MAGA Demands More Epstein Transparency, and Epstein's Potential Intel Ties, with Ben Shapiro and Michael Shellenberger | Ep. 1107

21:06Right. And, and one of the other people that you just mentioned is one of the others, right? Nadia, whatever her name is. So, you know, that, that is sort of the, the big open question that everyone was asking was, okay, is that, who's that? Like Stephen Hawking, right? Cause he was one of the names who was mentioned or Alan Dershowitz was one of the names who was mentioned. Lex Wexner. Or Hood Barack or Lex Wexner, right? Like all these were. And again, here's my thing. I was open to every single one of these theories until the DOJ and FBI put out a memo saying we have looked at all the evidence and here is what we have come to.

21:33Right.

21:33Michael Shellenberger:You were persuaded by that memo without without more. I mean, I wasn't persuaded. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not persuaded by a memo. What I'm persuaded by is the fact that I have not seen evidence that they have seen. And so I'm not prepared to call Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, President Trump, J.D. Vance and Pam Bondi. It's not the same, though. All liars. Their two page memo says no credible evidence, no credible evidence. Well, somebody's made a judgment call there and there's all you could drive a truck through that exception. Well, I mean, if the idea is that they're supposed to release non-credible evidence, then I'd love to see them, you know, hand it over to a special investigator to a court.

22:04OK, fine. So then back to my scenario. Do a special investigator. I don't care. I mean, I think that'd be good. I mean, that's fine. I think that would be fine. But all of that is fine. But the jump from there to the most extreme version of the theory. I don't find like if you're willing to say again, OK, that's fine. I'll give you that speculation. But if you don't want to give you that, I like to operate in the world.

22:26Michael Shellenberger:Let's spend more time in my scenario, which is like one a, you know, between one and two, you know, of like they're not covering up a sex ring, but there's enough in there that they find troubling that sees, let's say, major Trump donors that they don't want to embarrass and that have been accused in some way, shape or form. I mean, even Alan Dershowitz pointed out to me on episode 10 of this show that many others had been accused. And he listed some of them. He mentioned Ehud Barack. He mentioned Bill Richardson. He mentioned a couple of others saying not everybody. Right. Everybody. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

22:59Michael Shellenberger:He said not everybody who's been accused has come forward like I have to say absolutely not. This is bullshit. Virginia Dufresne is lying. And I'll show you all my records to prove that it's a lie. And Alan said on this show, without specifying which of those names he was referring to, some of those men likely have something to hide. And that's why they haven't been so forthcoming. So those two things. All right. So just take those two things, Alan saying that, and he, he was Epstein's lawyer. Um, and then this, the government admitting that he, he worked to obtain minor girls for the sexual gratification of others.

23:33Michael Shellenberger:And we don't know who those others are because the government hasn't told us. So those are questions that we'd like answered. You know, if I got Pam Bondi on this show or at oppressor, which I would travel to, to ask her questions. I want that answered. Her memo doesn't do it for me. I agree. You know, not non-credible evidence is not good enough, not good enough by far. Well, I mean, again, I think that in the world of the DOJ and the FBI, for what they are, law enforcement agencies, it may not be good enough for public consumption, but that's sort of what we've been saying from the outset, right, is that more transparency with regard to the public is necessary.

24:02That's not quite the same thing as do the DOJ and the FBI have the legal grounds to prosecute or release information that you want prosecuted or released? That's kind of a different question.

24:12Michael Shellenberger:Yeah, I don't I don't know that they do have the grounds to prosecute. I don't either. But I mean, I would suggest that they probably do not, given that they are not doing the prosecution. That's a different question from informational release or answering questions on a straight up basis. Again, that's the reason why Dan is pissed is because he's saying release the information that you can release or at least answer the questions that you can answer. Right. I think that's true, because I do believe Dan is convinced there is no case to be brought and there's not some huge scandal behind the scenes.

24:39Michael Shellenberger:And I think, yes, one of his frustrations is why doesn't Pam just as the spokesperson, she's his boss, effectively, go in front of the microphones and just answer all the questions so that you and I and Tucker and everybody else can be as convinced as he apparently now is that there's no there there. I mean, the problem for the administration is, yes, those two top officials at FBI and many in the president's orbit. You know, I, this is another thing I spent the weekend looking at not so much Trump, but JD Vance, Don jr. Alina Habba, many of the president's surrogates have been stirring the Epstein pot now for years, for years.

25:17And so, you know, we are owed more

25:20Michael Shellenberger:than a two page memo being like, there's no, they're there now move on. I mean, I, again, I totally agree with you on this. And I still think that there's a gap between that, which I agree with. And the most extreme form of the theory is true. And now it's a giant Trump administration coverup, but I won't actually name the members of the Trump administration because I'm a coward. Okay. Now let's talk about whether, oh wait, no, I wanted to play this Julie Brown soundbite first, sorry, before we move on from like what's being withheld, what's potentially out there that they're not telling us, which led to the big dispute between Bondi and Bongino and all that.

25:54Michael Shellenberger:Julie K. Brown is probably the reporter who's done most on Epstein. She's annoying because she hates conservatives in my viewpoint. And I really can't stand people who report on big, important stories like this and make and draw those lines. It's just bullshit. You know, when you're talking about the protection of minors, like I asked her to come on the show in 2020. I asked her for help trying to figure out what's happening with Epstein. Nope. Wouldn't do it. I'd love to put her on now. She won't do it. She goes on the lefty podcasts. Um, I think she was on with Jim Acosta. She went on with Dan Libetard, right?

26:30Michael Shellenberger:But she's not going to do a conservative podcast because I guess in her mind, we, you only give a shit about little kids. If you're a liberal, even though her side of the aisle has taken huge dumps on this story since the day it was broken that no one had time for Julie K Brown and her reporting other than people on the right, as you know, Ben. But having said all that, she's annoying, but I think she's honest. And she did go on this LeBitard show on Saturday and spoke to what's likely still out there that could be releasable on Epstein. Here's part of it in SOT 6. Is it six or seven? I'll let my, I'll let Debbie figure that out.

27:08Michael Shellenberger:Seven. Are there more Epstein files? oh my god yes there's tons of files tons tons of files there's there's when she said she had the file sitting on her desk i was just stunned i'm like that those files wouldn't even fit in her office i mean it's it's remember they did an investigation way back in 2005 all that stuff had to land at the Justice Department because, you know, they did a subsequent investigation in New York. So they had to look at everything. And remember, the Department of Homeland Security has records because he went in and out of all those airports with his private planes. They kept track of who was on his planes.

27:57They haven't released that. The FAA has flight records that haven't been released. There's been tons of material in different government departments that even hasn't been released. And like I said, you can look on the vault. There's like, I don't know, 20, 30 parts, Jeffrey Epstein, part one, two, three, four. If you click on all those things, you'll see, you know, hundreds of pages. So there's probably tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, you know, so. That are still missing, that are ostensibly at this point being covered up. Right. Because they're all redacted.

28:38Michael Shellenberger:It's the FBI's the vault. So that's her saying there's more. There's a lot more, Ben. And then I'll just give you one more from her. She also has serious doubts about the cell block tape showing not Jeffrey Epstein's cell, but the area outside of his cell, which she does not credit in any way, shape or form. She completely rejects that as evidence he did not kill himself or that he did kill himself. Sorry, I always screw that up. Here she is in, let's see, SOT 6, I think it is. Yeah, they got it. I covered prisons for about four years, and I can't even tell you some of the stuff that people get away with in those prisons.

29:23They know exactly where the cameras are. They know exactly how to commit crimes where nobody knows how to do them. It is a science to them. I mean, these prisons are full of corrupt people, and it's just not a far-fetched idea and not a conspiracy theory to think that something else may have happened. Now, I'm not saying he was murdered. I just don't think we know the full story.

29:51Michael Shellenberger:Okay, your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, that last quote's about as vague as it's possible to be. I mean, there have been multiple autopsy. She did go on. She talked about how you can't see Jeffrey Epstein's tell. You don't know whether another prisoner went in there. That's fine. But when she says she's not saying that he that he that he didn't commit suicide, but but it's it's possible. What what I want to know is then who killed him. So, again, I'm I'm only operating off the evidence that I can see in front of my eyes. We can all speculate it's the evidence that we can't see. But now we're doing kind of God of the gap sort of stuff.

30:19OK, well, I mean, I don't have evidence of what the other two cameras that were broken or allegedly broken saw. And I don't have that and you don't have that. Nobody has that, right? It doesn't exist, supposedly. And as far as this camera, all I can see is what's on the footage that we were presented. So I can speculate, but my speculation is not worth very much. And I don't think hers is on that particular score either, considering we now have multiple autopsies. So you can either believe it or you can't believe it. But if you're going to provide an alternative theory.

30:45Michael Shellenberger:One is the medical examiner who said this is a suicide. And one is Dr. Bodden who said, no, it doesn't look like one. Well, Dr. Bodden, I don't credit for very much. I mean, his prior history with autopsies is rather checkered. And when it comes to the DOJ also did an autopsy and an investigation and found that he committed suicide as well. And again, I've talked to, without revealing sources, the people in the federal government who I've talked to, who are familiar with the details of this case, have said unanimously that it was a suicide. Now, again, you can say that they're all lying. I totally disagree.

31:14Michael Shellenberger:Totally disagree. I have my own sources high up in the law enforcement, let's say. I'll just go that far, who say not only do we believe he was an agent, but we don't believe he killed himself. I mean, that's fine. And then they should come out and they should say that. And then they should say who's covering that up. Okay, but this is what they can't. I mean, there are a lot of people who say they can't, right? They can't because let's look at what the administration is saying right now. They don't want to be the one to cross Trump. But my position is, like, show us all the evidence so we can come to our own conclusions.

31:44I have names of the people. So I agree with you. That's fine. But in the absence of that, I have the names of the people who are making the claim that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself and that the most gross and sort of extreme of the conspiracy theories or theories, just don't even call them conspiracy theories, the most sort of extreme version of the theory is not true. I have names of the people who are claiming that. They are all in the administration. And this is my point. If other people want to make those claims that are counter to that, then they should provide evidence or at least put their names on it so we can question them about that as well.

32:16Because otherwise, we're just in the realm of pure speculation. And frankly, I just don't find that useful. I would love more useful information. This is why I'm angry at Pam Bondi. I think there should be all the useful information possible. But the same thing holds true for people who are making claims on the other side. Otherwise, I can claim that he was working for a cadre of space aliens who are blackmailing high profile Americans in order to protect from a future invasion. And there's just about as much evidence for that as many of the claims that are being made on the other side. All right.

32:39Let's talk about that. That is made requires evidence. Any claim that's being made requires actual evidence. And at the very least, in the absence of evidence, the credible names of the people that I can either trust or not trust, ranging from, again, the president of the United States and vice president to the head of the FBI, the AG and the deputy head of the FBI.

32:56Michael Shellenberger:Well, I think it's very hard to say those people need to come out and put their names on these claims when they're working for an administration, this one and the one before, that didn't want that to come out. You're asking somebody to countermand the people they work for. How am I supposed to falsify their claims? Now we're working in the realm of the unfalsified. You're not, but you're—look, Ben, you can't come to me and say, everybody I know says he killed himself. And then I respond saying, I actually have my own sources who say he didn't. And then you say, well, your sources are not valid because they won't put their names on it.

33:27Michael Shellenberger:OK, well, let's go down the list and then we'll talk about why they might be saying that. My sources are the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, Cash Patel, the head of the FBI, Dan Bongino, the deputy head of the FBI and Pam Bondi, the attorney general. And those aren't just my sources. They're everybody sources because they publicly came out and said this. OK, Trump hasn't specifically weighed in on that specific aspect of it. We've all seen the limited things that Trump has said and tweeted on this. And J.D. Vance was calling for transparency and suggesting otherwise prior to taking office.

33:54Michael Shellenberger:He hasn't commented on this so far, so he's not one of his sources. You've got Cash, you've got Dan, and you've got Pam, and we've already discussed that memo in full detail. I'm talking about people behind the scenes who, prior to this, to Trump taking office, I'm not going to get too specific, but trust me, I have high-level sources who have said they don't believe any of that, any of that. And I'm not going to out them for purposes of convincing you, but you're telling me name them. No, I'm not going to. I don't have authorization. No, I'm not. I'm not saying no. And then you say, well, I dismiss all of it because you won't name them.

34:24Hold on, Megan. I'm not saying you should name them. I'm saying they should name themselves because otherwise they are being complicit in one of the greatest coverups in the history of the American Republic. That's easy for you to say, Ben.

34:32Michael Shellenberger:That's very easy for you to say. Why is that easy for me to say? Why? Because you'll have your job and you'll have your millions no matter what they do. Megan, give me a break. If somebody came out today and they were a whistleblower on the greatest scandal in the history of the American Republic, they would make more money tomorrow than in their entire life working for the FBI. That's ridiculous. There are reasons not to cross the people who are in charge. And that's all I'm going to say. And look, this is me not having drawn a conclusion. I don't know what the truth is. I've been reporting in a way, I mean, I see you've taken a side that you've chosen to believe the story that's being offered.

35:04Michael Shellenberger:And that's fine. A lot of people have. I'm not there yet. I don't actively say that there's a pedophile ring. I don't say any of that. I'm just following the facts. and we're not at the place where I can draw that conclusion. Well, no, I can draw the conclusion that the evidence that I'm seeing and the people who are speaking about it lead me toward this particular conclusion. And if counter evidence is presented that is not speculative, then I will change my conclusion because that's what I've done on this case. Until this memo came out, I was weighing toward the more extreme version of this theory.

35:32And you can look back at my tweets and what I've said about it. And then this came out and now my perspective has changed. When the facts change and the people who are speaking change. I guess I'm just not that trusting of government.

35:41Michael Shellenberger:There are other facts. They said not credible. There's no credible evidence. They talked about no, what was the qualifier they use on the client list? Something like no persuasive client list. Megan, I'm not that trusting of government either, unless I know the exact people in government we're talking about. Okay. Government is not just a giant. All I've said so far is I trust Dan. But do you believe that Dan has all the information? You believe Dan Bongino has everything? You believe he's seen all the SDNY had? You believe, what about Julie Brown's claims about the number of data, like the documents, the Department of Homeland Security flight logs on who was on his planes.

36:16Michael Shellenberger:Do you believe he has all that in his purview? And he said, I've reviewed it all and none of it's persuasive. I don't believe that. I believe Dan's reviewed what's been made available to him by the preexisting FBI. And in there, he hasn't come up with anything that proves Epstein was murdered or found some child pedophile ring that's been covered up. That's fine. I'll accept his word and effectively cash his word and Pam's word to some extent on that. But it doesn't explain all these other questions that existed prior to them taking office that have been raised by people like Julie Brown, that have been raised by people like Pam Bondi before today.

36:49Michael Shellenberger:And I'm not satisfied. Again, I'm unsatisfied with the amount of information that we're getting. But if the question is, is there information being hidden now from Dan or Cash or Pam, then I would like evidence that there's information hidden from them in the same way that I want them to be more transparent. Why is asking for evidence from all sides suddenly - Well, are you not persuaded by this? That soundbite from Julie K. Brown, for example, like that, that DHS would have more information that FBI just on their vault alone has tons and tons of redacted information that you could see that they may or may not be able to see.

37:20Michael Shellenberger:I don't know, but that there's lots of information still out there or, or the, she's, she's claiming that quote that the FBI does have all that information. Okay. So do you think she's lying? I mean, do you think that like the redactions are not available to the FBI? I think the redactions are available to the FBI. So what? You were making the claim a moment ago that they actually are not available to Pam or Dan. Well, that's my point. So why don't they put them out? So like, why wouldn't they come out and say, here are the documents that we have. We've redacted the following information. This is a child's name.

37:48Michael Shellenberger:This is a victim's name. Or where's the DHS account of who was on the Epstein plane? Where's the Alan Dershowitz account of those names that I gave you? And what role, if any, they played in this matter? None of that's been provided. I agree with you. They should be more transparent. Right, and we've taken away different conclusions. Right. Your conclusion is that they're covering something up. And my conclusion is that there's wild incompetence happening at the level of the attorney general. And that's the reason why Dan is upset. I don't think I don't think you're I think you're trusting the conclusions of that memo and a decision made by our administration to move past this far too much.

38:22Michael Shellenberger:I mean, I'm pro Trump. I'm a Trump supporter. But I think they've made a decision that they want to put this in the rear view. You think it's because there's absolutely no there there and you're crediting that claim. And I have doubts about whether that's true. I mean, that's fine. And again, I'm open to doubts about whether that's true. But I think that once you have the doubts about whether they are lying to you, that's a different thing. Is it incompetence or lying? I mean, that really is the question, is it not? You don't think even the Trump administration is capable of lying to the public because they think it's for the greater good?

38:51Michael Shellenberger:They think there's a solid reason to do it? I mean, I'm wondering what they are lying about and what the lies would be. So again, I think in your middle scenario, that's the most credible scenario. But you just answer they're capable of doing it if they think it's for the greater good? I think anybody is capable of lying if they think that it's for the greater good, of course. But I think that in order to answer the question of whether they are doing that, we would have to determine what greater good is being pursued and what the lie is. I think all of this is a little bit. That's why some of us are still asking questions.

39:15I mean, I'm not in the business of covering for

39:17Michael Shellenberger:any administration, Republican or not. Megan, not all the questions are the same. Asking a question about whether all the information has been released because there are figures who would be publicly humiliated because they were riding on Epstein's plane, but there's no evidence the person was raping a child is not quite the same thing as some of the more outstanding claims, which is that the administration is covering up full scale for a child sex operation. Right. Not all questions. That's fine. That's a debate. You need to have somebody else because no one on this set is claiming that. All right.

39:43Michael Shellenberger:Let's move on to point two, which is whether he's he was some sort of an agent. And that's a possible reason why he got a sweetheart plea deal and or why to this day people aren't that interested in digging deep under the Jeffrey Epstein story. So there's a lot of speculation about this. You mentioned Tucker. I'll just play what he said at Turning Point, and we can take it from there. What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house. You have all this contact with the foreign government. Were you working on behalf of Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of foreign government?

40:22Michael Shellenberger:And there's another one, Sat3, play that follow-up. And I think the truth for whatever it's worth, in case you're interested, is that the DOJ didn't release lots of incriminating sex videos with Epstein and his billionaire pals because they don't have them. They don't have them because when the original search warrant was served, 2007, I think, it was basically designed to protect Epstein. The search warrant was written in such a way to make sure that the feds never got their hands on the actually incriminating evidence. The real question is, why was he doing this? On whose behalf? And where did the money come from?

40:55And I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of Intel services, probably not American. And no one has ever gotten to the bottom of that because no one has ever tried. It's extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one's allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that's naughty. There is nothing wrong with saying that. There's nothing anti-Semitic about saying that. There's nothing even anti-Israel about saying that. I've spent my entire life pretty much in Washington where I knew and loved a number of people, including one very close person who worked at CIA.

41:34That has never prohibited me from saying, I think the CIA has done some horrible things. That doesn't make me a disloyal American. It doesn't make me anti-American in any sense.

41:44Michael Shellenberger:Okay, so many people believe that. You could hear the cheers in the audience when he said he believes Epstein was working for Mossad. I, on my Twitter feed today, laid out some of the evidence why people believe he was an agent. I don't know whether that's true. And if he was an agent, I don't know whether he was ours or he was Mossad or he was something else. But I know there's enough to sniff around on whether he was an agent. The most persuasive piece of which is where to get all that money. I mean, nobody's been able to answer the question in following the money of how Jeffrey Epstein earned all that dough.

42:18Michael Shellenberger:Why is it problematic for Tucker to say, I think he was an agent, I think he worked for Mossad? I mean, Tucker can say it whatever he wants. It's free country. I think that if he's saying that he worked for Mossad and that no one has looked into it and that he was running a child sex ring on behalf of Mossad and the evidence should exist for that to happen, then just say the administration is covering for Mossad. I mean, if you're that certain of it and you believe that that's the case, then presumably the case that you're making is that the administration is now working for Mossad and covering up a child sex ring.

42:48So he can say that, that's fine. But I think he should then have the balls to say what Dave Smith said, which is that the Trump administration was covering for a child sex ring that was a blackmail scheme run by Mossad. If you want to actually say that, then say it. Okay, and then provide evidence to that effect. Because the only evidence that I've seen related to Jeffrey Epstein and Mossad, so far as I am aware, is a secondhand quote from Vicky Ward at the Daily Beast, who I do not consider a verifiable source about Alex Azar, the original prospect. She was on Epstein from the beginning, though.

43:18I mean, her being on Epstein from the beginning doesn't mean she's a credible source. She ran for the Daily Beast and she was arguing about a person who said secondhand. Yes. So what? Bannifair is a shitty publication. Okay. I'm just saying, like, that's fine.

43:30Michael Shellenberger:You can dislike Vicki Ward. I don't have, I'm not running defense for her. No, but the point is that the Alex Azar quote that she is making is not even from Alex Azar. It is a secondhand anonymous quote. Thank you. Sorry. Alex Acosta, the prosecutor who ended up being labor secretary. Alex Acosta, that quote was not from Alex Acosta. It was from a secondhand source. And that said that he was told to shut down the investigation because he was working for a foreign intelligence agency. Right. That was that was that that quote. And then let me just give it exactly. I'll just give it exactly because we need to be precise.

44:01Michael Shellenberger:So he she reported in Vanity Fair or she reported for Vanity Fair, like a definitive Epstein article. And then she updated it in the Daily Beast in twenty nineteen when I think it was after Epstein died or could have been when Trump nominated him. It was probably when they did the investigation into the Acosta party, right? So she updated. He was already in office, Acosta, at this point. So she reported that—stand by. I tweeted out. Now I'm looking to find it. Okay. That she had spoken with a member of the Trump transition team when Trump was taking office who told her that when they talked to Acosta about possibly becoming the labor secretary, they said, is this Epstein thing, this settlement that you oversaw, going to be a problem for us, you know, because you're the guy who basically gave him that slap on the wrist and that Acosta had told the Trump transition team that Epstein, quote, belonged to intelligence, end quote, and that he'd been ordered to, quote, leave it alone, end quote, and that he'd, quote, been told to back off.

45:03Michael Shellenberger:He later was on the record, Ben, as saying main justice was the one who told him to settle that case and that they had approved of the Epstein plea deal. So that's him. We know that main justice did tell Alex Acosta to settle that case. What we don't know is whether he in fact said all that stuff to the Trump transition team. Well, he was asked about this at a hearing, I believe, a congressional hearing. And he said that there are a lot of rumors out there and you shouldn't believe everything you read, I believe, was something close to the direct quote from the congressional. We have it. We have it.

45:34Right, Deb?

45:35Michael Shellenberger:Do we have? Sorry, stand by. We have it on camera. It was first asked, it was a press conference on July 10th, 2019. This is the first we know of that he was asked about Vicki Ward's report. Watch. Secretary, were you ever made aware at any point in your handling of this case that Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset of some sort? So, so, so, so there has, there has been reporting to that effect. And, and let me say, there's been reporting to a lot of effects in this case, not just now, but over the years. And again, I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact. This was a case that was brought by our office.

46:22It was brought based on the facts. And I look at that reporting and others, I can't address it directly because of our our guidelines. But I can tell you that that a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.

46:39Michael Shellenberger:I'm sorry, but that's a non-denial denial. And he never came out to deny it in any other way after Vicky Ward reported it. I'm not persuaded by his denial at all. He did later tell the Office of Professional Responsibility within the DOJ when he was asked during an investigation that he did not say that to the Trump transition team. So later, outside of the public setting, he reportedly did deny Vicki Ward's reporting. But I have questions about that, too, because that's the Department of Justice investigating itself. And under this theory that Epstein was compromised and the DOJ knew it, the DOJ would have been the one to tell Alex Acosta to drop it.

47:17Michael Shellenberger:And then the DOJ would have been sitting down with Alex Acosta saying, did we tell you to drop it or didn't we? So I can see why people have doubts about that later testimony. Again, I don't know what's true, but that's a very weaselly answer. He just gave it that presser. I mean, that's fair to say it's a weaselly answer. It's also fair to say that the original quote was never confirmed by anybody on the record, correct? So I mean, like at the very best, that one is it's dicey. I mean, like I think the best you can say about that particular claim is dicey, both for and against. Right. And I see why you can take away either conclusion.

47:45Yes. I mean, is that fair?

47:47Michael Shellenberger:Yes. Yes. Look, there's also the matter, like I said, of the money And there's also the question of - The money's super suspicious, but I think that's really more about Leon Black signing him a check for like$160 million for unspecified financial services, right? And then Leon Black - Everybody wants to know why. Right, exactly. But then let me just make this other point, then I'll give you the floor. Then I'll give you the floor. You know, there's this former Israeli intel guy named Ari Ben-Minashe. Well, he claims he is. The Israelis say he's not, correct? Well, that was litigated. And actually, if you look up this guy's Wikipedia, it's actually quite interesting.

48:17Michael Shellenberger:It's wild. Um, but he's a wild character. It appears he, it appears he was, it appears he was. And there was this whole long trial in which they tried to disown him and it failed. They failed. So I think he is warmer in Israeli Intel. And this guy has come out to say Epstein was a Mossad agent and that he, this Ari Ben-Minashe was the agent who handled him. Um, others, including Danny Yatom, who ran the Mossad for three years, say that's not true. And this morning we had Naftali Bennett come out publicly as a former Israeli prime minister saying, I was with the Mossad. I mean, the Mossad reported directly to me.

48:58Michael Shellenberger:And I say to you with 100 % certainty, the accusation that Epstein worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. Well, I mean, I actually followed up with Bennett to ask for more clarification on that. And what he actually told me is that Mossad has not run an operative against the United States or in the United States since Jonathan Pollard was convicted in 1987, because Israel really wants to steer clear of pissing off the United States. So there's some speculation about whether Epstein wasn't an agent, but was like an asset. Right. So asset is a really weird word in terms of intel, because he was also accused of being an asset for both the Saudis and MI6, right?

49:36So there are multiple intelligence agencies for whom he could theoretically have been considered an asset. Asset is not necessarily, by the legal definition, somebody who is working for a foreign government. It could be somebody who is giving information to a foreign government under a wide variety of auspices. And so that's a lot bigger. What we do know from the public statements is that he was not working for an American intelligence agency. The Israelis say he wasn't working for them. Now, one of the weird sort of unfalsifiable aspects of this case is that if Mossad says somebody's not working for them, are they or are they not?

50:11Right, so usually - Well, same with our intel. Well, right, exactly. And so this is kind of my problem with this case and why I keep begging for more, same as you, more transparency, more evidence. I tend to believe that the DOJ and FBI are correct in their evidentiary presentation. You tend to not. But I think that we're coming to the same conclusion, which is release everything you got because I don't think anybody should be afraid of the answers. I just think there's a way in which it's not some,

50:33Michael Shellenberger:they're not covering up for pedophiles. That Jeffrey Epstein was the disgusting dirtbag that was referenced in that settlement agreement I read to you part of, and that the DOJ at the time started sniffing around him and then quickly was pulled off of the Epstein matter. And I believe Acosta might've been told by DOJ, no, stop, don't go there. There's a reason. I mean, there was a, there, by the way, not for nothing, but I did find this interesting in my, in my research. The local, the Palm Beach County state attorney at the time, Barry Krishna wrote the assistant U.S. attorney at the time when it was settled about the proposed agreement.

51:10Michael Shellenberger:Glad we could get this worked out for reasons I won't put in writing. After this is resolved, I would love to buy a cup at Starbucks and have a conversation. There's just there's so much smoke around it. And I think there's there there could be a piece in what Tucker said that's true, that they didn't investigate as hard as they wanted to or could have. So they got pulled off of it. And from that point forward, they never got all the evidence that we would like to see. Anyway, my mind is wide open. Ben Shapiro, I love debating the facts with you. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, man. All right.

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54:00Michael Shellenberger:Here for more on the Epstein discussion is journalist Michael Schellenberger. He feels strongly, as strongly as we do, about the importance of the Epstein case. Writing this weekend, quote, This failure to follow through seriously undermines Trump's explicit commitments to reform and shine light on the deep state. Michael is the founder of Public News on Substack and CBR chair of politics, censorship and free speech at the University of Austin. Michael, welcome back. Great to see you. So I understand, you know, Ben's position, which is I trust these guys and without direct evidence to contradict what they're saying, I'm choosing to move on.

54:39Michael Shellenberger:That's exactly what Trump would like everyone to say. And I'm a Trump supporter, but I'm just not there yet because my only goal is to follow the facts. That's it. I'm not trying to undermine Trump. I'm not trying to help Trump. I'm trying to just follow facts. I feel like you're in my camp. So where do you stand on all of this? Yeah, well, first of all, it's great to be back with you, Megan. And I'm really glad that you're continuing to cover this. In fact, we just published a story really praising MAGA for standing up to Trump on this and continuing to push for answers. Of course, the media has said for over a decade that MAGA is a cult of personality.

55:14I think it's proven that it's not with this. And I think it thus marks a pretty important watershed moment in the Trump administration. I think it's a big blow to the legitimacy of the Trump administration and legitimacy is really essential for governing. So I think it's a big ongoing problem. But, you know, look, I'm with you. I mean, look, part of the problem is that you have the director of the FBI, the deputy director of the FBI, the attorney general, all having made very strong claims. You know, I mean, we have Pam Bondi said there was a truckload of evidence, thousands of pages of documents.

55:47You had deputy director Dan Bongino say that he was told that Epstein was an intelligence asset for a country in the Middle East. Director Cash Patel said that the FBI wasn't releasing the client list because of who's on that list. And then I think kind of tragically, you know, Cash Patel has sort of positioned himself as a really loyal public servant for the president. But Dan Bongino was a really trusted influencer, podcaster. You know, he went on Fox and Friends and said that they were going to release the raw, unedited video of Epstein's cell. They did not do that. That is not what happened.

56:26And so they still have a lot of explaining to do. I don't think the cover up is worse than the crime, but clearly there's a cover up that's ongoing. And I just don't see how the Trump administration moves on without transparency. see.

56:40Michael Shellenberger:The why do you say they did not do that about the prison cell video? I mean, I know there's a missing minute before midnight and now there's a report out that the video itself has been, I don't want to say manipulated, which makes it sound nefarious, but that changes were made to it prior to it being released. Dan admitted on Fox and Friends that they were cleaning it up so that it was more easy to see. And that minute before midnight, I think his defenders would say, what kind of a ninja could get in and out of the cell in a minute and commit this murder. Like, if you believe that, you know, I got a spaceship I want to sell you.

57:13Michael Shellenberger:But I think there are people like Julie K. Brown who say, like her response to all that was you're debating what happened at a Starbucks in Austin instead of talking about JFK getting shot in the head in Dallas. her point has been that video doesn't show Epstein's cell. It shows an, a common area down the hallway from Epstein cell. And we have no idea what prisoners may have had access to Epstein, what deal may have been struck with them, how easy it was for them to get to him. Even in his cell alone, if you want to argue there was that just allowing him to commit suicide was what was done as opposed to actual murder.

57:54Michael Shellenberger:He was given two mattresses when most people had one. He was given extra linens when that was forbidden, you know, a couple of weeks after he had tried to kill himself. So there's a couple of theories abounding. But I'm curious what you why you think Dan didn't live up to the promise on the on the tape. Well, I mean, he said both he and Patel said that that we would be getting the original prison video. I mean, the exact quote from Patel was we're going to give the original Epstein prison video. So you don't think there are any shenanigans. You know, I was joking with a friend of mine. I was like, one of the most endearing quality of Republicans is that they're such bad liars.

58:28You know, the Democrats are really good at it. But this is clear misinformation. You know, you can see in the metadata that they were that the video was assembled from two source clips, saved multiple times, exported and uploaded to the Department of Justice's website. This was you can see this both in the Wired report, Also, CoffeeZilla, a really underrated podcaster, did a really incredible investigation of it. Moreover, it doesn't, as you said, it doesn't actually dispel suspicions in any way. It doesn't, it contradicts the previous assertion that all the inmates were in their cells by 8 p.m.

59:03Now, that was the previous assertion. The new DOJ memo says Epstein was out of his cell around 1040 p.m., which is consistent with a distant orange image in the footage that appears near the staircase to the cell block. But what's still unexplained is why the prison guards failed to complete their mandatory rounds and inmate counts that night, and then why they falsified their statements and records by claiming they had. So there's just too many. I mean, the other thing was that we also saw this huge escalation. In 2019, the DOJ said that the Epstein indictment referred to dozens of victims. Now they say it's 1 ,000 victims.

59:42That's the new that they've reached the memo that the Trump administration just put out. So there was 1000 victims. So there's just so many missing.

59:50Michael Shellenberger:I mean, and Michael, just to go back, we talked about this in hour one. We pulled up the old DOJ documents from right around the time Epstein cut that sweetheart plea deal in 08. And in that in one of the related documents and settling a civil case with the victims, the DOJ is on record as admitting he had approximately 30 victims as of 2008. from all around the country. So in 2008, it was 30. And then he cut a deal. And from 2008 to 2020, 19 or to 2019, when he died, he amassed another 970 victims. Obviously not, right? I mean, they just that was part of the part of the sweetheart deal was to cover up the full scale of the operation.

1:00:35You know, I mean, I've heard it. There's a there's a sort of a story going around now that this is all sort of a conspiracy theory, you know, that we don't know, you know, you know what they got. I mean, you know, this is the Miami Herald in 2019 reported that FBI agents found a cache of thick black binders, all labeled with names that contain hundreds of naked or semi naked photographs on CDs that Epstein stored in various places. The picture that Bondi was sort of presenting was, well, he just had some child porn that he had downloaded on his laptop. That is just absolutely contradicted by all of the court cases, by what's been reported.

1:01:13You know, the intelligence community ties are amazing.

1:01:16Michael Shellenberger:I mean, you know, I don't think you got to listen to my discussion with Ben, but Ben does not. He does not believe from the sound of it that that he was an intelligence agent or asset, though. we agreed asset is lesser charged, a lesser charged term than agent. But still, for my purposes, I don't care because I think the government would have an interest in protecting him under either label. And he doesn't put much stock into the reports about Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney handling the case for the feds when they went after Epstein in 08, 07, 08, because the best thing we have against Acosta is a hearsay statement reported by Vicki Ward in the Daily Beast in 2019, in which she claimed that a Trump transition team official had told her that when they went to Acosta, when they were considering him for labor secretary, he said, like, this isn't going to come back to haunt us because Epstein was, I just, again, I don't want to say it.

1:02:18Michael Shellenberger:Belonged to intelligence. Yeah. I don't want to have the wrong language, but I do have it written down in front of me that he, quote, belongs to intelligence and that he is quote above my pay grade. I was told he was above my pay grade. Um, and that he was, yeah, that he quote belonged to intelligence. And it told me to, to move off of the case, which I mean, frankly, I believe, I believe that. And I know many people don't because then later Acosta gave that smarmy little on camera statement at a 2019 presser when he was in trouble, he was about to resign because he was part of the Trump administration.

1:02:56Michael Shellenberger:Then Epstein died and all hell broke loose and he was on his heels. And now he's like, oh, maybe you shouldn't believe everything you read in the press is essentially what he said. But then when he got interviewed by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, he reportedly behind closed doors said, it's not true that I said that to the Trump transition team. Yeah. I mean, you know, if that were all it was, but we also have, you know, I think you did mention to Ben, And I heard the last part of it, you know, Ari Ben-Manash, the former high ranking Israeli intelligence officer.

1:03:27Who says he was his handler. Yeah, he said he introduced Epstein to Israeli intelligence and that the higher ups approved of Epstein, one of whom was the former prime minister, Ehud Barak, who was also the head of Israeli military intelligence. And how many times did Ehud Barak stay at Jeffrey Epstein's house? I mean, what we report is that Epstein had planned 36 meetings with Barack without. I'm not sure how many of those meetings actually happened. But I mean, that's a huge number of meetings. I mean, the former CIA director under Biden, Bill Burns, has already been the Wall Street Journal reported that he had three unexplained meetings.

1:04:10So, I mean, you kind of look at it, it looks like there was a sex blackmail operation being operated on U.S. soil that the CIA knew about. I mean, I just kind of think I think it's important for people to remember, too, that like honeypots or sex blackmail operations. We know that the CIA used those in the you know, it starts in the 1960s. according to Whitney Webb's reporting, the CIA actually got the idea for them or learned how to do them from the mafia. But, you know, 1975, the CIA operated love traps in New York City and San Francisco were foreign diplomats were lured by prostitutes in the pay of the CIA.

1:04:51They used one way mirrors to fill to film the sexual adventures. I'm quoting from Whitney Webb's two-volume book, One Nation Under Blackmail. So this is, it's not like, it's certainly not outlandish that that was what was going on, that what was going on was what it appears to have been, which was a sex blackmail operation operated by intelligence. And that's very serious, obviously, because we have a democracy that depends on the idea that we're electing people who are loyal to the citizens and not to some secret intelligence agencies.

1:05:26Michael Shellenberger:But Ben said that he after Naftali Bennett put out this statement today saying he was never a Mossad agent, which I have to say, I credit not even a little, not even remotely. I don't believe him. I don't actively disbelieve him either, but I don't put any of what do you what would what would Naftali Bennett say? What would Ehud Barak say? Of course, they're going to say no. So it's like, OK, fine. And I get. But anyway, Ben said he reached out to Naftali Bennett's office and that they told him, for what it's worth, that they haven't conducted any sort of spying operation on U.S. soil since 1987.

1:06:02Michael Shellenberger:I also don't believe that. And what what's making me uncomfortable, Michael, is that I'm just trying to lay out the facts and I see you doing the same. Tucker's saying what his opinion is, which is not outside of the mainstream at all, that he thinks Epstein worked for Assad or was it was somehow an asset to them. But this immediately, even if you're as a staunch, a staunch, a defender of Israel in general, I haven't defended all the way they've conducted this war, but in general, their right to defend themselves after the horrific attack of 10-7 and of American Jews who are facing overwhelming discrimination on college campuses.

1:06:35Michael Shellenberger:Even if you're in my position, you get lunatics out there who accuse you of being like anti-Semitic because you are exploring this theory, which is such utter bullshit. And honestly, like I will just say this for the record. If you think that those kinds of smears are going to stop me from reporting, you haven't been paying attention to my career at all. If anything, when you accuse me of shit like that, I will double, triple and quadruple down. It tells me that I'm onto something. Um, so nice try, but you've chosen the wrong person. You know, I can hear Tucker's frustration when they do this to him, he's much more controversial than I am because he's interviewing the president of Iran and things like I'm like, I've been a defender of Israel.

1:07:19Michael Shellenberger:So people who say I'm not going to fuck off, they don't know me at all. I'm allowed to figure out what Jeffrey Epstein's actual connections were. And if that leads me to our government or Israel's too bad, your thoughts. Well, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if we come to the exact same conclusion, I think, first of all, we don't want any foreign intelligence. We don't want any sex blackmail operations operated by intelligence. We certainly don't want any foreign intelligence, whether it's France or Germany or Israel or anybody else. I think the context is important here. I mean, it's I think if you're a defender, a strong defender of Israel right now, this is a difficult time.

1:07:57You have to remember, a majority of Americans currently have an unfavorable view of Israel, And the share of Americans with a very unfavorable view nearly doubled between 2022 and 2025. Now, among Republicans ages 18 to 49, which was that audience that you were with on Friday night at Charlie Cook's Turning Point USA, 50 percent hold negative views of Israel, up from 35 percent in 2022. So I don't think that you're going to deal with that problem by trying to cancel, as you said, people that are really allies of Israel, defend the right of Israel to defend itself. My co-author, by the way, the lead author of the piece that we just published, Daughter of an Israeli, certainly Israelis have no hesitation about criticizing the Israeli government.

1:08:44It just appears to be a kind of I mean, it's sad to see because I do see some people that engage in that idea that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. I see some of those are people that were actually very good on this issue of cancel culture and kind of the woke reign of terror over the last 12 years. So, no, I absolutely share your view. I think there's just this other thing that's going on, which is that MAGA, I'm very impressed. I mentioned before, I'm very impressed with MAGA. I disagree with MAGA on a lot of things, including some of the stuff around free speech. I'm not a huge fan of these attempts to do mass deportations in the way that they're doing it.

1:09:21But I got to hand it to MAGA. They are sticking with their principles on this. They want reform of the intelligence community. I put out one tweet on election night after Trump won, which was that we need serious intelligence community reform. So, Megan, this Epstein cover up, which it clearly is, it's just undeniably a cover up, regardless of what we think it's covering up. It's happening in a context where we're just not getting the transparency and disclosure of information that we were promised, much less the intelligence community reform that we were promised. So, look, we have three branches of government.

1:09:56Two are extremely strong. Supreme Court and the executive branch. I don't think Congress is stepped up in the way that they need to, with some exceptions. Representative Luna, for example, has been wonderful in getting the JFK files released. But I think Congress now needs to step up and hold those hearings to get to the bottom of this. I think whether or not there's a special prosecutor, as Steve Bannon has advocated, it's now time for Congress to do its job and do its Article II duties under the constitution and provide oversight to the intelligence community.

1:10:29Michael Shellenberger:There's not going to be a special prosecutor. That's just not, there's zero chance that the executive branch is going to authorize that zero. I mean, they've already told us where they're going with it, which is move on, move on. No, they're there. What do you make of Ben's claim? Like he says, so it's, it's one or the other. It's either, this is all on Pam Bondi as a communications failure, which 100 % is in in large part on Pam Bondi, the current crisis, because she definitely overpromised. And then when she underdelivered, it was in the dark of night, skulked away with an unsigned memo that she just wanted to shove down our throats and then have us accept.

1:11:07Michael Shellenberger:Or that this is an active cover up and Trump blessed it. So I said that I said that in a tweet, right, that this is either Pam Bondi created this crisis and that the president is just standing by her because he thinks it's just a communication crisis. He believes there's no they're there and he's willing to forgive her for her stupid comms because she's a loyal soldier or this actually is a cover-up and the president has authorized it but ben took that to mean that i was saying a cover-up that of an active pedophile ring that trump and bongino and cash patel and pam bondi all know about and are fine with that's not what i said i think there's a there's an in between there of there's a decision to move on made at the highest levels and loyal soldiers are going along with it and that there are reasons other than like act girls are getting raped right now by pedophiles, foreign and domestic, and we're all just fine with it within the Trump administration.

1:11:58Michael Shellenberger:I don't believe that. No. Well, no. And I think, too, I also saw somebody go viral on X over the weekend who said something like, hey, that's all in the past and we need to really crack down on sex trafficking of minors that's happening in the present, which I totally, of course, agree with. But I think you have to keep in mind if there's impunity for sex blackmail or sex trafficking operations in the past that directly undermines your ability to crack down on them in the present. Look, if if it's not a cover up, then release the truckloads of documents and thousands of documents. I don't think this is just a communications problem.

1:12:35If it is just a communications problem, then Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are equally guilty of it because they went on Rogan and on Fox and Friends and said that we were going to get the raw, unedited file of Epstein's cell, and we didn't get that. So I don't think that Bondi, her communications were particularly worse. But again, I just don't think it's a communications issue. I think when she said there's truckloads of information that had come from the FBI to her, I think all these other information we've gotten shows that there's huge amounts of information. There's deception involved in the communications.

1:13:10They said, there's no Epstein list. That could be true, but it's completely irrelevant. If you have truckloads of documents and thousands of documents and hundreds of CDs with videos potentially shot through one way mirrors of Johns with, you know, minors, that's we're in a totally different universe here. So like, I think it's really good. I think it's really important not to let it go. I know the Trump administration is going to want to let it go. I know a lot of folks that our Trump allies are going to want to move on. We have a lot of things that we want to see the Trump administration do.

1:13:44I mean, I just I thanked President Trump on Friday for what he's been doing on Brazil because they're cracking down on free speech. So I myself am in a situation where I'm like criticizing the administration. I also am praising the administration. It's it's requiring a level of complexity here, but I don't think we should let it go. I don't think it's just a communications problem. I think Congress needs to step up and do its job and provide oversight, even as uncomfortable as that make people, because I just think it's going to be a festering issue for for months or years to come. Better just to be transparent and get the information out there rather than let it fester.

1:14:23Michael Shellenberger:I mean, not for nothing, but here's a from a New York Times article dated July 8th, 2019. In a detention memo submitted on Monday, federal prosecutors outlined some of the evidence seized from a search of Epstein's house on Saturday night. It included hundreds, possibly thousands of sexually suggestive photographs of girls who appear under age, as well as hand labeled compact discs with titles like Girl Picks Nude and with the names redacted Young So-and-So Plus So -and-So Together. Like that's just one example of the amount of data that's out there. And you said that the cash and Dan had promised release of all the unredacted files.

1:15:01Michael Shellenberger:I think you meant video. Sorry, video, yes. Yeah, no, I know. I know. And just to be clear. And so like on the video front, I mean, FBI, I think would say they have released the unredacted video. But then there is this wired report today saying that it's been that it actually has been edited. And but they released two, you know, that they released like one that looks cleaned up and one they say is the raw. But the wired report is saying that even the raw has gone through multiple modifications. Hold on, I'm just trying to pull up my report here from Wired. They say metadata shows the FBI's raw prison video was likely modified.

1:15:42Michael Shellenberger:Metadata embedded in the video and analyzed by Wired and independent video forensics experts show that rather than being a direct export from the prison surveillance system, the footage was modified, likely using the professional editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro. File appears to have been assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, then uploaded to DOJ's website where it was presented as raw. experts caution it's unclear what exactly was changed and that the metadata does not provide does not prove deception deceptive manipulation the video may have simply been processed for public release using available software with no modifications beyond stitching together two clips but the absence of a clear explanation is a problem they go on to say um if then they go to a professor at uc berkeley whose research focuses under digital forensics and misinformation And he says, if a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I'd say, no, go back to the source, do it right.

1:16:36Michael Shellenberger:Do a direct export from the original system. No monkey business. He points to another anomaly. The video's aspect ratio shifts noticeably at several points. Why am I suddenly seeing a different aspect ratio? He asks. he says while the debt metadata clearly shows the video was modified the changes could be benign for example converting footage from a proprietary surveillance format to a standard mp4 the fbi did not respond to specific questions about the files processing instead referring wired to the doj the doj in turn referring inquiries back to the fbi and the bureau of prisons the bureau of prisons did not respond and round and round it goes by the way here's that julie brown clip from the dan show on why, again, the whole debate about the metadata is like talking about the Starbucks in Austin instead of the president getting shot in the head in Dallas when it was JFK.

1:17:25Turns out that might not even be video of his cell door. It is in his cell. The whole thing, again, is a big, big red herring. And they think the people, and I guess there are some people that look at this because it's a frame of two cells. OK, and then they point to them, him walking down below. You can barely see him. And now they're saying, oh, a minute is missing. Well, it doesn't matter. The video doesn't show Epstein's cell at all. It doesn't even show where people are going in and out of his cell. So and if you read the report on his investigation, the guy who who ran the cameras in the prison, the tech guy, says to investigators, none of the cameras were recording.

1:18:13OK, they worked in real time. There was one camera that was recording. That is the camera that they showed you the footage of. But that camera is of what they call the common area. It doesn't show the walkways. For example, let's just say another inmate wanted to go in his cell. You would never know that because we don't have footage of his wing. There is a camera at the end of his hallway, but it wasn't recording. It wasn't working. So somebody could have, you know, left one of the other inmates' cells unlocked. The inmate could have gone in and done something to him. I'm not saying this is what happened.

1:18:52But think about this. They they're showing you a camera doesn't even show his cell.

1:19:00Michael Shellenberger:Thoughts on that, Michael? Yeah, I mean, look, they they they and that's again, they promised that they were going to show they were going to share the the raw video of the cell. And that's just not what we got. And they were I mean, when you watch the Patel on Rogan and Bongino on Fox and Friends, they were trying to just kind of go, look, no, no, it's just not true. We've got the video. It's going to absolutely prove this. So for this to just for to see that it was doctored, the video. And again, you can say, well, we didn't do anything misleading. Well, then you need to release the raw video.

1:19:36But again, as she was saying, great. I mean, it's not even if they released the raw video wouldn't show anything because you're still missing the video of his cell. So it just feels like a deliberate misdirection on the part of the administration. And again, that's why I don't just think it's Bondi's fault. I mean, you know, and not to mention the fact that, you know, the FBI is a department within DOJ and that both FBI and DOJ signed off on that memo. So I, you know, I know you're friendly with Bongino. I actually praised him last summer because he was absolutely right about the failures of the Secret Service.

1:20:10He predicted that spot on. I think he was right about a bunch of other stuff. But he made a promise basically to be a truth teller for MAGA. So for me, I just kind of go, you got to come clean. I mean, I'm not saying he needs to resign, but something needs to change here. I don't think just getting a phone call from Trump telling him to calm down should be enough for him. He's got made a promise to his listeners. And I assume he wants to go back to Rumble and do his podcast after the administration. This is just unfinished business for him. And, you know, Patel might be more of a character that, you know, is just there to kind of do what the president wants.

1:20:48But I mean, with Bongino, he sort of had this this kind of dual identity. And I think that makes this whole episode particularly problematic for him.

1:20:56Michael Shellenberger:I my own suspicion without knowing this firsthand is that the only way Dan's going to stay is if something happens like she agrees to a presser or she does an interview or she does something because I do. I just know just having known him that transparency really is his big issue. And even though I'm sure it took a lot for him to go on Fox and Friends and say, I think he killed himself. You know, I know it's a reversal, but like, I think that's what I think. And somebody show me the evidence. You got evidence. I'll take a look at it. But we haven't seen it. We haven't seen it. I'm sure that took a lot for him because there's a difference between being, you know, in your seat and my seat and then actually getting to the FBI and getting actual data or the lack of it and having to say, look, we have it or we don't.

1:21:37Michael Shellenberger:So I, for me, I believe he wasn't lying on Fox and Friends about the murder suicide thing because I think it took a lot for him to say that. But I know he's pro transparency on everything and we're just not getting that at all. And like, you know, I'm all over the board on this in a way, Michael, because like, I don't know what to believe other than ever since that memo and Trump's cabinet meeting the day after that memo, I'm more suspicious than ever. Like that did exactly the opposite for me than than I think was intended. Yeah, I'll tell you something else I think is really interesting, Megan, is that, you know, Trump is sort of famously gregarious, you know, talks a lot.

1:22:18One of the criticisms, of course, is he shares, you know, information he shouldn't share. That's been one of the constant criticisms of him. But here you have everybody around him. His closest people are all saying, we're going to release Epstein lists. We're going to release the Epstein files. The AG says it, the director of the FBI, before he comes into office, the deputy director. J.D. Vance goes on Theo Vaughn, I think it was about a week before the election, and said, yeah, seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing. you see Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, getting up there and saying we need to release the Epstein list.

1:22:57Look, I think one of the best arguments that there's nothing there that implicates Trump is the fact the Democrats didn't use it. They were trying to put Trump in prison, trying to prevent him from running for office. Why didn't they use it? But it was a weird thing. I'll say, when you watch, Trump was on Lex Friedman as well, And there was an interesting moment where Lex, to his credit, because Lex has a reputation as a bit of a soft interviewer, you know, he was really pressing the president on the Epstein files. And you just see it and you don't have to be one of those body language experts.

1:23:29You just see Trump becoming really uncomfortable and he kind of hems and haws around the Epstein files. And then he goes, well, the JFK files, you know, we're going to release that. And you kind of get a sense that, at least in the president's mind, he was going to release the JFK files and that that would be sort of that would kind of cover the transparency that they wanted to do. But he was kind of like the Epstein files are a little bit more tricky. It was like, well, but have you talked to everybody around you to not create expectations? Because, I mean, it's you can say it's a communications problem, but it's like like they didn't get the memo.

1:24:02I mean, Bondi, you know, apparently it sounded like Cash and, you know, it sounded like Patel and maybe Bongino kind of got the memo. And that's why they went on Rogan and Fox and Friends. But like the AG is just up there talking freely about truckloads of evidence and thousands of pages.

1:24:18Michael Shellenberger:Which sounded more like Bongino and Cash prior to them joining the administration, which sounded more like virtually every Trump surrogate when he was running. Right. All the things that they had been saying. And then what, you know, Pam Bondi's statements prior to actually assuming the role as DOJ, as AG, sounded totally consistent with what most of MAGA had believed, not to mention we're letting Alina Habba off the hook. But she was probably more provocative than anyone on Piers Morgan. And it's not like she had no connections to the administration. She was at that time counselor to the president.

1:24:54Michael Shellenberger:And within three weeks, she was working for DOJ and didn't dial any of it back and made, you know, much bigger promises. So, look, I I don't know. I don't care. I have zero desire to, like, hurt Trump as an electoral matter. I'm on his side. I've been very open about that. But I also prize honesty with the audience and just honesty, period, first. So this you're right. This is an awkward moment because you really have to make sure you have your integrity. You have your commitment to honest reporting and you're not letting your fondness for the administration drive the way you cover it. nor like as soon as I see the left jumping on, I'm like, oh, that's that makes me want to leave this this little lily pot.

1:25:38Michael Shellenberger:You know, like I don't want to be the same side of Jamie as Jamie Raskin on anything. But I kind of would like to see a hearing or a congressional subpoena. Yeah, well, no, I'm with you. I certainly don't want to help. I mean, the left bring back, you know, all the awfulness they brought back, you know, at the same time, intelligence community reform is something that had been bipartisan. The last time we had significant intelligence community reform was in 1975 when you had the church committee hearings. And then there was a whole set of reforms that were passed into law with bipartisan majorities in Congress.

1:26:12And so, yeah, I mean, I don't trust Jamie Raskin and the folks that have been really, you know, we're promoting various hoaxes and conspiracies around the president. But I do feel like there I wish there were this were an opportunity, like if even if you couldn't get the transparency of the Epstein files, can we get intelligence community reform? You know, and that's not just putting, you know, Trump's picks as the head of those agencies. It's real reform. And you saw Tulsi Gabbard, the president's director of national intelligence at the Turning Point USA conference that you were at on Friday night.

1:26:46get up there and say that just openly that they're dealing with deep state operatives that are preventing them from releasing information. And so you have this clear. Oh, and it's happening in

1:26:55Michael Shellenberger:FBI, too. You have this clear cry for help where and I understand the challenge of it, because often those people that are the problem of blocking information are also valuable for doing other things. They have all this institutional memory. They have all this you know, they have strings that they're they're pulling in all sorts of ways. So I get that it's hard. But that's why I'm like, you got to bring Congress into it somehow. You got to get some dynamic set up where there's something going on to get more information released, to get intelligence community reformed. If there really is, if all that's left in the so-called files is stuff that could potentially be problematic for like an individual wrongly accused or, you know, nobody's interested in seeing actual victims names of, you know, like that's not, that's actually not appropriate to release or secret grand jury testimony that we have no legal right to.

1:27:42Michael Shellenberger:If you get a congressional subpoena, all of that can be handled. The administration might want that, right? So it's like, here, take it all, right? If they're not interested in covering anything up, then they should welcome a congressional speaker. Great. You guys take it. Let this be your problem and not ours. I think some people, at least in the administration may want that. I have to take a break, but I've got to ask you something quickly about the piece you just dropped that as you came on. It's called why MAGA isn't dropping Epstein. This is interesting on the question of whether Epstein was an agent possibly for Israel.

1:28:13Michael Shellenberger:You write about this guy, Ben Minash, who we discussed in brief. He asserted that he introduced Epstein to Israeli intelligence and that his higher-ups approved of Epstein. One such higher-up was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was the head of Israeli military intelligence when Ben Minash met Epstein. Between 13 and 17, Epstein planned 36 meetings with Ehud Barak. In the 1980s, according to reports, Epstein developed relationships with British arms dealers and often traveled from the Middle East to London. Ben Minash alleged that Epstein was then contracted to act as a professional blackmailer on behalf of Israeli military intelligence.

1:28:53Michael Shellenberger:This is the part that's interesting to me. Due to fears that a new American president would push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Now, that is actually quite interesting. Like that actually gives a motive to Israel potentially for why it would do this. Like because, you know, that it seems somewhat incredulous. I'm incredulous to think Israel just wanted to see a bunch of little girls molested and sat idly by while they watched. And again, I don't think we're talking about little girls. It doesn't make it better that they're 14. I'm just there is a somewhat of a difference just in terms of the crime.

1:29:30Michael Shellenberger:When you talk about six versus 14, 15, you know what I'm saying? I'm not blessing. Yeah. Anyway, this this actually puts a potential motive behind why they thought it was worth it. That's right. And potentially, I mean, a really disturbing one when you consider that this is potentially an effort to control or influence U.S. foreign policy. You know, whatever you think of the bombing of those uranium enrichment facilities in Iran, there's a legitimate debate about whether that's in the U.S. interest. You know, clearly it was started, instigated by Israel. There's real questions about why that's in the U.S.

1:30:12interest. Just it was I mean, just to be, you know, open about I mean, look, to be honest about it, Iran was complying with international law. I mean, it had inspectors in there. It had not kicked the inspectors out under the nonproliferation treaty. It has a right to enrich uranium. Again, I'm not defending Iran, not defending the uranium enrichment. But this was not consistent with international law. And maybe we just don't believe international law anymore. shouldn't believe it anymore. But, you know, I think there's reasons to wonder if that was motivated by some motivated by wanting to support Israel rather than an objective look at U.S.

1:30:50interests. So all of this is occurring in a context when I think whatever you think of Israel, Gaza, Hamas war, there is a genuine concern that the U.S. could get drawn into a broader Middle Eastern conflict because of Israel. I don't think that's that's not anti-Israel to be concerned about being pulled into foreign conflicts. So when you add in this, you know, potential sex blackmail operation, yeah, it really dials up the drama a bit.

1:31:19Michael Shellenberger:Well, I think it's safe to say both you and we will stay on it. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back on what we just learned about Joe Biden and President Otto Penn. This thing is getting more interesting and more problematic for the Biden administration. Why are elite athletes, business leaders and high performers turning to Armra Cholestrum? Armra Cholestrum is nature's first whole food, packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that work at the cellular level to support lean muscle growth, accelerate recovery, and fuel performance, all without artificial stimulants or synthetic ingredients.

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1:34:37Michael Shellenberger:Visit iXL.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required.

1:35:17Michael Shellenberger:I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. You talking about the Oto Pen. And look, the auto pen, I think, is maybe one of the biggest scandals that we've had in 50 to 100 years. This is a tremendous scandal. And I know the people on the other side of the, see that desk, that Resolute desk? Unfortunately, he used it before me.

1:36:04But, you know, we have our choice of seven desks. They're all beautiful. But I chose the Resolute, and so did he, unfortunately. But the people on the other side of the Resolute desk, I know them. Lisa, the whole group, and they're no good. They're sick people. And I guarantee you, he knew nothing about what he was signing.

1:36:28Michael Shellenberger:I guarantee it. So they're going to figure it out, and we'll see what happens. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. Michael Schellenberger is my guest. He's founder of Public on Substack. Michael, that was the president commenting on this New York Times report on the auto pen where they for the first time got access briefly to Joe Biden himself. And it was revealed by him. He claimed that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term saying, I made every decision. but the New York Times actually unearthing that the person who would actually like press go on the auto pen was her last name is Feldman.

1:37:16Michael Shellenberger:And she, I guess, felt uncomfortable with the process they had set up because she was not in any of the meetings with the president, only was receiving direction from underlings and wanted to have some written accounts confirming his oral instructions in these meetings. And yet all she got was assistants who drafted blurbs who were not themselves in the room. The assistants then circulated the drafts to the people who were in the room, like Ed Siskel, his White House counsel, Jeff Zients, his chief of staff, and some others. And that whole people wound up pardoned or having their sentences commuted by Jeff Zients just simply hitting reply to all to approve these decisions.

1:38:02Michael Shellenberger:So it was like Biden orally to some set of staff. Then the girl who had to press go said, can I have something in writing? And all she got was like a reply to all from the chief of staff saying everything's approved. And that is how we wound up with some of the most controversial pardons of in U.S. history. The only one he physically signed was the one for his son, Hunter Biden. What do you make of it? Gosh, how could I possibly add anything to it? I mean, it's so crazy because if you're if you're too debilitated to actually sign something, then how can you say that you were, you know, were fully competent to actually make the decision?

1:38:46There's so much to unpack in there. I mean, I thought the Times piece, first of all, is very long. It was a very serious report. They then frame it sort of defensively on the side of Biden. Biden says he made the clemency decisions. But if you actually go read that full piece, it is absolutely damning. You know, Comer, you know, Congressman Comer doing oversight apparently is issuing new subpoenas. There's going to be more of investigation. You know, where does it go legally? I mean, who knows? Does it go to the Supreme Court finally to rule on this stuff? I mean, there's so much in it. You know, Jeff Zients, the chief of staff, Zients, who pardoned Fauci, was also the main social media censorship coordinator on COVID policy.

1:39:30So, I mean, it's just, you know, so corrupt from top to bottom. It's really quite shocking.

1:39:37Michael Shellenberger:And that's really interesting because the other person who got pardoned, of course, was Fauci. And he's the only other one that I think the president admits in this meeting. He personally said, like, specifically yes to he said specifically yes to Hunter, specifically yes to Fauci. And he signed the Hunter pardon. But I mean, the more we learn about Fauci, the more we come to understand that this whole cabal probably well understood that Fauci, this was not some prophylactic, oh, just protect our friend who did nothing wrong. That perhaps it was much more nefarious. And they knew what we're starting to realize about Fauci and what we're starting to glean from the intel community, which is he knew far more and was repeatedly under oath with Congress lying.

1:40:22Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's also such a testament to like these cases that you think are actually that we know everything and they're ready to move on, that there's still information coming out about them. I mean, I thought we knew everything about Biden's poor health until the Jake Tapper book came out, which was, I think, contained a bunch of new revelations as annoying as it was coming from him. But similarly for COVID, there's so much we still don't know about COVID. And what was it that they were doing? You know, was COVID, you know, if it's created in a lab, I mean, this whole idea that it was a people go, people say it's a conspiracy theory.

1:40:58It's a conspiracy theory to suggest it was a bioweapon. But if it was created in a lab, you know, it was potentially in a lab that PLA had oversight over the Chinese army. It was potentially a bioweapon. And so you're looking at essentially, I mean, I still told this to some progressive friends of mine. They were like, what are you actually saying? I'm saying that it looks as though, and we don't have all the proof yet, but it looks as though the United States was involved in a bioweapons program, I think motivated to develop vaccines against those bioweapons, but was involved in a bioweapons and vaccination program in China.

1:41:35We funded it. We did a lot of the intellectual development of it. And then it leaked. And the guy that was responsible for creating it also oversaw the response, which, Megan, I think people don't fully appreciate. I mean, we know, of course, it was, you know, people know that it was an over, we over responded to it. one of the questions is why? Like, why was there such a radical, aggressive response to COVID with the lockdowns and the school closures? One possibility is that they knew perfectly well that it was a bioweapon, that it wasn't some thing that leaked out from the wild. And so one of the remaining questions that we want to get at is, did Fauci and his lieutenants realize, oh, you know, they were developing a bioweapon in that lab?

1:42:19Again, I'm not saying it was some conspiracy to poison the world or kill all these people. I'm just saying as a military project to develop vaccines to potential bioweapons. And then when it leaked, the response to it resembled much more of a response that you would have to a bioweapon rather than to some virus that had emerged naturally from the jungles of South China.

1:42:42Michael Shellenberger:And now I feel like we're never going to know because there is no question in my mind that neither Fauci nor Francis Collins left those offices without scrubbing anything and everything that would have reflected any of that. Yeah, you could be right. You know, like I said, I think that, you know, I think we all thought, you know, I just published a been publishing a debate around the JFK files and the person that thinks it was a lone shooter wrote a book called Case Closed that came out in the 90s. So, You know, I think that sometimes we think these things are case closed, but there is some information lurking out there.

1:43:20So another reason to keep the cases open and continue to investigate and continue to demand transparency in congressional hearings, because there could very well be more information out there that we're not aware of.

1:43:31Michael Shellenberger:Well, and I wonder now whether the Fauci pardon and for that matter, the Hunter Biden. I don't know. I'm like not sure if Biden was non-compass mentis, the Hunter one could be in trouble, too. But really, the auto pen pardons, whether they're really going to stand. I mean, the odds you'd have to put money on them standing. I don't think the Supreme Court is going to want to second guess any of this, but it's one of the reasons why we need this Dr. Kevin O 'Connor to actually speak, notwithstanding his BS assertions of privilege, which don't stand when you're looking at a congressional subpoena, the attorney or the doctor patient privilege.

1:44:04Michael Shellenberger:Now we'll see about the Fifth Amendment. If he gets immunity, that too should go away. Anyway, there's a lot more happening on that front. that one's not over, not by a long shot. Michael Schellenberger, I love your journalism. I love reading your stuff. Come back more often, please. Thanks so much for having me, Megan. Great to see you. Okay. See you soon. Back tomorrow.

1:44:27Michael Shellenberger:Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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