being a property that was never searched by any authorities over the years, may have been a location where Epstein preferred to keep some of his most sensitive materials.

Adding to the intrigue over the stolen gun safe is the fact that the evidence suggests Epstein may have actually been present at the ranch at the time of the burglary. At least that’s what we can infer from the fact that the safe was reportedly stolen out of a garage. We don’t know which garage exactly, but we do know that the garage of the home of Epstein’s pilot, which was located on the ranch, was to be used to store the guns when Epstein was present on the ranch. When he was gone, however, the guns could be kept in the main house and in the shooting range. The arrangement was basically a loophole designed to get around the fact that Epstein wasn’t legally allowed to own firearms as a result of his federal conviction. So the guns would technically be ‘off the property’ during Epstein’s visits by moving the guns to the garage of the home of his pilot, who technically had that land deeded to him even though the home is located on the ranch. Given that we are told the gun safe was stolen out of a garage, that suggests it was the pilot’s garage and therefore Epstein was there at the time.

It’s also rather notable that the Zorro Ranch staff was apparently heavily armed when Epstein wasn’t visiting. According to a March 2010 email Epstein sent to the ranch manager, the manager should have “as many guns as you are allowed including high powered rifles” when Epstein was not visiting. With 33 guns allegedly stolen in just that one incident, we have to ask just how militarized Epstein’s operations ultimately were. Why the need for “as many guns as you are allowed”? It’s the kind of question that serves as a reminder that, while we still don’t have a clear idea of how Epstein made his fortune, that’s just one of many major unanswered questions in this story.

Ok, first, here’s that August 22, 2018, report on the $1 billion class action lawsuit against Epstein. The kind of lawsuit that threatened to blow open a still-closed chapter of Epstein’s life, when he was already seemingly untouchable:

Law360

Investors Claim Jeffrey Epstein Built $473M Ponzi Scheme

By Dave Simpson
Law360 (August 22, 2018, 7:17 PM EDT) — Shareholders filed a putative class action against financier, billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in New York federal court on Tuesday for his alleged role in developing and executing a $473 million Ponzi scheme for which Steven Hoffenberg was convicted in 1997.

Hoffenberg signed an affidavit in a separate New York state court case last week, laying out all of Epstein’s alleged involvement in the scheme that landed Hoffenberg in prison. The investors claim that, though the scheme is more than two decades old, they did not know about Epstein’s deceptive practices until Hoffenberg’s affidavit was made public.

“While Hoffenberg was convicted as a result of his role in this Ponzi scheme, Epstein has remained an uncharged co-conspirator,” Tuesday’s suit said. “All the while, Epstein knowingly and intentionally utilized funds he fraudulently diverted and obtained from this massive Ponzi scheme for his own personal use to support a lavish lifestyle.”

Investors Marvin Gerber and Kalma Koenig hit Epstein — along with The Financial Trust Co., XYZ Corp. and ABC Inc. — with claims of fraud, conversion, unjust enrichment and breach of fiduciary duty, seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

...

But Tuesday’s suit alleges that, starting in the 1980s, Epstein orchestrated a massive scheme for which Hoffenberg ultimately took the fall, resulting in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for more than 200,000 investors who bought securities from the duo.

The scheme was intricate and involved spreading money around to hide losses, the suit alleges. As shares of defendant Financial Trust Co. fell, Epstein manipulated the price of a stock called Emery to counterbalance the loss, the suit says.

“In order to do so, Epstein opened and maintained a number of brokerage accounts to execute false trades in order to artificially inflate the price of Emery stock — while the company was in reality useless,” the suit said. “Because Epstein did not have a license to trade, Epstein traded, purchased and sold stocks, bonds and other securities by what he referred to as ‘making the orders’ through licensed brokers.”

In the early 1990s, the federal government went after Hoffenberg for the scheme and during his prosecution he was given a reduced sentence in exchange for information on his co-conspirators, the suit says. And yet, he did not give any information about Epstein until decades later, the suit says.

...

————

“Investors Claim Jeffrey Epstein Built $473M Ponzi Scheme” By Dave Simpson; Law360; 08/22/2018

“Investors Marvin Gerber and Kalma Koenig hit Epstein — along with The Financial Trust Co., XYZ Corp. and ABC Inc. — with claims of fraud, conversion, unjust enrichment and breach of fiduciary duty, seeking more than $1 billion in damages.”

A $1 billion lawsuit against Epstein in late August, 2018, filed just three months before the Miami Herald’s “Perversion of Justice” series from November 2018 that set off the renewed interest in Epstein in the months leading up to his July 2019 arrest and ‘suicide’ a month later. It’s a remarkable piece of the Epstein timeline, in part because so little about Epstein’s role in the Ponzi scheme has ever been revealed. But also because Epstein’s ostensible career as a financier for the ultra-wealthy has similarly never really been elucidated. The entire ‘finance’ side of the Epstein story largely remains a mystery to this day, despite years of fevered speculation and the release of millions of files. It’s a remarkable bit of timing in this overall story. A lawsuit threatened to open up this still-closed chapter in Epstein’s life, a few months before the whole story about sex trafficking blew up and quickly resulted in Epstein’s arrest and ‘suicide’:

...
Hoffenberg signed an affidavit in a separate New York state court case last week, laying out all of Epstein’s alleged involvement in the scheme that landed Hoffenberg in prison. The investors claim that, though the scheme is more than two decades old, they did not know about Epstein’s deceptive practices until Hoffenberg’s affidavit was made public.

“While Hoffenberg was convicted as a result of his role in this Ponzi scheme, Epstein has remained an uncharged co-conspirator,” Tuesday’s suit said. “All the while, Epstein knowingly and intentionally utilized funds he fraudulently diverted and obtained from this massive Ponzi scheme for his own personal use to support a lavish lifestyle.”

...

In the early 1990s, the federal government went after Hoffenberg for the scheme and during his prosecution he was given a reduced sentence in exchange for information on his co-conspirators, the suit says. And yet, he did not give any information about Epstein until decades later, the suit says.
...

And as we can see, the suit didn’t simply allege that Epstein play a role in the Ponzi scheme. It describes him as the person who orchestrated the thing. In other words, Steven Hoffenberg took the fall for Epstein, for a crime committed all the way back in the 1980s, which legend of Epstein as some sort of international playboy man of mystery was just getting underway:

...
But Tuesday’s suit alleges that, starting in the 1980s, Epstein orchestrated a massive scheme for which Hoffenberg ultimately took the fall, resulting in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for more than 200,000 investors who bought securities from the duo.

The scheme was intricate and involved spreading money around to hide losses, the suit alleges. As shares of defendant Financial Trust Co. fell, Epstein manipulated the price of a stock called Emery to counterbalance the loss, the suit says.

“In order to do so, Epstein opened and maintained a number of brokerage accounts to execute false trades in order to artificially inflate the price of Emery stock — while the company was in reality useless,” the suit said. “Because Epstein did not have a license to trade, Epstein traded, purchased and sold stocks, bonds and other securities by what he referred to as ‘making the orders’ through licensed brokers.”
...

And that story from August of 2018, just a few months before the Miami Herald’s reporting dragged the Epstein story back into the national spotlight, brings us to the following story from August 13, 2019, just a few days after his alleged ‘suicide’ in a Manhattan federal prison. A CBS interview of Hoffenberg and others involved with the case that makes clear Epstein was deeply involved with the company’s ponzi schemes. So why wasn’t Epstein implicated by Hoffenberg and ultimately charged? Well, according to Hoffenberg, “I didn’t take that opportunity and I was wrong. And others have wanted me to cooperate civilly against Jeffrey Epstein, and I didn’t take up those opportunities, and that was wrong,” adding that he did not want to take the risk of fighting Epstein in court, mainly due to his powerful relationships and political connections. Powerful relationships and political connections Epstein apparently already had in the early 90s as Hoffenberg’s prosecution was playing out:

CBS News

Jeffrey Epstein worked at financial firm that engaged in massive Ponzi scheme in 1980s and 1990s

By Brian Pascus, Mola Lenghi
August 13, 2019 / 9:12 AM EDT

Jeffrey Epstein worked as a paid consultant during the 1980s and 1990s at a New York financial company that participated in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history, according to court records and the accounts of attorneys and executives connected with the firm, Towers Financial.

Towers was a bill collection agency founded by Steven J. Hoffenberg, who told CBS News he hired Epstein in 1987 to help commit a billion dollars worth of financial fraud.

“He was my best friend for years. My closest friend for years,” Hoffenberg told CBS News, speaking of Epstein. “We ran a team of people on Wall Street, investment people that raised these billion dollars illegally. He was my guy, my wingman.”

The scheme worked like this, according to prosecutors who later brought charges against Hoffenberg: Between 1988 and 1993, Towers raised more than $400 million by selling bonds and promissory notes to investors. Hoffenberg and his associates then used the money to cover operating costs, repay earlier investors —and enrich themselves.

“I was one of the investors,” said Marvin Gerber in an interview with CBS News. “He swindled me out of $250,000.”

Hoffenberg was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, andpleaded guiltyin 1995 to five criminal charges. Hewas sentencedin 1997 to 20 years in prison and was released in 2013. Towers Financial executives Mitchell Brater and Michael Rosoff were given prison sentences between seven and nine years. Other employeeswho pleaded guilty received civil judgments.

...

Some of those who either investigated or sued Towers Financial two decades ago recall Epstein being involved with the company.

“As I understood, he was sort of a senior VP. If he was not the number two guy, he was certainly the number two or number three person at the firm,” said Terrence Corrigan, a lawyer for a committee tasked with getting back money for an estimated 2,800 investors in the scam. “I know we saw organization charts and, yes, Epstein’s name was on them.”

Corrigan told CBS News that by the time investigators began probing, “Epstein was either gone or on his way out.”

Corrigan likened Towers’ business model to the classic con movie “The Sting.” He described an operation where Hoffenberg and other executives would woo investors in a Manhattan wood-paneled boardroom before giving tours of operating floors one floor below. Someone would make a call downstairs to make sure employees would look busy once investors arrived.

“It was a pure Ponzi scheme right from the inception,” Corrigan said. “The company had different lines of business. It was selling promises to investors: Buy our notes, buy our bonds. It never had a core operating business that would have sustained the kind of payoffs that were being promised.”

Corrigan’s team did not pursue a financial claim against Epstein. He turned the product of his investigation over to the SEC, which brought its own charges against Towers executives that did not involve Epstein.

An attorney at Towers Financial, who requested his name not be used, also confirmed that Epstein worked at the company.

“He was a consultant at Towers Financial,” the attorney told CBS News. “I met him there and I drafted a consulting agreement as I was an attorney at the company. I remember him.” The attorney said he was not aware of the fraud and could not say whether Epstein was involved.

...

“I do not recall Jeffrey Epstein,” said Alan Cohen, the trustee for Towers after it filed for bankruptcy when the scheme collapsed. “All of the old management — and I don’t know if Epstein was or wasn’t — were no longer there by the time we got there.”

CBS News spoke with four defense attorneys who represented Towers executives. They could not recall Epstein at the company, though some qualified their responses by noting they couldn’t remember much about litigation from over 20 years ago.

Two business deals executed by Towers in the 1980s show an Epstein connection. In 1987, Towers acquired two failing Illinois insurance companies, United Fire and Associated Life. They rolled them into a Towers shell company called United Diversified Corporation. That same year, Towers attempted to take over Pan Am Airways by using millions in bonds from the newly acquired insurance companies.

State insurance regulators say Towers and United Diversified made improper investments and misused funds, in violation of Illinois law. Hoffenberg told CBS News that Epstein was in charge of the illegal transfer and sale of bonds and investments out of United Diversified accounts.

James Schacht, the former director of the Illinois Department of Insurance, told CBS News that Epstein was involved in the transactions.

“I recall Mr. Epstein’s involvement with United Diversified Corp., and affiliated insurance companies,” Schacht told CBS News. “The insurers were United Fire Insurance Co. and Associated Life Insurance Co., as I recall. United Diversified was owned by Towers Financial which was controlled by Steven Hoffenberg. This person, I believe, had the connection with Mr. Epstein.”

Epstein is not named as a defendant in a 1991 lawsuit filed by Schacht and the Illinois Department of Insurance against Hoffenberg and other Towers executives. But Epstein’s name appears multiple times in a section on “Improper Disbursements,” listing a series of checks issued by Hoffenberg and drawn from the United Fire and United Diversified accounts.

“Other disbursements included a series of checks payable to Jeff Epstein or Jeff Epstein & Co. totaling $215,000,” the lawsuit states.

Barry Gross, Schacht’s attorney in the lawsuit, told CBS News he did not recall Epstein’s involvement with Towers Financial, but stood by claims made in the lawsuit. “If I alleged that money was paid out to Epstein, I am very comfortable saying there would have been forensic evidence supporting that,” Gross said.

A press release issued by Towers Financial in 1987 about the proposed Pan Am acquisition also lists Epstein as being connected to the firm. Towers attempted to use $3 million from United Diversified to finance the takeover.

“Jeffrey Epstein, chairman of the board of directors of Intercontinental Asset Group, is a financial advisor who has been familiar with Pan Am for approximately six years,” the filing reads. “Epstein serves as an advisor to Towers/United’s management with respect to the proposed transaction.”

The bid failed, in part because of the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which ultimately contributed to the airline’s bankruptcy.

Hoffenberg insists Epstein was his co-conspirator in the crimes, which he suggests amounted to a billion dollars worth of financial fraud.

“Jeffrey was my partner in what we did raising the billion dollars. He worked with me every day, seven days a week and he was in the mix with everything that I did,” Hoffenberg told CBS News. “I was the CEO of Towers Financial Corporation, a public company, and Jeffrey was my main assistant, associate, or partner. And the company did do a billion dollars in raising money. And it was criminal.”

Attorney Ira Sorkin, a former SEC attorney in the 1980s who later defended Bernie Madoff, was one of Hoffenberg’s lawyers in the 1990s. He told CBS News that he does not recall Hoffenberg ever mentioning Epstein.

Hoffenberg’s financial crimes in the 1990s drew major public attention, as the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff’s crimes a decade later, according to The New York Times.

Gary Baise, former United States Associate Deputy Attorney General who has also represented Hoffenberg in legal filings in recent years, spoke with CBS News about an exchange he had with the judge overseeing Hoffenberg’s prison sentencing.

“Judge Robert Sweet asked me, ‘Why did he not give up Epstein?’ ” Baise said, adding, “My impression is that everybody sort of knew about Epstein and Hoffenberg.”

Today, Hoffenberg admits he should have cooperated with the feds and implicated Epstein.

“I didn’t take that opportunity and I was wrong. And others have wanted me to cooperate civilly against Jeffrey Epstein, and I didn’t take up those opportunities, and that was wrong,” he said, stating he did not want to take the risk of fighting Epstein in court, mainly due to his powerful relationships and political connections.

The 1993 case against Hoffenberg was spearheaded by former U.S. Attorney Daniel Nardello, who, soon after prosecuting Hoffenberg, went into private practice. Nardello declined to comment to CBS News.

...

After he left prison, Hoffenberg filed lawsuits against Epstein in 2016 and 2018, both of which were withdrawn. Hoffenberg claimed a statute of limitations barred him from proceeding with the lawsuits and he is waiting to refile if the SEC or another government agency takes legal action against Epstein’s estate. In both lawsuits, Hoffenberg alleged Epstein was his unindicted co-conspirator in the Towers crimes.

...

“I don’t know what he knew, given what we understood,” Corrigan said, speaking of Epstein. “But I don’t think there was anyone who worked for the company who didn’t understand it was a fraud the whole time, from the secretary up to Hoffenberg.”

————-

“Jeffrey Epstein worked at financial firm that engaged in massive Ponzi scheme in 1980s and 1990s” By Brian Pascus, Mola Lenghi; CBS News; 08/13/2019

“Epstein is not named as a defendant in a 1991 lawsuit filed by Schacht and the Illinois Department of Insurance against Hoffenberg and other Towers executives. But Epstein’s name appears multiple times in a section on “Improper Disbursements,” listing a series of checks issued by Hoffenberg and drawn from the United Fire and United Diversified accounts.”

Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t a named defendant in the original trial over the Towers Financial case, And yet his name all over the evidentiary documents and numerous people involved with the investigation recognized him as one of the top figures at the firm. Or at least he had been one of the top people one one point, and the fact that the company is described as a ponzi scheme from its inception means there couldn’t have been a point when Epstein’s involvement was innocent. But it appears that Epstein had either left the firm or was leaving at the time of the investigation. Notably, when the legal team for a committee tasked with getting back money for an estimated 2800 investors turned over their investigation to the SEC, that agency brought its own charges against the Towers executives but also chose to leave Epstein out of the prosecution. It’s widely recognized that Epstein was involved with the crime, but somehow he managed to dodge all culpability:

...
Some of those who either investigated or sued Towers Financial two decades ago recall Epstein being involved with the company.

“As I understood, he was sort of a senior VP. If he was not the number two guy, he was certainly the number two or number three person at the firm,” said Terrence Corrigan, a lawyer for a committee tasked with getting back money for an estimated 2,800 investors in the scam. “I know we saw organization charts and, yes, Epstein’s name was on them.”

Corrigan told CBS News that by the time investigators began probing, “Epstein was either gone or on his way out.”

...

Corrigan’s team did not pursue a financial claim against Epstein. He turned the product of his investigation over to the SEC, which brought its own charges against Towers executives that did not involve Epstein.

An attorney at Towers Financial, who requested his name not be used, also confirmed that Epstein worked at the company.

“He was a consultant at Towers Financial,” the attorney told CBS News. “I met him there and I drafted a consulting agreement as I was an attorney at the company. I remember him.” The attorney said he was not aware of the fraud and could not say whether Epstein was involved.

...

Corrigan likened Towers’ business model to the classic con movie “The Sting.” He described an operation where Hoffenberg and other executives would woo investors in a Manhattan wood-paneled boardroom before giving tours of operating floors one floor below. Someone would make a call downstairs to make sure employees would look busy once investors arrived.

“It was a pure Ponzi scheme right from the inception,” Corrigan said. “The company had different lines of business. It was selling promises to investors: Buy our notes, buy our bonds. It never had a core operating business that would have sustained the kind of payoffs that were being promised.”

...

“I do not recall Jeffrey Epstein,” said Alan Cohen, the trustee for Towers after it filed for bankruptcy when the scheme collapsed. “All of the old management — and I don’t know if Epstein was or wasn’t — were no longer there by the time we got there.”

...

“I don’t know what he knew, given what we understood,” Corrigan said, speaking of Epstein. “But I don’t think there was anyone who worked for the company who didn’t understand it was a fraud the whole time, from the secretary up to Hoffenberg.”
...

And when we see how the Towers Ponzi takeover of Pan Am Airlines ultimately failed due to a bankruptcy fueled by the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 serves as another fascinating intelligence-related twist in this story given all the still unanswered questions surrounding that terror attack and the evidence implicating Western intelligence in the bombing. It’s quite a coincidence that Epstein, an alleged intelligence asset, was organizing an illegal takeover of the airline at the same time it was driven to bankruptcy over an intelligence-organized terror attack. More evidence that we really don’t know what we’re looking at this with story:

...
Two business deals executed by Towers in the 1980s show an Epstein connection. In 1987, Towers acquired two failing Illinois insurance companies, United Fire and Associated Life. They rolled them into a Towers shell company called United Diversified Corporation. That same year, Towers attempted to take over Pan Am Airways by using millions in bonds from the newly acquired insurance companies.

State insurance regulators say Towers and United Diversified made improper investments and misused funds, in violation of Illinois law. Hoffenberg told CBS News that Epstein was in charge of the illegal transfer and sale of bonds and investments out of United Diversified accounts.

James Schacht, the former director of the Illinois Department of Insurance, told CBS News that Epstein was involved in the transactions.

“I recall Mr. Epstein’s involvement with United Diversified Corp., and affiliated insurance companies,” Schacht told CBS News. “The insurers were United Fire Insurance Co. and Associated Life Insurance Co., as I recall. United Diversified was owned by Towers Financial which was controlled by Steven Hoffenberg. This person, I believe, had the connection with Mr. Epstein.”

...

A press release issued by Towers Financial in 1987 about the proposed Pan Am acquisition also lists Epstein as being connected to the firm. Towers attempted to use $3 million from United Diversified to finance the takeover.

“Jeffrey Epstein, chairman of the board of directors of Intercontinental Asset Group, is a financial advisor who has been familiar with Pan Am for approximately six years,” the filing reads. “Epstein serves as an advisor to Towers/United’s management with respect to the proposed transaction.”

The bid failed, in part because of the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which ultimately contributed to the airline’s bankruptcy.

Hoffenberg insists Epstein was his co-conspirator in the crimes, which he suggests amounted to a billion dollars worth of financial fraud.

“Jeffrey was my partner in what we did raising the billion dollars. He worked with me every day, seven days a week and he was in the mix with everything that I did,” Hoffenberg told CBS News. “I was the CEO of Towers Financial Corporation, a public company, and Jeffrey was my main assistant, associate, or partner. And the company did do a billion dollars in raising money. And it was criminal.”
...

And those questions about Epstein’s intelligence ties bring us to the absolutely remarkable claims by Hoffenberg regarding why he never implicated Epstein in the Ponzi investigation: he didn’t want to take the risk of fighting Epstein in court, mainly due to his powerful relationships and political connections. This investigation was all the way back in the 1990s. What kind of powerful relationships and political connections had Epstein already cultivated by that point?

...
“Other disbursements included a series of checks payable to Jeff Epstein or Jeff Epstein & Co. totaling $215,000,” the lawsuit states.

Barry Gross, Schacht’s attorney in the lawsuit, told CBS News he did not recall Epstein’s involvement with Towers Financial, but stood by claims made in the lawsuit. “If I alleged that money was paid out to Epstein, I am very comfortable saying there would have been forensic evidence supporting that,” Gross said.

...

Attorney Ira Sorkin, a former SEC attorney in the 1980s who later defended Bernie Madoff, was one of Hoffenberg’s lawyers in the 1990s. He told CBS News that he does not recall Hoffenberg ever mentioning Epstein.

Hoffenberg’s financial crimes in the 1990s drew major public attention, as the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff’s crimes a decade later, according to The New York Times.

Gary Baise, former United States Associate Deputy Attorney General who has also represented Hoffenberg in legal filings in recent years, spoke with CBS News about an exchange he had with the judge overseeing Hoffenberg’s prison sentencing.

“Judge Robert Sweet asked me, ‘Why did he not give up Epstein?’ ” Baise said, adding, “My impression is that everybody sort of knew about Epstein and Hoffenberg.”

Today, Hoffenberg admits he should have cooperated with the feds and implicated Epstein.

“I didn’t take that opportunity and I was wrong. And others have wanted me to cooperate civilly against Jeffrey Epstein, and I didn’t take up those opportunities, and that was wrong,” he said, stating he did not want to take the risk of fighting Epstein in court, mainly due to his powerful relationships and political connections.

The 1993 case against Hoffenberg was spearheaded by former U.S. Attorney Daniel Nardello, who, soon after prosecuting Hoffenberg, went into private practice. Nardello declined to comment to CBS News.

...

After he left prison, Hoffenberg filed lawsuits against Epstein in 2016 and 2018, both of which were withdrawn. Hoffenberg claimed a statute of limitations barred him from proceeding with the lawsuits and he is waiting to refile if the SEC or another government agency takes legal action against Epstein’s estate. In both lawsuits, Hoffenberg alleged Epstein was his unindicted co-conspirator in the Towers crimes.
...

And then we get to the claims by Hoffenberg about how Epstein wasn’t just intimately involved in the ponzi scheme. The two were best friends for years. Which is fascinating given how much this time frame overlaps with what we understand to be the early years of Epstein’s close friendship with Donald Trump:

...
“He was my best friend for years. My closest friend for years,” Hoffenberg told CBS News, speaking of Epstein. “We ran a team of people on Wall Street, investment people that raised these billion dollars illegally. He was my guy, my wingman.”
...

And that brings us to a fascinating tidbit from the 2016 presidential campaign when Donald Trump was making his first foray into national politics: it turns out Steven Hoffenberg formed a pro-Trump super-PAC in late April 2016, declaring his intent to raise $1 billion for Trump’s campaign. Except, it’s not actually clear Hoffenberg’s pack, the Get Our Jobs Back PAC, was doing anything at all despite allegedly already having received a donation of $50 million in services from a company. When reminded by a reporter that it’s a federal crime to knowingly lie to the FEC, Hoffenberg’s lawyer angrily responded that Hoffenberg was a born again Christian and therefore wouldn’t lie. So while we don’t know what exactly Trump’s relationship with Hoffenberg may have been in the 1980s, it’s pretty clear that Hoffenberg was very pro-Trump several decades later:

Politico

Convicted Ponzi schemer: I’ll conduct $50 million marketing campaign for Trump

By Hanna Trudo and Kenneth P. Vogel
06/14/2016 09:45 PM EDT

A convicted Ponzi schemer on Tuesday filed a curious report with the Federal Election Commission declaring that his super PAC was going to conduct a $50 million digital-media marketing campaign boosting Donald Trump.

Steven Hoffenberg filed paperwork in late April to create a super PAC called Get Our Jobs Back Inc. The PAC, which has yet to disclose any cash donations, filed a report Tuesday indicating that a company called Statware Inc. was making an in-kind donation of services worth $50 million. The PAC listed the services as “Digital Media Marketing, Revenue Sharing,” though there’s little evidence yet of such a campaign.

Statware Inc. is a private company based in Centerbrook, Connecticut, that advises financial brokers on issues related to sensitive or proprietary data. According to its website, the firm does not have outside investors and operates “without distraction or undue outside influences.”

Hoffenberg, a born-again Christian and a former owner of the New York Post, spent more than a decade in federal prison for committing what the SEC called “one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.” In 1995, Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to selling $475 million in fraudulent notes and bonds to multiple investors, and ultimately using some of the profits from separate investors to pay interest owed to the earlier stakeholders. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and required to pay $1 million in fines and $463 million in restitution. Hoffenberg later settled with the SEC for $60 million.

In May, Hoffenberg said in a statement that he intends for his PAC to raise more than $1 billion in support of Trump.

...

Reached by phone, Hoffenberg initially said he would charge $1 million for an interview, then said he doesn’t do interviews and referred questions to a spokesman.

When a reporter pointed out that it was a federal crime to knowingly report false information on an FEC form, Hoffenberg threatened to sue if the reporter suggested that the FEC form contained false information.

A spokesman, Theodore Fotsis, later called to say that Hoffenberg was “furious” about the phone call and that he was a born-again Christian, so he would not report false information.

...

—————

“Convicted Ponzi schemer: I’ll conduct $50 million marketing campaign for Trump” By Hanna Trudo and Kenneth P. Vogel; Politico; 06/14/2016

“In May, Hoffenberg said in a statement that he intends for his PAC to raise more than $1 billion in support of Trump.”

$1 billion for a pro-Trump super-PAC. That was the pledge Steven Hoffenberg made back in May of 2016, as Donald Trump was securing the Republican nomination for the first time. It would appear Hoffenberg was extremely pro-Trump from the beginning of his political ascent. And yet, despite an apparent in-kind donation of services worth $50 million by a company called Statware Inc., there didn’t appear to be any activity by the pack by that point. Amusingly, when a reporter seemed to question the sincerity of Hoffenberg’s pledge by pointing out that it was a federal crime to knowingly report false information on an FEC form, Hoffenberg’s defense apparently revolved around him being a born-again Christian and therefore incapable of reporting false information. In other words, Hoffenberg’s $1 billion pledge to Trump was probably some kind of grift. Still, the fact that he made such display of allegiance to Donald Trump at that point in time only fuels the questions about what kind of relationship Hoffenberg and Trump may have had in the 80s:

...
A convicted Ponzi schemer on Tuesday filed a curious report with the Federal Election Commission declaring that his super PAC was going to conduct a $50 million digital-media marketing campaign boosting Donald Trump.

...

Steven Hoffenberg filed paperwork in late April to create a super PAC called Get Our Jobs Back Inc. The PAC, which has yet to disclose any cash donations, filed a report Tuesday indicating that a company called Statware Inc. was making an in-kind donation of services worth $50 million. The PAC listed the services as “Digital Media Marketing, Revenue Sharing,” though there’s little evidence yet of such a campaign.

Statware Inc. is a private company based in Centerbrook, Connecticut, that advises financial brokers on issues related to sensitive or proprietary data. According to its website, the firm does not have outside investors and operates “without distraction or undue outside influences.”

Hoffenberg, a born-again Christian and a former owner of the New York Post, spent more than a decade in federal prison for committing what the SEC called “one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.” In 1995, Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to selling $475 million in fraudulent notes and bonds to multiple investors, and ultimately using some of the profits from separate investors to pay interest owed to the earlier stakeholders. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and required to pay $1 million in fines and $463 million in restitution. Hoffenberg later settled with the SEC for $60 million.

...

When a reporter pointed out that it was a federal crime to knowingly report false information on an FEC form, Hoffenberg threatened to sue if the reporter suggested that the FEC form contained false information.

A spokesman, Theodore Fotsis, later called to say that Hoffenberg was “furious” about the phone call and that he was a born-again Christian, so he would not report false information.
...

And all of those questions related to Epstein’s years of partnership in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history, culminated in the August 22, 2018, report on the plans to sue Epstein for $1 billion over his role in the affair brings us to the following report about crime that took place on Epstein’s Zorro Ranch just a few days later: it turns out a burglary took place on late August 26 or early August 27, 2018, of an entire large gun safe from a garage on the property that contained around 33 guns. The theft was reported to the police, and yet the staff ultimately refused to cooperate with the investigation. It turns out that, while Epstein himself was banned from owning firearms over his federal conviction, an arrangement was made where the staff would be heavily armed while Epstein wasn’t there. When Epstein was on the property the guns would be moved to the garage of the home of Epstein’s pilot, which was also located on the ranch. We don’t know if Epstein was on the property at the time of the alleged burglary, but the fact that the theft reportedly happened from a garage suggests that was the case. The pilot also warned Epstein, weeks later, that the ranch manager suspected some employees may have been behind the theft. So just days after the report about a possible $1 billion lawsuit that would reopen Epstein’s decades-old past as an elite financial criminal, a mysterious theft of a large gun safe, with all of its contents, takes place followed by a refusal by the staff to cooperate with the police about what was actually taken:

Santa Fe New Mexican

Dozens of Epstein’s Zorro Ranch guns were stolen in 2018, but staff wouldn’t work with police

By Clara Bates cbates@sfnewmexican.com
Apr 9, 2026

Dozens of guns vanished from Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in 2018 — and his staff never told police what was taken.

Epstein’s staff stopped cooperating with the police and the case ran cold, according to a New Mexico State Police report obtained by The New Mexican and recently released U.S. Justice Department emails.

...

A “very large gun safe” in a garage on the property was stolen late Aug. 26 or early Aug. 27, 2018, the police report noted. Staff told a state police officer the safe contained handguns, rifles and antique weapons. The garage had a large window broken, according to the report.

Leading to and from the garage were tire tracks, which led to a dirt road and a fence that had been slashed open. The report said two nearby cabins were also broken into, with antique lamps and another antique gun stolen, and another residence was missing two rifles.

...

The night after the robbery, ranch staff had already compared serial numbers and documented the missing guns, but do not appear to have turned over those numbers to police, despite an officer pressing them to do so for weeks.

A ranch manager in late August wrote to Epstein: “Please advise if we are to forward the list of stollen [sic] weapons to Office Byrd [sic] of NM State Police, so serial numbers extra can be sent to pawn shops, gun shows etc, in the hope that something will turn up.”

Epstein replied only to refer the manager to his lawyer.

The serial numbers were never sent, according to the police report, and staff stopped answering the officer’s calls.

The staff estimated 33 guns were missing, although one was later found in a staff member’s home.

Ranch manager Brice Gordon found a “gray 22long ... rifle” in his house on the Zorro property, Epstein’s pilot Larry Visoski wrote to Epstein in September, saying Gordon “keeps changing his story” and that Gordon “suspects” another staff member was involved. Gordon, who first reported the theft to police, couldn’t be reached for comment.

About one month after the robbery, state police closed the case, citing lack of cooperation.

State Police spokesperson Amanda Richards wrote by email this week the case “may be reopened at any time if new information is developed.”

‘Conviction/felony’

It’s not clear from the Justice Department files why staff didn’t hand over the gun details, but correspondence in previous years could point to one explanation: Epstein wasn’t allowed to possess guns.

...

Epstein after the conviction was barred under federal law from possessing guns.

“As a convict not allowed , to possess firemarms,” Epstein wrote in typical typo-strewn fashion to one of his attorneys in 2010, before asking whether he could carry a gun on a hunting trip in Africa.

In March 2010, when Epstein was informing his property managers about his new restrictions, he told Gordon, the ranch manager, in an email Gordon should have “as many guns as you are allowed including high powered rifles” when Epstein was not visiting.

A few months later, Gordon asked whether he needed to remove firearms from the property before Epstein arrived, to place in temporary storage, to which Epstein said yes. When Gordon asked whether he should rent an Albuquerque storage unit or move the guns “from the main house and shooting range” to the garage of Epstein’s pilot, Visoski, who owned a house on his property, Epstein selected the latter.

“This land is deeded to Larry, therefore guns have been removed from your property. Larry’s on board with this approach,” Gordon wrote.

In 2011, Epstein wrote in an email a staff member living on the property would be allowed to have a firearm: “It will not be in the main house or in my possession , as we discussed due to the conviction/felony.”

In the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned another property, an attorney weighed in on the issue of whether an employee of the island could have a gun, concluding that it was permitted with various restrictions, as long as it was for the personal use of the employee only. Epstein tried to get his gun rights restored in the Virgin Islands as recently as 2018 but he doesn’t appear to have been successful. (In 2013 he said he didn’t feel safe on his island “with no protection at all.”)

The Justice Department files don’t provide a comprehensive list of guns at the ranch. In 2003, a memo notes Epstein authorized the purchase of “three more handguns to enable a weapon to be kept in each vehicle” at Zorro, estimating a cost of $2,400. The cabinets at Zorro Ranch containing guns, as of 2013, were themselves worth roughly $57,500, according to a list of Epstein’s insured “fine art.” (Also noted on the form was a “17th century painted wood panel collection” at Zorro worth $115,000.)

...

———-

“Dozens of Epstein’s Zorro Ranch guns were stolen in 2018, but staff wouldn’t work with police” By Clara Bates; Santa Fe New Mexican; 04/09/2026

“A “very large gun safe” in a garage on the property was stolen late Aug. 26 or early Aug. 27, 2018, the police report noted. Staff told a state police officer the safe contained handguns, rifles and antique weapons. The garage had a large window broken, according to the report.”

The timing sure is fascinating: a large gun safe, filled with guns, is stolen from a garage on the Zorro Ranch property on August 26 or 27, 2018, just four days after that August 22, 2018, report on the possible $1 billion lawsuit against Epstein over his role in the Ponzi scheme decades earlier. Is that just a coincidence? Keep in mind that, while this potential lawsuit wasn’t directly related to all of the sex-trafficking charges that ultimately resulted in Epstein’s arrest and jailing, the public attention the case could bring to Epstein was presumably enough to trigger concerns about just how deep a new investigation might get. Was the stolen gun safe some sort of cover story for the ‘loss’ of incriminating evidence? Also keep in mind that any blackmail material Epstein may have collected over the decades is presumably material Epstein, and his co-conspirators, doesn’t want investigators to ever find but also doesn’t want destroyed. All the tapes and photos have to be kept hidden, but not actually destroyed. Was the theft of this large gun safe and all of its contents part of a preemptive effort to remove incriminating evidence from the property in the wake of that report about a new lawsuit? Either way, the fact that an estimate 33 guns were in the stolen safe is an indication of just how large this safe really was, although it sounds like it wasn’t really a safe but instead antique “fine art” cabinets. So someone allegedly cut over a fence, drove in, and managed to steal an entire large set of antique cabinets, still filled with over 30 guns inside, from a garage on the compound. So wasn’t there some sort of armed security there to stop this theft? Apparently not, which is a supremely ironic detail. But the fact that two nearby cabins were also broken into suggests these were either some very busy burglars or, if this was an inside job, someone went through a lot of work to make it look like an authentic burglary. Although that also raises interesting questions about who Epstein’s neighbors may have been at the Zorro Ranch:

...
Leading to and from the garage were tire tracks, which led to a dirt road and a fence that had been slashed open. The report said two nearby cabins were also broken into, with antique lamps and another antique gun stolen, and another residence was missing two rifles.

...

The staff estimated 33 guns were missing, although one was later found in a staff member’s home.

...

The Justice Department files don’t provide a comprehensive list of guns at the ranch. In 2003, a memo notes Epstein authorized the purchase of “three more handguns to enable a weapon to be kept in each vehicle” at Zorro, estimating a cost of $2,400. The cabinets at Zorro Ranch containing guns, as of 2013, were themselves worth roughly $57,500, according to a list of Epstein’s insured “fine art.” (Also noted on the form was a “17th century painted wood panel collection” at Zorro worth $115,000.)
...

And those questions about what actually happened in this alleged burglary brings us to the fact that the ranch’s staff notified the police but refused to cooperate with any police investigation. No serial numbers were ever sent and staff stopped answering officers’ calls, resulting in a closure of the case a month later:

...
The night after the robbery, ranch staff had already compared serial numbers and documented the missing guns, but do not appear to have turned over those numbers to police, despite an officer pressing them to do so for weeks.

A ranch manager in late August wrote to Epstein: “Please advise if we are to forward the list of stollen [sic] weapons to Office Byrd [sic] of NM State Police, so serial numbers extra can be sent to pawn shops, gun shows etc, in the hope that something will turn up.”

Epstein replied only to refer the manager to his lawyer.

The serial numbers were never sent, according to the police report, and staff stopped answering the officer’s calls.

...

About one month after the robbery, state police closed the case, citing lack of cooperation.

State Police spokesperson Amanda Richards wrote by email this week the case “may be reopened at any time if new information is developed.”
...

And that lack of cooperation brings us to the fact that at least one of the ‘stolen’ guns was found at the ranch managers house while Epstein’s pilot, Larry Visoski, warned Epstein a month later that the ranch manager “keeps changing his story” and that Gordon “suspects” another staff member was involved. Notably, Visoski’s has his own house on the ranch and it was previously decided that his garage should be used to store the guns when Epstein is on the property due to Epstein’s past conviction. As we saw above, the guns were stolen from a garage, which had a large window broken. Which suggests the guns were Visoski’s garage, implying that Epstein was likely on the property at the time of the theft. But also note how this arrangement for relocating the guns to Visoski’s garage was part of an arrangement intended to allow the staff to have “as many guns as you are allowed including high powered rifles” when Epstein was not visiting. In other words, this was a heavily armed ranch. That’s part of the context of this brazen alleged robbery:

...
Ranch manager Brice Gordon found a “gray 22long ... rifle” in his house on the Zorro property, Epstein’s pilot Larry Visoski wrote to Epstein in September, saying Gordon “keeps changing his story” and that Gordon “suspects” another staff member was involved. Gordon, who first reported the theft to police, couldn’t be reached for comment.

...

It’s not clear from the Justice Department files why staff didn’t hand over the gun details, but correspondence in previous years could point to one explanation: Epstein wasn’t allowed to possess guns.

...

Epstein after the conviction was barred under federal law from possessing guns.

...

In March 2010, when Epstein was informing his property managers about his new restrictions, he told Gordon, the ranch manager, in an email Gordon should have “as many guns as you are allowed including high powered rifles” when Epstein was not visiting.

A few months later, Gordon asked whether he needed to remove firearms from the property before Epstein arrived, to place in temporary storage, to which Epstein said yes. When Gordon asked whether he should rent an Albuquerque storage unit or move the guns “from the main house and shooting range” to the garage of Epstein’s pilot, Visoski, who owned a house on his property, Epstein selected the latter.

“This land is deeded to Larry, therefore guns have been removed from your property. Larry’s on board with this approach,” Gordon wrote.

In 2011, Epstein wrote in an email a staff member living on the property would be allowed to have a firearm: “It will not be in the main house or in my possession , as we discussed due to the conviction/felony.”
...

Was this a coincidental robbery that just happened to take place a few days after the reports about a $1 billion class action lawsuit that threatened to blow open Epstein’s role in the one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history? A scheme that may have served as the original source of Epstein’s vast fortune. Was this all just a coincidence? Maybe. Either way, the fact that we still don’t know how the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme may have served as the source of Epstein’s original fortune underscores the fact that we are still scratching the surface of the Epstein story. For all of the focus on the elite sex trafficking mega-scandal, that’s not the only mega-scandal in this story. Just the one that got all the attention. Or got less covered up.

For all we’ve learned in recent years, major questions about the basic facts of this case continue to loom large over this story. Which brings us to a fascinating Substack post by journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez about another under-explored facet of the Epstein scandal. A part of this story directly related to the stunning fact that Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister, Christine Maxwell, co-founded Chiliad, a company offering PROMIS-like database capabilities to the US government in the post‑9/11 period, with the FBI serving as one of Chiliad’s flagship initial clients: It turns out Christine Maxwell’s career in offering software with PROMIS-like capabilities is far more direct than just her founding of Chiliad. was handed day-to-day control of Information on Demand back in 1985, the company led by father, Robert Maxwell, and that sold PROMIS software to US institutions. As we’ve seen, Robert Maxwell played a profound role in the PROMIS affair, having been recruit as a salesman for versions of PROMIS with Israel backdoors built in. And Christine Maxwell was right there for helping to manage this operation, as far back as 1985. It’s the kind of revelation that isn’t just fascinating in the context of the Epstein scandal. It’s also rather revelatory given the fact that Christine went on to co-found a company that was given access to so many of the US government’s most closely held secrets.

As Valdes-Rodriguez also recounts, it was June of 1984 when two Sandia National Laboratories employees approached the FBI’s New Mexico field office about information they received from colleagues at the National Security Agency (NSA) that Information on Demand had acquired an NSA database containing information about methods for tapping government databases. The employees also conveyed that they feared Maxwell was attempting to sell their institution bugged software. The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation. By August of 1984, the DOJ ordered the New Mexico field office to close the investigation. This is, of course, the same DOJ that itself was involved in the original theft of PROMIS from INSLAW. It’s part of what makes the PROMIS affair such a fascinating precursor to the Epstein scandal. In both cases we seemingly have US and Israeli intelligence working together in an operation that remains unexplained to this day. It’s also worth keeping in mind that, while Robert Maxwell was alleged to work for MI6, the Mossad, and even the KGB, one of the coups he managed to pull off in the PROMIS affair was the sale of the software to the Soviets. So if Maxwell really was working with the KGB as has been alleged, and he didn’t warn them about PROMIS’s backdoors in advance, it would appear he was operating in a double agent capacity, which is really what we should expect given the overall context of his life and career.

But Christine Maxwell’s role in the PROMIS affair isn’t the only Epstein-related revelation in the following report that ties in the Epstein affair into the US national security state. Because it also turns out there’s communications tower located at Zorro Ranch set up to run a private communications link between the ranch and Sandia Crest Tower, a critical piece of New Mexico’s communications infrastructure. According to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records, the Zorro Ranch is the location of two Microwave Industrial/Business Pool licenses, one that carries transmissions to Sandia Crest Tower in the Sandia Mountains and the other carrying transmissions back to the ranch, creating a private bi-direction communications channel operating entirely outside commercial internet infrastructure. Keep in mind that the kind of organizations that normally use this kind of private communication technology include NSA field stations, CIA operational facilities, FBI secure data operations, Department of Defense installations, electric utilities, natural gas pipeline operators, high-frequency trading firms, and major bank data centers. Once transmissions arrive at the Sandia Crest Tower they can be broadcast to virtually anywhere in the world. Why would Zorro Ranch need to communication that discrete?

Keep in mind that if Sandia Crest Tower doesn’t just have private Microwave Industrial/Business Pool connections to the Zorro Ranch. Sandia Crest Tower is a hub for this kind of private communications which presumably means the communications sent there could be privately routed to a range of other entities. Which brings us to the fact that Zorro Ranch is a neighbor of some major national security research institutes including Los Alamos National Laboratory, and, of course, Sandia National Laboratories. In fact, it turns out Zorro Ranch is at a geographic midpoint between those to entities, which only adds to the speculation of who Epstein was communicating with.

The pair of licenses were granted on July 12, 2016 and expire on July 12, 2026, in just a few months, and remain active. Yes, Epstein’s alleged death, and subsequent sale of the Zorro Ranch property, somehow didn’t end up with a loss of those licenses.

The following piece also goes on to speculate about a possible Russian angle to the Epstein affair. It’s not exactly a compelling argument, but some of the details laid out are still noteworthy. The speculation focuses on the fact that Karyna Shuliak — the Belarussian woman described as Epstein’s girlfriend and who ended up as one of primary beneficiaries of Epstein’s estate and who was the last known person Epstein spoke with the day before his ‘suicide’ — happened to be in Russia on the day Epstein’s body was discovered. The fact that she was in Russia isn’t particularly shocking or informative in and of itself. After all, the notion that Epstein was running a Russian influence operation all these decades flies in the face of the incredible kid-glove treatment he kept getting from US authorities, including the fact that the Epstein estate was left with potentially over $100 million in assets after federal prosecutors decided to not pursue the remaining assets on behalf of the victims.

But some of the other details about Shuliak are quite notable like the fact that Shuliak worked for Southern Trust Company, the financial entity with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets at the time of Epstein’s death. Recall how, as we’ve learned through the many interviews with Ed Opperman, Southern Trust appears to be the financial entity that somehow came into hundreds of millions of dollars in assets in the wake of the Towers Financial ponzi scheme that Epstein somehow managed to evade any culpability over despite being a central player. That Shuliak worked for Southern Trust and ultimately ended up a beneficiary of Epstein’s estate suggests she was extremely important in the financial side of Epstein’s operations. Recall how Epstein’s final phone call at the jail before his ‘suicide’ was ostensibly to his mother — long dead at that point- but was in reality to Shulia. Epstein was even allowed to use a phone for that call to Shuliak that is normally reserved for discussions with attorneys and therefore aren’t monitored by the prison. And let’s not forget that the will that has been guiding the disbursement of the estate’s remaining assets was created just days before his alleged ‘suicide’ and requires the estate to follow a trust Epstein set up, the 1953 Trust, that remains a secret. Shuliak appears to be the person tapped to continue at least some aspect of the Epstein operation in one form or another.

Another very interesting part of Shuliak’s biography is the fact that she was apparently in a five year sham marriage to Jennifer Kalin, an Epstein victim who also happened to be an ex-girlfriend of Kimball Musk, brother of Elon Musk, to facilitate Shuliak getting her US citizenship. It’s one of the many details in this story involving the Musk family. Recall how journalist James B. Stewart recounted hearing during an ‘off the record’ interview of Epstein in 2018 that Elon Musk was consulting with Epstein about possible replacements for the role of CEO of Tesla. That Kimball Musk’s ex-girlfriend spent five years in a sham marriage with Shuliak suggests the ties between Epstein and the Musks are far more extensive that generally recognized.

Another ostensibly suspicious Russian tie-in to the Epstein story cited below involves Don and Mary Catherine Huffines, the MAGA-connected Texas couple who secretly purchased Zorro Ranch in 2023. It turns out both Don, Mary Catherine, and Don’s twin brother all joined a delegation led by Senator Rand Paul during a June 2018 trip to Russia. The trip was not publicized by the Huffines, who characterized it as an attempt to confront Russian officials about election interference, with Rand Paul apparently delivering a letter from President Trump to Vladimir Putin. There’s plenty of very interest associations of the Huffines, but it’s hard to see that trip to Russia as some kind of smoking gun.

Intriguingly, as we’re going to see, Epstein had a Russian business visa issued in June of 2018. We don’t know if it was issue before or after the Paul delegation’s trip to Russia that month, but the fact the trip was over by August 6, 2018, suggests the visa was likely issued after the trip. Did the Huffines or someone else from the Paul delegation lobby the Russian government on Epstein’s behalf?

And those questions about how Epstein got that June 2018 Russian visa brings us to another Russian tangent to the Epstein story: Sergei Belyakov, ca graduate of the FSB Academy and the man who ran the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Belyakov met with Epstein at least five times. We are told Belyakov apparently helped Epstein obtain Russian visas.

We are also told Belyakov used Epstein to arrange meetings with Peter Thiel and Thomas Pritzker, and, in return, Epstein attempted to facilitate a meeting between Belyakov and Putin. There’s no explanation for how Epstein could possibly play a role in facilitating a meeting between Belyakov and Putin or the veracity of these claims. But as we’re going to see, Epstein write in a 2013 email to Ehud Barak that, “Putin asked that i meet him in st petersburg the same time as his economic conference I told him no.” There’s no evidence such a meeting ever took place, but such tales of claims by Epstein suggest that Epstein had probably been hyping alleged ties to Putin for years.

Note how we also aren’t told that such a meeting between Belyakov and Putin ever happened. Which makes this is a good time to recall the apparent role Sergei Belyakov and the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum may have played in another bizarre episode involving a mysterious intelligence-connected figure who made all sorts of questionable claims about access to the Kremlin: the case of Felix Sater, the mysterious Russian immigrant with ties to the Russian mafia who has past as both an FBI and CIA contract agent who was a central player in the 2016 ‘Ukrainian peace plan’ fiasco with the Right Sector-connected Ukrainian politician Andrii Artemenko. As we saw, back in 2015 and 2016, Trump was still trying to work out some sort of ‘Trump Tower Moscow’ deal that would require permission from the Kremlin. In June of 2016, Sater approaches Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, with an offer for Cohen to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, with Sater suggesting that he could arrange for Cohen to meet with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, top financial leaders, and maybe even Putin. We were also told that Sater even presented Cohen with a formal invitation to the conference from the Russian leader of the event, who was presumably Belyakov. In other words, it’s possible Belyakov was playing a role in Felix Sater’s still-under-explored maneuverings with the Trump campaign in 2016. As we’re going to see, Belyakov repeated tried to get Epstein to arrange for high profile US guests to the forum, which is consistent with him working with Felix Sater to recruit Michael Cohen as an attendee. Epstein and Belyakov have plenty to quid pro quo options available between the two of them.

Another interesting activity between Belyakov is and Epstein is a request Epstein had of Belyakov to investigate a Russian woman who was attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessmen in New York. We have no idea of this woman was one of Epstein’s victims or not, but it’s the kind of request by Epstein that suggests his putative role as ‘blackmail-in-chief’ may have involved the deployment of that skill set to protect powerful figures from blackmail. And, more generally, we have to ask how often Epstein and his co-conspirators had to deal with threats of blackmail from their many victims? How were these situations handled? This is a good time to recall the allegations of bodies buried on the Zorro Ranch property.

It’s that constellation of remarkable facts laid out in Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s recent Substack piece. Facts that strongly point towards some sort of intelligence-related relationship to the US by the Maxwell family going to the PROMIS scandal of the 1980s that happened to directly involve Christine Maxwell before she went on to offer PROMIS-like services to the post‑9/11 US national security state. And facts that don’t really point towards a Russian government role in the Epstein affair but instead a Russian-related chapter to this broader story. And then there’s the June 2018 visa issued to Epstein the same month as the Rand Paul delegation to Moscow where the Huffines tagged along. Epstein definitely had an interest in Russia, but the pedigree of his operation all points towards an operation that has been operating with high level US state protection for decades. And is potentially still operating with that protection as the Epstein estate continues to chug along, including the private communications to someone via the Sandia Crest Tower. It’s all a reminder of the remarkable parallels between the PROMIS scandal and the Epstein affair: in both cases, the more we learn, the more sordid it all gets. But all the more apparent that it becomes that we’re never going to be allowed to really know what happened:

Alisa Writes Substack

Ghislaine Maxwell’s Father Sold Bugged Israeli Software to Two Nuclear Weapons Labs in New Mexico. Then His Daughter Led Jeffrey Epstein to Purchase a Ranch Located Halfway Between Them.

A federal paper trail connects Robert Maxwell’s bugged software at Sandia to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, the Huffines family’s secret Moscow meeting, and a son in the Trump White House.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Mar 26, 2026

In 1985, a British media mogul walked into Sandia National Laboratories — one of the most sensitive nuclear weapons facilities in the United States — and signed a contract to install surveillance software that federal investigators would later allege was engineered to spy on its own users.

In 1993, a convicted sex offender purchased a ranch at the precise geographic midpoint between that facility and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the other crown jewel of American nuclear weapons research. He equipped that ranch with an industrial-sized spy-grade private microwave communications link running directly to a relay tower at Sandia Crest.

In 2023, a Texas family with documented ties to Russian officials and the Trump White House purchased that ranch, terminated most of its federal communications licenses — but kept the microwave link to Sandia Crest running, in the dead man’s company name.

The British media mogul was Robert Maxwell. His daughter is Ghislaine Maxwell. The sex offender was Jeffrey Epstein. The Texas family is Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines.

These documented facts are all drawn from federal court records, FCC license filings, FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the Epstein files, congressional testimony, published investigative reporting, and this reporter’s own review of primary sources.

...

I. The Software

PROMIS — the Prosecutor’s Management Information System — was developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Inslaw Inc., a small Washington, D.C. software firm. Its founder, William Hamilton, built something genuinely revolutionary: a program that could simultaneously query and integrate information from multiple, incompatible databases without requiring each system to be reprogrammed. In an era before the internet, before cloud computing, it was a surveillance tool of extraordinary potential.

The Department of Justice licensed PROMIS for use in U.S. attorneys’ offices nationwide. Then, according to court findings and congressional investigators, it stole it. A federal bankruptcy court found that the DOJ had obtained enhanced versions of PROMIS through what it called ‘trickery, fraud and deceit.’ The 1992 House Judiciary Committee report confirmed significant irregularities in the government’s handling of the software.

...

According to FBI counterintelligence records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Hamilton and reported in detail by the investigative news organization MuckRock, Israeli intelligence — specifically the Mossad, under veteran operations chief Rafi Eitan — recognized PROMIS’s potential as a global surveillance weapon. Eitan’s alleged plan: modify the stolen software with a hidden backdoor, then sell the compromised version to intelligence agencies and institutions worldwide. Every installation would quietly funnel data back to Israel, without the buyer ever knowing.

Eitan was not an obscure figure. He was a senior Mossad operations chief who, during the same period, was also running Jonathan Pollard — the U.S. Navy intelligence analyst later convicted of passing American nuclear secrets to Israel. His alleged role in the PROMIS operation has been identified consistently across multiple independent investigations spanning three decades, including by former Israeli Military Intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, and by journalists Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon in their extensively sourced 2002 account, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy.

The 1994 DOJ review of the INSLAW matter explicitly rejected some of the most sweeping espionage allegations, finding “no credible basis” for certain claims. That review affirmed the findings of a special counsel appointed by Attorney General William Barr — the same William Barr whose father, former OSS officer inexplicably turned Dalton School headmaster Donald Barr, hired Jeffrey Epstein as a teacher in 1974. The same Bill Barr who would later serve as Trump’s Attorney General overseeing the federal facility where Epstein died in 2019. The same Bill Barr who, as I write this, is a private attorney whose secret legal doctrines — written during his first tenure as Attorney General — are currently being used by the Trump administration to justify the extraordinary rendition of foreign leaders, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Critics have noted that the 1994 DOJ review of the INSLAW matter was conducted by the same Justice Department implicated in the original theft of PROMIS from Inslaw. Readers should weigh that context.

What the FBI’s own records confirm is this: the New Mexico field office opened a counterintelligence investigation into an attempt to sell PROMIS to Sandia National Laboratories. And that investigation was shut down by Main Justice before it could conclude.

II. The Salesman

Robert Maxwell was born Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923 in Carpathian Ruthenia — then part of newly formed Czechoslovakia, now part of Ukraine — the youngest son of a poor Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. He escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, joined the Czechoslovak army in exile, and fought with British forces across Europe. Field Marshal Montgomery decorated him personally. By war’s end he had changed his name five times and spoke at least eight languages.

After the war Maxwell worked in the British Foreign Office’s press division in occupied Berlin — placing him at the intersection of Allied intelligence networks at exactly the moment the OSS was becoming the CIA. British Foreign Office files, partially declassified in subsequent decades, described his ‘questionable activities’ as having been brought to the Office’s attention on multiple occasions. The files labeled him ‘a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.’ His daughter Ghislaine would later tell the FBI in a deposition that her father was an intelligence asset for the British “and others.”

By the 1980s Robert Maxwell had built one of the world’s largest publishing empires — Pergamon Press, Mirror Group Newspapers, Macmillan Inc. He was a Labour Member of Parliament and a friend of world leaders. He was also, according to Ben-Menashe and the investigative record compiled by Thomas and Dillon, a Mossad asset tasked with selling the backdoored PROMIS software to governments and institutions worldwide. According to those accounts, he ultimately brokered PROMIS installations worth over $500 million to intelligence agencies in more than twenty countries — including the KGB and agencies across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

His biggest target, however, was the United States itself.

III. New Mexico, 1984

Sandia National Laboratories sits on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is one of three Department of Energy nuclear research facilities, responsible for the non-nuclear components of American nuclear weapons — the triggering systems, the delivery mechanisms, the engineering that makes a warhead function. Los Alamos National Laboratory, roughly ninety miles northwest, is where the weapons themselves are designed, and where J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team created the world’s first atomic bomb. Together, these two New Mexico facilities represent the operational core of the American nuclear arsenal.

In 1984, Maxwell — operating through a U.S.-based company called Information on Demand, which his Pergamon publishing empire had quietly acquired — targeted both facilities for PROMIS sales. According to Thomas and Dillon’s sourced account, Maxwell sought out Senator John Tower of Texas, then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, paying him $200,000 for introductions to Sandia and access to the Reagan White House. That allegation has not been confirmed in primary documents available to the public and should be understood as credibly alleged.

What is documented in FBI records: in June 1984, two Sandia employees who worked in technology transfer approached the FBI’s New Mexico field office. They had received alarming information from colleagues at the National Security Agency — that Maxwell’s company had acquired an NSA database containing information about methods for tapping government databases. They believed Maxwell was attempting to sell their institution something engineered to spy on it.

The FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation. Two months later, one of the Sandia employees followed up with the Bureau, urging the FBI and NSA to investigate jointly. According to MuckRock’s analysis of the FOIA records, the Sandia employee was essentially stonewalled and told to take concerns to FBI headquarters.

In August 1984, FBI headquarters — operating under Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Department of Justice, the same DOJ implicated in the original PROMIS theft from Inslaw — ordered the New Mexico field office to close the investigation.

The investigation was closed. Maxwell returned to Sandia. In February 1985, he signed the contract for the PROMIS installation, listing himself as President and CEO of Information on Demand. Shortly afterward, he transferred day-to-day control of the company to his daughter Christine Maxwell, who served as its president and CEO until her father’s death in 1991.

MuckRock’s subsequent analysis found that Robert Maxwell’s FBI file has grown progressively more classified over time — more heavily redacted in 2013 than in 1994, and more heavily redacted still in 2017. This is the inverse of what normally happens with aging intelligence files.

IV. The Triangle

Pull up a map of central New Mexico.

[see map of central New Mexico]

Sandia National Laboratories sits in Albuquerque, in the Rio Grande valley. Los Alamos National Laboratory sits on a mesa to the north, in the Jemez Mountains. To the east, between them, slightly closer to Albuquerque, you arrive where Jeffrey Epstein built Zorro Ranch. (Now called San Rafael Ranch.)

Epstein purchased the 7,600-acre property in 1993 for a reported $12.3 million, according to the Albuquerque Journal. He bought it from Bruce King — the longest-serving governor in New Mexico history, whose three terms in office (1971–1975, 1979–1983, and 1991–1995) bracketed the entire PROMIS operation on both ends. King was governor of New Mexico when Maxwell was targeting Sandia. The King family’s land surrounds the Zorro Ranch property. Members of the King family appear in Epstein’s personal address book. Epstein donated money to Gary King — Bruce King’s son, who served as New Mexico Attorney General from 2007 to 2015, the period during which his office had jurisdiction over potential state-level crimes at Zorro Ranch.

The connection between Bruce King’s administration and the federal intelligence activity occurring within his state has never been publicly examined. His papers are archived at the UNM School of Law and are open to public researchers, but by appointment only. My appointment is coming soon.

What has now been documented, through my review of Federal Communications Commission records, is something that reframes the ranch’s relationship to Sandia National Laboratories (and possibly Los Alamos National Labs) entirely.

FCC records show that Zorro Development Corp., registered at 49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley, New Mexico, holds two active Microwave Industrial/Business Pool licenses — call signs WQXY316 and WQXY300, both granted July 12, 2016, both expiring July 12, 2026. License WQXY316 carries transmissions from the Zorro Ranch main residence to Sandia Crest Tower in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque. License WQXY300 carries transmissions from Sandia Crest Tower back to Zorro Ranch. Together they constitute a permanent, fixed, bidirectional private microwave communications link — a dedicated two-way data channel operating entirely outside commercial internet infrastructure, through channels where traffic cannot be monitored, intercepted, or logged by third parties.

The Sandia Crest end of the system is anchored by a lattice tower standing 45.7 meters tall. Sandia Crest Tower is one of the most significant communications relay points in New Mexico. Data reaching Sandia Crest from Zorro Ranch can be routed onward through that infrastructure to virtually any destination in the world.

To understand the significance of this infrastructure, consider who actually uses Industrial/Business Pool microwave systems: NSA field stations, CIA operational facilities, FBI secure data operations, Department of Defense installations, electric utilities, natural gas pipeline operators, high-frequency trading firms, and major bank data centers. None of those descriptions apply to a private vacation ranch in the high desert.

Robert Maxwell sold backdoored surveillance software to Sandia National Laboratories in 1985. A decade later, his daughter’s partner built a private off-network communications link from the geographic midpoint between Sandia and Los Alamos directly to a tower at Sandia Crest. The surveillance infrastructure Maxwell embedded in Sandia, and the communications infrastructure Epstein built toward it, are connected by geography, by the Sandia Crest relay point, and by the decade-long relationship between Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein himself.

But why? And to whom was Epstein privately sending so much data from his remote outpost between two of the United States’ top nuclear weapons labs?

V. The Heir

On August 10, 2019, the day Jeffrey Epstein died in a Manhattan federal detention facility, his last known phone call was to Karyna Shuliak — a Belarusian-born dental surgeon whom Epstein had designated as the primary beneficiary of his estate two days before his death.

That day, according to FBI text messages now in the public record — document EFTA01227447, a 289-page FBI text chain — Shuliak was in Russia. Federal prosecutors, the document shows, were aware of this. They asked her attorney to arrange a conversation about the final phone call and her relationship with Epstein. As far as the public record shows, that conversation never took place. Shuliak has never been charged with any crime.

Shuliak’s background warrants scrutiny. She was introduced to Epstein in 2009, almost immediately after his release from prison in Florida, through an unnamed Russian woman described as a mutual friend. She met him for the first time in Minsk, her hometown. Epstein coached her to pose as a domestic worker to enter the United States. He later instructed her to form a sham marriage with Jennifer Kalin, a former Epstein survivor and ex-girlfriend of Elon Musk’s brother, Kimball. The marriage lasted five years, long enough for Shuliak to gain her U.S. citizenship. Epstein also donated a massive amount of money to get Columbia University to accept Shuliak to its dental surgery program after it initially rejected her application. The bribe worked. She graduated in 2015.

Shuliak also worked for Southern Trust Company, Epstein’s U.S. Virgin Islands entity that processed $184 million through Deutsche Bank between 2013 and 2019 — described in court filings as a conduit for payments to young foreign women.

Shuliak inherited Epstein’s estate, including Zorro Ranch, upon his death. She subsequently sold Little Saint James — Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands — for $60 million to Stephen Deckoff, billionaire founder of Black Diamond Capital Management. Her dental practice is currently located at 6100 Red Hook Quarters, St. Thomas, in the same geographic area.

VI. The New Owners

In 2023, Zorro Ranch was purchased from Epstein’s estate by San Rafael Ranch LLC, a limited liability company whose beneficial owners were subsequently identified as Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines of Dallas, Texas. The Huffines family had initially attempted to remain anonymous in the transaction, but were outed by Clara Bates, a reporter at the Santa Fe New Mexican, this year.

The Huffines family terminated several FCC licenses on the property in 2024 and 2026. They did not terminate the microwave link to Sandia Crest. As of the date of publication, FCC records show those two licenses — WQXY316 and WQXY300 — remain active, held in the name of Zorro Development Corp., Jeffrey Epstein’s former LLC, at 49 Zorro Ranch Road. This is likely not a mere oversight, as they did terminate three other FCC licenses. The curious piece is why they’ve left the two remaining licenses in the name of the late Epstein’s company rather than transferring them to their own.

Donald Huffines is a former Texas state senator currently running for Texas state comptroller with an endorsement from Donald Trump. His son Russell Huffines is currently the Associate Director of Agency Outreach in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs under President Donald Trump, according to LegiStorm and the White House’s own annual report to Congress on staff. Another son, Colin Huffines, was listed in LLC filings as managing the ranch property.

The Huffines family’s connections to Russia are documented. In June 2018, Donald Huffines and his twin brother Phillip traveled to Moscow as part of a delegation led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. The trip was not publicized by either Huffines brother. It became public only after Russian state media released photographs and wire reports from the meeting. Donald Huffines’ spokesman subsequently stated the trip was intended to confront Russian officials about election interference. The meeting included discussions with Sergei Kislyak, the former Russian Ambassador to the United States whose contacts with Trump campaign officials were a central subject of the Mueller investigation.

According to NBC News reporting on the delegation, Rand Paul carried a handwritten letter from President Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian officials at the meeting advocated for the release of Maria Butina, the Russian national who had infiltrated the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party and was subsequently convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Mary Catherine Huffines was also present at that Moscow meeting, according to photographs published by Russian media — her presence there, like her husband’s, was not previously disclosed.

The Huffines family also heads HEST Investments, which finances Secretome Therapeutics, a biotech company whose chief product is developed from neonatal cardiac cells harvested from newborns within thirty days of birth. Epstein had publicly stated for years his intention to use Zorro Ranch specifically to impregnate women with his DNA — what he called seeding the human race. Southern Trust Company, the Epstein entity where Shuliak worked, filed documents disclosing it was engaged in DNA analysis. Epstein’s plan to use the ranch for what he described as a human breeding program was not a secret; he discussed it with scientists and associates and it was reported by the New York Times.

VII. The Russian Thread

Epstein’s own connections to Russian intelligence infrastructure are documented in the federal files. Sergei Belyakov — a graduate of the FSB Academy, which trains Russian intelligence officers, and the man who ran Putin’s flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum — met with Epstein at least five times. Epstein referred to him in correspondence as ‘my very good friend.’ According to the files, Belyakov helped Epstein obtain Russian visas, gathered intelligence on a woman Epstein claimed was attempting to blackmail American businessmen, and used Epstein to arrange meetings with American billionaires Peter Thiel and Thomas Pritzker. In return, Epstein attempted to facilitate a meeting between Belyakov and Putin.

In June 2018 — the same summer Epstein was emailing former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland to suggest that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov could benefit from speaking with him — Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines were in Moscow, in a meeting with Kislyak, as part of Rand Paul’s delegation carrying Trump’s letter to Putin.

The chronology is as follows: Robert Maxwell, alleged Mossad and multi-agency intelligence asset, penetrated Sandia National Laboratories with surveillance software in 1985. His daughter Ghislaine became Jeffrey Epstein’s operational partner in the 1990s, after Robert’s mysterious death in 1991. Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch — positioned near the midpoint between Sandia and Los Alamos — from the governor of New Mexico, built a private microwave communications link to Sandia Crest, and operated the ranch as a hub of what federal prosecutors described as an international sex trafficking and blackmail network for nearly three decades. Upon Epstein’s death, his estate — including Zorro Ranch — passed to Karyna Shuliak, a Belarusian national introduced to Epstein through Russian contacts, who was in Russia the day he died. The ranch was subsequently sold to a Texas family whose documented Russian contacts include a secret Moscow meeting with sanctioned officials, whose son sits in the Trump White House, and who has kept Epstein’s private microwave link to Sandia Crest running in Epstein’s company name.

Each of these facts is individually documented. Their sequence is a matter of public record. The question of whether they constitute a continuous intelligence operation, or a series of unrelated coincidences, is one that law enforcement, congressional investigators, and the New Mexico Legislature’s newly formed Epstein Truth Commission are now positioned to examine.

...

VIII. What Has and Hasn’t Been Investigated

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez reopened the state’s investigation of Zorro Ranch in February 2026, citing ‘revelations outlined in the previously sealed FBI files’ as warranting further examination. The state’s initial investigation had been closed in 2019 at the explicit request of federal prosecutors in New York — the same year Epstein died. On March 8, 2026, state investigators began a physical search of the property, the first such search in the ranch’s history despite decades of survivor allegations.

...

No New Mexico news outlet has reported the connection between Robert Maxwell’s 1985 PROMIS sale to Sandia and Jeffrey Epstein’s subsequent establishment of Zorro Ranch at the geographic midpoint between Sandia and Los Alamos. No New Mexico outlet has reported that the private microwave communications link Epstein built between Zorro Ranch and Sandia Crest Tower remains active under the Huffines ownership, in Epstein’s LLC name. No New Mexico outlet has connected the Huffines family’s documented Moscow meeting — including Mary Catherine Huffines’ previously unreported presence — to their purchase of the ranch and their maintenance of its intelligence-grade communications infrastructure.

The Bruce King Papers, covering his three gubernatorial terms including the 1979–1983 term during which Maxwell was targeting Sandia, are archived at the UNM School of Law and are open to public researchers. They have not, to this reporter’s knowledge, been examined in connection with any of the above.

...

————

“Ghislaine Maxwell’s Father Sold Bugged Israeli Software to Two Nuclear Weapons Labs in New Mexico. Then His Daughter Led Jeffrey Epstein to Purchase a Ranch Located Halfway Between Them.” by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez; Alisa Writes Substack; 03/26/2026

“After the war Maxwell worked in the British Foreign Office’s press division in occupied Berlin — placing him at the intersection of Allied intelligence networks at exactly the moment the OSS was becoming the CIA. British Foreign Office files, partially declassified in subsequent decades, described his ‘questionable activities’ as having been brought to the Office’s attention on multiple occasions. The files labeled him ‘a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.’ His daughter Ghislaine would later tell the FBI in a deposition that her father was an intelligence asset for the British “and others.””

The more we learn, the worse it gets. But also the more intriguing it gets. Chislaine Maxwell wasn’t some random individual who fell into Epstein’s orbit. She’s the daughter of Robert Maxwell, long suspected of being an intelligence asset for Britain “and others”, presumably a reference that includes Israel. It’s a fascinating pedigree for the woman who ended up managing an apparent multi-national intelligence operation that has long looked to be managed by the US and Israel and, possibly, “others”. Recall how the 2019 raid on Epstein’s safe revealed a fake passport issued in the early 1980s apparently by the government of Austria listing his residence as Saudi Arabia. Who the hell knows how many “other” governments were partaking in this Epstein/Maxwell operation over the decades it was active. But it’s not just Robert Maxwell’s status as an multi-national spy that makes him such an intriguing father for Ghislaine. There’s the reality that Robert Maxwell was allegedly tasked with selling compromised versions of PROMIS software with backdoors installed to governments and institutions around the world, ultimately brokering more than $500 million in PROMIS contracts to intelligence agencies in more than twenty countries. Robert Maxwell was apparently one of the key players in one of the biggest intelligence scandals/operations of the late 20th century. A scandal global in scope, with US institutions as one of the primary targets. Fascinating, while the compromised PROMIS software was apparently feeding information back to Israel, this whole operation seemingly started with the illegal theft of PROMIS from INSLAW by the US DOJ. So when we see how compromised versions of PROMIS that fed information back to Israel were being peddled by Robert Maxwell to governments around the world, it’s important to keep in mind the corrupt role of the DOJ in all this and Israel’s long-standing role as a US intelligence proxy:

...
PROMIS — the Prosecutor’s Management Information System — was developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Inslaw Inc., a small Washington, D.C. software firm. Its founder, William Hamilton, built something genuinely revolutionary: a program that could simultaneously query and integrate information from multiple, incompatible databases without requiring each system to be reprogrammed. In an era before the internet, before cloud computing, it was a surveillance tool of extraordinary potential.

The Department of Justice licensed PROMIS for use in U.S. attorneys’ offices nationwide. Then, according to court findings and congressional investigators, it stole it. A federal bankruptcy court found that the DOJ had obtained enhanced versions of PROMIS through what it called ‘trickery, fraud and deceit.’ The 1992 House Judiciary Committee report confirmed significant irregularities in the government’s handling of the software.

...

According to FBI counterintelligence records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Hamilton and reported in detail by the investigative news organization MuckRock, Israeli intelligence — specifically the Mossad, under veteran operations chief Rafi Eitan — recognized PROMIS’s potential as a global surveillance weapon. Eitan’s alleged plan: modify the stolen software with a hidden backdoor, then sell the compromised version to intelligence agencies and institutions worldwide. Every installation would quietly funnel data back to Israel, without the buyer ever knowing.

Eitan was not an obscure figure. He was a senior Mossad operations chief who, during the same period, was also running Jonathan Pollard — the U.S. Navy intelligence analyst later convicted of passing American nuclear secrets to Israel. His alleged role in the PROMIS operation has been identified consistently across multiple independent investigations spanning three decades, including by former Israeli Military Intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, and by journalists Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon in their extensively sourced 2002 account, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy.

...

By the 1980s Robert Maxwell had built one of the world’s largest publishing empires — Pergamon Press, Mirror Group Newspapers, Macmillan Inc. He was a Labour Member of Parliament and a friend of world leaders. He was also, according to Ben-Menashe and the investigative record compiled by Thomas and Dillon, a Mossad asset tasked with selling the backdoored PROMIS software to governments and institutions worldwide. According to those accounts, he ultimately brokered PROMIS installations worth over $500 million to intelligence agencies in more than twenty countries — including the KGB and agencies across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

His biggest target, however, was the United States itself.
...

And as we can see with the corrupt role Bill Barr played in burying the DOJ’s review of the PROMIS scandal in 1994, the closure of that DOJ review included a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI’s New Mexico field office into an attempt to sell PROMIS to Sandia National Laboratories. The investigation was shut down by Main Justiced before it could conclude. Which sure sounds like what we might expect if indeed PROMIS had been successfully sold to Sandia National Laboratories and the leadership of the DOJ wanted to keep all that covered up. Alarmingly, it appears that 1994 DOJ review of the INSLAW/PROMIS affair happened a decade after the FBI shut down the investigation after two Sandia employees first approached the FBI about Maxwell’s overtures in 1984, the same period when the DOJ itself is implicated in the theft of the PROMIS software. In 1985, Sandia signed the contract with PROMIS. That same year, Robert Maxwell transferred day-to-day control of his company, Information on Demand, to his daughter Christine Maxwell, the same daughter who went on to co-founded Chiliad in the late 1990s, a company offering PROMIS-like abilities to the post‑9/11 US national security state, with the FBI serving as one of the company’s showcase clients. So in 1985, Christine Maxwell was made the head of day-to-day operations for the company that was selling PROMIS software to key US agencies and institutions, including facilities where nuclear weapons development was taking place:

...
The 1994 DOJ review of the INSLAW matter explicitly rejected some of the most sweeping espionage allegations, finding “no credible basis” for certain claims. That review affirmed the findings of a special counsel appointed by Attorney General William Barr — the same William Barr whose father, former OSS officer inexplicably turned Dalton School headmaster Donald Barr, hired Jeffrey Epstein as a teacher in 1974. The same Bill Barr who would later serve as Trump’s Attorney General overseeing the federal facility where Epstein died in 2019. The same Bill Barr who, as I write this, is a private attorney whose secret legal doctrines — written during his first tenure as Attorney General — are currently being used by the Trump administration to justify the extraordinary rendition of foreign leaders, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Critics have noted that the 1994 DOJ review of the INSLAW matter was conducted by the same Justice Department implicated in the original theft of PROMIS from Inslaw. Readers should weigh that context.

What the FBI’s own records confirm is this: the New Mexico field office opened a counterintelligence investigation into an attempt to sell PROMIS to Sandia National Laboratories. And that investigation was shut down by Main Justice before it could conclude.

...

Sandia National Laboratories sits on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is one of three Department of Energy nuclear research facilities, responsible for the non-nuclear components of American nuclear weapons — the triggering systems, the delivery mechanisms, the engineering that makes a warhead function. Los Alamos National Laboratory, roughly ninety miles northwest, is where the weapons themselves are designed, and where J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team created the world’s first atomic bomb. Together, these two New Mexico facilities represent the operational core of the American nuclear arsenal.

In 1984, Maxwell — operating through a U.S.-based company called Information on Demand, which his Pergamon publishing empire had quietly acquired — targeted both facilities for PROMIS sales. According to Thomas and Dillon’s sourced account, Maxwell sought out Senator John Tower of Texas, then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, paying him $200,000 for introductions to Sandia and access to the Reagan White House. That allegation has not been confirmed in primary documents available to the public and should be understood as credibly alleged.

What is documented in FBI records: in June 1984, two Sandia employees who worked in technology transfer approached the FBI’s New Mexico field office. They had received alarming information from colleagues at the National Security Agency — that Maxwell’s company had acquired an NSA database containing information about methods for tapping government databases. They believed Maxwell was attempting to sell their institution something engineered to spy on it.

The FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation. Two months later, one of the Sandia employees followed up with the Bureau, urging the FBI and NSA to investigate jointly. According to MuckRock’s analysis of the FOIA records, the Sandia employee was essentially stonewalled and told to take concerns to FBI headquarters.

In August 1984, FBI headquarters — operating under Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Department of Justice, the same DOJ implicated in the original PROMIS theft from Inslaw — ordered the New Mexico field office to close the investigation.

The investigation was closed. Maxwell returned to Sandia. In February 1985, he signed the contract for the PROMIS installation, listing himself as President and CEO of Information on Demand. Shortly afterward, he transferred day-to-day control of the company to his daughter Christine Maxwell, who served as its president and CEO until her father’s death in 1991.

MuckRock’s subsequent analysis found that Robert Maxwell’s FBI file has grown progressively more classified over time — more heavily redacted in 2013 than in 1994, and more heavily redacted still in 2017. This is the inverse of what normally happens with aging intelligence files.
...

And that remarkable history of Robert and Christine Maxwell’s role in the PROMIS affair and, seemingly, a PROMIS installation at Sandia National Laboratories brings us to the intriguing communications role seemingly played by a pair of active Microwave Industrial/Business Pool licenses carrying transmission from the ranch to and from Sandia Crest Tower, a fixed bidirectional private microwave communications link operating entirely outside commercial internet infrastructure, through channels where traffic cannot be monitored, intercepted, or logged by third parties. Sandia Crest Tower also happens to be one of the most significant communications relay points in New Mexico, with the ability to route communications to virtually anywhere in the world. It’s the kind of communications infrastructure used by NSA field stations, CIA operational facilities, FBI secure data operations, Department of Defense installations, electric utilities, natural gas pipeline operators, high-frequency trading firms, and major bank data centers. And the Zorro Ranch just happened to be directly connected to this. Both licenses granted July 12, 2016, and remain active, for now, with expiration dates of July 12, 2026. Will those licenses get renewed now that the ranch is under new ownership of the Huffines family? We’ll see, but given the Huffines’s close relationship to President Trump, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be very amendable to any special requests from the Trump administration about how to handle these sensitive services:

...
Sandia National Laboratories sits in Albuquerque, in the Rio Grande valley. Los Alamos National Laboratory sits on a mesa to the north, in the Jemez Mountains. To the east, between them, slightly closer to Albuquerque, you arrive where Jeffrey Epstein built Zorro Ranch. (Now called San Rafael Ranch.)

Epstein purchased the 7,600-acre property in 1993 for a reported $12.3 million, according to the Albuquerque Journal. He bought it from Bruce King — the longest-serving governor in New Mexico history, whose three terms in office (1971–1975, 1979–1983, and 1991–1995) bracketed the entire PROMIS operation on both ends. King was governor of New Mexico when Maxwell was targeting Sandia. The King family’s land surrounds the Zorro Ranch property. Members of the King family appear in Epstein’s personal address book. Epstein donated money to Gary King — Bruce King’s son, who served as New Mexico Attorney General from 2007 to 2015, the period during which his office had jurisdiction over potential state-level crimes at Zorro Ranch.

The connection between Bruce King’s administration and the federal intelligence activity occurring within his state has never been publicly examined. His papers are archived at the UNM School of Law and are open to public researchers, but by appointment only. My appointment is coming soon.

What has now been documented, through my review of Federal Communications Commission records, is something that reframes the ranch’s relationship to Sandia National Laboratories (and possibly Los Alamos National Labs) entirely.

FCC records show that Zorro Development Corp., registered at 49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley, New Mexico, holds two active Microwave Industrial/Business Pool licenses — call signs WQXY316 and WQXY300, both granted July 12, 2016, both expiring July 12, 2026. License WQXY316 carries transmissions from the Zorro Ranch main residence to Sandia Crest Tower in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque. License WQXY300 carries transmissions from Sandia Crest Tower back to Zorro Ranch. Together they constitute a permanent, fixed, bidirectional private microwave communications link — a dedicated two-way data channel operating entirely outside commercial internet infrastructure, through channels where traffic cannot be monitored, intercepted, or logged by third parties.

The Sandia Crest end of the system is anchored by a lattice tower standing 45.7 meters tall. Sandia Crest Tower is one of the most significant communications relay points in New Mexico. Data reaching Sandia Crest from Zorro Ranch can be routed onward through that infrastructure to virtually any destination in the world.

To understand the significance of this infrastructure, consider who actually uses Industrial/Business Pool microwave systems: NSA field stations, CIA operational facilities, FBI secure data operations, Department of Defense installations, electric utilities, natural gas pipeline operators, high-frequency trading firms, and major bank data centers. None of those descriptions apply to a private vacation ranch in the high desert.

...

In 2023, Zorro Ranch was purchased from Epstein’s estate by San Rafael Ranch LLC, a limited liability company whose beneficial owners were subsequently identified as Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines of Dallas, Texas. The Huffines family had initially attempted to remain anonymous in the transaction, but were outed by Clara Bates, a reporter at the Santa Fe New Mexican, this year.

The Huffines family terminated several FCC licenses on the property in 2024 and 2026. They did not terminate the microwave link to Sandia Crest. As of the date of publication, FCC records show those two licenses — WQXY316 and WQXY300 — remain active, held in the name of Zorro Development Corp., Jeffrey Epstein’s former LLC, at 49 Zorro Ranch Road. This is likely not a mere oversight, as they did terminate three other FCC licenses. The curious piece is why they’ve left the two remaining licenses in the name of the late Epstein’s company rather than transferring them to their own.

Donald Huffines is a former Texas state senator currently running for Texas state comptroller with an endorsement from Donald Trump. His son Russell Huffines is currently the Associate Director of Agency Outreach in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs under President Donald Trump, according to LegiStorm and the White House’s own annual report to Congress on staff. Another son, Colin Huffines, was listed in LLC filings as managing the ranch property.

...

The Huffines family also heads HEST Investments, which finances Secretome Therapeutics, a biotech company whose chief product is developed from neonatal cardiac cells harvested from newborns within thirty days of birth. Epstein had publicly stated for years his intention to use Zorro Ranch specifically to impregnate women with his DNA — what he called seeding the human race. Southern Trust Company, the Epstein entity where Shuliak worked, filed documents disclosing it was engaged in DNA analysis. Epstein’s plan to use the ranch for what he described as a human breeding program was not a secret; he discussed it with scientists and associates and it was reported by the New York Times.
...

Then there’s fascinating fact that Karyna Shuliak, the woman who is one of the primary beneficiaries of the Epstein estate, appears to have spent five years in a sham marriage with Jennifer Kalin, an ex-girlfiend of Kimball Musk, in order to secure US citizenship. It’s one more data point indicating the Musk family has a still-under-recognized relationship with Epstein. And when we see how Shuliak worked for Southern Trust Company, an entity that processed $184 million through Deutsche Bank between 2013 and 2019, recall how, as we’ve learned through the many interviews with Ed Opperman, how Southern Trust appears to be the financial entity that somehow came into hundreds of millions of dollars in assets in the wake of the Towers Financial ponzi scheme that Epstein somehow managed to evade any culpability over despite being a central player. Also recall how Elon Musk reportedly consulted Epstein back in 2018 about people who could serve as the chairman of Tesla. And recall how Epstein’s final phone call at the jail before his ‘suicide’ was ostensibly to his dead mother but was in reality to Shuliak. Epstein was even allowed to use a phone for that phonecall that is normally reserved for discussions with attorneys and therefore aren’t monitored by the prison. And then there’s the fact that federal prosecutors decided to leave the Epstein estate, and therefore Shuliak, with potentially over $100 million in assets. So when we learn that Shuliak — one of the primary beneficiaries of Epstein’s estate and who ultimately inherited the Zorro Ranch upon Epstein’s apparent death — had spent five years in a sham marriage with an ex-girlfriend of Kimball Musk — brother of a very significant US defense contractor/oligarch — not only is a apparent that the Musk-angle to the Epstein story remains under-explored but it’s also apparent that Karyna Shuliak has long played a key role in the whole Epstein operation. She’s incorporated the property management, financial chicanery, and personal influence operations. Small wonder she’s the person who seems to be ultimately tasked with carrying on aspects of that operation in the post-Epstein era. The big question is who is Shuliak working for at this point:

...
V. The Heir

On August 10, 2019, the day Jeffrey Epstein died in a Manhattan federal detention facility, his last known phone call was to Karyna Shuliak — a Belarusian-born dental surgeon whom Epstein had designated as the primary beneficiary of his estate two days before his death.

That day, according to FBI text messages now in the public record — document EFTA01227447, a 289-page FBI text chain — Shuliak was in Russia. Federal prosecutors, the document shows, were aware of this. They asked her attorney to arrange a conversation about the final phone call and her relationship with Epstein. As far as the public record shows, that conversation never took place. Shuliak has never been charged with any crime.

Shuliak’s background warrants scrutiny. She was introduced to Epstein in 2009, almost immediately after his release from prison in Florida, through an unnamed Russian woman described as a mutual friend. She met him for the first time in Minsk, her hometown. Epstein coached her to pose as a domestic worker to enter the United States. He later instructed her to form a sham marriage with Jennifer Kalin, a former Epstein survivor and ex-girlfriend of Elon Musk’s brother, Kimball. The marriage lasted five years, long enough for Shuliak to gain her U.S. citizenship. Epstein also donated a massive amount of money to get Columbia University to accept Shuliak to its dental surgery program after it initially rejected her application. The bribe worked. She graduated in 2015.

Shuliak also worked for Southern Trust Company, Epstein’s U.S. Virgin Islands entity that processed $184 million through Deutsche Bank between 2013 and 2019 — described in court filings as a conduit for payments to young foreign women.

Shuliak inherited Epstein’s estate, including Zorro Ranch, upon his death. She subsequently sold Little Saint James — Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands — for $60 million to Stephen Deckoff, billionaire founder of Black Diamond Capital Management. Her dental practice is currently located at 6100 Red Hook Quarters, St. Thomas, in the same geographic area.
...

And those questions about who Karyna Shuliak may be answering to these days now that she’s in control of the substantial assets that were left in Epstein’s estate brings us the speculation surrounding Epstein’s ties to the Russian government. The speculation appears to be rooted in the fact that Shuliak, a Belarussian, was in Russia on the day of Epstein’s death and that the Huffines, who purchased Zorro Ranch in 2023, made a 2018 trip to Russia as part of a delegation led by Senator Rand Paul. And then there’s Sergei Belyakov, an FSB Academy graduate who met Epstein at least five times and, intriguingly, gathered intelligence on a woman Epstein claimed was attempting to blackmail American businessmen. Epstein not only arranged meetings with Peter Thiel and Thomas Pritzker for Belyakov, but he even apparently attempted to facilitate a meeting between Belyakov and Putin. All in all, it’s hardly evidence that Epstein was some kind of Russian asset, a scenario that flies in the face of decades of apparent protection of Epstein on behalf of US authorities. And recall how, while Robert Maxwell was alleged to work for MI6, the Mossad, and even the KGB, one of the coups he managed to pull off in the PROMIS affair was the sale of the software to the Soviets. But if Epstein really was someone who was used to gather intelligence on women attempting to blackmail American businessmen, that adds a fascinating new dimension to overall story. Was Epstein seen as some kind of elite sexual blackmail guru? Able to be inflict the blackmail but also defend against it?

...
The Huffines family’s connections to Russia are documented. In June 2018, Donald Huffines and his twin brother Phillip traveled to Moscow as part of a delegation led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. The trip was not publicized by either Huffines brother. It became public only after Russian state media released photographs and wire reports from the meeting. Donald Huffines’ spokesman subsequently stated the trip was intended to confront Russian officials about election interference. The meeting included discussions with Sergei Kislyak, the former Russian Ambassador to the United States whose contacts with Trump campaign officials were a central subject of the Mueller investigation.

According to NBC News reporting on the delegation, Rand Paul carried a handwritten letter from President Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian officials at the meeting advocated for the release of Maria Butina, the Russian national who had infiltrated the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party and was subsequently convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Mary Catherine Huffines was also present at that Moscow meeting, according to photographs published by Russian media — her presence there, like her husband’s, was not previously disclosed.

...

Epstein’s own connections to Russian intelligence infrastructure are documented in the federal files. Sergei Belyakov — a graduate of the FSB Academy, which trains Russian intelligence officers, and the man who ran Putin’s flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum — met with Epstein at least five times. Epstein referred to him in correspondence as ‘my very good friend.’ According to the files, Belyakov helped Epstein obtain Russian visas, gathered intelligence on a woman Epstein claimed was attempting to blackmail American businessmen, and used Epstein to arrange meetings with American billionaires Peter Thiel and Thomas Pritzker. In return, Epstein attempted to facilitate a meeting between Belyakov and Putin.

In June 2018 — the same summer Epstein was emailing former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland to suggest that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov could benefit from speaking with him — Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines were in Moscow, in a meeting with Kislyak, as part of Rand Paul’s delegation carrying Trump’s letter to Putin.
...

And all of those questions raised about the Russian ties to the Epstein operation brings us to the following report from back in February about the many examples of Epstein’s interest in cultivating ties to Russia that have emerged in the released Epstein files. As we’ll see, Epstein was keenly interested in identifying Russia girls for recruitment, with a network of scouts throughout Russia providing him a steady stream of prospects. Evidence indicates Epstein may have traveled to Russia several times, with the files including a 2011 Russian visa application and an older photo of Epstein posing in front of the luxury Hyatt hotel in central Moscow. In 2013, Epstein bragged to to Ehud Barack that, “Putin asked that i meet him in st petersburg the same time as his economic conference I told him no.” There’s no evidence Putin and Epstein ever met. But Epstein did definitely have a business visa approved, in June of 2018, the same month of the Rand Paul delegation to Moscow attended by the Huffines:

FRANCE 24

DOJ files reveal Jeffrey Epstein’s efforts to build Russian ties

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sought to cultivate ties with Russia’s political elite and repeatedly pressed for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, according to US Justice Department files released on Tuesday. The documents detail Epstein’s travel to Russia and efforts to recruit young women through senior intermediaries.

by FRANCE 24
Issued on: 18/02/2026 — 00:38
Modified: 18/02/2026 — 08:09

Convicted US sex offender JeffreyEpstein sought to build ties with Russia’s political elite and appeared desperate to secure a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, files released by the US Department of Justice show.

...

Seeking Putin

“Lets try to set a putin meeting, “Epstein wrote in a January 2014 email to Thorbjorn Jagland, former Norwegian prime minister and then secretary general of the Council of Europe.

He repeated the request to Jagland in 2015 and 2018.

In a 2013 email to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Epstein said: “Putin asked that i meet him in st petersburg the same time as his economic conference I told him no.”

The files suggest Epstein wanted to pitch a digital currency project to Putin.

AFP found no evidence in the files that the meeting ever took place.

Following the release of documents, Poland said it would probe Epstein’s alleged links to Russian secret services.

Asked whether Epstein was a Russian agent, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I’m tempted to make a lot of jokes about that version, but let’s not waste our time.”

Visits

The documents indicate Epstein may have travelled to Russia several times.

A Russian business visa was issued to the disgraced financier in June 2018, when Moscow was hosting the football World Cup. Travel itineraries show he had plans to watch Morocco-Iran in Saint Petersburg and Uruguay-France in Nizhny Novgorod.

The DOJ release also includes a 2011 Russian visa application.

The files also show older photos of Epstein posing in front of the luxury Hyatt hotel in central Moscow, and an undated image of his jailed associate Ghislaine Maxwell appearing to stand between two Russian soldiers.

Women

Flight data shows numerous trips booked for Epstein and Russian women on his behalf. Many of the women were proposed to Epstein by scouts and modelling agencies inside Russia, who often emphasised the women were young and blonde.

“She has a perfect body and 100% blond,” one woman with a Russian name wrote toEpsteinin February 2010.

Months earlier the same person had promised in a separate email to “find a ‘flower’ ” during a trip to Russia, which appeared to be financed by Epstein.

Various emails show Epstein and his network exploited the desire of some young women to leave Russia and their precarious immigration status when they were in the United States.

Favours for officials

One of the most prominent Russians in the files is Sergei Belyakov— a former deputy economy minister, graduate of the FSB security service’s academy and who was on the organising committee of Russia’s flagship economic forum in Saint Petersburg.

Emails show Belyakov repeatedly asking Epstein for help attracting high-profile US guests to the forum, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring sex from a minor.

“i will be all the help i can. who is your dream att=ndees? peter thiel? nathan myrhvold. ? reid hoffman.?” Epstein wrote to Belyakov.

Epstein also asked Belyakov to gather information on a woman, who he said was “attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessman in New York”.

“Tomorrow I’m meeting with a guy who knows her/about her. if you have any details about case you have mentioned it could help,” Belyakov said in reply.

“I do not know many people like you, who can open new horizons and prospects,” the Russian wrote to Epstein in May 2014 after an apparent meeting.

Another influential figure in the files is veteran Russian diplomat Vitali Churkin, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN from 2006 until his death in 2017.

The documents suggest Epstein and Churkin met several times in 2016–2017. In August 2016, Epstein invited Churkin to a lunch with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and businessman Tom Barrack, now the US ambassador to Turkey.

The files also indicate Epstein helped arrange an internship for Churkin’s son, Maxim, at a New York investment fund in late 2016.

“Max is doing better. He just needed to understand American biz habits,” Epstein wrote in a message to the Russian diplomat, who replied: “U r a great teacher!”

Epstein was also angling for an introduction to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“you might suggest to putin, that lavrov , can get insight on talking to me. vitaly churkin used to . but he died,” Epstein wrote to Jagland in 2018.

...

———-

“DOJ files reveal Jeffrey Epstein’s efforts to build Russian ties”; FRANCE 24; 02/18/2026

“A Russian business visa was issued to the disgraced financier in June 2018, when Moscow was hosting the football World Cup. Travel itineraries show he had plans to watch Morocco-Iran in Saint Petersburg and Uruguay-France in Nizhny Novgorod.”

Is it just a coincidence that Epstein got his Russian business visa approved the same month as the Rand Paul delegation to Moscow? We can only speculate. But the fact that Epstein even needed to get that visa approved at all, and didn’t already have a visa, stands in stark contrast to the claims he made to Ehud Barak that he turned down a request from Putin to meet during a St. Petersburg International Economic Forum gathering:

...
In a 2013 email to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Epstein said: “Putin asked that i meet him in st petersburg the same time as his economic conference I told him no.”

The files suggest Epstein wanted to pitch a digital currency project to Putin.

AFP found no evidence in the files that the meeting ever took place.
...

But despite those highly questionable claims by Epstein regarding his ties to Putin, it’s not at all a surprise to learn that his sex trafficking operation had long had a focus on Russia. There had to be an ample supply of potential victims who would be relatively easy to entrap after they are trafficked to another country:

...
The documents indicate Epstein may have travelled to Russia several times.

...

The DOJ release also includes a 2011 Russian visa application.

The files also show older photos of Epstein posing in front of the luxury Hyatt hotel in central Moscow, and an undated image of his jailed associate Ghislaine Maxwell appearing to stand between two Russian soldiers.

Women

Flight data shows numerous trips booked for Epstein and Russian women on his behalf. Many of the women were proposed to Epstein by scouts and modelling agencies inside Russia, who often emphasised the women were young and blonde.

“She has a perfect body and 100% blond,” one woman with a Russian name wrote to Epstein in February 2010.

Months earlier the same person had promised in a separate email to “find a ‘flower’ ” during a trip to Russia, which appeared to be financed by Epstein.

Various emails show Epstein and his network exploited the desire of some young women to leave Russia and their precarious immigration status when they were in the United States.
...

Then there’s the interesting fact that Sergei Belyakov apparently repeatedly asked Epstein to help arrange from high profile US guests to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. It’s the kind of detail that adds new context to the bizarre story of Felix Sater’s 2016 overtures to entice Michael Cohen to the forum. It’s not hard to see why Belyakov would have viewed Epstein as someone who could provide those high profile connections:

...
Favours for officials

One of the most prominent Russians in the files is Sergei Belyakov— a former deputy economy minister, graduate of the FSB security service’s academy and who was on the organising committee of Russia’s flagship economic forum in Saint Petersburg.

Emails show Belyakov repeatedly asking Epstein for help attracting high-profile US guests to the forum, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring sex from a minor.

“i will be all the help i can. who is your dream att=ndees? peter thiel? nathan myrhvold. ? reid hoffman.?” Epstein wrote to Belyakov.
...

Lastly, regarding Epstein’s request to gather information on a woman who was “attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessman in New York”, we have to ask if this woman was one of Epstein’s own victims. And, more generally, how often did his victims issue blackmail threats of their own? It had to happen at least some times given the shocking number of victims. How did the Epstein operation handle those cases?

...
Epstein also asked Belyakov to gather information on a woman, who he said was “attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessman in New York”.

“Tomorrow I’m meeting with a guy who knows her/about her. if you have any details about case you have mentioned it could help,” Belyakov said in reply.
...

Again, let’s not forget about the claims of bodies buried on the Zorro Ranch. It would be interesting to know how Epstein ultimately ended up handling this blackmail threat. Maybe that information will turn up in the released documents, but keep in mind that roughly half of the 6 million Epstein files are never going to be released according to the DOJ. Which is also a reminder that we’ve really only been allowed to see a fraction of the overall Epstein story and the worst stuff is likely never going to see the light of day. The Epstein affair, and PROMIS, are both decades old at this point. And intertwined. And in both cases we’re still scratching the surface.

In the first of the long AFA shows about the shooting of the Pope (AFA#17) we discuss Opus Dei, founded by Escriva under Francisco Franco and inextricably linked with his regime.

One wonders if Banco Popular was a Franco/Opus Dei project?

https://spitfirelist.com/anti-fascist-archives/rfa-17–21-who-shot-the-pope/

It appears Pope Leo has taken a special interest in Opus Dei, the bizarre far right Catholic cult with a remarkably powerful and influential roster of members. Amazingly, Pope Leo has reportedly taken a keen interest in the allegations published in a 2024 book, Opus, describing decades-long abuses by the group that have a number of alarming parallels to the Epstein story. An global operation of recruiting vulnerable youths into a cult-like lifestyle where they are trafficked, forced to work essentially for free, and abused physically, psychologically, and sexually. But also an operation of recruiting powerful and influential individuals in governments and institutions across the world. Importantly, the book describes how Opus Dei’s ability to maintain this scandalous global operation under wraps was directly tied to the protection offered to group by Vatican, and in particular, Pope John Paul II’s decision to declare the founder of the group, Jose Maria Escriva, a saint in 2002 despite the abundant opposition from inside the Vatican due to the abuse allegations that were already known. Pope John Paul II apparently view the group as a fellow conservative ally inside the Vatican.

In the following interview of the author of the book, Gareth Gore, he recounts how he was stunned to receive a direct invitation to visit with Pope Leo earlier this year. And not only did that meeting happen, but Pope Leo apparently asked a number of incisive questions and even allowed two cameramen in at the end of the interview to make it public. It really is a remarkable turn of events given that Gore is placing much of the blame for Opus Dei’s decades of abuses squarely on the Vatican and calling for a rescinding of Escriva’s sainthood status.

As Gore lays out in the book, the role the Vatican has played in protecting the group’s activities from scrutiny isn’t limited to the fact Opus Dei’s found was declared a saint in 2002. The group had been granted a “personal prelature”, making them answerable to no one but the pope. As a result, any abuse allegations against the group couldn’t be handled in the normal way through the local bishop or archbishop. No other Catholic group before or since has been granted such status. Gore describes how this arrangement emerged from the fact that the Vatican become reliant on funds from Opus Dei in the 1970s. So there was a kind of perverse quid pro quo where the Vatican granted the group untouchable status in exchange for funds.

The book also describes the hierarchical nature of the group’s membership, where there’s “numeraries” and “numerary assistants” who have to live in single-sex dorms under strict, cult like, conditions where physical, psychological, and sex abuse are rampant. The “numerary assistants” are primarily women and girls from underprivileged who are recruited under the pretext of being offered a better life. Cocktails of drugs that include antidepressants, sedatives and even Rohypnol, an infamous “date rape” drug.

But then there’s the “supernumeraries”, who comprise the majority of Opus Dei’s membership. These individuals are invite-only members hailing from positions of wealth and influence and who do not have to live under the strict conditions demanded of the numeraries. It is apparently one of the top responsibilities of numeraries to recruit supernumerary members who can make large donations to the group. So we have an organization that recruits vulnerable youths into a life of abuse, including sexual abuse, but also recruits wealthy and influential members who get to live under a completely different set of rules. Again, it’s hard not to notice the Epstein parallels here.

Except Opus Dei’s abuses long pre-date Epstein’s abuses. In fact, the group, which is almost a century old, apparently hijacked Banco Popular back in the 1940s, turning the bank into a kind of cash machine for the organization. As Gore describes in his book, from the 1950s and onward, funds from the bank were used to finance Opus Dei’s growth around the world, along with its recruitment and human trafficking operations. Banco Popular unexpectedly collapsed in 2017 following a run on the bank in the wake of questions about its ability to service non-performing real estate loans. But Banco Popular isn’t the only time we’ve heard about the collapse of an Opus Dei-affiliated bank. Recall how the figure who was at the head of the Vatican Bank during its collapse in 2010, Ettore Gotti Tedesci, was not only an ardent supporter of ‘free-market’ economic orthodoxy. He was also an Opus Dei member.

Another part of what makes Pope Leo’s interest in the group rather notable is the fact that Pope Leo is an American pope and the US political establishment is one of the group’s biggest areas of influence. Two very notable Opus Dei members Gore mentions in the interview are Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Leonard Leo, one of the leading figures in the Federalist Society. As we’ve seen, both Roberts and Leo happen to be members of the CNP, a theocratic entity that includes a number of Catholic and Protestant political reactionaries. In Roberts’s case, his theocratic ties also include a long-standing alliance with theocratic billionaire Tim Dunn and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Recall how the TPPF and the Claremont Institute ran the “79 Days Report ‘simulations in 2020 imagining contested election scenarios. Kevin Roberts, John Eastman, and fascist businessman Charles Haywood all participated in the simulations. And it was Roberts who declared himself the head of Project 2025 and who declared in July of 2024 that the “Second American Revolution” was underway, which could remain bloodless if “the Left allows it to be”. Leonard Leo, of course, is behind the Judicial Crisis Network and a series of other entities that played a major role in backing the the Supreme Court nominations of the first Trump administration. Recall how Leo sat on the board of the Catholic Information Center, the DC-based Opus Dei-owned organization long run by Father C. John McCloskey, before McCloskey had to step down in 2003 over sex abuse allegations. McCloskey was known for facilitating the religious conversions of Sam Brownback, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich, Robert Bork, economist Lawrence Kudlow, financier Lewis Lehrman, and journalist Robert Novak, among others.

Another notable Opus Dei member is former Attorney General Bill Barr, who, of course, played a central role in the cover up surrounding Epstein’s 2019 ‘suicide’ while in federal custody. Recall how Barr refused to recuse himself from the Epstein investigation despite conflict of interest concerns due to the fact that Barr once worked for a law firm that represented Epstein. It was Bill Barr’s father how hired Epstein as a high school math teacher at the elite Dalton private school (despite lacking a college degree) before he moved into the world of child sex blackmail.

And, of course, let’s not forget about that report from back in 2011 when Seymour Hersh revealed that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff was dominated by members of both the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei. Opus Dei really is one of the most powerful forces in the US government today, along with its CNP allies. And yet, this reality remains barely known or acknowledged to this day. Which is part of what makes the apparent interest of Pope Leo so fascinating. He’s picking a very serious fight here if that’s what he’s really doing.

At this point it’s unclear who exactly is accused to doing the sexual abuse. Were ‘numeraries’ and ‘numerary assistants’ turned into sex slaves for the pleasure of the supernuminary benefactors? If so, are we looking at a similar kind of elite blackmail/influence operation that appeared to comprise much of what Epstein’s operation was all about? That’s unclear, but those are all the kinds of questions we have to hope the pope is now looking into. Adding to the high stakes nature of Pope Leo’s apparent interest in the group is the fact that public prosecutors in Argentina have already conducted a two-year investigation into allegations of abuses by over 40 women. And since those allegations have gone public, more women have come forward in Ireland, Mexico, France, and Spain. And with Opus Dei operating roughly 300 private Catholic schools around the world, odds are there are a lot more allegations to come. Might that explain the pope’s sudden interest? Are we seeing the Vatican getting out ahead of another major abuse scandal? Either way, we can be confident the group isn’t just going to roll over and allow the new pope to expose and it and strip it of its long-held privileges. In other words, Opus Dei’s ‘answers to the pope and only the pope’ status is about to get a major stress test. Hopefully:

The Guardian

He spent years investigating Opus Dei, a Catholic group accused of a vast conspiracy of abuse. Then Pope Leo asked to meet

Gareth Gore’s 2024 book Opus alleges decades of manipulation, which the group has denied. He believes the pope wanted to send a clear message

Sam Wolfson
Mon 6 Apr 2026 07.00 EDT

Gareth Gore was on a research trip to California earlier this year when he was told to expect a call from the Vatican arranging a one-on-one audience with the pope.

Gore was stunned. In 2024 he published the book Opus, a meticulously researched and gripping account of the abuses allegedly perpetrated by Opus Dei, the highly secretive Catholic group started by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in the 1920s. Over a century Opus Dei established itself as a deeply religious order that, they claim, helps ordinary people “love God and serve others through work well done, carried out with honesty and integrity”.

Gore’s book lays out claims the organisation is at the heart of a conspiracy involving child grooming, human trafficking, and psychological and emotional control, with former members saying the group used private confessions as leverage against members and drugged those under its sway – claims Opus Dei categorically denies. Gore reported that Opus Dei collaborated closely with the bloody dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, before supporting rightwing causes around the world.

Gore laid much of the blame for these alleged abuses with the wider Catholic church, which relied on Opus Dei for financial support in the 1970s and in return gave it freedom to operate as a legitimate branch of Catholicism, but outside the Vatican’s normal structures. In 2002, Escrivá was made a saint after ferocious lobbying by Opus Dei, despite much protest from within the Vatican, as abuse allegations mounted and some Catholic leaders began to raise questions about the organisation.

...

Gore began reporting on Opus Dei almost by accident. He was a financial journalist looking into the collapse of Banco Popular, one of Spain’s largest banks, in 2017. At the time, the world couldn’t understand how such a pillar of European banking had failed so spectacularly. Gore discovered that the bank had been hijacked by Opus Dei since the 1940s (the bank’s chair was a lifetime member, as were many on its board, and companies controlled by Opus Dei turned out to be the bank’s largest shareholders). Opus Dei had used the bank “as its personal cash machine”, Gore alleged, “siphoning off” funds to finance its expansion around the world. (The trial of Banco Popular’s former leadership, facing allegations of fraud, is scheduled to begin in Spain’s national court in 2027. For its part, Opus Dei has denied that it was involved in the management of the bank and said it “does not get involved in commercial activities”.)

Through hundreds of interviews with former Opus Dei members, Gore’s book traces how from the 1950s onwards, Banco Popular’s wealth went into creating a vast recruitment network targeting children and vulnerable teenagers, building palatial Opus Dei centres across the world, and eventually forming one of the most formidable clandestine political influences in the US. Its US members would become crucial in eroding reproductive rights, funding the Washington march that led to January 6, and heavily influencing Project 2025, according to Gore’s reporting.

Gore’s book also sheds light on the inner workings of Opus Dei. Its most religious members, called numeraries, live in single-sex dormitories in a life of servitude and self-flagellation: they fast for dangerously long periods, wear a small spiked chain called a cilice around their thighs, and whip themselves with ropes, former members told Gore. Every element of their life is strictly controlled and manipulated by the group’s leader and senior priests, Gore said. Mental illness, common in an atmosphere of constant physical and psychological abuse, was treated with a reported cocktail of antidepressants, sedatives and even Rohypnol, according to claims made by victims in interviews Gore conducted.

Female members known as “numerary assistants” – women and girls from mostly underprivileged backgrounds – staffed the Opus Dei residencies, working long days cooking and cleaning. Many of them were allegedly cut off from their families, transported internationally and, in many cases, expected to give their entire salaries to Opus Dei in an operation that Gore believes meets the UN definition of human trafficking. Some made claims to Gore of sexual abuse.

In Argentina, federal prosecutors are leading an investigation into senior leaders of Opus Dei who they accuse of overseeing the exploitation and trafficking of women and girls; Opus Dei in Argentina set up a “healing and resolution” office to hear the women’s complaints. In 2024 it also said allegations that girls were coerced into joining the organization on promises of education at its schools were “false and misleading”. Opus Dei said it was committed to safeguarding minors and vulnerable adults.

Most Opus Dei members don’t live in these conditions. These “supernumeraries” can marry and live in their own homes. The most critical mission of the numeraries is to recruit supernumeraries to make large donations back to Opus Dei and influence politics and society to further Opus Dei’s conservative goals. An Opus Dei priest in Washington DC, who Opus Dei acknowledged has credible accusations of sexual misconduct against him, oversaw the 2009 conversion of the former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to Catholicism.

...

I spoke to Gore, who lives in London, two weeks after his 16 March visit to the Vatican about what happened when he met Pope Leo.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’ve spent almost a decade compiling this dossier on Opus Dei that implicates the Vatican. How on earth does it happen that you’re invited to present these findings to the pope?

Honestly, I don’t know. I was on a work trip in the States and I got a call from somebody I know in Peru who’s quite close to the pope. And he had heard from the pope himself, that the pope wanted to meet me and to hear more. I remember putting the phone down and having to take a moment: is this for real?

...

How much do you think Pope Leo already knows about the organization?

Who knows how much information actually gets to him. Opus Dei is renowned for having penetrated the Vatican. It’s highly likely there are people there who are limiting what information gets to the pope – perhaps for malicious reasons, but also, as with any other kind of big company or big institution, sometimes it’s better that the boss doesn’t know everything so that there can be some kind of deniability.

In the limited time you had to speak with Pope Leo directly, what was the central story that you wanted to tell him?

I think people on the outside don’t realize the founder of this movement, this Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá, told his members that the idea for Opus Dei had come directly from God. He’d received this vision which he wrote down in meticulous detail.

These writings are the source of all of this control and manipulation and political manoeuvring that’s ongoing today. And so without understanding the internal documents, internal rules, and without understanding that the members truly believe that these rules came directly from God, it’s impossible to understand the mentality of how Opus Dei works. So I was trying to convey that message to [the pope], while also trying to explain why reforming this group will be unbelievably difficult, because the founder is revered as a saint, which he is. He was made a saint by the Vatican in 2002.

So the pope can’t just say, “You guys have got to stop doing this,” because the true believers will continue believing that all of these practices and all of this manipulation is what God wants of them.

How does one hammer things home to the pope? Did you feel like you had the freedom to be persuasive, or do you have to adopt a respectful tone?

I went into the meeting with this kind of burden of wanting to really get this information to him, but I had this attitude of not giving a damn. Maybe I want to rephrase that: I was unafraid of offending him or of breaching etiquette. I just thought: no one else has been given this opportunity and if they throw me out after five minutes, I can live with that because I’ve tried to do what I think is right.

...

How did he respond?

Honestly, the meeting could not have gone any better. He asked a number of very incisive questions. It went on for much longer than was scheduled. There were two cameramen there. And at the end of the meeting, the pope said to me that it had been his decision to invite the cameras in and to make the meeting public. I think he quite clearly wanted to send a signal to Opus Dei that he’s taking these allegations seriously.

Opus Dei is only 100 years old, and perhaps the reason it’s not treated like other groups of the 20th century that have accused of cultlike behaviour is the seal of religious authority that has been stamped on it by the Vatican. Does the Vatican have real powers to rein in Opus Dei if it chose to?

The Vatican helped to create this monster, not least Pope John Paul II because he saw them as political allies in his conservative crusade. He saw them almost like his personal green berets that he could send off to any part of the world where there was some kind of progressive priest or bishop who was causing trouble. He could send Opus Dei there to do his work or be his eyes and ears. He gave them this special status that has never been granted before or since in the history of the Catholic church.

What is that status?

He made them into this thing called the “personal prelature”, which basically meant that they were answerable to no one but the pope. They could operate anywhere they wanted to in the world and any abuse allegations against [Opus Dei] couldn’t be handled in the normal way through the local bishop or archbishop. Ordinary Catholics welcome this group into their homes, they allow their kids to go to its schools, they attend its meetings because [it has] this stamp of approval from the Vatican.

Pope Francis, to his credit, started to take action [before his death in April 2025]. He issued a papal decree in 2022 where he basically ordered Opus Dei to get its house in order. But there was no effort to speak with any former members, no effort to speak with journalists such as myself who investigated the group.

The point I was trying to make to Pope Leo is that if you’re trying to solve a problem, the first step is to understand exactly what the problem is. Which is why I suggested to him that the next logical step would be to open a full independent investigation into all allegations of abuse [by Opus Dei] – whether they are spiritual, psychological, emotional, physical.

Prosecutors are starting to look into the organization too.

Certainly in Argentina, public prosecutors there have conducted a two-year investigation into the allegations made by 43 or 44 women. And after the investigation, these public prosecutors concluded that there were absolutely grounds to charge the group with human trafficking and serious labour offences. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Since the Argentina allegations have come out, we’ve had more women coming forward in places like Ireland, Mexico, France, Spain.

Opus Dei operates about 300 [private Catholic] schools around the world, including in the UK and the US. Not far from my home in south London there are two Opus Dei schools where kids my kids’ age go. The next big step is for governments and for social services to really look into safeguarding practices at these schools and to begin to ask questions about whether this group, which is accused of very serious abuses and crimes, is fit to be looking after young kids and young adults. I would argue that it absolutely is not.

One of the things you’re pushing for is for the canonization of Escrivá to be undone? Would that be terminal for Opus Dei?

Unfortunately people are brainwashed into believing certain things, so whether removing the sainthood of Escrivá would result in this group just dying out, I’m not sure. But it would go a long way to removing this stamp of legitimacy and approval from the Vatican. If all the Vatican does is make a few tweaks around the edges but leaves this guy as a saint, that’s going to send very mixed messages. We have [the founder’s] actual writings in black and white where these practices are not only outlined but mandated and ordered of the membership, which is why this is such an enormous headache for the pope.

People might think that this is an obscure religious group that has little to do with them. Opus Dei says it does not take political positions other than the stances of the Catholic church. But you describe them as having pivotal influence when it comes to the makeup of the supreme court and abortion.

The founder of Opus Dei made it clear that he saw his followers as part of a militia who were going to enter into battle against what he called the “enemies of Christ”. So right from the beginning, this is a political group that uses religion as almost a veneer to hide behind – controlling and manipulating the membership to get them to do things that might benefit Opus Dei politically or financially.

In places like Washington, [Opus Dei has] made a real concerted effort to infiltrate the corridors of power and has been immensely successful. I would argue that today, Opus Dei within the Maga Republican movement is one of the pre-eminent forces. There are several very high-ranking figures inside the White House and the wider Maga ecosystem who are either full-on members of Opus Dei or big supporters. People like Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation [and the force behind Project 2025], is a regular at the Opus Dei centre in central DC and gets his spiritual direction from them. You’ve got Leonard Leo, who helped to orchestrate the conservative takeover of the supreme court and sits on the board of the Opus Dei centre in central Washington. The list goes on.

This is a group that is by invitation only and they target the elites: politicians, judges, business people, journalists, academics.

...

————

“He spent years investigating Opus Dei, a Catholic group accused of a vast conspiracy of abuse. Then Pope Leo asked to meet” by Sam Wolfson; The Guardian; 04/06/2026

“Gore’s book lays out claims the organisation is at the heart of a conspiracy involving child grooming, human trafficking, and psychological and emotional control, with former members saying the group used private confessions as leverage against members and drugged those under its sway – claims Opus Dei categorically denies. Gore reported that Opus Dei collaborated closely with the bloody dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, before supporting rightwing causes around the world.”

A decades-long conspiracy of child grooming, human trafficking, and psychological and emotional control. That’s the horrific history of Opus Dei laid out in Gareth Gore’s book published in 2024. But the book isn’t just a condemnation of Opus Dei. As Gore makes clear, the wider Catholic Church, including past popes, have played a major role in the promotion and apparent validation of the group’s dangerous beliefs, seemingly in exchange for Opu Dei’s financial support in the 1970s. 2002, Pope John Paul II made the group’s founder, Josemaria Escriva, a saint, despite the abuse allegations that were already leveled against the organization by that point and much protest inside the Vatican. The pope even made the group into the “personal prelature” that is answerable to no one but the pope, thus ensuring that allegations wouldn’t be handled through normal channels. No other Catholic group has ever had status. Opus Dei has been operating as a kind of ‘above the law’ Catholic entity for decades, ostensibly with a mission delivered to Escriva directly from God, with the blessing of a pope, no less! That’s all part of the stunning context of Pope Leo seeking out an audience with Gore. The Opus Dei mega-scandal is a papal mega-scandal and, if we’re lucky, the present pope is going to do something about it:

...
Gore was stunned. In 2024 he published the book Opus, a meticulously researched and gripping account of the abuses allegedly perpetrated by Opus Dei, the highly secretive Catholic group started by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in the 1920s. Over a century Opus Dei established itself as a deeply religious order that, they claim, helps ordinary people “love God and serve others through work well done, carried out with honesty and integrity”.

...

Gore laid much of the blame for these alleged abuses with the wider Catholic church, which relied on Opus Dei for financial support in the 1970s and in return gave it freedom to operate as a legitimate branch of Catholicism, but outside the Vatican’s normal structures. In 2002, Escrivá was made a saint after ferocious lobbying by Opus Dei, despite much protest from within the Vatican, as abuse allegations mounted and some Catholic leaders began to raise questions about the organisation.

...

In the limited time you had to speak with Pope Leo directly, what was the central story that you wanted to tell him?

I think people on the outside don’t realize the founder of this movement, this Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá, told his members that the idea for Opus Dei had come directly from God. He’d received this vision which he wrote down in meticulous detail.

These writings are the source of all of this control and manipulation and political manoeuvring that’s ongoing today. And so without understanding the internal documents, internal rules, and without understanding that the members truly believe that these rules came directly from God, it’s impossible to understand the mentality of how Opus Dei works. So I was trying to convey that message to [the pope], while also trying to explain why reforming this group will be unbelievably difficult, because the founder is revered as a saint, which he is. He was made a saint by the Vatican in 2002.

So the pope can’t just say, “You guys have got to stop doing this,” because the true believers will continue believing that all of these practices and all of this manipulation is what God wants of them.

...

Opus Dei is only 100 years old, and perhaps the reason it’s not treated like other groups of the 20th century that have accused of cult like behaviour is the seal of religious authority that has been stamped on it by the Vatican. Does the Vatican have real powers to rein in Opus Dei if it chose to?

The Vatican helped to create this monster, not least Pope John Paul II because he saw them as political allies in his conservative crusade. He saw them almost like his personal green berets that he could send off to any part of the world where there was some kind of progressive priest or bishop who was causing trouble. He could send Opus Dei there to do his work or be his eyes and ears. He gave them this special status that has never been granted before or since in the history of the Catholic church.

What is that status?

He made them into this thing called the “personal prelature”, which basically meant that they were answerable to no one but the pope. They could operate anywhere they wanted to in the world and any abuse allegations against [Opus Dei] couldn’t be handled in the normal way through the local bishop or archbishop. Ordinary Catholics welcome this group into their homes, they allow their kids to go to its schools, they attend its meetings because [it has] this stamp of approval from the Vatican.

Pope Francis, to his credit, started to take action [before his death in April 2025]. He issued a papal decree in 2022 where he basically ordered Opus Dei to get its house in order. But there was no effort to speak with any former members, no effort to speak with journalists such as myself who investigated the group.

The point I was trying to make to Pope Leo is that if you’re trying to solve a problem, the first step is to understand exactly what the problem is. Which is why I suggested to him that the next logical step would be to open a full independent investigation into all allegations of abuse [by Opus Dei] – whether they are spiritual, psychological, emotional, physical.

...

One of the things you’re pushing for is for the canonization of Escrivá to be undone? Would that be terminal for Opus Dei?

Unfortunately people are brainwashed into believing certain things, so whether removing the sainthood of Escrivá would result in this group just dying out, I’m not sure. But it would go a long way to removing this stamp of legitimacy and approval from the Vatican. If all the Vatican does is make a few tweaks around the edges but leaves this guy as a saint, that’s going to send very mixed messages. We have [the founder’s] actual writings in black and white where these practices are not only outlined but mandated and ordered of the membership, which is why this is such an enormous headache for the pope.
...

Intriguingly, as Gore points out, Opus Dei is also known for having penetrated the Vatican and is likely playing an active role in shaping the information made available to the pope about the group’s operations. So when Gore met the pope and found that he was asking one incisive question after another, and even filmed the meeting, we have to wonder about the internal dynamics between the group and the current papal administration. It’s the kind of question that serves as a reminder that, while Opus Dei has undoubtedly served as a mechanism of papal influence on important people and institutions around the world, the group presumably also working to influence the pope too. This is a group with its own far right agenda that isn’t going to necessarily be aligned with every upcoming pope:

...
How much do you think Pope Leo already knows about the organization?

Who knows how much information actually gets to him. Opus Dei is renowned for having penetrated the Vatican. It’s highly likely there are people there who are limiting what information gets to the pope – perhaps for malicious reasons, but also, as with any other kind of big company or big institution, sometimes it’s better that the boss doesn’t know everything so that there can be some kind of deniability.

...

How did he respond?

Honestly, the meeting could not have gone any better. He asked a number of very incisive questions. It went on for much longer than was scheduled. There were two cameramen there. And at the end of the meeting, the pope said to me that it had been his decision to invite the cameras in and to make the meeting public. I think he quite clearly wanted to send a signal to Opus Dei that he’s taking these allegations seriously.
...

And that brings us to the horrid allegations against the group. Allegations that sure have quite a few parallels to the elite sex trafficking/influencing activities of Jeffrey Epstein. On one level, we have a kind of slave class in the organization, the “numeraries”, who live in single-sex dorms where their lives are strictly controlled, physical and psychological abuse is rampant, and drug cocktails that. There’s even “numerary assistants” – women and girls from mostly underprivileged backgrounds – who staff the Opus Dei residences, living a life that Gore describes as fitting the UN definition of human trafficking, including sex abuse. But then there’s the “supernumeraries”, the wealthy and influential members who comprise the bulk of the Opus Dei membership and who get to live lives unencumbered by the group’s harsh restrictions. The recruitment of these supernumeraries, who, in turn, make large donations to the group, is seen as an essential mission of the organization. In other words, Opus Dei is a group that relies on the systematic recruitment, control, and abuse of large numbers of young, underprivileged people, in order to support a system designed to recruit the wealthy and powerful. It’s not exactly like Epstein’s operation, but the parallels are hard to ignore. Incredibly influential members like Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, and Leonard Leo, the key architect of the Federal Society’s takeover of the federal judiciary. As we’ve seen, Roberts is much more than the head of the Heritage Foundation. As the we’ve seen, Roberts is a member of theocratic CNP and the former president of the TPPF, an entity closely aligned with billionaire Texas theocrat Tim Dunn. Recall how the TPPF and the Claremont Institute ran the “79 Days Report ‘simulations in 2020 imagining contested election scenarios. Kevin Roberts, John Eastman, and fascist businessman Charles Haywood all participated in the simulations. And it was Roberts who declared himself the head of Project 2025 and who declared in July of 2024 that the “Second American Revolution” was underway, which could remain bloodless if “the Left allows it to be”. Roberts might be a member of Opus Dei, but that’s far from the only theocratic organization he’s part of. Similarly, Leonard Leo, also a member of the CNP and a highly influential figure in the conservative movement, has a track record of working with all sorts of theocrats and other types of power mongers. Which is a reminder that Opus Dei’s ultimately agenda is less about the elevation of some sort of bizarre Catholic cult and more about raw power. The cultish part of Opus Dei is more about manipulating the young victims:

...
Gore’s book also sheds light on the inner workings of Opus Dei. Its most religious members, called numeraries, live in single-sex dormitories in a life of servitude and self-flagellation: they fast for dangerously long periods, wear a small spiked chain called a cilice around their thighs, and whip themselves with ropes, former members told Gore. Every element of their life is strictly controlled and manipulated by the group’s leader and senior priests, Gore said. Mental illness, common in an atmosphere of constant physical and psychological abuse, was treated with a reported cocktail of antidepressants, sedatives and even Rohypnol, according to claims made by victims in interviews Gore conducted.

Female members known as “numerary assistants” – women and girls from mostly underprivileged backgrounds – staffed the Opus Dei residencies, working long days cooking and cleaning. Many of them were allegedly cut off from their families, transported internationally and, in many cases, expected to give their entire salaries to Opus Dei in an operation that Gore believes meets the UN definition of human trafficking. Some made claims to Gore of sexual abuse.

...

Most Opus Dei members don’t live in these conditions. These “supernumeraries” can marry and live in their own homes. The most critical mission of the numeraries is to recruit supernumeraries to make large donations back to Opus Dei and influence politics and society to further Opus Dei’s conservative goals. An Opus Dei priest in Washington DC, who Opus Dei acknowledged has credible accusations of sexual misconduct against him, oversaw the 2009 conversion of the former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to Catholicism.

...

People might think that this is an obscure religious group that has little to do with them. Opus Dei says it does not take political positions other than the stances of the Catholic church. But you describe them as having pivotal influence when it comes to the makeup of the supreme court and abortion.

The founder of Opus Dei made it clear that he saw his followers as part of a militia who were going to enter into battle against what he called the “enemies of Christ”. So right from the beginning, this is a political group that uses religion as almost a veneer to hide behind – controlling and manipulating the membership to get them to do things that might benefit Opus Dei politically or financially.

In places like Washington, [Opus Dei has] made a real concerted effort to infiltrate the corridors of power and has been immensely successful. I would argue that today, Opus Dei within the Maga Republican movement is one of the pre-eminent forces. There are several very high-ranking figures inside the White House and the wider Maga ecosystem who are either full-on members of Opus Dei or big supporters. People like Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation [and the force behind Project 2025], is a regular at the Opus Dei centre in central DC and gets his spiritual direction from them. You’ve got Leonard Leo, who helped to orchestrate the conservative takeover of the supreme court and sits on the board of the Opus Dei centre in central Washington. The list goes on.

This is a group that is by invitation only and they target the elites: politicians, judges, business people, journalists, academics.
...

And then we get to this very interesting history of the group’s ties to Banco Popular, which was apparently hijacked by Opus Dei in the 1940s and turned into the group’s cash machine. But Banco Popular wealth wasn’t just used to expand the group’s influence. It also went into creating a vast recruitment network targeting children and vulnerable teens. The systematic abuse of young people was a core function of this incredibly powerful organization that seemingly exists to promote its own power and influence. It’s as if the Epstein operation was based on Opus Dei:

...
Gore began reporting on Opus Dei almost by accident. He was a financial journalist looking into the collapse of Banco Popular, one of Spain’s largest banks, in 2017. At the time, the world couldn’t understand how such a pillar of European banking had failed so spectacularly. Gore discovered that the bank had been hijacked by Opus Dei since the 1940s (the bank’s chair was a lifetime member, as were many on its board, and companies controlled by Opus Dei turned out to be the bank’s largest shareholders). Opus Dei had used the bank “as its personal cash machine”, Gore alleged, “siphoning off” funds to finance its expansion around the world. (The trial of Banco Popular’s former leadership, facing allegations of fraud, is scheduled to begin in Spain’s national court in 2027. For its part, Opus Dei has denied that it was involved in the management of the bank and said it “does not get involved in commercial activities”.)

Through hundreds of interviews with former Opus Dei members, Gore’s book traces how from the 1950s onwards, Banco Popular’s wealth went into creating a vast recruitment network targeting children and vulnerable teenagers, building palatial Opus Dei centres across the world, and eventually forming one of the most formidable clandestine political influences in the US. Its US members would become crucial in eroding reproductive rights, funding the Washington march that led to January 6, and heavily influencing Project 2025, according to Gore’s reporting.
...

Finally, note how this isn’t just a story about a remarkable interest taken by Pope Leo into the allegations in Gareth Gore’s book. Investigations are already underway in Argentina, with more abuse victims coming forward in places like Ireland, Mexico, France, Spain. It’s the kind of context that doesn’t just make Pope Leo’s apparent interest quite significant, but also suggests that Opus Dei is going to be feeling increasingly vulnerable and, presumably, increasingly anti-Pope Leo. Which raises the question of what kind of response we should expect from Opus Dei and its arch-conservative allies inside in Vatican. This is one of the most powerful and influential organizations on the planet with reach into governments around the world. They aren’t just going to allow their privileged status to be stripped away by the pope without a fight:

...
In Argentina, federal prosecutors are leading an investigation into senior leaders of Opus Dei who they accuse of overseeing the exploitation and trafficking of women and girls; Opus Dei in Argentina set up a “healing and resolution” office to hear the women’s complaints. In 2024 it also said allegations that girls were coerced into joining the organization on promises of education at its schools were “false and misleading”. Opus Dei said it was committed to safeguarding minors and vulnerable adults.

...

Prosecutors are starting to look into the organization too.

Certainly in Argentina, public prosecutors there have conducted a two-year investigation into the allegations made by 43 or 44 women. And after the investigation, these public prosecutors concluded that there were absolutely grounds to charge the group with human trafficking and serious labour offences. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Since the Argentina allegations have come out, we’ve had more women coming forward in places like Ireland, Mexico, France, Spain.

Opus Dei operates about 300 [private Catholic] schools around the world, including in the UK and the US. Not far from my home in south London there are two Opus Dei schools where kids my kids’ age go. The next big step is for governments and for social services to really look into safeguarding practices at these schools and to begin to ask questions about whether this group, which is accused of very serious abuses and crimes, is fit to be looking after young kids and young adults. I would argue that it absolutely is not.
...

Pressure is ramping up. Does the pope have the authority to reign this organization in? Public prosecutors? Time will tell. But given that we’re talking about a century-old organization that has managed to cultivate one of the most influential rosters of members on the planet, and potentially operates an Epstein-like elite blackmail network, you probably don’t want to hold your breath.

According to LeoLabs, a company that tracks objects in low Earth orbit, the recent incident, which took place at ~560km above the Earth, was “likely caused by an internal energetic source rather than a collision with space debris or another object.” In other words, something probably just broke on the satellite. Probably. But note the reality that LeoLabs is purely speculating here and, sure, maybe it really was just an internal event caused by something spontaneously breaking on the satellite. Perhaps a battery exploded or a propulsion tank started leaking. There’s simply not enough information available to know for sure.

But let’s not forget that mysterious seemingly spontaneous “fragment creation events” are also exactly the kind of thing we might expect from a space junk incident. And while LeoLabs’s has the ability to track space junk, it can’t track all space junk. Starlink even put out a statement about how, “We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with NASA and the US Space Force,” which is an implicit admission that untrackable debris could have been created too. Untrackable debris that’s just floating along unseen and ready to create more “fragment creation events” if that debris does de-orbit sooner rather than later.

Similarly, following the incident in December, Starlink put out a statement that an “anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.” Was this anomaly due to some sort of “internal energetic source” like an exploding battery? Or did a tiny piece of space junk hit it? We have no idea and it doesn’t sound like Starlink knows either, even though the company issued assurances at the time that it was confident that it could prevent future anomalies. “Our engineers are rapidly working to [identify the] root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event,” the company claimed at the time.

Yes, the company didn’t seem to know what the anomaly was, but it was confident it could prevent it and was already deploying a solution. Three months later, another very similar sounding anomaly. What’s going on here?

Notably, the anomaly back in December wasn’t the only incident Starlink reported that month. There was also a near-collision event with a satellite that had just been deployed by a Chinese company setting up its own satellite cluster. The Starlink satellite reportedly came within 200 meters of the Chinese satellite. Starlink squared centered responsibility for the near-hit on the Chinese company for a lack of coordination. “As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude,” according to the company at the time. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to change.” It’s a remarkable admission if true. For all the assurances Starlink and others might make about all the steps they are taking to safely operate in space, those assurances are worthless if ALL of these operators aren’t also coordinating with each other adequately. That’s what Starlink admitted back in December, which is basically an admission that many more incidents like this are inevitable. This is a good time to recall how Starlink has long touted the automated collision avoidance system that is integral to how its satellite cluster operates because there are so many satellites they can’t feasibly be put into independent orbits. Avoid collisions is a routine part of how it operates. And while it’s going to be relatively easy for Starlink to track and prevent collisions among its own satellites, collisions between different satellite operators apparently potentially poses a much greater threat. A threat that’s only going to grow as more and more players into into this low Earth orbit space with satellite clusters of their own. It’s a space race, after all. This is only getting worse.

The following article also notes another noteworthy admission Starlink has made regarding the implications of satellites falling out or orbit: the company claims the satellites are designed to burn up entirely such that, even if a piece does somehow make it to the ground intact, the impact energy will be negligible. On the one hand, if true, that’s great to hear from the standpoint of not getting hit by a falling satellite. But on the other hand, it’s worth keeping in mind that one of the other hazards created by this flood of new satellite clusters is the threat of aluminum oxide pollution destroying the ozone layer as a consequence of the aluminum-heavy satellites burning up on reentry. The more completely these satellites burn up, the more ozone-destroying pollution with each reentry event. It’s a trade-off.

And that’s assuming a best-case scenario that the satellites, and any related ‘fragments’ all reenter the atmosphere in a timely manner and don’t end up as semi-permanent space junk that risks further “fragment creation events”. Which brings us to another important update on this topic that we got back in April of 2025 at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris in Bonn, Germany, when none other than Donald Kessler presented an update on his “Kessler Syndrome” theory on out-of-control space junk chain-reactions first posed by Kessler decades ago. So what was the update? Well, they introduced a revised model for estimating orbital stability, concluding that “The results indicate the current population of intact objects exceeds the unstable threshold at all altitudes between 400 km and 1000 km and the runaway threshold at nearly all altitudes between 520 km and 1000 km. Planned deployments of large constellations will likely lead to the population of intact objects across an even greater extent of low Earth orbit exceeding the runaway threshold.” Keep in mind that this mystery “fragment creation even” took place at ~560km, so Kessler is talking about this exact low Earth orbit space where all these satellite clusters are being deployed. In other words, we’ve already passed a threshold where Kessler Syndrome will likely unfold in the space that is still be filled with more and more satellites. Don’t forget that Starlink has plans for over 40,000 satellites and it’s only about 25% of the way there so far. And that’s not counting Musk’s musings about launching a network of up to 1 million satellites dedicated to AI computations. So either Donald Kessler is very, very wrong in his estimations, or we are careening towards an accelerating Kessler syndrome scenario. Sooner rather than later, as these mysterious “fragment creation events” suggest:

ArsTechnica

Starlink satellite breaks apart into “tens of objects”; SpaceX confirms “anomaly”

Satellite failure cause is unexplained after second “fragment creation event.”

Jon Brodkin – Mar 31, 2026 4:28 PM

SpaceX’s Starlink division confirmed yesterday that it lost contact with a satellite on Sunday and is trying to locate space debris that might have been produced by… whatever happened there.

Starlink said there appeared to be “no new risk” to other space operations and did not use the word “explosion.” But it seems that something caused a Starlink broadband satellite to break apart into at least tens of pieces. LeoLabs, which operates a radar network that can track objects in low Earth orbit, said in an X post that it “detected a fragment creation event involving SpaceX Starlink 34343,” one of the 10,000 or so Starlink satellites in orbit.

...

LeoLabs said the breakup was “likely caused by an internal energetic source rather than a collision with space debris or another object.” Because of “the low altitude of the event, fragments from this anomaly will likely de-orbit within a few weeks,” it said.

Two anomalies in orbit

Starlink said in an X post yesterday that “Starlink satellite 34343 experienced an anomaly on-orbit, resulting in loss of communications with the satellite at ~560 km above Earth.” Starlink said its “analysis shows the event poses no new risk” to the International Space Station, its crew, or NASA’s Artemis II mission that could launch as soon as Wednesday.

“We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with NASA and the US Space Force,” Starlink said. “The event also posed no new risk to this morning’s Transporter-16 mission, which was designed to avoid Starlink with payload deploys well above or well below the constellation. The SpaceX and Starlink teams are actively working to determine root cause and will rapidly implement any necessary corrective actions.”

LeoLabs said yesterday that the new event is similar to one from December 17, 2025, which also produced “tens of objects in the vicinity of the satellite” and appeared to be “caused by an internal energetic source” rather than a crash with another object. LeoLabs said it wants more information on the anomalies.

...

Starlink provided a few details shortly after the December 2025 incident, saying on December 18 that an “anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.” Starlink added that the satellite was “largely intact” but “tumbling,” and would reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and “fully demise” within weeks.

In December, Starlink seemed confident that it could prevent future anomalies. “Our engineers are rapidly working to [identify the] root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event,” Starlink said in the December 18 post.

...

Starlink reported near-crash after Chinese launch

Starlink also had a near-crash in December, in a different incident about a week before the “tumbling” satellite. Starlink Senior VP Michael Nicolls wrote on December 12 that a Chinese company had launched nine satellites without coordinating with other space users. Lack of coordination increases the risk of collisions, he said.

“As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude,” Nicolls wrote at the time, referring to the Chinese launch. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to change.”

Coordination can only become more important if SpaceX goes through with its stated plan of launching a million satellites to create an orbital data center.

Under normal circumstances, Starlink satellites reaching their end-of-life date follow “a targeted reentry approach to deorbit satellites over the open ocean, away from populated islands and heavily trafficked airline and maritime routes,” Starlink says in a document on “satellite demisability.” But satellites that fall to Earth unexpectedly should pose no risk to people on the ground because they are designed to “demise with extremely low impact energy,” according to Starlink.

“A critical aspect of sustainable satellite design is demisability, which ensures that satellites fully break up and burn up during atmospheric reentry,” Starlink says in the document. “Any fragments that do not completely demise should have negligible impact energy.”

————

“Starlink satellite breaks apart into “tens of objects”; SpaceX confirms “anomaly”” by Jon Brodkin;
ArsTechnica; 03/31/2026

“Starlink said there appeared to be “no new risk” to other space operations and did not use the word “explosion.” But it seems that something caused a Starlink broadband satellite to break apart into at least tens of pieces. LeoLabs, which operates a radar network that can track objects in low Earth orbit, said in an X post that it “detected a fragment creation event involving SpaceX Starlink 34343,” one of the 10,000 or so Starlink satellites in orbit.”

A “fragment creation event” that resulted int tens of pieces. That’s the apparent fallout from the mystery incident that caused a Starlink satellite to break apart a few days ago. Was it an “internal energetic source” (like an exploding battery), as LeoLabs suggests was the case, rather than a collision? We’re forced to speculate at this point. But let’s hope LeoLabs is correct in its prediction that the debris should de-orbit within a few weeks, because the last thing we want is debris that just lingers. But let’s also keep in mind that even if one of those pieces of debris ends up lingering, that’s a recipe for more mysterious “fragment creation events” in the future. Kessler Syndrome seeds:

...
LeoLabs said the breakup was “likely caused by an internal energetic source rather than a collision with space debris or another object.” Because of “the low altitude of the event, fragments from this anomaly will likely de-orbit within a few weeks,” it said.
...

And note the particular altitude of the affected satellite: ~560 km above Earth. It’s an altitude that we are constantly assured is safe to clutter up because it’s so low objects in orbit inevitably de-orbit in relatively short order. Weeks to months. As we’re going to see, Donald Kessler’s 2025 update just raise serious questions about those assurances:

...
Starlink said in an X post yesterday that “Starlink satellite 34343 experienced an anomaly on-orbit, resulting in loss of communications with the satellite at ~560 km above Earth.” Starlink said its “analysis shows the event poses no new risk” to the International Space Station, its crew, or NASA’s Artemis II mission that could launch as soon as Wednesday.
...

And observe how Starlink refers to its commitment to continuing to monitor trackable debris. It’s a reminder that debris that is small enough may not be trackable. In other words, the tens of fragments estimate could be a significant underestimate if there was a lot of small debris created. Also keep in mind that untrackable debris are a great way to create mysterious “fragment creation events” that don’t seem to have a readily available explanation:

...
“We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with NASA and the US Space Force,” Starlink said. “The event also posed no new risk to this morning’s Transporter-16 mission, which was designed to avoid Starlink with payload deploys well above or well below the constellation. The SpaceX and Starlink teams are actively working to determine root cause and will rapidly implement any necessary corrective actions.”
...

Adding to the mystery is the fact that this isn’t the first time such an anomaly happened in recent months. Just three months earlier, a Starlink satellite produced “tens of objects in the vicinity of the satellite” and appeared to be “caused by an internal energetic source” rather than a crash with another object when an “anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.” Are we looking at a design flaw manifesting? Or collisions with untrackable space junk?

...
LeoLabs said yesterday that the new event is similar to one from December 17, 2025, which also produced “tens of objects in the vicinity of the satellite” and appeared to be “caused by an internal energetic source” rather than a crash with another object. LeoLabs said it wants more information on the anomalies.

...

Starlink provided a few details shortly after the December 2025 incident, saying on December 18 that an “anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.” Starlink added that the satellite was “largely intact” but “tumbling,” and would reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and “fully demise” within weeks.

In December, Starlink seemed confident that it could prevent future anomalies. “Our engineers are rapidly working to [identify the] root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event,” Starlink said in the December 18 post.
...

And then there’s the near-crash incident, also just a few months ago, when a Starlink satellite at ~560 km came within 200 meters of a newly deployed Chinese satellite. Starlink blamed it on the Chinese company for no coordinating and deconfliction. Which is a stunning deflection by Starlink since it implies that widespread coordination among all the players who are launching their own satellite clusters into orbit at these same altitudes is required to avoid collision. If that’s the case, it’s hard to imagine anything other that a growing number of mistakes as this satellite cluster ‘space race’ only accelerates. And as the article notes, such coordination is only going to be more and more important for everyone if Musk succeeds in building a network of up to 1 million satellites dedicated to AI computations. Orders of magnitude more deconfliction will be required to avoid an increasingly catastrophic outcome:

...
Starlink also had a near-crash in December, in a different incident about a week before the “tumbling” satellite. Starlink Senior VP Michael Nicolls wrote on December 12 that a Chinese company had launched nine satellites without coordinating with other space users. Lack of coordination increases the risk of collisions, he said.

“As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude,” Nicolls wrote at the time, referring to the Chinese launch. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to change.”

Coordination can only become more important if SpaceX goes through with its stated plan of launching a million satellites to create an orbital data center.
...

And regarding Starlink’s claims that any fragments that don’t burn up upon reentry “should have negligible impact energy”, keep in mind that it’s the burning of aluminum-heavy materials that produces ozone-destroying Aluminum-oxide and poses a new threat to the ozone layer. In other words, designing these satellites to burn up entirely might sound great but it’s a trade-off:

...
Under normal circumstances, Starlink satellites reaching their end-of-life date follow “a targeted reentry approach to deorbit satellites over the open ocean, away from populated islands and heavily trafficked airline and maritime routes,” Starlink says in a document on “satellite demisability.” But satellites that fall to Earth unexpectedly should pose no risk to people on the ground because they are designed to “demise with extremely low impact energy,” according to Starlink.

“A critical aspect of sustainable satellite design is demisability, which ensures that satellites fully break up and burn up during atmospheric reentry,” Starlink says in the document. “Any fragments that do not completely demise should have negligible impact energy.”
...

So with the second mystery “fragment creation event” in three months, it’s worth taking a look at the update on Kessler Syndrome provided by none other than Donald Kessler back in April of 2025 at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris in Bonn, Germany. As Kessler concludes, it’s not a matter of if or when orbital instability is triggered. “The current (March 2025) population of intact objects is now above the threshold for an unstable environment at altitudes between 420 km and 1000 km”, according to Kessler. “Furthermore, the threshold for a runaway environment has now been exceeded or is close to being exceeded at altitudes between about 520 km and 1000 km, even if upper stages are ignored.”:

Proc. 9th European Conference on Space Debris, Bonn, Germany, 1–4 April 2025, published by the ESA Space Debris Office

CRITICAL NUMBER OF SPACECRAFT IN LOW EARTH ORBIT: A NEW ASSESSMENT OF THE STABILITY OF THE ORBITAL DEBRIS ENVIRONMENT

Hugh G. Lewis(1) and Donald J. Kessler

ABSTRACT

The stability model by Kessler and Anz-Meador identified regions near 900 km and 1400 km where the number of intact objects in the February 1999 satellite catalogue exceeded the critical number needed for a runaway environment. The deployment of large constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit, has prompted a new analysis with this approach. Using data from on-orbit fragmentation events, this paper introduces a revised stability model for altitudes below 1020 km and evaluates the March 2025 population of payloads and rocket stages to identify new regions of instability. The results indicate the current population of intact objects exceeds the unstable threshold at all altitudes between 400 km and 1000 km and the runaway threshold at nearly all altitudes between 520 km and 1000 km. Planned deployments of large constellations will likely lead to the population of intact objects across an even greater extent of low Earth orbit exceeding the runaway threshold.

...

5 CONCLUSIONS

The intentional collision breakup of the Fengyun-1C satellite, the accidental collision of Iridium-33 with Cosmos-2251, and a new ground-based hypervelocity impact test have enabled an update to the work previously reported by Kessler and Anz-Meador in [1]. In combination with data from the P‑78 orbital satellite test and the Transit ground-based test, an analysis of these collisions has confirmed the previous findings that large regions of low Earth orbit were unstable, leading then to an expectation of an increasing fragment population due to random collisions. In the “best case” evaluated by Kessler and Anz-Meador, which excluded upper stages in the February 1999 population, the increase would likely have levelled off and reached a new, higher equilibrium level. However, inclusion of the upper stages may have prevented an equilibrium environment being reached in the region between 800 km and 970 km.

The current (March 2025) population of intact objects is now above the threshold for an unstable environment at altitudes between 420 km and 1000 km, based on updated stability model values from the additional orbital collisions and a new ground-based test. As before, this instability will cause a slowly increasing fragment population across a broad range of LEO altitudes. Furthermore, the threshold for a runaway environment has now been exceeded or is close to being exceeded at altitudes between about 520 km and 1000 km, even if upper stages are ignored.

The continuing absence of hypervelocity breakup data for upper stages and the underestimation of fragment sizes in the decimetre range from SSN-derived RCS measurements are limitations in the current work. However, the differences between the 2001 and 2025 “critical numbers” are relatively small – it is the significant change in the population of intact objects below 1000 km over the last two decades that has driven the expansion of the regions of instability.

The current intact population is increasing at an unprecedented rate, with ITU filings suggesting more than 1 million satellites could enter orbit in the near future. Many of these new satellites will form large constellations of satellites, with several targeting the regions of instability identified. Despite the mitigation potential arising from collision avoidance manoeuvres, the rate of increase in collision fragments will increase substantially. As noted already in [1], and reinforced by the results presented above, these conditions mean that after some period of time – perhaps shorter than previously anticipated – the intact population would be difficult to maintain because the fragment population would become too hazardous to continue space operations in low Earth orbit. This finding has implications for large constellations already in orbit and those that are planned.

Whilst these conclusions are not too different from those of previous studies and point to instabilities that are likely anticipated in the context of a possible 1 million satellites, they serve to emphasise the importance and timeliness of limiting future breakups in space and of identifying management tools that address the
environmental conditions leading to instability.

...

————–

“CRITICAL NUMBER OF SPACECRAFT IN LOW EARTH ORBIT: A NEW ASSESSMENT OF THE STABILITY OF THE ORBITAL DEBRIS ENVIRONMENT” by Hugh G. Lewis and Donald J. Kessler; Proc. 9th European Conference on Space Debris, Bonn, Germany, 1–4 April 2025, published by the ESA Space Debris Office

“The current (March 2025) population of intact objects is now above the threshold for an unstable environment at altitudes between 420 km and 1000 km, based on updated stability model values from the additional orbital collisions and a new ground-based test. As before, this instability will cause a slowly increasing fragment population across a broad range of LEO altitudes. Furthermore, the threshold for a runaway environment has now been exceeded or is close to being exceeded at altitudes between about 520 km and 1000 km, even if upper stages are ignored.”

The threshold for a runaway environment has now been exceeded or is close to be exceeded between about 520 km and 1000 km. That sure sounds like Starlink territory.

What hasn’t been remotely exceeded is the ambitions of Musk and others to dramatically expand the number of objects in orbit, damn the warnings. And at this rate we really shouldn’t be surprised if Musk succeeds in putting a million objects into orbit. Perhaps it will be a million AI satellites. Or maybe a million untrackable objects created through mysterious “fragment creation events”. Either/or. We’ll see which one happens first.