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628 - Real Detective feat. Nick Bryant (5/16/22) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-17 03:55:52
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

In a more serious episode, we talk to author and journalist Nick Bryant about his 2009 book “The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal.” We’ve mentioned the Franklin Credit Union scandal in passing on the show before, but it begins with the collapse of the Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska in 1988 due to rampant corruption and embezzlement of its manager, Lawrence E. King, Jr. Soon after, King was accused, along with GOP lobbyist Craig Spence, of orchestrating a massive child prostitution ring, shuttling minors between Omaha and D.C., and using their solicitation to blackmail high ranking political figures. Bryant’s work examines the evidence behind this, and we discuss the scandal, the victims, the cover up, intelligence agency connections of its perpetrators, and the crucial links between intelligence-led sexual political blackmail operations of the past with the Epstein case today.

Follow Nick on Twitter here: @nick__bryant

Find more info, Nick’s book and Nick’s blog on his website here: nickbryantnyc.com

Files

Comments

Mick

Should have gotten Tim Dillon in on this one

Baron

Holy shit

Jon Bon

Oh hell yeah

Aaron Baer

That's a trash thing to say ... Virgil has a talent and a bad decision ... He's not a trash person

Lord Drewcifer

Will puts this shit together. He's the glue. Call that slicko mode. Cuz he slick

cwen

Okay, I take back some of the shit I said.

Hunter

Unrelated but shoutout to Felix for the Red Plenty recommendation a few episodes back, I’m like 2/3 of the way through it now and it’s fantastic, I’d avoided it because I thought it was some dense piece of theory literature

Tom Joad

I just want them to get Tim on in general. Lol

Twistedsister

Grinning and nodding reading this description

theSmokingGun

Can't believe CTH beat TrueAnon to this topic. Both keep delivering excellent and fresh content. They're together creating a paradigm shift in podcasting.

Zsoro

What an interview

Brendan Garcia

It really is amazing how powerful Wikipedia is with shit like this. I like to think I know better now, but a few years ago when I first looked into this, and saw the succinct, blanket, “this was just a hoax,” I thought well, maybe there’s nothing there. Because even on mkultra, Epstein, JFK, other “conspiracies,” they’ll at least spend time deboonking, and presenting the allegations, even if they’re under a “conspiracies” header.

The Cheerful Comrade

There's an amazing Subliminal Jihad series on the Franklin scandal. For those who want a deep dive. SJ takes in depth look at para politics and conspiracy from a far left lense. They're right here on Patreon but also SoundCloud check it out. Subliminal Jihad.

TCE

You're not wrong, but tbf to this case for the longest time the only "source" on this was John DeCamp's book on it from the early 90s, which is by no means a reliable source. I remember reading it years ago, and DeCamp is pretty out there. He talks about there being "a million practicing murderous Satanic cultists in the US" and no allegation or rumour from the time is too outlandish or farfetched to be published, including many Bryant spends a lot of time debunking in his own book. Even if Wikipedia had no agenda they wouldn't - or shouldn't - let a book like that be used as a reliable source on anything

Salt M. Bank

agreed, but interesting how this author confidently posits epstein is intelligence (which I agree with) vs true Anon playing down that claim with one of their more recent guests

Salt M. Bank

Irt operation midnight climax I’ve walked past the house the cia used in sf to spy on dosed johns. Seems to have been extensively updated since those days, but still has a creepy vibe

theSmokingGun

I remember that. But at the same time, I dont think that point needs to be debated with random guests who have a more liberal outlook on Epstein. Both hosts have stressed not only Maxwell's father's connection to intelligence, but have stressed Acosta's confirmation testimony. And regardless there is a bit of nuance and/or cloudiness when discussing a middle ground of "intelligence informants" v. "intelligence assets" v. "intelligence agents." Its just my opinion, but agents don't fall out of favor. Its bad for morale and loyalty. The fact that Epstein and Maxwell weren't bailed out reinforces the idea that maybe they weren't close enough to power to exert control over that situation. Hence, imho only, implies assets more than agents. But 🤷‍♂️.

George Lochinski

Yeah Im def an enormous idiot for ever having donated to Wikipedia

Gengeros

If we factor in that politicians with compromising child material on them that acutely helps boast their political careers, we can’t ignore the possibility that politicians like sanders and AOC and others have blackmail on them. You don’t that far in Washington DC and hold that power (Obama campaigned for sanders and he’s head of the senate budget committee) without some dead bodies in your basement. A few years ago I would have considered this unhinged conspiracy theory stuff, but with stuff like Peter scully, Epstein, this, dark web zoosadism like dark forest, drill dog and other horror gore shit I have come around.

Ricky

I haven’t readthe soy comments yet but just finished the episode. Bold and important topic.Thanks fellas

Ricky

The comments were actually not so soy. Nice

Nick Cole

Wow we never here about the Larry King Franklin cover-up. Awesome

Nick Cole

*hear fucking autocorrect

s

Charles Manson was institutionalised at Boys Town, Nebraska in 1949, when he was 14 or something

Shiv

only want to add kudos for the TrueAnon pronunciation (deboonking)

Shiv

wild to hear about this here after first coming to this topic via true crime pod ladies covering johnny gosch…also LOL at A dot Ham’s side piece being a secret (at least as long as the soundtrack has existed)

D.O.D

Pretty big get to have John Lithgow on to talk about Epstein

D.O.D

dosed pod johns

Ascetic Blur

Yo this dudes balls are the size of the moon. I'm hoping he stays safe.

William

Fuck off dipshit

Tim

I remember watching that documentary on Franklin and Gosh and constantly having to reset my brain every time “Larry King” was said. “No, Tim. Not the suspenders guy. Not the suspenders.”

David Andrews

Pure gold. I loved this guy and the interview.

Jon Spiegler

This book is brutal but it’s required reading if you can get through it

William

This interview shows the lengths at which people go to maintain power. And most of the "left" is arguing about the fucking legitimacy of candidates or any social leader through the standpoint theory of social purity. That alone should tell you the state of the "opposition" to the real structures of power. It's not the globetrotters vs the generals - it's the 92 dream team vs the wauwatosa east junior varsity team

Dylan Wintersteen

They do it openly and yet the rubes keep voting for them edit: I am also a rube

Scott Harding

Nick Bryant is played by John Lithgow

Woke Batou

Holy shit, was satanic panic just a cover for this scandal like QAnon was a cover for Epstein?

Samuel Cain

More broadly, whatever the media chooses to ignore is an unstated subliminal cover

Alexandr

Oh god, I shouldn't ask because I'll get an answer... but, I'm uninformed about Peter Scully, darkweb zoosadism. Please don't tell me the latter one is like tortuing animals.

Alexandr

Just have a Cum Town soundboard set up so you can mash the I DON'T THINK SO, TIM!!! clip

Alexandr

Hey, man, you ever done a milquetoast liberal establishment interview with Anita Dunn on catastrophic amounts of benzos?!

Woke Batou

Also love how Chapo will do TrueAnon better than TrueAnon

Ozzie

Goddamn, this is some real life True Detective shit

Alexandr

Good Family Guy reference. Check out MeatCanyon's latest video for something really fucking disturbing along the Family Guy line.

Dustice

this is unnecessary violence against brace and liz and yung chomsky

Alexandr

Honestly, people say Tim Dillon is a righty but I don't fucking see it. He's just fed up with asinine, retarded liberal cultural bullshit and all. He may be skeptical about leftism, but he has reason to be after what America's done to us. And by that, I mean we're propagandized to about how leftism is bad and liberals are lumped in with 'the left' when they aren't. It takes more steps to uncouple us from the damaging hack ignorami that proclaims themselves as 'the left', liberals and culture-obsessives that are very literal SJW caricatures alike. The kind who try to cancel Chapo all the time.

Harry

This is some all time chapo content

TangiePower

Oligarchy goes hand-in-hand with mafia bullshit. Rich people need seemingly unconnected underlings to do their dirty work and keep order. People like Epstein, Dutroux want official protection and elevation. Organized blackmail schemes form a major supporting column in the power structure.

Jay

good episode !

sir peepus

thank you for covering this while Brace is on birthright

justdave

The newest horse on the ranch is 'Braveheart' -we found him trying to nurse from his mother after she had been killed by a car. He is brave

Abram Blau

one time i met this guy at the airport

justdave

Do you have to clean the shit off his cute little butt everyday?

Jesse

McMartin was not "fake." Children were abused - both juries agreed. Most members of the jury thought Ray Buckey had molested kids, and his mother had covered it up, but the prosecution failed to make the case, and based too many of the charges on the testimony of children who were later browbeaten on stand, and subsequent parents were intimidated into not letting their kids take the stand. But the idea that it was "fake" or a "hoax" is not factual. Prof. Ross Cheit from Brown wrote a fantastic book on what actually went down, called The Witch-hunt Narrative.

chetan kadodwala

'True Detective' was based upon the Franklin scandal.

Nobody

Touch grass. You get power via money and influence. Horrible people exist at every level of society

Nobody

Was Virgil apart of this Franklin Scandal? Honestly it is pathetic you can talk about this stuff but never put a statement out about your friend who was accused of the very same behavior

Dinosaur

Why do all these people think that the boys owe us an explanation for something Virgil did? Were Felix, Will, or Matt also accused of grooming? Were they accused of helping him groom? If the answer is no (spoilers: it is) then I don't see how the boys have any right to weigh in on something that they were not a part of. Also, the allegations came out after Virgil left the show, so they don't even have the "house-cleaning" angle. I know the boys don't read the comments, but save Chris some trouble and shut the fuck up about VT. Can't believe after a fucking year people are still talking about this.

Nobody

Soliciting a minor is very serious behavior and you have no clue what else he was doing or has done. When your coworker on your popular podcast leaves and everyone knows why and you refuse to address it? It's cowardly trying to ignore an issue and hope it goes away. You're trying to "well it's not as bad as what's being discussed!" Like what the fuck dude

Jesse

Cheit has addressed this on his blog. How do you explain away the significant medical evidence present on the children in that case?

kenton

this is a psyop to make you take SSRIs

Nobody

Virgil wasn't officially "gone" until after the accusations. Briahna Joy Gray also not addressing it is pathetic.

Jack Sorensen

please make a friend in real life and i promise you will be happier

Nobody

Pedophilia is important to expose and prosecute those responsible but just ignore Virgil nothing to see here guys

Shea Scott

For some reason I'm not seeing this in the feed on my podcast app. I'm using Overcast on iOS

Pete Johnston

I’m in the same boat - it’s not showing up on Overcast. Any suggestions?

Dan

Have you tried putting it in rice

phillypostmaster

Could not follow what this guy said at all, he just kind of alluded to vague horrors.

Bil

Tim Dillon is a twerp and a cunt

Jesse

So your very special take is, Franklin was a hoax, but we should listen to Subliminal Jihad, the podcast hosted by the LaRouchite weirdos who think everyone who follows a non-Abrahamic religion is communing with Satan?

Ian Woods

I guess the hardest part of this to accept is that in the decades this has apparently been going on that there are 0 deathbed confessions, no WitSec-earning testimony from a bodyguard who couldn’t stomach working for Kid Abuse Inc. Not sold one way or the other but we’re talking thousands of people over decades, some of which were necessarily just ‘the help’ and not abusers themselves; tough to just set that aside as ‘hyper competent conspiracy cover-up’. Anyway, interesting episode. Encouraged me to read more on my own, so message amplification achieved

Evan Scott

it still doesn't make sense to me that people can't understand why Brace or Liz wouldn't have jumped down Julie fuckin Brown's throat on saying Epstein wasn't an intelligence asset

JJJ

"The very same behavior" last time i checked virgil wasn't accused of raping children he was in charge of. What Virgil did was gross but to even begin to compare it to these scandals is disrespectful to those children.

Zarathushtra

Felix brings up the craze on the right about calling everything "grooming", and he has a point, BUT I've seen the videos of teachers on TikTok saying they tell their students to keep things that go on in the class or in their "special inclusion clubs" secret from their parents and that's just unacceptable. Training children to keep secrets from their parents is step one of grooming.

William

The problem with this view is that you think there should be all these other people involved. There's no proof either way how many there are. Even still, there are numerous examples of large scale operations remaining out of the public eye for decades - Gladio is one. The national security state is maintainig several large networks right now. The code breakers in Britain held their silence for 50 years or so

TCE

I definitely get the impression that there's two stories here: A ring of abuse in Omaha in the 80s / early 90s that got covered up when a few people + cop allies closed ranks to protect themselves, and the much larger, more outlandish stuff involving D.C. figures and intelligence agencies. The first one I'm almost positive happened, more or less as described. The second one seems a lot more speculative and dicey. There were all kinds of rumours and tabloids and Satanic Panic evangelical types and conspiracists going around spreading their bullshit back then I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened here; a legit story got hijacked by a bunch of Larouchite types who added in their own pet fears and conspiracies and muddled the waters, possibly irreparabley.

Ernest Ambrus

"You don’t have kids. " I do. Don't be gullible with any adults around them.

John Swan

Stopped reading after “I’ve seen videos on TikTok”

Noah Mickens

OK, nerds, I'll bite - what exactly is Virgil Texas accused of doing? If you just say "grooming," I'll assume you're full of shit.

Noah Mickens

It's been going on for way longer than decades, that's for sure. This kind of honeytrap shit is cooked into how power has worked for centuries.

M.R. Alchemist

This episode was like getting a shiner on your third eye... good episode but wow real bleak... depths of depravity.

Evan Scott

This is the stupidest right wing talking point. I've known/dated people who would've been beaten or kicked out of the house if their parents knew they were gay

Evan Scott

children aren't pieces of property that parents have free reign over, they're people

philip b toolin

he lost me at wikipedia is in on the coverup

Nobody

Oh yeah just soliciting a minor is forgivable. Holy shit you all are hypocrites

Zarathushtra

I will have a kid soon and those TikTok videos I mentioned are all over twitter.

Brendan A. MacWade

I had to turn off the interview when Bryant got to the CIA. I have no time for bullshit. Nope.

Zarathushtra

No they aren't but a parent has more say in raising a child than some teacher. I don't want the CHUDS to destroy public schooling but giving in to the excesses of the liberal left is aiding them.

EUGENE HETZEL

So the court, the news, Wikipedia are all complicit in hiding the truth? Reeks of conspiracy. And suspicion is not truth. Specific, exact proof is needed.

William

Agreed. Like, sure they may have have armed, funded, and trained terrorist organizations. Sure they may have had involvement in high profile domestic assassinations and heavy involvement in the global drug trade. But organize a system of sexual blackmail against highly powerful people in charge of the funding and existence of their organization? That's fucking retarded

caroline

okay but that entirely depends on what the secret is. if the secret is we talk about our abusive parents, sure. if it’s we watch porn in class, no.

caroline

if you guys aren’t happy with his research contributions can you at least be happy for some new and well needed schizo representation on chapo?

caroline

i get where you’re coming from but i also don’t know what they could really add or say

mark

this guy is out of his fucking mind

caroline

also @ noah, he’s accused of having a 16 year old online gf when he was 24, who he had sexual interactions with over facetime. she mentioned forms of emotional abuse but that was the most serious one.

Christopher Price

Try using Wikipedia to research anything on CIA/NED backed media. That stuff is quashed thoroughly.

Christopher Price

Are you lost? Are you new here? Shit like this happens all the time when all major estates make a concerted effort to hide the truth.

TangiePower

Jeez fellas, you don’t honestly think the rich people would be soooo mean, do you?

blackFFillip

Love the way he says “intelligence” with a hard g

Emily Richardson

What’s the name of the franklin episodes? I can’t find them.

Garth Hillsborough

it's so funny how so many of you think the insinuation that Wikipedia may be a compromised source is beyond the pale. You dumb little lambs need to kill the lib in your head.

Nat Cohen

genuinely don't understand what you want them to do, he hasn't been associated with the pod for a year and they've never defended him or minimized the allegations.

Matthew Black

This guy has the rhetorical style where if at least 10% of what he’s saying is true that’s a huge problem and you absolutely cannot tell the difference without looking it up

Chairman Corn

well I for one liked the episode.

Sam McManus

Similarly, I am shadowbanned on twitter, which is why my posts don't get any likes

Mark Schneider

Back in 1989 I was arrested and held in jail for 5 days by the Berkeley police (kidnapped from the Oakland house I shared though they had a warrant), falsely arrested of being a "Satanist" with 12 other people in 2 other houses . . . it was a moron "investigation", the Berkeley cop "expert" before the raid belonged to a Chick pamphlet related group that also claimed Judaism and the Roman Catholic Church are "satanic" (true at least in the latter case)-- 7 of us sued the city of Berkeley & cops, eventually they settled for a $30K payout as city of Berkeley was embarrassed by the cops' idiotic hijinx, well covered by the Bay Area alternative press!! Usual deal, the 2 lawyers that repped us got nearly all the $$ but my chiropractor who fixed my back 'coz they'd yanked me from behind with plastic wrist cuffs on did get paid for the gratis corrections he'd done on my back. PS-- my chiropractor was a Scientologist so he was probably into wackier stuff than I was!!

Mark Schneider

Oh, I'm sure those children who told stories of being molested in flying machines by Chuck Norris were completely accurate! Also, the authorities dug under the McMartin facility looking for the "tunnels" where Satan appeared and helped them molest children, how strange that the devil made the tunnels disappear in the interim. And the mother who got the whole witch hunt started and drank a full bottle of whiskey every single day at the time was obviously a sane and reliable source, her commitment to a mental institution later in life had to be done by shadowy Satanic epopts . . .

Mark Schneider

LaRouchies know what the evil, Satanic musical notes are that cause people to molest children and unwittingly serve the royal family's drug dealing, so yeah, a few grains of salt when following that shit!! (& yes, of course the British Royals and East India company forced opium onto the Chinese populace for profit for decades. Blind pig, enjoy the acorn)

Patrick

U realise the school system especially the curriculum is heavily right wing

Mark Schneider

Read the Wikipedia entry on Norman Finkelstein if you want to see ridiculously biased "What ifs?" "He could be wrong about this?" There's certain people on the Left they are going to routinely shit all over (I haven't looked at their take on Julian Assange recently, but bet I know what's in there) so yes, caveat.

Alec

His story about meeting the abuse victim in the bar sounds like he ripped it from The Departed. I’m only disappointed someone didn’t chime in and say “cranberry juice? what, are you on your period?”

Jesse

You should really read beyond the mainstream sources. Several kids had medical evidence of being assaulted, obtained using methods which are still the standard used in sexual assault cases - even the defense had to admit this. The jury in both trials were split, with *most* members saying they believed that children had been molested. The wild claims that you mentioned were not a part of *any* of the initial victim statements.

Jesse

Try being coherent, man, I dunno what the hell you're even saying

skrrt vonnegut

"These guys can eat steak whenever they want... so they go for the forbidden fruit" You know Will was holding back "so they go for the kids meal"

William

What if I were to tell you that the US government colluded with major media organizations to pump up support among Americans for regime change wars... Does that sound like conspiracy?

Aaron Baer

You watch a lot of TV, don't you? I don't blame you, but your base of reference is a little narrow, ay?

Andrew Richardson

Wikipedia also nixed a Hollywood pitch of mine…

EUGENE HETZEL

Your overarching concern for your childs safety, on your end right, does not mean I or others should, en extremis, adopt that arc as proper for our society.

EUGENE HETZEL

The CIA not being angels can be true with him also being full of it

Brendan A. MacWade

Seriously. And wasn't he born in England? That is not the voice I expected.

Jessica S

Awesome interview. These comments are messing with my head, though. I know I’ll be written off as one of “those people”, but for real the shit commenters feel like they swooped in, as if this were a negative episode about AIPAC or the Saudi royals, lol. And passionate analysis of speech patterns to determine credibility - WTF is going on?

Jessica S

100% on the deboonking - I can’t read it without hearing Liz’ lovely pronunciation :)

Jessica S

The fact that a place called Boys Town can exist, basically within a bubble, shows how much contempt is held for the common folk by the people tasked with creating and upholding laws that are ostensibly created to prevent such hellish places. I read a general theory of how the purpose of any organization shape the people who maintain it and by extension the people it serves. It was speaking specifically about the educational system but can be applied beyond: that is that while it professes to nurture confidence and initiative, in reality it produces a system that employs people to reinforce and replication the current conditions that will support these corrupt systems and produce citizens who sole purpose is to be the necessary cogs that perpetuate the system. Their argument being the system produces the “bad apples”, not that “bad apples” are bound to occur every once in awhile. Therefore, to quote the overused phrase, Boys Town (or Epstein et al) is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Jessica S

Re: Larry King - so true and unfortunate. There was someone I was listening to the other day on a totally unrelated podcast genre with the name Jeffrey Epstein. Time for a pseudonym.

Jessica S

It’s sickening to hear what these kids endure. Having kids now makes it a visceral experience; being immersed in and witness to the innocence that was ripped from them makes it, at times, unbearable to take in. But yeah, the victims’ reality demands to be known. Fucking monsters, the perpetrators and also the uniquely evil people who actually work to identify which of these degenerates, when caught, could be useful “talent”, as if they’re looking for the next American Idol instead of getting one less predator off the street. I felt sick when he talked about that part. I have to wonder how many sickos this system activates by simply needing that role to exist.

Jessica S

From personal experience?

caroline

first they come for the hard r

Jessica S

That’s messed up. Satanic panic is no fake-out, and ironically peddled by religious zealots that are filled with their own legit pedophile demons. It certainly has become useful as a generic smear serving people who are doing things unrelated to that nonsense. Which is like victimizing those caught up in it all over again.

Jesse

Maybe you're just stupid

Brendan Garcia

Yea I’d like to hear what these people analyzing this poor old man’s speech patterns make of Felix Biederman’s.

Jessica S

CTH’s “silence” re: VT vs nothing to be silent about, and the veracity therein, is in a separate category. It’s not a matter of degrees under the same heading, there’s no equivocation to Epstein and the rest, no whataboutism, not as in “their’s is worse” but that they can’t be combined. Those guys literally industrialized abuse, put it on a production line like a manufacturing plant. It’s a different universe not in size but in, like, physical makeup. (Lol, I’m not a astro-physicist, you get the point.) And that needs to be read as “it deserves its own category”, not translated to “and that is why you should STFU.” Although some of these peeps might say elsewhere STFU and it’s undeserved. Personally, I don’t know enough to opine.

Jessica S

Oh right, forgot to take that. thanks for the reminder.

Mad Larkin

yeah because conspiracies have never existed right?

Logan

Lmao

David Andrews

Why is that difficult to believe?

Ricky

Problem?

Ricky

The average Chapo subredditor thinks all guests should sound like Mr Feeny or the librarian guy from Buffy

Nobody

Maybe when you make absurd accusations you should provide evidence?

Starry Pr1nce

These ppl like eugene and brendan are libs who can't recognize that the security state has a material and existential interest in maintaining the capital relationship. Like you really think the cia has your interests at heart as a citizen? Gotta be bad faith comments by incurious lib, not everything is partisan like qanon, the material analysis is not partisan.

Starry Pr1nce

Qanon is partisan garbage meant to muddy the water. Trump didn't meaningfully challenge the intelligence community at all. Go listen to American Exception.

The Etymology of Nonsense

Whoa really? Q anon is partisan? The reality TV host who hung with epstein didn't challenge anything? Thanks for the enlightenment princess! I really got lost there for a minute.

etienne

wikipedia is totally solid if you want the version of events as described by guys who spend 12 hours a day editing and have no jobs and live in Arlington VA for some reason

TzzZach

Overall pretty good, will mentioning that McMartin is a hoax is not true. Check out Ed Opperman episode on YouTube about the tunnels under the school that they found later. Also just obvious stuff about the amount of kids with STIs

Reebs

People are shitting their pants over the wiki part but it's not hard to imagine half a dozen dorks constantly editing the page to make it sound like a hoax just because they're misguided, like that's easily the most believable part of this episode regardless of how you feel about Wikipedia as an institution

William Beamish

bring a bigfoot expert on plz, I want to learn about the sheep and smoke bigfoots

Gengeros

There is a subjection of p e d o s and zoophiles who are classified as sadists, people who get off to torture, dismemberment, and killing of animals and children. They are so bad that even other p e d o and zoophile sites on the dark web put explicit conditions on their onion websites that they do not support sadists.

David Chen

Wow, this one was incredibly boring and tedious

I am become reply guy

Why is it so hard to find anything about this story? Is there reading list out there?

Nat Cohen

the guest wrote a book about it, I'm gonna start there

Tomaz

The wikipedia on the incident detailing it as a hoax might be a good insight into the prevailing orthodoxy on this one

Colin Clark

Yeah I think they gave Khive the contract to do sockpuppet shitlib comments on this episode bc most of them don't even seem to be subscribers. Amazing episode

William

TCE has a decent point I'm not sure they were trying to make - Wikipedia depends on other people doing the basic research. As far as I know no one is doing primary research for Wikipedia. Whatever sources are deemed credible end up censoring the others in the same way that Google adjusting it's search algorithm determines how many people see your website

Demented Avenger

Opperman sometimes does good work, but he has a lot of law enforcement sources and defers to them. These guys don't want to admit they're wrong about anything, much like many of us. The "tunnels" under the school was just part of a foundation of a building that had been there before the preschool was built. McMartin was a hoax.

SF

Get over it. Just stop listening to the podcast if you're so mad about it.

SF

Completely agree with Evan here. People's reaction to that episode was baffling.

SF

Great guest, great ep. And as ever, no Chapo interview episode is complete without a bunch of listeners getting mad about it in the Patreon comments.

Woke Batou

Chapo doing god's work

ClownBabee24

Ive been waiting for Trueanon to cover this, but i guess chapo will do lol

A Loon

Wondering if why this guy was ground down so hard vs people investigating Epstein is the general lack of state capacity now. Everything is the same only worse, even for the people running the official pedophile rings.

TCE

He wrote a book for an independent publisher in the late 2000s - when the internet was smaller, sexual assault / child abuse wasn't as prominent in the media, and the events he was talking about were decades in the past and forgotten about - while the Epstein investigators, especially Julie Brown, wrote for a major newspaper that backed her, while Epstein was still at large (making it "news" instead of "history or w/e), in the middle of the #MeToo movement meaning there was a lot of media interest in stories like this, and he had very public ties to people like Trump and Clinton, which the general public was more interested in. Pictures helped too. People love pictures. There were dozens of pictures of Epstein standing next to famous people at parties, including the then President. Meanwhile you have to get to like the 10th page of Google to even find what Lawrence King looks like, never mind photos of him with someone like a President

Matthew Black

I think he is sincere and doing his research but it is very hard to keep track of what is an established fact what is hearsay and what is a wild assertion. I find him at least somewhat convincing and I don’t doubt his conviction for a nanosecond but when your position commits you to saying that for example the Wikipedia editing on your topic is systematically biased it is good to address your listener’s probable skepticism directly. I found Stephen Donzinger to be a good example of somebody who is out on a limb but _very_ convincing in that not only is there a straightforward explanation for why he’s right (corporations are greedy, seek to avoid responsibility, and exercise power in dirty ways) but he also seems to have anticipated and addressed of lot of potential objections. Also he has a small coterie of haters who are totally insane.

Joe Bowden

God there are some very sensitive chapo listeners. I haven't even listened but why are you so closed minded. You don't have to believe and fully agree with everything endorsed by this podcast to enjoy it

SF

lol why do guys like you even listen to this show

Hector Jaime

First google search result is Politifact which immediately rates the scandal “false”. So, what is up with the Poynter Institute? What’s the dirt on them?

Hector Jaime

That the #metoo movement didn’t help Epstein survivors isn’t mind boggling given that Bill Clinton was in the picture.

Hector Jaime

Did you listen to the episode? You know who will end up having more say on raising a child than “some teacher” if they don’t keep secrets from their shitty abusive parents? A pedophile ring when one of their pimps finds them drug-addled on the streets after they run away from home.

Hector Jaime

I think Matt Christman answers this in the next episode. “The Yankees and the Red Sox play in the same league, but they’re not in the same league. 27 rings!!!

Metra Eccentric

Nah. Not EVERYONE is being blackmailed, but certainly a lot. Sanders and AOC are pretty much what they seem, which is liberal-left or left-liberal politicians. I think a lot about Pelosi's daughter tweeting about "some of our faves" being implicated in Epstein. Pelosi has mob connections, Wexner connections, and likely has blackmail on huge portions of the House, not necessarily sexual blackmail (80% probably commit a slew of financial crimes every year). But despite being a doddering out of touch politician, word is that she runs the house extremely vindictively. At a certain point I think the Squad (including Sanders here) has accepted that they're trying to reform a liberal system with left policies rather than a left attack at the system. They accept the role they have, and part of their somewhat legitimate strategy is to keep primarying Dems. It's just hard to look at the totality of evil at the highest levels of government and then hope that a reformist/liberal strategy of left policy is going to be able to overcome that. The point of the blackmail is that the erstwhile politicians that might also be moved to left policy can be kept in check through blackmail. So the Squad is isolated even though their policies are often good politics.

Munir hakim

The video doesn’t work :(