OpEd by Brian Cates
Unless you've been living under a rock somewhere for the past few weeks, you know about the explosive video that journalist James O'Keefe & Project Veritas unveiled on November 5.
That video showed ABC News 20/20 host Amy Robach stating she had an 'unbelievable' amount of evidence regarding the late Jeffrey Epstein's international sex trafficking operation – and how frustrated she was that she was not allowed to air any of it for three years. With Epstein's surprise arrest back in July of this year, all opportunity for her to break the story was lost.
There are two ways the Fake News Media currently deal with the Epstein Cover Up Scandal at ABC News. They either ignore it, or they refuse to talk about it honestly.
It is becoming increasingly apparent through recent developments that the people who provided cover for Epstein and his fellow sex traffickers included federal officials inside the US Government and powerful executives inside the mainstream media.
A Purposefully Missed Story
The Epstein story had elements that would usually draw investigative journalists like moths to a flame:
- a billionaire with his own private island
- rich and powerful men who flew in from around the world to frolic with underage 'models'
And yet, even after Epstein was indicted and arrested for sex trafficking back in 2007, nobody in the Fake News Media seemed interested in how or why it happened. Epstein was even gifted with a surprise sweetheart deal that allowed him to work from his own office under a lame kind of 'house arrest,’ but nobody seemed to care.
It wasn’t until 2018 that Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald finally pursued this story, but even then, it’s apparent she did so only in an attempt to tie Epstein’s sweetheart deal to President Donald Trump and his then-Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta. Brown’s motive was clear from her headline: “How a Trump Cabinet Member Gave a Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime.” The subtitle read, “A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.”
Why did it take Donald J. Trump winning a Presidential election for someone in the mainstream media to decide to go back and investigate what happened in 2007?
If we had a real news media, investigative journalists would have shed light on the weak law enforcement practices in Florida and in Washington D.C. back in 2007. Real media would have exposed Epstein's international sex trafficking ring and all those involved in it. Perhaps prosecutors wouldn’t have given Epstein such a light sentence if the country had known what was going on.
Instead, both government officials and mainstream media executives coordinated to finesse the handling of the Epstein arrest and managed the fallout so that the story hardly made a blip on the national radar screen.
Ten years ago, no investigative reporters pursued the Epstein story, and nobody pursued his co-conspirators, who, by the way, were allowed to walk away unnamed and uncharged. No tough questions were asked of the prosecutors nor other officials who smoothed the way for Epstein’s corrupt deal to get done.
Epstein got a slap on the wrist with reduced charges. Officials pretended that Epstein alone had sexual encounters with a few underage girls. Buried were the facts about international sex trafficking and the complicity of numerous other rich and powerful men involved in these crimes. It can't be overlooked that these crimes were quickly buried and forgotten with the mainstream media's help.
And Then Journalism Actually Happened
Back in 2016, someone at ABC News had an attack of real journalism. They saw this unfinished Epstein business from 2008 - 2009 and decided to pursue it. This led Amy Robach and others at the news division to commit acts of ACTUAL JOURNALISM: talking to Epstein's victims and collecting evidence.
In the video leaked through Project Veritas, Robach says one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts, was in hiding for twelve years. That's how much these victims are scared into silence. Robach says we – meaning her and her team of investigators – talked Roberts into coming forward to share her story and her evidence, which included pictures.
They got the flight logs from Epstein's planes, they got victim statements from other girls besides Roberts, they obtained incriminating pictures and who knows what else. Robach describes it as an 'unbelievable' amount of evidence, and she made efforts for three years to get it on the air.
What happened? The higher ups at ABC News consistently killed the story every time it was brought up to them. Beginning in 2016 and all the way through whenever the last time Robach or others asked to run it, someone at ABC News gave orders not to run the story.
It appears to me that somebody (or several somebodies) at ABC was operating as a tripwire for Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. Epstein was on a list – a list of people ABC News does not touch.
With resources at his disposal and friends in high places Epstein had cultivated for decades, I think Epstein and those who covered for him knew ABC News had an investigative team pursuing his story. This is why the story was repeatedly killed. Epstein and his enablers were alerted, and it was made clear this story was never to be allowed to run.
These powerfully rich and elite men (and some women) who helped facilitate this have tripwires everywhere. Their networks are extensive, and they are protected. They all watch out for each other. Friends don't let friends get investigated, so to speak.
Defeat of the Tripwires
For some strange reason, something changed in 2017. Guys who were previously protected started getting exposed. Previously untouchable people, like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, and Matt Lauer, suddenly had their vile crimes brought to the light by victims coming forward en masse, in too large of groups to handle via regular methods. If those victims had come forward one at a time, the intimidation, the threats, and the silence payments could have worked. But when a dozen victims came forward at once? The usual methods got overwhelmed.
Suddenly the usual tripwires and networks of mutual protection were obsolete, and Epstein is the case in which this is most apparent. I have a theory I've been working on, and I'll now make it public.
Under **normal** circumstances, a protected, untouchable guy like Epstein would have gotten advance warning from his friends in high places that something was coming. He would have known to flee. A guy protected for decades by top government and media people would have had a tripwire go off when someone started using official government channels to investigate him.
Yet, as we all know, Epstein received **no advance warning** before he was arrested. "Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey,” according to one of the sources. “Flight records show he had just flown to Teterboro from Paris on Saturday."
Somehow every single tripwire in the network around him was defeated.
You must understand. This does not happen.
Jeffrey Epstein, one of the protected princes in the world, is not the kind of guy law enforcement is able to sneak up on. This kind of thing is not allowed.
And yet ... it happened. The FBI and the Southern District of New York's Public Corruption Unit not only opened up a case against Epstein **without him or anybody in his extensive network ever catching wind of it**, they actually indicted him & issued an ARREST warrant without him being tipped off.
Understand: Epstein had extensive resources at his disposal. If he’d caught even the merest hint that he was about to be arrested, he would have bolted. This is a guy who could wake up in the morning on his private island, say, "I feel like sunning myself on the French Riviera this afternoon," and then hop on one of his private planes to make it happen.
If Epstein had decided to run, you were not going to catch him. But he couldn't even get a chance to run because he got no warning what was coming. And once he was arrested, it was over for him.
As I have mentioned in not just one but two previous columns, the fact that this case against Epstein is being run by the Southern District of New York’s Public Corruption Unit [PCU] in a joint effort with the FBI demonstrates a crucial fact that many in the media have missed: Epstein himself was and is not the main target of the investigation.
The targets the FBI/PCU are really going after are the other people who were protected and covered for back in 2007, as well as the federal officials who did the protecting and the covering.
But, before they roll up all the co-conspirators and unseal indictments of all the federal officials who betrayed their oaths by covering up an international sex trafficking ring of pedophiles, the Fake News Media needed to be dealt with.
Why? Because when the FBI/PCU takes public the results of their investigation beyond Epstein, exposing the rich and powerful people who were on those planes to the island and in that apartment, powerful people in the mainstream media would attempt to use their news outlets to defend those being exposed.
Therefore, something needed to be done. The media's power to cover up the crimes of the elites, to minimize the fallout after they are exposed, and run damage control to ensure their political/social survival, needed to be removed.
And we're watching that happen right now, with the ABC News Epstein cover up scandal.
Even now, James O'Keefe and Project Veritas are waiting to drop more videos, biding their time. The executives at ABC, CBS, and CNN are telling themselves this is a bluff, and that there aren't any more videos. But when more videos drop – because O'Keefe isn't bluffing – the scandal will only get worse for the mainstream media. They have been caught red-handed hiding major crimes on behalf of their elite friends.
They no longer serve the public interest; they now serve the interests of their friends in high places.
When the Epstein investigation results finally go public, the fallout from the Epstein-Cover-Up scandal will have removed Fake News Media as a player on the board. Their effectiveness at hiding, covering up, and doing damage control for all their kiddie-diddling friends in high places will have been reduced to zero.
So, what’s my theory about who set everything motion to capture Epstein AND the pedophiles around him AND those that covered for them? I can share this now because all the 'right' people out there will never believe it. My theory is that the guy who set all this in motion is the guy they were hoping to destroy by attempting to tie him to Epstein.
He attended their parties for decades. For several years he was registered as a Democrat, he was wealthy with great influence, and they thought he was one of them. But while they all drank and did drugs and blabbed away (I'm sure they were telling him quite a bit), he never drank nor did drugs. What was he doing? He was mentally filing away all of what he heard.
Now you can see why they are so desperate to get rid of him as fast as they can. And, they will never stop. This is not just about politics. He knows all their secrets, and they know that he has put people in place to expose them and take them down.
But there is nothing they can do to stop what's coming. Both Attorney General William Barr and US Attorney Geoffrey Berman from the Southern District of New York have said that Epstein's co-conspirators should be afraid, because justice is coming.
I believe them.
