Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / Mega Edition: Jeffrey Epstein And His Time As The Big Man On The Harvard Campus (Part 2) (5/9/26)

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Mega Edition: Jeffrey Epstein And His Time As The Big Man On The Harvard Campus (Part 2) (5/9/26) · The Epstein Chronicles

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Jeffrey Epstein Show. I'm
0:03
your host, Bobby Capucci, and this is a morning update. Hey,
0:09
what's up everybody, and welcome to the program. Today we're
0:13
gonna talk about another one of these fantastic top notch
0:19
members of academia and how their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was,
0:25
you know, just it was okay, it was no big deal.
0:27
I mean, according to them, their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
0:32
was just purely business and they had no idea what
0:35
sort of man he was, even though that he was
0:39
arrested for crimes, even though he was in the news
0:41
all the time for crimes allegedly committed. These people the
0:46
smartest amongst us, supposedly. Now, remember follow the science, right,
0:51
So we're following these people when they say follow the science.
0:55
I mean, that's a pretty vague statement to make, especially
0:58
considering everything we know about the people at this point.
1:03
Speaker 2: So people like Martin.
1:04
Speaker 1: Noak and Marvin Minsky and Joy Ito and the rest
1:10
of these members of academia that had their hand in
1:14
Jeffrey Epstein's pocket, well, there should be more punishment coming
1:19
towards them besides just being sanctioned Martin Noak should be
1:25
removed from his positions, not just sanctioned. And until these
1:32
universities get on board, and until these universities start doing
1:37
the right thing when it comes to these kinds of people,
1:40
then this kind of thing is going to keep happening
1:43
over and over and over again, because, like we discuss
1:46
all the time, when there is no real punishment, then
1:50
what sort of deterrent is there to stop people from
1:53
doing this? You don't lose your job, Oh, I'll get sanctioned,
1:57
big deal. I mean, come on, big efn deal. Did
2:01
he lose tenure? Did he get you know, kicked off
2:04
campus forever? Nope, none of that. So when we talk
2:09
about these people from academia, I am always ready to
2:14
vomit at this point because these higher institutions, these so
2:20
called elite institutions, they have a whole lot to answer
2:24
for and the way they conduct themselves is an embarrassment
2:28
and it should be brought to light and it should
2:30
be discussed more on a wider level, because how are
2:35
these universities going to charge so much money for courses
2:40
at their school while at the same time giving somebody
2:44
like Jeffrey Epstein an office on campus? With access to
2:47
these kids, and I know they're over eighteen. I'm not
2:51
talking about kids as in, you know, little kids, but
2:53
I'm talking about young people who can easily be molded
2:56
or who could easily be impressed by a man like
2:59
Jeffrey Epstein's wealth and connections and find themselves very quickly
3:03
in a position they probably shouldn't be. It.
3:08
Speaker 2: So it's up to the.
3:09
Speaker 1: University to have those safeguards in place to make sure
3:12
that people like Jeffrey Epstein aren't lurking around the campus
3:16
at a place like Harvard, I mean, is that too
3:22
much to ask from the university from them on their
3:25
end to do a better job of safeguarding the people
3:28
that are on that campus. It's really one of the
3:32
basic tenants of a campus, right make sure people are safe.
3:37
And how can you promote and say that you're making
3:39
the campus safe while at the same time having somebody
3:43
like Jeffrey Epstein have an office on that same very campus.
3:49
Today we have an article from Harvard Magazine and the
3:54
headline is Martin Noak sanctioned for Jeffrey epstein involvement. The
4:01
article was authored by man I'm gonna I'm gonna mangle
4:05
this name. I am truly sorry, Ladi al Gibson, Lydil Gibson,
4:11
l y d I A l y l E. Gibson.
4:14
Sorry about mangling your name. I am absolutely terrible at that,
4:18
as the listeners can all attest. All right, So onto
4:22
the article. In an email sent this afternoon to faculty members,
4:27
graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in the Department of Mathematics
4:32
and Organism, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and the Program for
4:37
Evolutionary Dynamics, Faculty of Arts and Scientists Sciences, Dean Claude
4:43
Dean Gay announced distant a player disciplinary actions against Martin Nowak. Oh, well,
4:51
about time you see all those fancy different types of sciences.
4:57
I was just talking about stuff you could hardly even
4:59
freaking pronounce, right, And this guy one of the biggest
5:02
members in all of these disciplines. Right, We're talking about
5:06
a serious, serious scientist here, and we're talking about somebody
5:12
who had a serious connection to Jeffrey Epstein. So while
5:16
the sanctioning's all fine and well, and I think it's
5:19
a decent point to start at, I think a much
5:23
more important message could be sent by actually firing these
5:31
people that were involved with Epstein. You know you there's
5:36
no self responsibility for these people. They get caught with
5:39
their hands in the cookie jar, they get a little spanking,
5:42
and then in a couple of years from now, they
5:44
have all of their positions back in the board, they
5:47
have all of their different teaching positions back, and it's
5:50
like none of it ever happened until they're in bed
5:52
with the next scumbag who rolls around with a bag
5:55
full of money. Professor of Mathematics and Biology Martin Noak,
6:03
stemming from his connections to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Those
6:08
connections were spelled out in a twenty twenty report. Between
6:12
nineteen ninety eight and two thousand and eight, Epstein made
6:15
gifts of six and a half million dollars to the
6:18
Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which was run by Noak. So
6:26
in that span of ten years, Epstein dropped six and
6:29
a half million dollars in Noak's lab for the lab
6:33
for you know, the the other projects that he's working on.
6:37
And while it's all fine and well for one of
6:40
these scientists to try and bring money in for their programs,
6:44
right for their projects, they have to be responsible ultimately
6:48
for who they're getting in bed with. They can't let
6:51
the allure of money drop a hood over their eyes,
6:55
so they don't know who they're dealing with. And then
7:00
when the chickens come home to roost, they can't say, well,
7:04
I had no idea, since one is ignorance a proper
7:08
defense in the eyes of the law. So I think
7:14
that while it's a decent step, right, a very small
7:17
minute step to sanction this man, there needs to be
7:21
much more stringent punishment when these sorts of behaviors are
7:27
engaged in. That figure made up the largest share of
7:33
this nine point one million in total gifts that Epstein
7:36
donated to the university during that period. So Epstein donated
7:42
nine point one million dollars in total gifts from ninety
7:45
eight to two thousand and eight according to their I'm
7:48
using air quotes here official records, right, and that means
7:54
that there was there was still two point five six
8:00
million that was donated elsewhere. So Epstein was spreading the
8:05
dough around, right, Remember, and married with children. When al
8:08
Bundy would get paid and he'd sit on the couch
8:10
and he'd just start passing the money out to all
8:12
the family members. You know, Kelly and Buck and Bud
8:16
the dog. Even Buck would get something and then the
8:19
wife would get some money, and he'd be left with nothing.
8:23
That's how it was with Epstein. With these scientists at Harvard,
8:26
He'd just be sitting there and he'd be passing out
8:27
the dough. Following a thorough review by the FAS, in
8:34
which Professor Noak had the opportunity to participate, Gay wrote,
8:39
Professor Noak's actions were found to have violated several FAS
8:43
and Harvard policies, including professional conduct, campus access, and guidelines
8:50
for responding to requests for endorsements. That all sounds pretty damning, right.
8:55
It all sounds like if under normal circumstances at a
8:59
normal and you know, a normal industry.
9:03
Speaker 2: You'd lose your job over that. Right.
9:05
Speaker 1: Those are serious discretions. I mean, we're not talking about
9:09
just a couple of little things here. We're talking about
9:13
professional conduct out the window. Campus access, well that too.
9:17
Guidelines for responding to requests for endorsements. Yeah, you can
9:20
notch that one off. That's probably the least amount of
9:24
ridiculousness of those of the things mentioned. But campus access
9:29
and the professional conduct alone should be enough to get
9:32
rid of this guy. Any teacher who gives a sex
9:35
offender access to the campus, it probably.
9:40
Speaker 2: Should get fired. And I know no AC will say, oh,
9:43
I had no idea who he was. Are you this
9:45
is insane? I had no clue.
9:47
Speaker 1: Stop it, Okay, stop it. In her email, Gay announced
9:54
that the program for Evolutionary Dynamics would be shut down
9:58
and that NOAK would no longer holding an appointment in
10:02
the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Wow, sounds great, Right,
10:07
we're making some big steps, right, definitely making some big steps.
10:11
But wait, there's more. Updated March twenty fifth, at twelve
10:15
fifty five pm, a spokesperson for FAS has clarified earlier
10:21
information provided by the spokesperson to reporters. Noak will continue
10:26
to hold appointments in both departments. Oh isn't that nice?
10:30
What you thought that this story had a happy ending
10:33
at this point for these NOAC types actually facing some
10:37
sort of discipline. I'm sorry, folks, that is not the case.
10:42
So once again, what we see here are these trustees
10:46
and the board members rallying around the wagon, right, protecting
10:53
their little buddy Noak and doing the bare minimum to
10:58
make it look like they're standing up and say saying, hey,
11:00
look at me, I'm doing something. I'm making a difference.
11:03
That's what That's what they're looking to do, save face.
11:06
They're looking to refurbish the facade. But it's not gonna work,
11:14
unfortunately for them.
11:15
Speaker 2: It's pretty.
11:18
Speaker 1: Disgusting to think that Harvard would not really drop the
11:23
hammer on somebody like this, and it just goes to
11:26
show you what the culture at Harvard is promoting. He
11:31
will remain on the faculty of the Mathematics Department, but
11:34
Gay listed two year limits that would be placed on
11:37
his advising and research activities. There. Oh, two year limits.
11:41
Oh wow, mister no Ash. Really he's really getting the business.
11:46
I mean really really, I mean, this is what the
11:51
trustees and the board members think is proper penalties for
11:56
this sort of behavior. I don't understand. How are you
12:03
going to even begin to try and explain to me
12:07
and tell me and lay out a narrative to me
12:10
that you want me to believe that this guy should
12:13
still be working at Harvard. He shouldn't be working at
12:16
a community college at this point. I don't care how
12:19
smart he is, all right, what that's supposed to be
12:21
a shield? Guess what man actions have consequences. Professor Noak
12:31
will not be eligible to serve as a Principal Investigator
12:34
PI on any new grants or contracts, and will be
12:38
able to serve with a COPI only on already existing grants.
12:43
Why he shouldn't be able to serve as a PI
12:45
at all? He should be completely cut out, completely completely
12:50
cut out. If he's not going to be fired because
12:53
of whatever ridiculousness they have going on within the higher
12:56
education system, then he should be a persona non grata
13:00
on campus. Everyone should shun him. Professor Noak will not
13:06
be allowed to take new post doctoral fellows or other
13:09
researchers under his supervision. Well that's good. Probably not a
13:14
good idea to, you know, have these youngsters hanging out
13:17
with a guy who exhibited such bad judgment to hang
13:20
out with Epstein and take money from Epstein. The question
13:23
has to be asked, who else is this guy taking
13:24
money from or is taken money from in the past,
13:27
And that goes for all of these scientists as well.
13:33
Professor Noak's current graduate student advises will be co advised
13:38
with another faculty member from an FAS department, and he
13:42
is not allowed to take on new graduate students. This
13:45
is all just like side dressing, right, this is just okay,
13:52
that's all fine and well, but it's more of look
13:54
at us, we're doing something, We're trying to make a difference,
13:58
when in reality they should be put much more stringent
14:01
methods in place. They should be putting much more, much
14:07
more deterrent, right, they are a bigger deterrent is what
14:13
you want. And until these people go to jail, or
14:16
until they're really shown that this sort of behavior is unacceptable,
14:22
then they're going to continue to do it. And again,
14:24
I'm not just talking about Martin Noak here, right, I.
14:28
Speaker 2: Mean, he's one of many.
14:30
Speaker 1: He just happens to be the person in this discussion
14:34
right now. But there are plenty of people like Martin
14:37
Noak out there, plenty of these professors, and the whole
14:40
entire system and the whole entire way these guys go
14:43
about raising money is broken, and there needs to be
14:48
some sort of stringent regulation of this industry as well
14:56
at the end of his two year period. At the
14:58
end of this two year Gay will decide whether to
15:02
restore some or all of the above privileges. So basically
15:06
what's happening is Gay gave him a little shot to
15:08
the ribs right and said, hey, you know you're gonna
15:10
have to suffer a little bit so we save a
15:12
little face. But in a couple of years from now,
15:15
don't worry, we're gonna revisit this. I'm gonna go back
15:17
with the red pen and I'm gonna fix all of this,
15:20
and you're gonna be right back in business.
15:21
Speaker 2: Martin Noak. We need you on property. You're so much
15:26
smarter than everybody else. This is how absurd it is.
15:32
Speaker 1: Imagine imagine at any other regular job, your boss coming
15:36
to you and saying, look, we're gonna sanction you. You're
15:39
not gonna be able to eat in the galley for
15:40
two years, You're not coming to the company party.
15:43
Speaker 2: For two years, but just still got your job. It's done.
15:47
It's so out of the realm of reality.
15:50
Speaker 1: The way that these people function and the way that
15:53
the rest of us function. Operating in a manner consistent
15:59
with our policy, these norms and standards is one of
16:02
the fundamental obligations we must each fulfill as members of
16:05
the faculty. Well, yeah, that's pretty fair statement. Unfortunately, you
16:11
guys have shown a pattern and behavior that doesn't exactly
16:16
fall in line with that, plenty of scum baggery occurring
16:22
at Harvard, unfortunately. And it's sad too because when I
16:27
was younger, you know, growing up before even when I
16:30
was a grown man, before I really really started researching
16:33
this case, I always held Harvard up as the standard, right, man,
16:37
that's a kind of university. You want to go to
16:39
that university, get a degree there, you know, it's the
16:44
top of the.
16:44
Speaker 2: Top of the mountain.
16:47
Speaker 1: But now every time I even see the crimson colors
16:51
of Harvard, I want to vomit. And it's not like
16:55
the rest of the Ivy League schools or any better either, unfortunately,
17:02
Gay wrote, adding that the sanctions against Noak are proportionate
17:06
to the severity of the behavior observed and seek to
17:09
uphold and further our shared community standards while keeping the
17:14
way open a productivity and improvement. Well, a bit of
17:19
improvement would be him getting fired. And you, Claudine Gay,
17:29
reevaluating your decisions here, because I mean, is anyone thinking
17:33
that these are the types of punishments where it's going
17:37
to deter people in the future, And when you're rendering punishment,
17:41
shouldn't that be one of the facets of it? So
17:44
that moving forward, that this does not occur again. Unfortunately,
17:50
in my opinion anyway, Harvard is white gloving the situation
17:56
once again. If you like to contact me, you can
18:00
do that at Bobby Kapucci at ProtonMail dot com. That's
18:04
bo b b y c ap you Cci at ProtonMail
18:08
dot com. You can also find me on Twitter at
18:11
Bobby underscore c ap you Cci. All of the links
18:17
that go with this episode can be found in the
18:19
description box. To everybody who has donated to the podcast
18:24
recently and in the past, Thank you folks so much.
18:27
All Right, everybody, I'll be back later on and we
18:30
will pick up where we left off. Our article today
18:36
is from the Harvard Crimson and the author is Guierimo
18:42
s Hava headline Tax Avoidance one oh one with Leon
18:46
Black and Jeffrey Epstein. Now, I think it's a solid
18:52
move that Harvard is covering this the way they are, right,
18:56
the Crimson has been pretty decent throughout this. They've covered
18:59
the Leon Black stuff, the stuff with Harvard, right, the
19:03
Jeffrey Epstein stuff with Harvard. So the Crimson here is
19:07
doing a decent job covering it. And I can only
19:09
imagine the minefield that they have to navigate to get
19:13
this story out. I mean, we're dealing with some of
19:15
the most powerful people in academia, never mind just Harvard, right,
19:21
so reporting on them for someone like this can't be comfortable.
19:26
So props to Guillermo for getting that story out there.
19:32
At first glance, Leon D. Black seems like the ideal
19:35
university donor, a poster boy for billionaire philanthropy. In nineteen
19:41
ninety he co founded Apollo Global Management, a now colossal
19:45
private equity firm. Black subsequent fortune allowed him to become
19:50
a productive, charitable member of elite so called Elite Society,
19:55
a patron of the arts, both as Museum of Modern
19:58
Art chairman and as a private collector, best known for
20:01
purchasing one of the four original versions of The Scream
20:05
for just under one hundred and twenty million dollars.
20:09
Speaker 2: At a Southeast auction.
20:12
Speaker 1: So right off the bat, we get the profile of
20:18
someone who is extremely wealthy, I mean extremely wealthy, right,
20:24
one hundred and twenty million dollar painting from Southeast really
20:29
the Scream. And I find that ironic as well, because
20:33
you know what that painting looks like, right, It's pretty iconic.
20:36
The screen painting I'm sure that's what Leon Black's face
20:39
looked like when he got those subpoenas and he found
20:41
out that he was in hot water here, that he
20:44
wasn't going to avoid being caught up in this entanglement.
20:48
I'm sure his face mimicked what that picture looks like
20:52
in the scream. Now, the fact that he's still the
20:55
chairman at MoMA.
20:57
Speaker 2: Is a travesty.
21:00
Speaker 1: Should be better, They should do better, and they should
21:04
demand that Leon Black steps down, and if he doesn't
21:07
step down, they should remove him as a board and
21:10
as a group, because, folks, it is.
21:12
Speaker 2: Not a good look, not a good look at all.
21:16
Speaker 1: And it just goes again to show you that the
21:19
art world, the world of academia, the world of modeling,
21:23
all of these people, the whole entire structure seems to
21:28
be rotten at its core of all of those industries.
21:31
And they're going to have a reckoning at some point.
21:34
And I think that reckoning is right down the pipe.
21:40
A successful alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Black has
21:43
also become a prominent supporter of our university and its
21:47
intellectual mission. He and his family foundation have pledged almost
21:52
twenty million dollars the Harvard and its various schools, including
21:56
a seven and a half million dollar contribution to create
21:59
student fellowships for US military members at the Kennedy School
22:03
of Government, where he coincidentally enough also serves as a
22:08
member of the leadership council. Now think about that for
22:11
a minute. Okay, Leon Black's bitch ass is a member
22:15
of the council of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Now,
22:19
where do you think all of these politicians that you
22:22
love and cheer for are going to school? You don't
22:27
think people like Leon Black have their ear right away.
22:30
You don't think big lobbyists like Leon Black are in
22:32
a fantastic position when they're members of boards such as these,
22:37
when the movers and shakers of tomorrow are within their
22:40
hands now to mold. Come on, folks, this is all
22:44
a hustle, It is all a scam, and people like
22:47
Leon Black put themselves in these positions so that they
22:51
can mold the future leaders of tomorrow. And that's why
22:54
I say all the time, we got to change the game.
22:57
Let's shake it up. You don't need to go to
22:59
Harvard to be a politician. You don't need to go
23:01
to Yale to be a politician, you need to have
23:04
some goddamn common sense. That's what you need to have.
23:06
And guess what a moral compass that is not broke.
23:11
How about we get some politicians that make the pledge.
23:14
I will go to Congress and I will serve one
23:16
term as a congressman or congress woman, and then if
23:19
after that term is over, I will try if I
23:21
want to keep going, I will serve one term as
23:24
a Senator, and then if that wants to If once
23:28
that's done and you want to go back to your
23:29
home state and be a politician there, fine, But on
23:32
the federal level, every one of these politicians should commit
23:35
to one or two terms at the most. Besides that,
23:39
what we have is a bureaucracy filled with Harvard trained
23:43
scumbags who are corrupted from the very beginning by people
23:47
like Leon Black. Yet as much buying luck has been
23:54
down as of late in October, and New York Times
23:57
expose revealed extensive ties between Black and another New York financier,
24:02
pedophile convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. Back in twenty nineteen,
24:08
Black had dismissed the allegations of criminal Epstein connections and
24:12
the tsunami of coverage as the gift that never stops giving.
24:16
It's sillacious. It involves elements of politics, of me too,
24:20
of rich and powerful people. All right, translation, woe is me,
24:25
woe is me.
24:25
Speaker 2: There's nothing here.
24:27
Speaker 1: All this is is because we're rich and we're powerful.
24:31
This is just silacious, silacious.
24:34
Speaker 2: It's the gift that never stops giving.
24:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, guess what if you didn't help refurbish your
24:40
buddy Jeffrey Epstein's image, and you didn't help him financially,
24:45
then maybe it wouldn't be the gift that continued to give.
24:48
Speaker 2: Guess who it wasn't.
24:49
Speaker 1: A gift for though, Leon Black, the survivors, you bitch
24:53
ass punk. But the tsunami led to reckoning, as they
24:59
use do. An internal review commissioned by Apollo emphasized that
25:04
there was no evidence that Black had been involved in
25:06
any criminal activity, but revealed that he had paid Epstein
25:10
almost one hundred and sixty million dollars over five years
25:15
for advice on a variety of tax and philanthropy issues.
25:20
It was damning enough to cost Black his job as
25:22
chief executive.
25:23
Speaker 2: Officer of his own firm.
25:25
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, no shit, it should be damning enough to
25:29
have anybody who was associated with him running for the hills.
25:33
There is no explanation that you, or anyone on this
25:37
planet can give me that I will accept about Leon
25:40
Black's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It's not purely business, okay.
25:44
And if it is, what sort of criminal activity is
25:47
Jeffrey Epstein engaging or was engaging in to try and
25:51
help Leon Black hide this money? You don't pay one
25:53
hundred and fifty eight million dollars for advice on charitable giving,
25:58
now when you're surrounded by so many rich and powerful
26:01
and smart people like Leon Black. Was you mean to
26:04
tell me all those people at Apollo weren't hip. They
26:06
couldn't have given him good advice. He had to go
26:09
off the reservation and go get this Yahoo.
26:12
Speaker 2: Stop it. Who's believing that?
26:16
Speaker 1: Now? The contents and the character of the review conducted
26:20
by Wall Street law firm Deckert LLP could fill up
26:23
an entire column, if not a series theirs. For example,
26:28
the fact that the chairman of the supposedly independent committee
26:31
overseeing the probe had eyebrow raising ties to Apollo itself
26:36
only five years ago. Remember when I talked, When I
26:39
was talking about this, about how there's no such thing
26:42
as these companies not being connected, these law firms not
26:46
being connected to people on Wall Street. Deckert's in the
26:49
bag bro for Leon Black. Leon Black is so powerful.
26:53
I don't you know, if you don't understand how the
26:55
financial game works and how the financial sector works, then
26:59
you don't understand the true power of somebody like Leon Black,
27:03
and why it's so extraordinary that we're tan and his
27:06
hide like this. We don't get chances get to nail
27:10
people like this very often, folks not very often at all.
27:14
And Deckert is very hip to the fact that Leon
27:17
Black is very powerful. So when they're doing this investigation,
27:21
they're treading lightly because well, they're hedging their bets. They
27:24
don't want to take the chance of voting Leon Black
27:28
into the challenge to use an MTV analogy and having
27:32
him come back right, So they're hedging their bets. The
27:38
skepticism of several industry insiders about the veracity of the report,
27:45
or even Deckert's own admission that it was aided in
27:48
its probe by a former Apollo outside legal counselor Paul Weiss,
27:52
who had helped vet Epstein's advice to Black in the past.
27:55
Whatever happened the conflicts of interest?
27:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree there.
27:59
Speaker 1: Guillermo, What the hell ever happened to that?
28:01
Speaker 2: Huh? Don't you think that's a little bit.
28:03
Speaker 1: Fishy that they would go and use Paul Weiss, who
28:07
used to be outside legal counselor for Apollo, to help
28:12
them conduct this investigation. I mean, here's an idea, you
28:17
really want to be independent farm that shit out to
28:19
somebody out of town that you have no idea who
28:22
they are, and they have no connections to you or
28:24
your company. Besides that, this is all song and dance
28:29
and theater. Guess what we see right through it. Black's
28:36
connections to Epstein, particularly as they relate to our university,
28:40
where several professors enjoyed an unexpected windfall as a result
28:45
of an Epstein mediated introduction with Black, are hardly a
28:50
settled matter. That's damn sure the case. And again that
28:54
is why I had doctor Steven delay On here to
28:57
talk about things from an insider's perspective within the structure
29:02
of academia. And we're not talking about at a community college.
29:05
We're talking about Oxford, folks, Okay, an elite university filled
29:11
with people.
29:12
Speaker 2: Just like this the movers and shakers of tomorrow.
29:15
Speaker 1: But yet there is still a shroud of secrecy, still
29:21
a curtain that needs to be pulled back further so
29:24
that we can examine the contents of the room in
29:29
the light. Because a reckoning is coming for academia, mark
29:34
my words. But let's, for a change, assume the best
29:40
we know at this point that that's how our own
29:43
institution is dealing with such allegations. Assume that Black really
29:47
had no one seemly ties to Epstein, that their relationship
29:50
was based entirely on professional convenience and financial advantage. All right,
29:55
I'm trying to look at it in that light, But boy,
29:58
it's hard. With everything you know, right, it's hard to
30:01
suspend all of the information that we have compiled. Let's
30:07
look beyond the ties themselves and zero into their presumed origin.
30:12
We might find a less salacious but more meaningful tale,
30:16
a story of wealthy philanthropists and the broken tax code
30:20
that makes them. Well, that's definitely part of this for me,
30:24
and it doesn't make him any less complicit. Right If
30:27
he was using Epstein, a known sex trafficker, a known
30:31
human trafficker, to try and skim money from the government
30:36
and from society itself. Boy, oh boy, that is just
30:40
as big of a problem and he should be going
30:43
to prison for that as well. According to the Deck Report,
30:49
Epstein offered his most valuable piece of work to Black
30:52
in twenty twelve, paving the way for the sex offender
30:56
to gain substantial monetary and personal access to one of
31:00
New York's finance's most powerful people. And they're zero doubt
31:04
about that Leon Black. I know I said this a
31:06
little bit ago, but he is your prototypical kingmaker. He
31:11
is the guy that makes big decisions.
31:14
Speaker 2: You know.
31:14
Speaker 1: I talk about Bobby Axelrod from the show Billions, and
31:18
that's the kind of guy Leon Black is, right, not
31:21
as cool, certainly, not as cool, certainly not as hip,
31:24
and definitely not as much of a break your face
31:28
kind of dude, but the same kind of try and
31:30
destroy everybody around me to consolidate my power type of guy.
31:34
Zero doubt about that. And Leon Black has made a
31:38
career out of enriching himself on the back of struggling
31:44
and failing companies. He is a financial predator, folks, point
31:48
blank period. The work itself was some financial advice related
31:54
to how best managed Black's grant or retained annuity trust
31:59
or grat for short, Eedstein's advice reportedly saved Black as
32:03
much as one billion or more in tax liabilities. And again,
32:09
as much as I hate Jeffrey Epstein and Leon Black
32:13
and the whole entire way this, this scam system is
32:16
set up, we have to go to the source of
32:19
the problem. And the source of the problem is in Washington,
32:22
d C.
32:22
Speaker 2: With the people we elect.
32:24
Speaker 1: Remember I just talked about all those people, the movers
32:27
and shakers of tomorrow who are on the Harvard board,
32:30
who go to Harvard, and that they're dealing with people
32:32
like Leon Black on a regular basis before they get
32:35
into politics, you know, when they're being molded.
32:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:38
Speaker 1: Well, here's the problem rearing its ugly head, right. Why
32:41
would those people being molded by people like Leon Black
32:45
when they're in school and younger at these so called
32:48
high powerful profile institutions, why would they write laws when
32:53
they become lawmakers that would screw their mentors and their
32:56
bag men. Well they wouldn't, okay, because it's a parasitic relationship.
33:05
Black's astronomical savings almost enough to, for example, quadruple federal
33:10
funding for historically black colleges and universities. Let that sit
33:13
in for that, Let that soak for a minute. Okay,
33:16
his savings were enough to fund the historically black colleges
33:20
and universities. That's the kind of tax game this son
33:24
of a bitch was playing. That's the sort of scam
33:26
he was running on the American people. And once again,
33:29
look who suffers. Imagine if you would have to pay
33:32
taxes on that, it would account for roughly one eighth
33:38
of Black's current estimated net worth. It embodies the kind
33:42
of perfectly legal, deeply impactful tax avoidance that's popular among
33:46
the ultraal wealthy, including a certain former president, and that
33:50
deepens economic inequality and mistrust in the fairness of our institutions.
33:55
Oh what we're gonna We're gonna act like Trump's.
33:57
Speaker 2: The only one player in this game.
33:59
Speaker 1: I wonder how much which the Clinton Foundation has buried offshore.
34:02
I wonder how much all these ex presidents. I wonder
34:04
how much George Bush has buried offshore. Give me a break,
34:08
they're all corrupt folks. Okay, guess what I know. This
34:10
is going to shake a lot of people at their core.
34:13
I know a lot of people don't want to hear
34:15
this all right. Everybody wants to think that their person
34:18
is the good guy in the story breaking news. None
34:21
of these politicians are the good guy. They're all great
34:24
characters at best.
34:28
Speaker 2: So what are grats? Anyway?
34:30
Speaker 1: I exchanged emails with Harvard law professor Robert H.
34:33
Speaker 2: Sitkoff to get.
34:34
Speaker 1: A better understanding of how the technique popularized by Harvard
34:38
graduate Richard Covey of class of nineteen fifty actually works.
34:42
You see what I'm talking about with Harvard folks. Every
34:45
time you turn around, it's someone who went to Harvard
34:48
that's screwing the rest of us. I have had my
34:51
fill of Harvard University. Sitkoff described gratz as a normal
34:57
and customary estate planning tool to minimize transfer taxes, and
35:01
agreed that minimizing tax liabilities, namely transfer taxation, was their
35:06
primary purpose. Let me translate, just another tool for the
35:11
rich to use to keep their money. While you and
35:14
I are struggling to make our rent, to make sure
35:18
we're not in default, to make our car payments. These guys,
35:21
on the other hand, now we'll just move a little
35:23
money around. We'll shove some money here, shove some money there,
35:26
pay some fees on it and then act like we're
35:28
doing real business. Meanwhile, it's all a scam. Meanwhile, these
35:34
dudes are more corrupt than John Gotti and the Gambinos
35:37
could have ever been. A grat is an irrevocable trust
35:43
to which the donor conveys property and that provides for
35:46
a term of annuity payments from the trust to the donors.
35:50
Sitkov explained to oversimplify a complex evasion mechanism from which
35:55
few readers are likely to benefit. An individual can create
35:59
a trust and receive payments from it for a given
36:01
amount of time, after which the remaining contents of the
36:05
trust go to the assigned beneficiary. Sounds good so far, right,
36:09
especially if you're involved in the scam, which I know
36:12
most of us certainly aren't. Such gifts would usually be
36:17
taxed under the aptly named gift tax, but under a
36:20
grat the fiscal liability becomes more complicated. The gift tax
36:27
is applied upon the creation of the grat, but is
36:30
calculated under the erranus assumption that the property within it
36:34
will increase in value at the now historically low federally
36:39
established rate, even if it turns out to do so
36:42
at a substantially higher pace and does not applied to
36:46
the sum of the annuity payments taken out of the trust.
36:50
Let me put that into Layman's terms. We're all getting hosed.
36:52
Speaker 2: Okay.
36:53
Speaker 1: These people are able to use the historically low rate
36:58
that was current at the time when this law was
37:01
passed now for their hustle, as I like to call it,
37:05
the grad hustle. You and I aren't able to do that.
37:12
And that's how it's all set up.
37:14
Speaker 2: You know.
37:15
Speaker 1: I talk about the two tiered justice system. There certainly
37:18
is a multi tiered financial system as well. Combine that
37:25
underestimated future value with exempt annuity payments, and you have
37:30
what on paper seems like a small or inexistent gift
37:34
liable to little taxation even as you transfer substantial wealth
37:39
to a second party. So again goes back to the
37:43
government officials the law. You mean to tell me that
37:46
we can't update this law. Law that's been on the
37:48
book since like the sixties or some wild shit. Come on, guys,
37:51
give me a break if they don't update it because
37:53
they don't want to update it now though, guess what
37:57
I don't want to hear nothing. Okaymocrats own all three Chambers.
38:02
It's put up or shut up time, all right, because
38:05
the days of bullshitting us and saying you're gonna get
38:07
things done and then not doing it, those days are
38:10
over because we're watching now, we're paying attention.
38:16
Speaker 2: So back to Black.
38:18
Speaker 1: A Harvard graduate pioneer is a complex system to avoid
38:21
millions in taxation. A New York billionaire uses the same
38:25
technique on advice from Epstein and invests the fact a
38:29
fraction of his newly engorged wealth donating to Epstein linked
38:33
professors and setting up a fellowship program named after himself.
38:37
Nothing to see here, folks, There's nothing untowards going on here.
38:41
This isn't a hustle. This isn't an absolute scam. Epstein
38:45
isn't spraying some money around the campuses with other purposes
38:49
in mind. Society is cheated out of hundreds of millions
38:56
in revenue, the kind of funds that could go a
38:59
very long way towards setting up universal preschool federally, and
39:03
Harvard gets a permanent tie to a now tainted mogul.
39:07
You know, this is real money. I talk about it
39:09
all the time. Everyone says, oh, we don't have the
39:11
money to do this. We don't have the money to
39:13
do that. Oh we have the money, folks, all right,
39:16
we have the money. We don't spend it correctly and
39:19
we don't appropriate it properly. How much money has been
39:23
spent on the needless war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions. Now,
39:30
think about if we would have put those trillions, all
39:32
of them, into the infrastructure of this country. Think about
39:35
how much better everybody's lives would be. They don't want that.
39:39
If your life is better, well, you don't need them.
39:43
Then you don't need the government to come in and
39:45
save you. You don't need the government to provide everything
39:48
for you because society is functioning correctly. So that takes
39:51
their power away, their power over you away, and they
39:55
can't have it. Harvard's desire for donat is more than understandable.
40:02
It is the base of our exceptional financial aid program,
40:05
arguably one of the reasons why Harvard, unlike other schools,
40:09
can offer need blind admissions, even to international applicants. We
40:15
all love the generous fellowships and excellent infrastructure that tax
40:19
avoiding pseudo philanthropists have provided us. Well, here's an idea.
40:23
How about we just make tuition affordable. There's a really
40:27
good idea. This whole industry of paying hundreds and hundreds
40:31
of thousands of dollars to go to Harvard to be
40:33
taught by these scumbags. I just I don't see bang
40:37
for your buck there. I certainly wouldn't be sending my
40:40
kid to Harvard, that's for sure. But our institution and
40:45
its counterparts are trapped in a gold plated version of
40:48
the prisoner's dilemma. Harvard, along with MoMA and other black
40:53
finance enterprises, could benefit from the increased levels of federal
40:56
funding afforded by equitable, grif free taxation. More crucially, they have,
41:02
or perhaps should have a duty as society minded institutions
41:06
to protect the public's well being against the excesses of
41:10
exorbit inequality. Yes, for sure, And you know people throw
41:15
that word around a lot, right, Inequality this, and inequality that.
41:19
What we're talking about here is all of that quantified
41:23
to such a level that it will make your head spin.
41:26
Speaker 2: The people we're.
41:26
Speaker 1: Dealing with here have more money and more power than
41:31
anyone you could possibly imagine, and that is not hyperbole,
41:38
because we are all competing for the very same handful
41:40
of billionaire donors. We also have an incentive to simply
41:44
follow the money to create pretentiously named leadership councils that
41:49
reward financial support and offer donation options that emphasize tax
41:54
breaks and financial rewards. This twisted game theory dilemma might
41:59
explain why our university split with Epstein was half hearted
42:03
at best, and why it doesn't seem to be seriously
42:06
re examining its ties to Black amidst broad backlash, even
42:11
after he subverted the spirit of our gift policy by
42:15
facilitating funds to Epstein proteges. After his conviction, a spokesperson
42:21
for the Kennedy School of Government didn't immediately reply to
42:24
a request for comment for this article, and again, it's chilling.
42:28
I don't know how much more I can focus on
42:30
the fact that the Kennedy's School of Government is one
42:34
of the biggest breeding grounds for the leaders of tomorrow,
42:40
and they're being corrupted right from the jump. They're being
42:42
corrupted by these people, these Epstein types. Do you really
42:47
think that Jeffrey Epstein didn't know what he was doing?
42:50
Do you think that he was just donating money randomly.
42:54
There is a method and a madness to everything Epstein did,
42:57
and that is one thing we have certainly proven throughout
43:01
this whole entire escapade. But as in the prisoner's dilemma,
43:08
the incentive to reject donations on the grounds of unmet
43:11
tax responsibilities is low. If Black doesn't donate to our school,
43:16
he can simply take his money elsewhere. There isn't exactly
43:19
a shortage of institutions eager to accept seven figure contributions.
43:24
So we find ourselves in an ethically gray no man's land,
43:28
unable or unwilling to forcefully oppose the undermine, the undermining
43:33
of the social goals that we value. Perpetually pursuing the
43:37
ultra wealthy so they can redirect their fortune to our
43:40
own community. We become the silent beneficiaries of an unfair
43:45
elite before we have even groomed its next generation, and
43:49
Harvard remains intimately intertwined with grats, grifts, and leon black folks.
43:57
It's great to see that Guillermo Hava, the associate editorial
44:03
editor of the Harvard Crimson, is talking about grats, because
44:08
this isn't something people are talking about. In this case,
44:10
everybody wants the more salacious details. Nobody wants to get
44:13
down and grind numbers. Well, guess what. I have my
44:17
number counting hat on and I'm here to grind the numbers.
44:21
I'm here to dig in to Jeffrey Epstein's financial ties.
44:26
And we're gonna keep ongoing, and we're gonna keep on
44:29
digging until all of this makes sense. If you like
44:36
to contact me, you can do that at Bobby Kapuci
44:38
at ProtonMail dot com. That's b O B b y
44:42
c ap you Cci at ProtonMail dot com. You can
44:47
also find me on Twitter at bo bby Underscore c
44:51
A p you Cci. All of the links that go
44:55
with this episode can be found in the description box
44:59
all I. I will be back later on and we
45:02
will pick up where we left off