Several weeks ago, ABC News anchor Amy Robach was taped talking to her producer off air, expressing her frustration about ABC “spiking” the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia story. Project Veritas picked up the tape and released it earlier this week. Here’s ABC’s Robach:
I’ve had the story for three years — I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre [one of Epstein’s victims]. We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’
NPR had criticized ABC in August for failing to air the interview with Giuffre, who was never told why ABC wouldn’t air it. In the clip, Robach says one reason the interview didn’t run is that Giuffre implicated British Prince Andrew, and the British royal family had “threatened” ABC “a million different ways.”
One of those ways, said Robach, was a threat to cut ABC’s access to British royals William and Kate. In the tape, an off-camera ABC employee said it was “creepy” that ABC would prioritize access to powerful people over telling the truth about Epstein’s predations on young girls. Robach agreed, saying, “Well, then I got a little concerned about why I couldn’t get [the story] on.”
“And then Alan Dershowitz was also implicated in — ’cause of the planes, she [Giuffre] told me everything,” Robach continued. “She had pictures, she had everything. She was in hiding for 12 years. We convinced her to come out. We convinced her to talk to us. It was unbelievable what we had [on Bill] Clinton. We had everything … [including] other women backing it up.”
At the end of the tape, Robach commented on Epstein’s recent death:
So do I think [Epstein] was killed? A hundred percent, yes I do. Because do you want it? He made his whole living blackmailing people. Yep. There were a lot of men in those planes, a lot of men who visited that island, lot of powerful men who came into that apartment.
The ABC employee off-camera then noted that she also didn’t believe the official story — that Epstein died in his jail cell from suicide.
“I knew [it wasn’t suicide] immediately,” Robach concurred. “And they made it seem as though he made that suicide attempt two weeks earlier. But his lawyers claim that he was roughed up by his cellmate around the neck, that was all, like, to plant the seed. And then … that’s why I really believe it. Like, really believe it.”
Robach then talked about Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly groomed the young girls for Epstein and reportedly has “dirt” on all involved:
Well, Ghislaine Maxwell, who I had all sorts of stuff on her too. … And everyone’s like, ‘Who’s that? Who cares?’ She knows everything. She should be careful. She went out and recruited all of these girls. She should watch her back. I’d have security guards all around me.
Robach Situation Reveals Media Malpractice
The whole thing is troubling. Robach tried unconvincingly to walk her comments back. ABC claimed it didn’t run the story because it didn’t meet ABC’s standards.
But three years ago, when ABC News had the story, Epstein was a free man, and girls were still being abused. And this revelation comes on the tail of NBC being credibly accused of trying to kill the Harvey Weinstein story, even while it allowed Matt Lauer’s alleged sexual abuses to go unchecked. Plus these revelations are juxtaposed against a long history of these networks’ eagerness to publish unsubstantiated sexual smears against center-right figures, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The timing of coverage has also been suspect. It’s astonishing to think how frenzied the Epstein coverage was, only to fade into relative oblivion after Epstein’s alleged suicide. The truth is that the media was only interested in the Epstein story when they thought they could tie Epstein’s crimes to President Trump because Trump was friends with Epstein in the 1990s.
According to court documents, though, Trump fell out with Epstein in the early 2000s, allegedly after Epstein was creepy with a towel girl at Mar-A-Lago, which led to Trump kicking Epstein out of the resort. The leftist media, without equally strong evidence, has tried to claim the falling-out occurred over a bidding war to buy an oceanfront mansion.
Either way, Trump and Epstein stopped being friends in the early 2000s. The same can’t be said for Bill Clinton. Other media leftists, including former Clinton White House official and current ABC News personality George Stephanopoulos, also continued to meet Epstein after his pedophilia had been publicly revealed.
Lest the Epstein coverage reveal too much, the media moved on from the Epstein-Trump angle and thus moved on from heavily covering the Epstein story altogether. In fact, much of the media is currently ignoring or downplaying the Robach tape concerning Epstein and ABC News.
That’s the opposite of journalism, especially since the entire Epstein story should keep Americans up at night. That Epstein died by suicide is questionable, according to medical evidence. And other irregularities surround Epstein’s death, including cameras that stopped working and guards that didn’t follow protocol.
Suicide or not, even bigger questions remain. As Robach said in the above tape, other people who were complicit in Epstein’s evil appear to be escaping (worldly) justice. Where is Ghislaine Maxwell? If only CNN still thought it could tie Epstein to Trump, Jeff Zucker would be personally paying for Maxwell’s security to get her to testify. If Maxwell remained missing, the search for her would be bigger than the search for that plane.
Investigate the Epstein-Media-Intelligence Agency Nexus
Aside from the media malpractice, our government has been negligent as well. The Epstein story is yet another example of why Americans’ faith in our government is completely broken. Yes, there’s the aforementioned “bungles” at the jail where Epstein spent his final days. But there’s another big question that has seen extremely little coverage.
Trump’s former Labor Department secretary, Alexander Acosta, was the federal prosecutor against Epstein in 2008 (Acosta being Trump’s Labor secretary was the other media angle to get Trump several months ago). Despite both state and federal prosecutors claiming they had a solid case, Epstein got a slap on the wrist — a non-prosecution plea deal in 2007 dropped all other federal investigation of sex crimes with minors and human trafficking.
Acosta deserves blame for that because Acosta gave Epstein that sweetheart plea deal. But when interviewed about Epstein during his vetting process before his Labor secretary nomination, Acosta allegedly told Trump transition team staff that senior Department of Justice officials were to blame for the lenience given to Epstein. According to The Daily Beast:
‘Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?’ Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case [with DOJ officials]. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told’ to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. ‘I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,’ he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta.
Acosta, while still Labor secretary and when asked about this report, issued a textbook non-denial. This is troubling. Given the history of the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, it is entirely conceivable that the intelligence community ran a blackmail operation via Epstein.
Yet what excuse could possibly exist for this? Young women were irreparably harmed. Often, what the intelligence bureaucracies say is in the interest of national security looks a lot more like a self-interested effort to accumulate power.
Power Must Be Held Accountable
America’s founders thought unaccountable power would always be abused. They were right. And people need to trust their government, at least most of the time, to keep a functioning republic. The media has already moved on from Epstein, but Middle America has not. Unless people in the Beltway want Middle America to totally check out, the Epstein-media-intelligence agency nexus must be investigated. Congress should hold hearings immediately to get to the bottom of this. Attorney General William Barr should also update the public on the progress and exact scope of his investigation.
The questions for Congress and the country to ask include: Is Acosta telling the truth about intelligence community involvement with Epstein? Who told Acosta to back off, and why? Where is Ghislaine Maxwell? What did ABC and other media outlets know, and when did they know it? Who were they covering for? If the intelligence community has such power over journalists, how often does the intelligence community tell newsrooms to kill stories?
For conservatives, the above questions apply, but more remain: The left talks a lot about equality, but what does it say about the leftist establishment when its media has consistently killed or underreported stories to protect the rich, connected, and powerful?
In other words, today’s news isn’t just slanted on a story-by-story basis. It’s slanted in the sense that many important stories never get covered, while small stories get overblown. Should conservatives continue to play this rigged game and treat these networks as left-leaning journalistic endeavors, instead of treating them as full-on opponents? Finally, are the intelligence agencies a threat to liberty, and what happens when even a Republican president, Republican appointees, and a Republican Congress can’t control these agencies?
In the end, it appears America is regressing, and injustice rules the day. The whole thing is reminiscent of the prophet Isaiah:
See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness resided within her, but now only murderers! Your silver has become dross, your fine wine is diluted with water. Your rulers are rebels, friends of thieves. They all love bribes and chasing after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, and the plea of the widow never comes before them. (Isaiah 1:21-23)
