Epstein Was a Known Sex Offender. Bezos, Musk and Brin Dined with Him Anyway

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-bezos-musk-billionaires-dinner

by smacktoward • 7 years ago

83 27 7 years ago

scohesc• 7 years ago

What a good headline. It totally doesn't make it look like these billionaires or billionaires-to-be knowingly went to this dinner even though Epstein was there, despite how the article a few paragraphs down says "they didn't know he was there" or "don't remember".

Outstanding journalism from a company known for their top 10 cat picture you _just can't resist!_

Ancalagon• 7 years ago

Agreed. Quite the amazing article, the likes of which you can only find on clickfarmnews.com

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DoctorOetker4• 7 years ago

who cares if they didn't know on the way? I'm not proposing it be illegal to stay upon learning Epstein is there, but similarily most of us don't understand why you would want to stay? most of us would go home and feel disturbed for the rest of the day.

if you are at a party, and some partypooper is present, do you actually stay?

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ch_123• 7 years ago

Is it really inconceivable that they didn't know that he was there, or that they did not recognize him, or that they were unaware of his criminal record?

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datapunk2• 7 years ago

These people are not like you. Where you would be uncomfortable and leave. They were extremely focused on why they were there and not let the presence of someone else ruin the entire night.

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newen• 7 years ago

How would you even know everyone and their criminal histories at a party you are invited to?

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paulddraper• 7 years ago

There's got to be a better news source than this.

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codeddesign• 7 years ago

Who cares. As long as they weren’t engaging in illegal sex activities and were all there conducting business then how is this even news. It seems more like random character assassination. Unless Buzzfeed is trying say that all sex offenders should not be allowed to work, eat, or associate which anyone regardless of the circumstance and likewise you should never associate with a sex offender regardless of the circumstance whether you knew they were a sex offender or not. This is all complete rubbish. Shame on you Buzzfeed.

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DoctorOetker4• 7 years ago

we're not talking about a random sex offender, he blackmailed people, and he associated with our tech leaders. so he potentially blackmailed same tech leaders.

this is a different observation than some random non-blackmailing sex offender sitting 2 spots away in the bus.

When Epstein was in prison, Alfredo Rodriguez tried selling Epstein's black book for $50k. Until he was arrested for obstruction of justice. The government had a list of all the victims (and in all likelihood the clients / targets).

https://vault.fbi.gov/alfredo-rodriguez/Alfredo%20Rodriguez%...

speaking of character assassination, remember when Musk was calling one of the cave divers a pedophile? (he saving kids stuck in a cave, and provided feedback that Musk's device was useless)

why wine and dine with Epstein, but then call a cave diver who actually saves children a pedophile?

why did Musk dare insinuate the diver was a pedophile, but did he not dare or care to say the same about Epstein?

this Epstein creep was really intelligent in his blackmail targets: he seems to have focused on people with stable positions of power like tech leaders (also business, academia?), as opposed to politicial leaders or party affiliated people as dumber blackmailers usually try: blackmailing partisan people is guaranteed to backfire sooner or later since roles switch by election every term or two.

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AndrewBissell2• 7 years ago

Rodriguez served 18 months in prison vs Epstein's 13, and he didn't even get the sweetheart work release deal either.

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jobigoud• 7 years ago

as opposed to politicial leaders or party affiliated people

It blew up in the news because of his ties with Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.

There is a famous quote: "I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy… He’s a lot of fun to be with. He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." -- Donald Trump.

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howeyc• 7 years ago

So what? Even if they did know, this is retarded.

As soon as you know someone is "ex-communicated" from society you must go out of your way to never ever possibly see or interact with them forever for life?

Get real. I'm not turning around to go home every time I see an "ex-communicated" individual.

Who keeps track of this list of individuals, where do I go to get an updated list so I can immediately vacate when one arrives? What happens if someone is added to the list after I have met them?? Am I on the list by association??

This is bonkers.

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zaphod4prez• 7 years ago

If I went to a party, and saw a guy there who was well-known as a convicted sex offender and convicted pedophile (Florida convicted him of soliciting an underage prostitute), I would leave.

I believe that the list of individuals is available online in real time, it's called the sex offender registry.

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kjeetgill• 7 years ago

I generally agree with you, but I think the difficulty here is that much of Epstein's ability to commit the crimes that he did at the level that he did comes directly from the willingnes of other wealthy elites to associate with him.

The basic idea is that we do expect some degree of moral responsibility from our leaders, elected or otherwise. Most of them absolutely operate with and require some public support.

People are just setting a higher bar for what that support requires.

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PavlovsCat• 7 years ago

this is retarded

The litmus test for what HN suppresses is in which topics one side (but it's only ever one) can talk like this without a stern talking to or threat of bans.

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heyitsguay• 7 years ago

I know it's against the rules to post inflammatory stuff and i want to be civil, but @dang, do you really feel ok representing a community where the prevailing opinion seems to be it's no big deal to have dealings with a known child sex trafficker, it's just societal shaming, etc? It's so disappointing that this is apparently how the minds work for prominent voices on this hub for the tech community.

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hgoel2• 7 years ago

On the contrary, do you really feel okay peddling this obvious attempt at a hit piece relying on guilt by association as evidence that all these other rich people were involved in some manner?

No one's saying that what Epstein did wasn't wrong, everyone's saying that people who interacted with him weren't necessarily involved, nor was it their responsibility to cause a ruckus about it.

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nullc• 7 years ago

You should edit your post because you meant "what Epstein did wasn't wrong". (and maybe no one here because I'm sure in some awful corner of the internet there is a conspiracy theory that makes a hero of him...)

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AndrewBissell2• 7 years ago

Look, how could Bezos have secured those contracts for Amazon from the CIA if he refused to dine with one of their best assets?

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morelisp• 7 years ago

Since the "how could we know!" bullshit is already out full-force in this thread:

The dinner was organized by John Brockman, literary agent for many of the figures who bragged about his ties to Epstein to his clients (e.g. https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-inte...).

Brockman organized the dinners as part of his running the Edge Foundation, a foundation funded substantially (reportedly some years entirely) by Epstein.

As Brockman himself put it after one such dinner in 2004, “last year we tried ‘The Science Dinner’. Everyone yawned. So this year, it’s back to the money-sex-power thing with ‘The Billionaires’ Dinner’.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/07/jeffre...

"How could they know" he was there? Because this was _Epstein's dinner_.

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datapunk2• 7 years ago

'Epstein did business in America, the world demands why America didn't stop him!'

See, I can do that too

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Udik• 7 years ago

There's a lot of fuss about which institutions accepted money from Epstein, and who dined one evening at the same table with him.

There is much less interest, it seems, on the big picture: we're talking about someone who had been convicted for sexual abuse of minors and sex trafficking, with about 34 minors involved; convicted for just one case, allowed to benefit from a non-prosecution agreement, given a joke sentence and let go. The judge who allowed this said "I was told he belonged to intelligence and he was above my pay grade". I had a hunch this judge might have died later in mysterious circumstances, so I googled him. He's not dead: he became the US Secretary of Labour with Trump.

So Epstein was free to fly around with his private jet full of underage sex slaves, to and from his private island, and to keep meeting and forming ties with powerful people from all over the world- industrialists, politicians, presidents, royals. In his safe they found money, diamonds, and a fake passport with stamps from many countries.

The other day I was reading a random conversation on the internet from a couple of months ago. One person was recapping these facts, another was replying: "if this is true, Epstein's life in prison will be very short". A few days later he was dead. The guards were not watching and the cameras were not working.

The picture that is forming is that of someone managing a high end prostitution ring, for many years, probably with the intent of collecting blackmail material, and probably working for some foreign intelligence.

That Elon Musk, Minsky or anyone else might have met him at a dinner table should be absolutely the last of our concerns.

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nikolay• 7 years ago

Well, all these rich assholes were fascinated by the opportunities he opened to them... If the Clintons were on the Lolita Express bandwagon, why can't they ride it as well?!

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Epstein Was a Known Sex Offender. Bezos, Musk and Brin Dined with Him Anyway

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