
Epstein Was a Known Sex Offender. Bezos, Musk and Brin Dined with Him Anyway - smacktoward
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-bezos-musk-billionaires-dinner
======
codeddesign
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.

~~~
DoctorOetker
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%...](https://vault.fbi.gov/alfredo-
rodriguez/Alfredo%20Rodriguez%20Part%2001%20of%2001/view)

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.

~~~
jobigoud
> 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.

~~~
DoctorOetker
1) To be clear I was not intrinsically trying to redirect attention to
apolitical leaders, only trying to connect the dots to what _Epstein seems to
have focussed on_ , and _therefore_ direct my attention towards apolitical
leaders, not intrinsically.

2) Prince Andrew is not elected, princes don't have terms where new princes
get rotated every term.

3) The fact that that 2 out of 3 _were political leaders_ only seems to prove
my point, and Trump, Clinton (and possibly others) would have been Epstein's
"mistakes" from the perspective of the strategy.

(I upvoted your comment, because it adds to my interpretation)

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scohesc
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!_

~~~
DoctorOetker
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?

~~~
datapunk
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.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I would not necessarily leave, typically in a situation where theres an
annoying person present, me and my friends would try to get rid of the
annoying person, and if that keeps failing, leave for home...

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morelisp
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...](https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-intellectual-
enabler)).

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...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/07/jeffrey-
epstein-mit-funding-tech-intellectuals)

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

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howeyc
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.

~~~
zaphod4prez
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.

------
Udik
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.

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

See, I can do that too

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

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

------
nikolay
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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heyitsguay
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.

~~~
hgoel
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.

~~~
nullc
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...)

~~~
hgoel
Ah yes, you're right. That's a pretty big typo on my side. The app I'm using
doesn't seem to let me edit though.

~~~
dang
We've edited it for you.

