PREVIEW: SPECIAL EDITION - Jeffrey Epstein Part 1 - Isaac interviews journalist and skeptic Michael Tracey.

0:00Jeffery Epstein has been one of the most requested topics for us here at Tangle to cover. And I've been thinking a lot about how to best cover this controversial, complicated, long, deep story for a very long time. And what I came up with was bringing on two journalists who have been looking at this story through very, very different lenses. Today, we're bringing to you a two-part podcast and YouTube special, our kind of mega episode on the Jeffery Epstein story. And the two guests we're bringing on today are Michael Tracy and Terrible Mary. Michael Tracy is an independent journalist. Terrible Mary is an independent journalist. Both Michael Tracy and Terrible Mary have been looking at the Epstein story for many, many years. And both of them have really distinct views on this issue as you're about to see. If I could describe them just briefly, I would say, Michael Tracy is somebody who is

1:01very skeptical and worried about the way the Epstein story has percolated in pop culture. He believes there is a mass hysteria equivalent to something like the Salem witch trials that is kind of taking over everybody's brains and making it very hard for them to think about these accusations and this story in a rational way. And he's doing a lot of work in his journalism to try and push back on some of the mainstream narratives and the assumptions that a lot of people are making. Terrible Mary, also an independent journalist, is somebody who has been doing her best to elevate the stories of the women who have accused Jeffery Epstein of assault. She's been pushing back on what she describes as a manosphere narrative from people like Michael Tracy who she thinks are trying to rewrite the Jeffrey Epstein story and trying to downplay the crimes and the nature of the crimes that he's both been accused of and been convicted of. So I brought them both on to

2:03the podcast and I interviewed them separately. I did that for a few reasons. One, I didn't want to do a debate show. I didn't want to bring them on and have to intervene while they were arguing with each other or yelling at each other. The two of them have appeared on shows before like Pierce Morgan. You can go watch that if you want. I didn't think it was particularly productive. I also interviewed them independently because I wanted to be able to just give them time to tell their version of events, to tell the stories that they've come across in their reporting, to focus the conversation in the way that they felt it was important to focus. To me, this felt like the best way to bring some balance to our reporting here at Tangle. Finally, I just want to say something about my particular interview style. When I'm doing interviews like this on a story like this, on a topic like this, in this particular context, I'm not coming trying to fight. You'll see moments in both the Michael Tracy interview and the Terrible Mary interview

3:03where things maybe get a little bit testy or could get a little bit testy or there's a moment where maybe there's an opportunity for it to become a confrontation or for me to push back really hard or to dig in or to espouse my views. I try not to do that. I don't think that is my job in this particular context. There are plenty of journalism contexts for that. Is my job? If you listen to this podcast, you follow this YouTube channel, you read our newsletter, you hear my opinion every single day. That's not what this was about. I wanted to inform my audience by sharing the stories that these journalists have uncovered. Frankly, I'm not an expert on the Epstein files. It's something my audience has requested me to cover a bunch and I've certainly spent a lot of time reading about this story and looking at some of the files myself, but I've not spent nearly the time these two journalists have on fleshing them out. I'm excited to bring these interviews to you. Part one is Michael Tracy, who you're going to hear talk about the things he's worried about the way the story is being reported and the hysteria he's worried about surrounding

4:05the story. Part two is Tara Paul Mary, who's going to talk about the way she worries that the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse are having their stories questioned and the emphasis she puts on the people who have been impacted by some of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. I think together, they make a really, really compelling and interesting and fascinating look at the Epstein story itself. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Without further ado, here's Michael Tracy. Michael Tracy, welcome to the Tangle podcast. Thanks so much for joining us, ma'am. Happy to be here. So we're going to get right into some of the Epstein stuff which, you know, you've been on this beat, I think, taking a pretty distinct lane in the current media ecosystem that we're all operating in. And I think to just give our audience a taste of the lens that you're viewing some of this stuff through. I want to start with a kind of two-part question. And the first part is I'd like you to describe in your view what you think the kind of mainstream narrative about

5:08the Epstein files has been. And then in your own words describe the lens that you look at the Epstein file story through and how you would describe the story to somebody who has never heard it before. I would say the mainstream narrative, and it's hard to even know how to define the mainstream nowadays. So I'm sort of grouping together, let's say, the more traditionally mainstream media, as well as online media or alternative or independent media, which is all kind of bunch together now into the same cacophony of a media ecosystem in which we all operate. So I would say if I could generalize like across these different spheres of media, it's that fundamentally it's taken to be true and unassailable that Jeffrey Epstein was the most notorious pedophile in American history or perhaps world history. And he likewise ran the most prolific child sex trafficking operation in recorded history since I don't know when the Jurassic era, the Big Bang, you tell me.

6:12And therefore given that presupposition, every piece of discrete information that ever comes out, and there's been an absolute avalanche of it obviously, especially since these quote unquote Epstein files have started to be produced since last December. Every little data point or every fragment of potential evidence or any even just insinuation of something is immediately viewed through that incredibly incendiary lens. So even pieces of evidence or materials that do come out that otherwise on their face would seem remarkably banal or not even worth remarking on at all. If they're imbued with this overtone of potentially contributing to this larger thesis that people have settled into and take to be gospel, then that means that you have this interpretive prism that automatically represents every new piece of information in the most inflammatory possible

7:16light. So that's where I object because you have to go back basically to the root of it, which is that I'm sorry and I keep telling people that I'm not thrilled to have to constantly be litigating this on the internet in particular. But there's just no credible grounds to proclaim, as cabelerly as people do, that Jeffrey Epstein was in fact the most notorious pedophile in X number of years or decades or even wasn't pedophile at all. Look, I know people are going to hear that and feel the wilderness and shocked and probably also angry, but it's something I can easily substantiate. And also on the notion of trafficking, it's also an incredibly fuzzy, hazy concept that I've been calling almost infinitely elastic that prosecutors have been wielding as a tool to go after defendants more and more eagerly because they can fit any particular fact pattern they'd like under a sex trafficking statute, federal sex trafficking statutes,

8:19and then proclaim that this person is somehow guilty of sex trafficking. And when you're talking about a civil context, which is where the most of the legal maneuverings, these of the Epstein have taken place, the burden of proof is much lower. And yet that forms a lot of the factual basis for why people think that he also must have been this world historic sex trafficker. So those core prongs of the premise of the premise underlying what people think must be true about Jeffrey Epstein, to my mind, are both so wildly exaggerated, if either like incredibly wildly exaggerated or just outright fictitious. And then that leads to the proliferation of all kinds of other mythology, where people just absorb like this ambient folklore, that's my new coinage, you can borrow it if you want. This ambient folklore around Jeffrey Epstein, which may be they picked up from social media, they picked up from watching one of these dopey Netflix documentary series, they picked up from watching just from seeing a headline somewhere or maybe in a casual conversation with a friend or

9:24acquaintance. And because nobody ever, to my knowledge, comes at this story from the direction that I do, which isn't just me kind of cynically devising a lane for myself as though I'm doing it for branding purposes, although of course people want to accuse me of doing something along those lines, it was really just me saying, look, I think this, this story is taken on such an outsized degree of prominence and also has such negative repercussions in terms of the hysteria that it seems to be fomenting, that it would be whove me and I think my readers and the wider public to the degree that I can have an impact, to almost do like a forensic start from scratch approach on the Epstein story, because there is such a huge volume of material or there was even before this round of Epstein files, quote unquote, productions, and you know, the more threads that I pulled, the more the evidence this just seemed to unravel, which is now late, let me to conclude that this really is the most just mind bending moral panic slash mass hysteria that humanity has

10:31been beset with in perhaps generations, and you know, it's like the Salem Witch Trials and the Satanic Panic daycare craze, but on steroids and then also tied in with like the main anti-Trump oppositional narrative of the second term and also internationalized, so it's like the number one political controversy that's currently ravaging everywhere from, you know, Norway to Great Britain to France to Poland, and you know, United Arab Emirates, etc. So that hopefully encapsulates to some extent the mainstream narrative and the way in which I've sought to do some degree of corrective tethered as best as possible to the facts and evidence, which I noticed the people who are so angry at me constantly, and so certain that I must be indubitably wrong, they don't seem to have much, nearly as much of a concern for tethering themselves with the available facts and evidence rather, they participate in this media ecosystem whose currency is largely conjecture,

11:37or, you know, radically confirmation biased motivational reasoning, and that does really well in the algorithms, and so that's just the mentality or the approach that they've thought is most advantageous for them, and it seems to be advantageous commercially, perhaps even politically, meaning some of these political entrepreneurs, let's say, who have latched on to the story. Journalistically, people have made a livelihood on this thing without anybody looking at the underlying facts and evidence in a properly critical manner, and also, yeah, I acknowledge that I have a bit of a different personality maybe or a different temperament where the fact that you just by engaging on this issue in the manner that I have is going to engender a absolute day lose of defamatory slime, and impugnment of motive, and, you know, for some reason, I'm like the one person on the internet obliged to be constantly declaring like every part of my income now, and I'm happy to do it because I like really have nothing to hide, and then which some of these

12:40Epstein billionaires were funding me because then I could, you know, maybe get a better apartment or something, but like so we have a recipe for that has allowed for the perpetuation of an almost entirely fictitious or wildly exaggerated narrative, and also like the it comes tied to it with the most potent of taboos that discourage everybody from politicians to journalists, so you think should be the most eager to do a proper critical examination from actually doing once that leaves me appearing to be in the wilderness here, but yeah, so be it. We'll be right back after this quick break. Well, let me ask you, I mean, I guess to kind of like really focus it for a moment,

13:41how would you describe based on all the evidence that you've taken in and, you know, studying Epstein files and reading the old court documents from 2008 and again in 2016 or whenever it was 2018, how would you describe the crimes that Epstein has been formally accused of, and maybe even some of the crimes you think there is circumstantial evidence for? I mean, what would you, how would you put it in your terms on what he actually did and what it's maybe likely he did that we have some substantiated accusations around? So I just want to clarify so people are aware it is true that the lion's share of everything that I've done on this story journalistically has been based on what's been available in the public record, but as the months have gone by, it's probably now also includes around 10% of original reporting from one degree or another, but I only say that because I want to underscore that for the most part, taking the perspective I do is more than possible given the almost

14:47mind-blowing quantity of public domain information that has long been available, like I said before, even prior to this most recent round of Epstein files productions. Now, I'll answer that, but I just want to sort of set the context by noting that the reason why people got so inflamed about the Epstein story most recently. So around last summer, when this FBI DOJ memo came out that appeared to dispel a lot of the common mythology around the Epstein story, meaning that unsigned DOJ FBI memo leaked on January 6th through Axios, where it dispels the idea that there's any additional third-party individuals for whom there's a predicate to charge with any child sex crimes or any crimes at all that Epstein conducted this kind of wide-scale child sex trafficking or blackmail operation. And on and on and on, I kind of dispel a lot of the common mythology, but then they threw in a bunch of other bizarre claims that kind of kept the

15:50fire burning or poor fuel on the fire to clarify my metaphor. But none of the reasons why people were so incense about this issue, meaning demanding something called they refer to as a client list or some other list of co-conspirators of Epstein that have been covered up at the highest levels of government or something to do with the smoking gun that they presume must exist having to do with his accumulation of wealth. I mean, people always love to ask in this very implicative, insinuating, you know, wink at a non-type way. How did Jeffrey Epstein make his money as if there's no information about how he made his money? I'm not saying there's comprehensive information, but there's plenty where like if you're asking that question constantly, you are more than able to go and like look at a lot of information that would shed a good deal of light on how he made his money. You just want to keep asking the question in this insinuating way more than likely because you want the enigma to continue to swirl. Yeah, the times in Bloomberg

16:56did like incredibly extensive detailed reporting on all of that. Yeah, yeah. And again, I always want more. I always tell people who asked me some variation of that question. I would love it if we could have a full forensic audit of how Jeffrey Epstein accumulated every last penny of his net worth, but that being said, here is a bunch of information that is presently available. If you'd like to look at it, that would give you at least some insight into how he accumulated his wealth. And more often than not, I found the people who do ask that question are not interested in taking my research leads and going to like study how he accumulated lots of his wealth. So, and the reason why I give that preface is because I'm happy to answer the questions about the Florida prosecution in which he entered his guilty pleas in 2008. But I just think it's worth noting almost like thematically or just so people can structure how they think about this in a little bit more of a precise way. That really doesn't have very much to do with these additional layers of the mythology that fueled the reemergence of the Epstein story as like the number one

18:01controversy in US politics and also got rich politics, French politics, etc. So I think that's just kind of like worth making a little clear to people. Yeah. We'll be right back after this quick break. And just really quick, I think that's a great preface. And I am interested, I mean, in the 2008 guilty plea, but also, I mean, just as we sit here today, maybe as you, as Michael Tracy, like what threads of this story do you actually find worth pulling at or what, you know, yeah, what elements of like his alleged criminal behavior do you think there's actually like maybe some there there as you've in the beginning, you've laid out the things that you feel like are just totally ridiculous and out there. So threads worth pulling at with respect to his

19:01personal potential criminal behavior or about the story writ large because his personal, his personal potential criminal behavior, I think. Um, Hey, everybody, this is John executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and send up for a newsletter subscription or you can send up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription, which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcast, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews, and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offering. So stay tuned. I will join you again for the daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Maul signing off. Have a great day, y'all.

20:06Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Loll. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Toddles. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weissbeng with senior editor Will K back and associate editors, Harjie Morehead, Lindsey Knuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diane 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com