Mythic Trump: The Incendiary Narcissus
Pepe Escobar • August 27, 2025
Mythic Narcissus, depending on his mood while facing his reflection in the pool, may at any moment authorize Kiev hits on Moscow and St. Petersburg with long-range missiles.
Alastair Crooke’s remarkable analysis of Trump in the context of myth as geopolitics has left us with much to ponder. There’s no escape from Trump’s “extraordinary ability to dominate the discourse”, globally, as well as his capacity for “bending people to his will” – and thus wreak havoc on the geopolitical chessboard.
Alastair stresses how Trump is skillfully “using mythic imagery” – actually crude archetypes – to always impress his (italics mine) narrative. The only narrative.
Yet Trump may not be straight-up Dionysian, compared to Apollonian Putin; he’s more like a Narcissus Drowned (in a pool of his own making). And when it comes to pop iconography, he’s certainly not The Godfather of Soul James Brown; more like the Village People – which were themselves a parody.
The most disturbing aspect of Trump the Self-Made Myth is what grip that death cult in West Asia holds over his imagination. Trump’s absolute normalization of genocide has made the whole – Wild – West civilization complicit. Alastair once again reminds us that “the bloodlust in Gaza”, awakened by the Torah, is driving “messianic, extreme Zionism” all the way “to barbarism”. That’s where we are now – with a License to Kill provided by a vicious, intolerant God: Yahweh.
Way below the mythical spheres where Trump does not fear to tread, rascals posing as the European political “elite” have created another myth: Putin as a “cannibal needing to eat” (copyright Le Petit Roi). He’s “The Beast at the Door”, with Russia framed as anti-Europe and anti-West, an existential threat: Putin and Russia morphed as The Anti-Christ.
Well, these intellectual midgets are obviously unaware that it was the Byzantine empire that survived the Roman Empire in the West for no less than a thousand years. Byzantium resisted everything: Goths, Avars, Arabs, Bulgars – until they could not resist the Ottomans. Still, they managed to evangelize the Bulgars and Kievan Russia, and even provided a state model to the Ottomans.
If we draw a line from Danzig to Trieste, going through Vienna, we can check out how Western Europe in medieval times was in fact “protected” from periodic nomadic onslaughts (the exception is the Hungarian plains, the final stop for nomadic waves from Asia).
And that explains why Europe knows next to nothing about Russia, Central Asia, Eurasia, the Heartland for that matter. Europe never had to face Mongol or Ottoman rule. They might have learned a thing or two – from Pax Mongolica and Ottoman inclusiveness. And that may also have tamed their superiority – civilizational – complex, borne out of splendid isolation.
I love a man in uniform
A ghastly Ariadne’s thread connects the current, appallingly mediocre European political elites – aspiring mini-Minotaurs lost in their own labyrinth. The BlackRock Chancellor in Germany comes from the British occupation zone of Germany, the grandson of a Nazi. The Nazis were successfully built up by Britain to position Germany as its proxy in a perpetual war against Russia.
The appalling Toxic Medusa in Brussels also comes from the British occupation zone of Germany: a noble family with Nazi background. Her “noble” husband is even worse, descending from war criminals.
Le Petit Roi in France, universally despised, is a lowly messenger of Banque Rothschild, financier of British kings and queens since the 18th century.
The Intermarium – Poland, the Baltic dwarves, Ukraine – always had governments staffed and controlled by Britain.
As for the opposition to the war on Russia in Romania, it was couped away.
The bottom line is that the Brits are on Totalen Krieg against Russia, on steroids, so they can snatch the Big Prize, unemcumbered: total control of Europe, or dismissively, “the continentals”. Their 18th century mindset imperial/feudal planners are looking way beyond rump Ukraine, towards a Forever War to weaken and tighten their total control over a discombobulated Europe.
The only counterpower comes from the former Austro-Hungarian empire states, plus Serbia: they refuse this Forever War, which will inevitably destroy Europe for the third (italics mine) time in a little over a century. Their pressing need is to get their act together and form a coalition against a new Balkan War.
The current absurdity peddled by the Forever War front is that European troops need to be sent to Ukraine before a much hyped ceasefire, and not after, so Anti-Christ Putin is kept “under pressure” to, well, capitulate while he’s winning.
Translation: the Europeans do not want a peacekeeping force. They want a deterrence force capable of advancing whenever they see fit – as in a false flag proving the evil Russians broke the truce.
This stupidity is mirrored by European “thinking” – as, for instance, the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) publishing a new strategic handbook with proposals for the “disempowerment” of Russia.
EUISS poses as analytical experts on Russia’s “hybrid warfare”: that’s pathetic, as Hybrid War is an American concept. Still, the EUISS goes for broke on establishing hegemony on five strategically important latitudes: China, Asia–Pacific, the southern Mediterranean, southeast Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. In sum: the same old shtick, NATO as Global Robocop on crack.
Apollo vs. Dionysus, remixed
Alastair sustains that Putin, in the Anchorage summit, “understood the psychology of Trump”. Trump “seems to recognize Putin as a fellow in the pantheon of putative mythic leaders”. Once again, the distance between Apollonian Putin and not-so-Dionysiac Trump should be the equivalent between Timur and a nondescript MMA fighter.
It’s open to vast speculation whether Trump in Alaska might have agreed with Putin to invert the planned Russian foreign asset theft by the EU – and instead force the funds to be invested in the US. Now that would be prime “offer you can’t refuse” territory.
So far, what we do know for sure is that Steve Witkoff – that real estate Bismarck – did not understand anything of what he heard directly from Putin, setting the stage for Alaska.
Witkoff hit the US networks full tilt, blabbering that Putin on August 15th had reversed his ultimate red line, No NATO for Ukraine. And it looks like Trump followed the real estate Bismarck’s massive fake news – as Witkoff himself spun the Russians made concessions “almost immediately” in Alaska.
Well, Witkoff must have been smoking something. Or not. Because his “lost in translation” gimmick in fact conditioned the whole subsequent tawdry spectacle on “the peacekeepers”.
So now Mythic Narcissus is saying that the Empire of Chaos won’t send any troops to Ukraine, but will support a “security guarantee”, allegedly with spy planes (well, they are already operating them anyway) and “back up” as in ISR, air defense and air cover. In practice, there will be no imperial “security guarantees” to the Ukrainian black void. But the myth of tens of thousands of EU/NATO troops stepping into Ukraine will persist.
Next week, the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok carries the enticing possibility of US-Russia deals being discussed. As in ExxonMobil maybe returning to the Sakhalin-1 mega gas project (already there have been secret talks with Rosneft); selling American equipment for LNG projects to Russia, including the Arctic LNG-2; and the purchase of Russian nuclear icebreakers by the US. Now that will be something to watch.
Meanwhile, no illusions in Moscow – as required. Mythic Narcissus, depending on his mood while facing his reflection in the pool, may at any moment authorize Kiev hits on Moscow and St. Petersburg with long-range missiles. Why not? “I have the right to do ANYTHING I want to do – I’m the President of the United States.”
Narcissus actually believes he’s Theseus – slaying every Minotaur in sight, and yet always incapable of leaving the Labyrinth. No wonder Moscow needs to be ready, 24/7, for some sort, any sort of irrational slaying.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... narcissus/
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The President’s “Firing” of Lisa Cook Is Illegal
Posted on August 27, 2025 by Yves Smith.
Yves here. Trump’s efforts to bring the Fed to heel has escalated into a market-roiling battle royale with his “firing” of Fed governor Lisa Cook. As some watchful Twitterati point out:
Dear journalists:
The President has not fired Lisa Cook. The President is *trying* to illegally fire her.
Your words shape people’s reality. Please be accurate in your reporting.
As readers likely know by now, Cook is filing suit to contest Trump’s effort to oust her.
Georgetown law professor, mortage/banking expert and sometimes running buddy (back in the foreclosure fraud days) Adam Levitin has weighed in on the validity of Trump’s removal scheme. Levitin starts with arguments that will likely be voiced in the mainstream media by other legal mavens, that even if Trump’s unproven allegations were true, they do not amount to “cause”. But Levitin makes additional arguments based on the accusations of fraud impropriety. He carefully parses what her representations on the relevant instruments would have amounted to, and in particular, that most observers are confusing “primary residence” with “principal residence” in that a borrower can have only one “primary residence” but can have multiple “principle” residences.
By Adam Levitin, Professor of Law, Georgetown University. Originally published at Credit Slips
President Trump fired Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook tonight based on unproven allegations by his politically motivated henchman that Cook engaged in mortgage fraud. The President’s actions are illegal. He currently has no legal basis to fire Cook. Instead, he disregarded even a modicum of due process in order to achieve a political goal.
It is clear that the President can remove a Federal Reserve Board Governor “for cause.” Unlike some other federal statutes, “cause” is not articulated in the Federal Reserve Act, but presumably it falls within the ambit of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance” or the like. Whether engaging in mortgage fraud would falls into the scope of “cause” is doubtful, as it is unrelated to the execution of Cook’s office. It’s really no different than conviction for assault and battery arising from a bar brawl. At most, one might claim that the fraud indicates a lack of integrity or some general moral turpitude, but that isn’t what “for cause” removal is about. Just because someone is a rotten human being does not create legal grounds for removal.But even if mortgage fraud were actually an adequate basis for “for cause” removal, Trump has no basis for concluding that Cook actually engaged in mortgage fraud. The only thing the President has to go on is the evidence adduced in FHFA Director Bill Pulte’s criminal referral letter. That evidence would not, standing alone, be grounds for a prosecution.
The only evidence Pulte presents is that (1) Cook took out mortgages on two properties within a couple of weeks, (2) the security instrument for each contains a covenant stating that she intended it to be her “principal residence” for one year hence, and (3) one property was briefly listed by someone as being available to rent. None of that evidence is sufficient proof of mortgage fraud.
Let’s consider the statutes that Pulte referenced in his referral. First, he referenced 18 U.S.C. § 1014, which criminalizes false statements in loan applications. The covenants in the security instruments are not “statements.” They are promises, not representations of current fact, so they cannot be false. A misrepresentation about intended occupancy on the Uniform Residential Mortgage Application could trigger 18 U.S.C. § 1014, but the representation there, that property will be the borrower’s “primary residence,” is very narrow given that no duration is specified. That vagueness cuts against a criminal prosecution.
Second, Pulte referenced 18 U.S.C. § 1344, which criminalizes “knowingly” defrauding a financial institution or obtaining credit “by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.” That provision could encompass the promises made in the security instrument about the property serving as the borrower’s “principal residence,” but it is far from clear that Cook knowingly made the promise or that it was in fact false.
Most borrowers do not read their security instruments, so it is entirely possible that Cook had no idea what she was promising beyond that she would pay the mortgage note when installments came due. While contract law readily tags consumers with constructive knowledge of the terms and conditions of their prolix form contracts, criminal law doesn’t work like that.
Moreover, even if Cook did know that she was promising to have both properties be her “principal residence,” it isn’t clear that she was making a false promise. The term “principal residence” is not a defined in the security instruments, but it is not the same phrasing as “primary residence” (as used in the UMRA). “Principal” is more capacious than “primary,” and is capable of covering multiple residences. Imagine someone who has an co-op in NYC, a house in the New York suburbs, and a condo in Florida and splits time among all three depending on seasons and days of the week, spending roughly a third of the year at each. That person might very well consider himself to have more than one principal residence. (Pulte also referenced the wire fraud and mail fraud statutes, but those are lard-one statutes that require an underlying predicate fraud, which takes us back to the two statutes already discussed.)
The key thing here is that Trump’s only basis for action is Pulte’s referral letter, and that is not an adequate basis for concluding that Cook actually engaged in any wrong doing. Neither Pulte nor Trump have no idea whether Cook knowingly made the occupancy promise or what she interpreted the promise to mean.
We have a system in which people are innocent until proven guilty, and there is not even a prima facie case of fraud here, only a scant bit of evidence that is consistent with fraud. What’s more, that evidence is basically fruit of the poisonous tree, the result of a politically motivated fishing expedition by Pulte. To my knowledge the FHFA has never previously directed the GSEs to produce the loan files for specific individual borrowers, much less without any prior cause for concern about those borrowers. Instead, it seems that Pulte gave the GSEs a hit list of folks whose mortgages files he wanted to review because of their politics. (The fact that he’s only found three targets says a lot about how his fishing expedition is going.) Yet the President is all to happy to use the inadequate result of his toady’s dirty work to advance his own goal of taking control of the Fed. Whatever “for cause” dismissal means, the President cannot be the sole arbiter of “cause” or else the restriction is meaningless. And if it is to have any meaning, the President would have to, at the very least, give the official in question an opportunity to be heard.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, we have a President disregarding due process in order to achieve a political goal. That’s not how America is supposed to work.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08 ... legal.html
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The CIA, Mossad & Epstein
August 26, 2025
As speculation mounts about the possibility of Trump pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan MacLeod unravels the intelligence ties of the Maxwell family.
Mug shot of British convicted sex offender and former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, taken at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, undated. (Federal Bureau of Prisons/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
By Alan MacLeod
MintPress News
With speculation mounting that U.S. President Donald Trump could pardon her, MintPress profiles the family of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. From her media baron father who acted as a high-level spy for Israel; her sister, working to push Tel Aviv’s interests in Silicon Valley; her brothers, who founded a dubious but highly influential anti-Islamic extremism think tank; and nephews in influential roles at the State Department and White House, the Maxwell clan have wide-ranging ties to U.S. and Israeli state power. This is their story.
Releasing Ghislaine, Burying the Epstein Files
Speculation is growing that Ghislaine Maxwell could soon be freed. Despite campaigning on the promise to release the Epstein Files, there are increasing signs that the Trump administration is considering pardoning the world’s most notorious convicted sex trafficker.
Last month, Trump (who contemplated the idea in his first term in office) repeatedly refused to rule out a pardon, stating to journalists that “I’m allowed to do it.”
[The transcript of a DOJ courthouse interview released on Aug. 22 shows Ghislaine Maxwell saying Trump and other famous figures were not involved in the pedophile ring in what might well be a quid-pro-quo: I’ll say Trump and other powerful people weren’t involved and you’ll set me free.]
Just days later, Maxwell was transferred across states to a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas — a highly unusual practice. Neither women convicted of sex crimes nor those with more than 10 years remaining on their sentences are generally permitted to be transferred to such facilities. The move sparked equal measures of speculation and outrage.
The decision to relocate Maxwell came after somebody — potentially a source within her team itself — began leaking incriminating and embarrassing evidence linking Trump to Epstein. This included a birthday card Trump sent Epstein, featuring a hand-drawn nude woman, accompanied by the text:
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Federal Prison Camp — Bryan, in Texas, where Ghislaine Maxell has just joined the list of notable inmates. (U.S. Bureau of Prisons/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
For years, Maxwell aided her partner Jeffrey Epstein in trafficking and raping girls and young women, creating a giant sex crime ring in the process. Epstein’s associates included billionaires, scientists, celebrities, and politicians, including Trump, whom he considered his “closest friend.”
In 2021, two years after Epstein’s mysterious death in a Manhattan prison, Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking offenses and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The news that Trump may soon free such an infamous criminal sent shockwaves through his base and drew charges of blatant corruption from the media. “Is there any reason to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell except to buy her silence?” ran the headline of one article in The Hill.
Meanwhile, Tim Hogan, senior Democratic National Committee adviser, denounced what he claimed was a “government cover-up in real time.” “Donald Trump’s F.B.I., run by loyalist Kash Patel, redacted Trump’s name from the Epstein files — which have still not been released,” he said.
Robert Maxwell: Media Tycoon & Israeli Operative
While many of Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes have come to light, less well-known are her family’s myriad connections to both the U.S. and Israeli national security states. Chief among these are those of her father, disgraced media baron and early tech entrepreneur, Robert Maxwell.
A Jewish refugee fleeing Hitler’s occupation of his native Czechoslovakia, Maxwell fought for Britain against Germany. After World War II, he used his Czech connections to help funnel arms to the nascent State of Israel, weapons that helped them win the 1948 war and carry out the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians.
Maxwell’s biographers, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, write that he was first recruited by Israeli intelligence in the 1960s and began buying up Israeli tech corporations. Israel used these companies and their software to carry out spying and other clandestine operations around the globe.
Maxwell amassed a vast business empire of 350 companies, employing 16,000 people. He owned an array of newspapers, including The New York Daily News, Britain’s Daily Mirror and Maariv of Israel, in addition to some of the world’s most influential book and scientific publishing houses.
With business power came political power. He was elected to the U.K. Parliament in 1964 and counted U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev among his closest friends.
He used this influence to advance Israeli interests, selling Israeli intelligence-gathering software to Russia, the U.S., the U.K., and many other countries. This software included a secret Israeli backdoor that allowed the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to tap into classified information gathered by governments and intelligence agencies around the world.
Robert Maxwell, at right, during the Global Economic Panel meeting in April 1989 in Amsterdam. From left: Dutch businessman Wisse Dekker, Dutch politician Hans van den Broek and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. (Rob Bogaerts, ANEFO, Nationaal Archief NL, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)
At the same time as it was expanding its espionage capabilities, Israel was developing a secret nuclear weapons program. This project was exposed by Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu, who, in 1986, leaked evidence to the British press. Maxwell — one of Britain’s most powerful press barons —spied on Vanunu, passing photographs and other information to the Israeli embassy — intelligence that led to Vanunu’s international abduction by Mossad, and his subsequent imprisonment.
His death was also surrounded by controversy, similar to Epstein’s. In 1991, his lifeless body was found in the ocean, in what authorities ruled a bizarre accident whereby the tycoon had fallen from his luxury yacht. To this day, his children are split on whether they think he was murdered.
The rumors that Maxwell had, for decades, been acting as an Israeli “superspy” were all but confirmed by the lavish state funeral he received in Jerusalem. His body was interred at the Mount of Olives, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the spot from which Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven.
Virtually the entirety of elite Israeli society – both government and opposition – attended the event, including no fewer than six living heads of Israeli intelligence organizations. President Chaim Herzog himself performed the eulogy. Also speaking at the event was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who stated that “Robert Maxwell has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
In the United Kingdom, however, he is remembered less fondly. A man with a fearsome reputation, Maxwell ruled his media business with an iron fist, in a similar vein to Rupert Murdoch (another individual with extremely close links to Israel). After his death, it transpired that he had stolen more than $500 million from his employees’ pension fund to bail out other failing companies in his empire, leaving many of his workforce’s retirement plans in tatters. As the newspaper, The Scotsman, remarked 10 years later in 2001:
“If [Maxwell] was despised in life, he was hated in death when it emerged he had stolen 440 million [pounds] from the pension fund of Mirror Group Newspapers. He was, officially, the biggest thief in British criminal history.”
Isabel Maxwell: Israel’s Woman in Silicon Valley
Isabel Maxwell addressing a panel in Marrakech, Morocco, at the World Economic Forum as president of Blue World Alliance, USA, on Oct. 27, 2010. (World Economic Forum/Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Even before it had been published, Isabel Maxwell – Robert’s daughter and Ghislaine’s older sister– managed to obtain a copy of Thomas and Dillon’s biography. She immediately flew to Israel, The Times of London reported, where she showed it to a “family friend” and deputy director of Mossad, David Kimche. These actions did little to beat the book’s central allegation that her father was indeed a high-level Israeli “superspy.”
Isabel has enjoyed a long and successful career in the tech industry. In 1992, along with her twin sister, Christine, she founded a company that developed one of the internet’s first search engines.
After the pension scandal, however, she and her siblings shifted their focus to rebuilding every facet of their father’s collapsed business empire. The sisters sold the search engine, netting enormous profits.
As Israeli outlet Haaretz noted, in 2001, Isabel decided to dedicate her life to advancing the Jewish State’s interests, vowing to “work only on things involving Israel” as she “believes in Israel.” Described by former MintPress journalist and investigative reporter Whitney Webb as “Israel’s back door into Silicon Valley,” she has transformed herself into a key ambassador for the country in the tech world.
“Maxwell created a unique niche for herself in [tech] as a liaison between Israeli companies in the initial development stages and private angel investors in the U.S. At the same time, she helps U.S. companies interested in opening development centers in Israel,” wrote local business newspaper, Globes. “She lives intensively, including innumerable flights back and forth between Tel Aviv and San Francisco,” it added.
Israel is known to be the source of much of the world’s most controversial spyware and hacking tools, used by repressive governments the world over to surveil, harass, and even kill political opponents. This includes the notorious Pegasus software, used by the government of Saudi Arabia to track Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, before assassinating him in Türkiye.
Isabel built on her father’s political connections. “My father was most influential in my life. He was a very accomplished man and achieved many of his goals during his life. I learned very much from him and have made many of his ways my own,” she said. This included developing intimate ties to a myriad of Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s closest associates.
During the 2000s, she was a regular participant at the Herzliya Conference, an annual, closed-door gathering of the West’s most senior political, security and intelligence officials, in addition to being a “technology pioneer” at the World Economic Forum.
She was also placed on the board of the Israeli government-funded Shimon Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, two organizations closely associated with those former Israeli prime ministers.
In 2001, she became the CEO of iCognito, taking the job, in her words, “because it [the company] is in Israel, and because of its technology.” The technology in question was aimed at keeping children safe online — highly ironic, given that her sister was actively trafficking and abusing minors throughout that period.
Isabel was a much more serious and accomplished individual than Ghislaine. As Haaretz noted:
“While her younger sister, Ghislaine, makes the gossip columns after breakfasting with Bill Clinton or because of her ties with another close friend, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Isabel wants to show photos taken of herself with the grand mufti of Egypt, or with Bedouin in a tent, or of visits to a Gaza refugee camp.”
In 1997, Isabel was appointed president of the Israeli tech security firm, Commtouch. Thanks to her connections, Commtouch was able to secure investment from many of the most prominent players in Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, a close associate of both the Maxwell family and Jeffrey Epstein himself.
Christine Maxwell: Funded by Israel?
Isabel’s twin sister, Christine, is no less accomplished. A veteran of the publishing and tech industries, she co-founded data analytics firm Chiliad. As CEO, she helped oversee the production of a massive “counterterrorism” database that the company sold to the F.B.I. during the height of the War on Terror. The software helped the Bush administration crack down on Muslim Americans and tear down domestic civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act. Today, she is the leader and co-founder of another big data corporation, Techtonic Insight.
Like her sister and father, Christine has a close relationship with the State of Israel. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), where, her biography states,
“She works to promote innovative academic research that leverages enabling technologies to empower proactive understanding and combatting the great dangers of contemporary antisemitism, and enhancing the ongoing relevance of the Holocaust for the 21st century and beyond.”
ISGAP’s board is a who’s who of Israeli national security state officials. This includes Natan Sharansky, former minister of internal affairs and deputy prime minister of Israel, and Brigadier General Sima Vaknin-Gil, the former chief censor for the IDF and director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Diplomacy. Also on the board is Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.
The think tank was a key player in the U.S. government’s decision to repress the 2024 Gaza protests on university campuses nationwide. The group produced reports linking student leaders with foreign terrorist organizations and promoted dubious claims about a wave of anti-Semitism washing over American colleges. It met frequently with both Democratic and Republican leaders, and urged them to “investigate” (i.e., repress) the leaders of the demonstrations.
Sign on Columbia University campus in New York in April 2024, during the student pro-Palestine encampment. (Pamela Drew, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
ISGAP has continually warned of foreign influence on American campuses, producing reports and holding seminars detailing Qatar’s supposed stranglehold over the U.S. higher education system, and linking that with growing anti-Israel sentiment among America’s youth.
Yet if ISGAP wished to investigate other foreign government influence operations, it would not have to look far, as its own funds overwhelmingly come from a single source: the Israeli state. In 2018, an investigation found that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs (then headed by Brigadier General Vaknin-Gil herself) channeled $445,000 to ISGAP, a sum representing nearly 80 percent of its entire revenues for that year. ISGAP failed to disclose that information to either the public or the federal government.
At the height of the concern over foreign interference in American politics, the news barely registered. Since then, the Israeli government has continued to bankroll the group to the tune of millions. In 2019, for example, it approved a grant of over $1.3 million to ISGAP. Thus, in her role as a fellow at the organization, Christine Maxwell is the direct beneficiary of Israeli government cash.
Third Generation Maxwells: Working In US Government
While Robert Maxwell’s daughters were close to state power, some of the family’s third generation have taken up positions within the U.S. government itself. Shortly after graduating from college, Alex Djerassi (Isabel Maxwell’s only son) was employed by Hillary Clinton on her 2007-2008 presidential campaign. Djerassi drafted memos, briefings, and policy papers for the Clinton team and helped prepare her for more than 20 debates.
The Clinton and Maxwell families are closely intertwined. Ghislaine vacationed with Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, and appeared prominently at her wedding. Both she and Jeffrey Epstein were invited multiple times to the Clinton White House. Long after Epstein was jailed, President Bill Clinton invited Ghislaine to an intimate dinner with him at an exclusive Los Angeles restaurant.
U.S. President Bill Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein after an event of White House restoration donors, September 1993; Ghislaine Maxwell on right. (White House, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
Although she failed in her bid for the White House, President Obama named Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, and one of her first actions was to appoint Djerassi to her team.
He quickly rose in the ranks, becoming chief of staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In this role, he specialized in developing the United States’ policy towards Israel and Iran, although he also worked on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and accompanied Clinton on visits to Israel and the Arab world.
While at the State Department, he served as the U.S. government representative to the Friends of Libya and the Friends of the Syrian People Conferences. These were two organizations of hardline, hawkish groups working towards the overthrow of those two governments, and their replacement with U.S.-friendly regimes. Washington got what it wanted. In 2011, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown, killed and replaced by Islamist warlords. And last December, longtime Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, fled to Russia and was replaced by the founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
Djerassi was later appointed an associate at the U.S.-government-funded think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. While there, he again specialized in Middle East policy, his bio noting that he “worked on matters relating to democratization and civil society in the Arab world, the Arab uprisings, and Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Today, he works in Silicon Valley.
While Djerassi’s fortunes were tied to the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party, his cousin Xavier Malina (Christine Maxwell’s eldest son) backed the right horse, working on the Obama-Biden 2008 presidential run.
Joe Biden and Barack Obama after the presentation of Biden as the vice presidential running mate in Springfield, Illinois, in August 2008. (Daniel Schwen/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)
He was rewarded for his good work with a position in the White House itself, where he became a staff assistant at the Executive Office of the President. Like his cousin, once his time in office was over, Malina also secured a position at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace before pursuing a career in the tech world, working for many years at Google in the Bay Area. He currently works for Disney.
While the actions of parents and grandparents should not determine the careers of later generations, the fact that two individuals who come from a multi-generational family of unrepentant spies and operatives of a foreign power secured positions at the center of the U.S. State is at least worthy of note.
The Maxwell Brothers: From Bankruptcy to Counterterrorism
Much of the Maxwell clan is most influential in American and Israeli politics. However, brothers Ian and Kevin also hold considerable sway over affairs in their native Great Britain. Although being acquitted of charges over widespread allegations that they helped their father, Robert, plunder over $160 million from his employees’ pension fund, the brothers kept a low profile for many years. Kevin, in particular, was known for little more than being Britain’s largest-ever bankrupt, with debts exceeding half a billion dollars.
However, in 2018, they launched Combating Jihadist Terrorism and Extremism (CoJiT), a controversial think tank pushing for a far more invasive and heavy-handed government approach to the question of radical Islam.
In his organization’s book, Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses, Ian writes that CoJiT was set up to play a “catalyzing role in the national conversation,” and to answer “difficult questions” arising from the issue. Judging by the content of the rest of the book, this means pushing for even more extensive surveillance of Muslim communities.
Jonathan Evans in 2019. (Roger Harris/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0)
Within Britain, CoJiT was a highly influential organization. Its editorial board and contributors are a who’s who of high state officials. Individuals participating in its inaugural conference in London in 2018 included Sara Khan, the government’s lead commissioner for countering extremism, and Jonathan Evans, the former director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency.
Like so many Maxwell projects, CoJiT appears to have wrapped up its affairs. The organization has not updated its website or posted anything on its social media channels since 2022.
In fairness, in the past few years, the brothers have had other priorities, leading the campaign to free their sister Ghislaine from prison, insisting that she is entirely innocent. In a manner reminiscent of Robert Maxwell, however, it appears that Kevin may have failed to pay the defense team; in 2022, Maxwell’s lawyers sued him, seeking unpaid fees of nearly $900,000.
The Infamous Mr. Epstein
For years, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein ran a sex-trafficking ring that exploited hundreds of girls and young women. They were also connected to vast networks of the global elite, including billionaire business owners, royalty, star academics, and foreign leaders, among their closest acquaintances, leading to intense speculation about the extent of their involvement in their many crimes.
It is still unclear when Epstein first met with the Maxwells, with some alleging that he was recruited into Israeli intelligence by Robert Maxwell. Others state the relationship only began after Robert’s death, when he saved the family from penury following its financial problems.
Mug shot of Jeffrey Epstein from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department following his indictment for soliciting a prostitute in 2006. (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
Only one month after his 2019 arrest, Epstein was found dead in his New York City prison cell. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although his family has rejected this interpretation.
Perhaps the two most powerful individuals in Epstein’s circle of confidants were Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton, already infamous for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, is known to have flown at least 17 times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” and was accused by Epstein victim, Virginia Giuffre, of visiting Little St. James Island, the multimillionaire’s private Caribbean residence, where many of his worst crimes took place.
Trump, arguably, was even closer to the disgraced financier. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” he said in 2002,
“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it.”
Like Clinton, Trump flew on the Lolita Express. Epstein attended his wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, and claimed to have introduced him to his third wife, Melania.
Unfortunately, while Epstein’s ties incriminate the entire political spectrum, coverage has often been framed as a partisan issue. A MintPress study of over one year of Epstein coverage on MSNBC and Fox News found that each network downplayed his connections to their preferred president, while emphasizing and highlighting the links to the leader of the other major party. As a result, many in the United States see the affair as an indictment of their political rivals, rather than of the political system as a whole.
There also remains the question of Epstein’s links to intelligence, something that has been openly speculated about in the media for decades, even years before any allegations against him were made public. Throughout the 1990s, Epstein’s biographer Julie K. Brown noted, he openly boasted about working for both the C.I.A. and Mossad, although the veracity of his claims remains in doubt. As Britain’s Sunday Times wrote in 2000, “He’s Mr. Enigmatic. Nobody knows whether he’s a concert pianist, property developer, a C.I.A. agent, a math teacher or a member of Mossad.” It is possible that there is at least a grain of truth to all of these identities.
Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein in 1993. (Ralph Alswang, White House/Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)
Epstein met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns three times in 2014. Burns would later be named director of the C.I.A. Burns’ proximity to Epstein, however, pales in comparison to that of former Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Between 2013 and 2017 alone, Barak is known to have traveled to New York City and met with the convicted criminal at least 30 times, sometimes arriving at his Manhattan mansion incognito or wearing a mask to hide his identity.
President Bill Clinton, center, with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on left, the Palestinian Authority’s Yasser Arafat on right at Camp David, July 1, 2000. (White House/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
Numerous sources have commented on Epstein’s connections to Israeli intelligence. A previous girlfriend and victim of his, referred in court documents as Jane Doe 200 to hide her identity, testified that Epstein boasted about being a Mossad operative and that, after he raped her, she could not go to the police because his position as a spy made her fear for her life.
“Doe genuinely believed that any reporting of the rape by what she believed to be a Mossad agent with some of the most unique connections in the world would result in significant bodily harm or death to her,” reads the court filing.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former senior official in Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, claimed that Epstein was a spy and that he and Ghislaine Maxwell were running a honeytrap operation on behalf of Israel. Four (anonymous) sources told Rolling Stone that Epstein had directly worked with the Israeli government.
Unlike much of the Maxwell family, however, his Israel and intelligence connections are based largely on testimony and unverified accounts. His only known trip to the country was in April 2008, just before his sentencing, a move that sparked fears he would seek refuge there.
Nevertheless, there has been intense public speculation that he could have been working for Tel Aviv. At the Turning Points USA Student Action Summit 2025, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson stated that there is nothing wrong, hateful or anti-Semitic about asking questions about Epstein’s foreign connections. “No one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel, because we’ve been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he said, before expressing his exasperation about the media’s silence on the issue.
“What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house, you have had all this contact with a foreign government, were you working on behalf of the Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?”
Carlson’s comments drew harsh condemnation from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel,” he wrote.
“This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t,” he added, concluding that Israel was under attack from a “vicious wave of slander and lies.”
Whatever the truth about Epstein, it is indisputable that the powerful Maxwell family holds wide-ranging connections to U.S., British and Israeli state power. It is also beyond doubt that if the full story of their activities were ever to reach the public, it would incriminate a significant number of the world’s most powerful people and organizations. Perhaps that is why Trump has, in short order, gone from promising to release the Epstein Files to potentially releasing his accomplice.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/08/26/t ... d-epstein/
I find it hard to believe that Mossad would be allowed to 'get the goods' on so many important Americans by the CIA without permission, connivance. Was Mossad a 'sub-contractor' in this? I suspect so, and that's why we'll never see 'the list', too much 'collateral damage'.
******
Denmark summons US envoy over report on covert American ‘influence operations’ in Greenland
By Catherine Nicholls and Henrik Pettersson
Sources from Denmark, Greenland and the United States told Danish public broadcaster DR that at least three Americans have attempted to "infiltrate" Greenlandic society. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The US envoy to Denmark was summoned by the Danish foreign ministry on Wednesday, after the country’s public broadcaster reported that a number of American men have attempted to conduct “influence operations” in Greenland.
According to an investigation by Danish public broadcaster DR, at least three Americans with “ties” to US President Donald Trump are conducting active operations in Greenland, sparking concerns that they could be working to shift public opinion and push Trump’s desire to make Greenland a part of the US.
Greenland, a huge, resource-rich island in the Atlantic, is a self-governing territory of Denmark. Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to annex the island, claiming that this is needed for security purposes. Both Greenland and Denmark are staunchly opposed to the idea.
“We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark. It is therefore not surprising if we experience outside attempts to influence the future of the Kingdom in the time ahead,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement Wednesday.
According to the DR investigation, which was based off conversations with eight sources across Denmark, Greenland and the US, the three men are conducting the operations in an attempt to “infiltrate Greenlandic society.”
One of the American men involved has made a list of Trump supporters in Greenland, with the goal of later recruiting them to establish a secessionist movement on the island, according to the broadcaster.
The two other men have made contact with politicians, business people and other citizens, causing authorities to be concerned that they could be used to support Trump’s goal of annexing the territory, DR reported.
The broadcaster was unable to determine whether or not the men were acting under orders. CNN has reached out to the White House and the government of Greenland for comment.
“Any attempt to interfere” in Denmark’s internal affairs is “unacceptable,” Rasmussen said in Wednesday’s statement.
“The cooperation between the governments of Denmark and Greenland is close and based on mutual trust, just as there is close cooperation and dialogue between the relevant Greenlandic and Danish authorities,” he continued.
https://us.cnn.com/2025/08/27/europe/de ... nland-intl
Trump wants Greenland as a refugia for the ruling class as climate change becomes catastrophic because of that ruling class. He foresees a real estate bonanza...
