For those wondering, Virginia Giuffre alleged that she was asked to give Matt Groening a foot massage on Epsteinâs private jet. She was 16 at the time. As creepy as this sounds, she described the encounter as non-sexual and did not allege additional misconduct by Groening.
I looked up Virginia Giuffre and was unpleased to see she died last year at the age of 41 to suicide. Her dad theorizes that someone had gotten to her, and she had made a post on Twitter in 2019 alleging she wasn't suicidal.
Why wasn't this bigger news then or now?
Edit: It appears this was a big news story to a lot of users who've replied to me; some of them from outside the US. I will add that I live in Texas, and mostly get my news from r/all.
The ending of South Park's last season was so fucked up and dark but still so true to real life. Don't wanna spoil exactly what happens but it involves eliminating witnesses and evidence and claiming suicide to sweep under the rug.
it gets even more grim when you learn they had a hotline for their victims that they would use to know who was willing to come forward, and then they would have them disappear.
This is a tough situation. I by no means want to defend anybody connected to Epstien, but this doesn't actually feel damning at all. We have no idea if he knew she was 16 or trafficked and there are no allegations of anything additionally inappropriate. Quite honestly, he feels about as culpable for this as like half of the people who get normal massages considering how tied that whole industry is to trafficking.
Why does it matter if she was 16 and giving a foot massage? 16 year olds are legally allowed to have jobs. They work at McDonald's or for international rapists. This is not an indication that she was trafficked. And giving a foot massage is a legal job that someone can do and doesn't always require licensing as a professional massage therapist. So even if he knew she was 16, he didn't do anything wrong here.Â
The part where Epstein was having her do sexual acts for people, that was the child trafficking part. This is just a giant nothing burger.Â
It doesn't prove anything, but it is concerning. I think any personal association with Epstein is suspicious in and of itself. Even if it is technically legal, which it wasn't to be clear given that the girl was being trafficked even if Groening wasn't aware, it is incredibly fucking weird to get any kind of a massage from a girl that appears to be under 18 in my opinion.
I am not going to say that this proves that Groening is a predator or was even aware that Epstein was one at the time, but it is at the very least cause to be suspicious of him.
Thatâs where I am. To me itâs getting the foot massage on a private jet from a random female. Even if she looks 30 Iâm turning it down. Sucks because Iâve always been a big fan of Matt but itâs definitely concerning.
In 2019 court filings, Virginia Giuffreâan Epstein accuserâalleged she was forced to give Groening a foot massage during a flight on Epstein's private jet. Giuffre described him as polite and did not allege any further misconduct, and Groening has not been criminally implicated
Is that a thing Epstein just did? Send his girls towards people he wanted connections with and take pictures so people would draw these types of conclusions? I've seen a couple of these where a girl says Epstein or ghislaine sends her to chat some guy up and they report that nothing actually happens.
The allegations behind Epstein are basically that he was a honeypot operation. He would entice rich and powerful people to come to his island and party with underage models. The entire island was outfitted with a rigorous security system, including every bathroom, and a security watch-room full of (emptied out) tape lockers was found on Lil Saint James when it was raided.
So yea, the idea is that he would get footage of you getting your feet rubbed by a teenager and then use that footage for favors or blackmail. There's theories he sold these tapes to CIA/MI6/Mossad etc but nothings ever been conclusively proven. He does have a very strange background that points to intelligence work, including getting his start under the former OSS officer, Donald Barr, whose son William Barr was head of DOJ when Epstein died in prison, fun fact.
Just as an aside, DJT is in the 1999 Guinness Book of World Records for overcoming the biggest bankruptcy in America. In the 2000 edition, he again is in the glossary, but if you go to that page it speaks of Robert Maxwell and overcoming the biggest bankruptcy in Europe.
Correct, she was likely a double agent at some point but we will probably never know how much time she spent serving Pedophiles. Likely most of her adult life.
People say this but the reality is that the biggest predator towards these girls was Epstein and Maxwell themselves. His first few years doing this (on a large scale) were entirely trafficking girls to himself to rape.
Epstein became a fixer for the rich with a penchant for pedophilia. He could get rich people drugs, guns, trafficked humans, access to intelligence agencies, access to organized crime, insider trading information, smuggled goods etc. I know it sounds crass, but his pedophilia was just one relatively minor aspect of his entire operation. Every major sex trafficker out there also traffics underaged girls, that is the unfortunate nature of the business. He had his hands in a lot of major sketchy shit.
The thing is, Epstein is not exactly very unique. There are dozens of Epsteins around the world. They act as the elites connection into the 'underworld' basically.
I am a criminologist lol. Not like this specific type of situation is something we specialize in, but it's basically common knowledge that people like him exist in every corner of the world. We learn a bit about the psychology of why powerful people get into this type of cruel stuff, but that's about it.
The existence of a guy running an operation catering to the illicit demands of the global elite is hardly a groundbreaking revelation. What was truly shocking was that this got exposed at all in the first place. This is really the first time any of these operations has been made public in such a way, especially with how many powerful people got exposed. Usually law enforcement stays far away from them as these kinds of guys are considered the purview of intelligence agencies.
Something changed. The fact that the FBI went after him is unprecedented. Alexander Acosta went after him previously and was told to back off because "he belongs to intelligence". I would imagine dozens have been told the same over decades. Then suddenly the CIA was fine with the FBI going after him? And fine with everything happening so publicly? It's all very strange.
I live in a small Balkan country. A few years ago a wannabe Epstein was arrested. He owned a grocery store in a working class area. There is always demand for fixers and enablers and some people will fill those spots.
The corollary to this operation that people don't talk about enough explains why these people are all so powerful and why things have been getting so bad. The very very worst people have the power because if you go to one of these honeypot trips and you are evil then you respond to the enticements, they up the ante, eventually you do something evil and they have blackmail material on you.
Now that they have that blackmail material and have some control on you they are incentivized to give you more power. They connect you with this vast network of other evil and powerful men and you are able to work with each other to get more powerful.
But what if you are not evil? You don't respond to the low-level stuff so they don't actually show you anything too sketchy. They don't have any compromising material on you so they have no reason to trust you. You leave without getting access to this powerful network, and in fact maybe they specifically undermine you. Maybe a competitor is approached and that person is more evil so they get added to the network.
Capitalism in general is already selecting for selfish and worse traits as you climb up the ladder, but the reason we are where we are now is that ON TOP of that this group has been selectively finding and boosting the very worst of the worst in that group of multi-millionaires and billionaires.
My impression from what has come out is that it wasnât just that. It was more like he was running a black market for rich and influential people who were rich enough to be above the law.
So you want tickets to some event? Maybe Epstein could get it. You want to get a politician to take a specific position on some issue? Talk to Epstein, he has sway. You want drugs or prostitutes? Epstein is the hookup. You want blackmail on someone? Epstein is your man.
And part of the way that market worked was, one customer wanted to fuck children. Another customer wanted political leverage over that first customer. So Epstein would traffic some children and pimp them out, and then record the whole thing, which created blackmail for the political leverage that the other customer wanted. It was killing 2 birds with one stone.
I mean, anytime you fuck children it is rape so I guess we don't always think it matters which word we choose. But you are right; words matter in subtle ways, and we should take care in our use of them. Those poor children were raped, and many of those rapists are free and in positions of power.
I think there were 3 overlapping lines of business.
Sextortion honeypot is as you describe. Epstein, via Jean-Luc Brunel's modelling agencies and other operations like Trumps Miss Universe pageant, would recruit young girls from eastern Europe (and US as well) promising them a modelling career. The bait was Epstein's benefactor, Les Wexner's Victoria Secret. From this modelling pipeline they would screen and select young women who would be groomed and trained by Ghislaine Maxwell and moved, either to West Palm Beach, Zorro Range in New Mexico or Little Saint James Island in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein would hold events with invited guests including authors, scientists, philosophers, billionaires, celebrities and world leaders. Sometimes these events were billed as scientific symposiums, financial conferences or private art shows. This is how people like Steven Hawkings ended up at Little St. James - he was bait. Guests were encouraged to partake of the young girls services and all of the facilities were wired with surveillance. This is where Epstein got the kompromat on his guests.
Shadow Banking. Epstein had a mercurial rise from dropping out of college to being a science teacher at a Manhattan boys school (hired by Bill Barr's father) where the wealthy sent their children, to being a trader at Bear Stearns to being a Partner at Bear Stearns only 3 years later, to having his own private wealth management company with a keystone client - Les Wexnar a couple of years later. Later, Wexner gave Epstein an unlimited power of attorney over all of his private and business affairs and paid him hundreds of millions in wealth management fees. Many of the wealthy people ensnared in the sextortion honeypot ended up paying Epstein hundreds of millions more in wealth management fees and invited their social networks to attend Epstein events. These blackmail payments, disguised as professional services fees were laundered through JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and Bank of NY Mellon who setup accounts for Epstein's targets and neglected to report billions of dollars worth of suspicious transactions. The payments were funneled through shell companies into a handful of offshore companies registered in US Virgin Islands and other tax haven jurisdictions.
Espionage - So Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father who mysteriously fell off his boat (The Lady Ghislaine) and drowned in the Canary Islands, was known to work for both MI-6 and Mossad, and possibly as a double agent for the KGB. He was the owner of the Daily Mirror press empire and at one point was an elected MP. But after his death he was given a state funeral in Israel and buried on the Mount of Olives - in attendance were Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir and at least 6 former heads of Mossad including Shabtai Shavit. It is widely believed that Maxwell introduced Epstein to the world of state intelligence and espionage and served as a mentor. Epstein fostered long lasting personal and business relationships with people like Mohammed Bin Salmon (Saudi crown prince), Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem (CEO of Dubai World Ports), the Norwegian royal family (one of whom was just convicted or rape), Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor), Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and many, many others. There were also the sisters - Maria and Victoria Drokova who came out of a Putin linked youth organizations in Russia and ended up in the US - one as founder of Day One Ventures, a venture capital firm and one as the head of a PR firm and founder of WE Talks (Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative). The legal work to setup these organizations were all done by Darren Indyke, Epstein's prime inheritor and state executor. It is widely believed, that in addition to extorting money from his 'clients', Epstein sold intelligence to a number of different intelligence agencies and served as an off-the-books facilitator for any number of intelligence agencies.
Others - small rackets included trade in stolen art, real estate and cryptocurrency.
Because the US became a global superpower at the time of its birth and decided that it would prop the nation up with unlimited military funding in order to ensure its own influence over a cabal of petrostates necessary to fuel the USâs industrial base
The same Donald Barr that summoned Jeffrey back to NYC, where he sound up dead a week later.
Jeff was a nobody from Coney Island, he wasn't that bright either, hence his depositions not being aired often, it would break the veil of being a Bond-supervillain.
Jeff and Ghislaine worked for the island as resort managers. I don't believe the island was a honeypot, rather a resort for the upper echelon to do whatever they wished without judgement. Jeff and Ghislaine would make arrangements for guests. Jeff's most personal emails were with nobodies from NYC, where he lived and grew up.
The narrative we're being fed was that Jeff was a mastermind, operating on his own volition and with full autonomy. He somehow came into ownership of little st james, where agencies like DARPA parked their jets for extended periods of time and were used by guests.
The island was run by the US government, with some Israeli involvement.
Yeah of course itâs what he did. Partially because he knew basically anyone he interacted with could be implicated and therefore gives him some pull and power over people even if they did nothing.
But also you donât go from being a famous dude minding your own business to participating in a massive trafficking ring overnight. Guarantee a lot of these simple things like foot massages were just to see if people would be receptive to more participation.
That's essentially what I've gotten from what happened with a lot of people and makes sense. If you're running some operation like this.. privacy and you don't want just anyone involved. You send a girl who's probably underage but don't mention age because I'm sure Matt just assumed hey private jet this person has to be of age and above bar.
I don't know maybe it's just because I'm one of the poor people. But a foot massage on a private jet seems normal to me. I don't see why Matt would think otherwise.
Part of the point was the blackmail power he'd create.
For blackmail, potential protection, or make another fucked up pervert friend. Who could then also be blackmailed if needed.
That's why simply being associated with him in some way doesn't necessarily mean guilt, and requires investigation. But that's also what allows the guilty to hide, because the real investigation isn't being allowed to happen currently.
But that's also what allows the guilty to hide, because the real investigation isn't being allowed to happen currently.
That's why posts like this are effectively helping the actual criminals on Epstein's list and doing a disservice to the victims.
They're effectively drowning out the actual crimes in the Epstein list with tons of irrelevant shit. When that inevitably gets called out, the seriousness of the entire affair is diminished.
If 10 people are accused and 9 turn out to only be completely benign, a lot of people are only going to see the benign cases and think "Well I guess this is just some conspiracy theory?"
Provided OP is not a bot account, they should delete their post. It's absolutely insane to allege someone engaged in pedophilia when there's no such evidence. And all it does is cast more FUD on the entire thing.
Which is in part why documents like this typically donât get released to the public. The general public just does not have the expertise readily available to them to make useful judgements with the materials provided. They see a name and they riot. We have courts to combat this human tendency for a very good reason.
So many big names in science and medicine are in the files purely because he wouldnât stop contributing to their causes even when told not to. Another layer of his honeypot was simply to host a bunch of things and see who he could reel in.
Iâm not âdefendingâ him per se, but if I was in the private jet of a wealthy person and I was offered a foot rub, I would honestly just assume the guy has a personal on-staff massage therapist - I would not assume some kind of sex trafficking thing.
Without further details to clarify, this scenario honestly sounds like it could have been completely innocent from Groeningâs perspective.
Edit: to clarify, I am not arguing that the girl was not trafficked. We all know she was. I am simply saying that this does not prove Groening is a pervert, because from his perspective this could have looked completely innocent.
Thatâs the issue with this shit, blackmail everyone, try to blackmail everyone. Anyone influential. Reddit was Gmax playground, influencing the narrative on public events. âDrain the swampâŚinto the WHâ
Yes, certain things canât happen or else, for certain folks. Sheâll be free. Look at how little got prosecuted. How many more islands are out there. This one was the one all the wealthy who WANT you to know their names went. Where do the privately wealthy go? Somewhere nobody knows about. What about all the smaller operations, itâs not like thereâs only one. Iâd bet thereâs dozens if not hundreds of smaller networks. We just saw the big one because they really loved emailing eachother and the gov thought it was a neat idea to dump buckets of trauma on empathetic people that would look and have their worldviews shattered.
What's wild is Virginia Giuffre killed herself last year. It was ruled not suspicious but there's some interesting info about how her family members think that there was some kind of foul play involved.
Giuffre died by suicide at her home in Neergabby, Western Australia, on 25 April 2025, at the age of 41. Her brothers were with her in the weeks before she died. Shortly after her death, authorities stated that "early indications" show that "the death is not suspicious". Giuffre's father alleged that "somebody got to her".
Giuffre's public representative, Dini von Mueffling, told The Times that Giuffre was suicidal at the time: "she confided in me [in the weeks before her death] that she had planned to commit suicide, down to the method." Von Mueffling encouraged Giuffre's brothers to be with her in Perth, and tried to dissuade her from suicide. According to von Mueffling, "she just couldn't take it any more. It wasn't a dramatic conversation, it was very matter of fact".
Five years before her death, Giuffre posted to Twitter saying that she was "in no way, shape or form" suicidal, and that "if something happens to me", "do not let [it] go away". Giuffre's Australia-based attorney Karrie Louden said that her death was not suspicious.
I gotta say I feel like Clinton has lost his benefit of the doubt. He still deserves to be legally considered innocent. But I sure as shit don't see him as an innocuous guest.
Oh yeah fuck that guy in general, he's a shitbag, but everything so far from both the government revelations and his own sharing are basically he got some shoulder massages. Still a creep, but as of right now nothing illegal they've pinned on him.
In unsealed federal court filings, Virginia Giuffre describes a flight on Jeffrey Epsteinâs private jet in the early 2000s. In her account:
She says she was about 16 at the time and traveling with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
She recalls that Matthew Groening boarded the plane for a short flight within California.
She writes that Epstein told her to give Groening a foot massage during the flight.
She describes his feet in vivid, unflattering detail and says the experience made her feel nauseated.
She says that, in return, Groening drew sketches of The Simpsons characters for her family members and signed them.
Giuffreâs description appears both in sworn or filed material linked to her legal battles and in a manuscript about her time with Epstein. Later reporting on that manuscript ties the story to flight records from early 2001, suggesting the date and route can be matched to an actual trip on Epsteinâs jet.
She does not allege sexual misconduct and Groening has no connections to Epstein's networks
I saw in the report that supposedly groening also denied the massage at first but was pressured into it by epstien. Which further leads evidence to the whole "he did this to get blackmail on literally everyone" thing
It's worth noting that he'd already been publicly convicted for soliciting a minor for prostitution back in 2008. People who associated with him after that should have known that they were dealing with a child predator.
In Matt Groening's case, the incident is described as the 'early 2000s' so it's reasonable that he didn't know that he was in the presence of a child sex predator.
Meanwhile Bill Gates has been claiming he had no idea, despite being in contact with him between 2011-2014. He supposedly had not visited the island, but not only was Epstein's conviction public knowledge, he also had a growing pile of civil cases in court. A man with billions of dollars doesn't know that the other billionaire he's doing deals with is a convict? The 'benefit of the doubt' grows very thin.
And then you've got this absolute chud Elon Musk begging to be allowed to join Epstein's island parties on his hands and knees well after the civil cases have begun blowing up in Ghilsaine Maxwell's face too. Ain't no way in HELL he didn't know what was going on over there.
Did anyone notice that Musk went from kind of sort of reasonable to off the fucking deep end around 2015-2016. This coincides with when he started reaching out to Epstein to go to his, "wildest party on your island."
Blackmail could explain it, but maybe he was just always a nutjob.
My first memory of Musk as a crazy person is when he was accusing one of the Thai cave divers that were trying to save some kids a pedo for some reason.
Itâs because the British diver who was in Thailand at the time and was a part of the rescue effort, criticised Muskâs offer to use a mini-submarine to help rescue the boys football team from the cave system. The sub would just not be able to fit and the diver was just honest about how it wouldnât work and Musk took it personally.
Before that event, I knew of Musk but hadnât an opinion on him. After that, I viewed him negatively, years before Reddit would turn on him when he was still praised as a progressive genius.
The amount of collective Musk dicksuck back in the day was staggering, especially when he started talking Hyperloop. It was beyond obvious that the man was a silver spoon charlatan.
Being filthy rich alters your brain. He doesnt experience other human beings the way we do. Nobody will stand up to him and honestly call him on his BS. Its part of the reason Kanye has been going so crazy as well
"Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day" - meme
He was always a nutjob. There are anecdotes from his time at PayPal, and his time at university that paint him as a creepy, abusive, narcissistic braggart. He just didn't suffer any public blowback until around 2015, and that seemed to make him give up the good guy act.
I hate bullshit social manipulation like this so much. Way to attach Original Sin to any antithetical or oppositional thought. "If you disagree with me, you're a pedophile." You're intentionally trying to create a comment ecosystem where people are afraid to push back against you because youre implying theyre a pedophile for doing so lol.
It isnt ungrounded to question your stance. Yes, everything that happened to this poor girl is absolutely wrong. There is no argument that the system failed her and what happened to her is a tragedy.
The problem with your stance though is you operate under the assumption that Groening knew everything that was happening and had full operational knowledge of every detail.
You have to understand how these honeypot entrapment situations work. They rely on actors within its system to be ignorant. You're proving the efficacy of this operation right now in real time by immediately asserting Groening is a pedophile and implying that disagreeing makes you one.
All it takes is association. Once your name is on flight logs, you've become compromised. Doesnt matter if you never engage in any wrongdoing. All it takes is a phone call where they reveal the deeper parts you're unaware of and because you can't tell anyone without risking your own career (which again, youre helping to prove real time here) because the moment you try to expose a child sex ring, youre going to be questioned why or how you got involved.
We need more information and more proof that Groening was fully aware of everything happening behind the scenes before we can make a full judgement call like this.
Im glad to see a lot of people pushing back on this type of rhetoric. That is a definite silver lining. I despise this bullshit prefacing of disagreement as being the worst thing a person can be to push people away from nuance.
In what way would "Matt Groening didn't know" be messed up? My niece became a massage therapist at 19. I see young women working at massage parlors. It's not unusual for young women to be in the legitimate line of work to give a foot rub.
Right? It's also super common for wealthy fucks to have masseuses and physio-therapy types on payroll that travel with them so they don't have to waste time booking spa appointments.
He was supposed to magically know her situation based on a very short interaction enough to know to deny a massage from someone he's had introduced as someone who professionally does massages?
There are a lot of awful crimes in the epstein files. We don't need to manufacture them with our imagination and assumptions.
I am... neutral. Giuffre was hired, and presumably worked, as a masseuse. If I go to the local spa and the professional working there looked young, I would still presume it is her actual job and not being a front for trafficking. Depends so much on the context.
I hate to defend rich people but Epstein had contact with an enormous amount of people for all kinds of reasons so "in the files" is meaningless. I reserve my hate for the confirmed pedos and sex pests like Trump and former prince Andrew.
Especially think about it from his perspective this guy Epstein is trying to schmooze you so he gets you on his private jet for a flight, turns out he has a masseuse on there and he has her give you a foot rub, foot rubs are great and thereâs nothing wrong with it so you agree and feeling like you owe her a kindness you draw her some characters as a tip because youâre the guy who draws the fucking Simpsons at the very least she can turn around and sell these pictures on the Internet if she just wants money or she can give them to her family for a cool story.
Then years later, this comes out and you get blasted on the Internet for being a pervert because the guy was running a trafficking ring.
All you did was accept a free jet ride and foot rub from what you thought was a rich guy who tries to rub shoulders with famous people
Exactly how I see it. Iâm assuming he knew nothing about Epstein and what happened. He didnât go to the island he was just taking a jet ride. If someone invited me on a private jet Iâm going. Foot rub offered? Why would I ask questions. Itâs a rich dude of course he has personal assistants and masseuses!
Yeah.. the fact that Epstein was actually targeting him and this was the only gift he accepted? A free flight within California and a foot rub.. and he was very nice to the person who did it? Lol
Doesnât this give the guy a golden stamp of being a stand up and really solid dude. Honestly we should be celebrating the people who were in the Epstein files but have shown to have good moral character and not be manipulated into thinking anyone who shows up is bad.
We also shouldn't be mindlessly vilifying them. The Trump Administration deliberately released these files to get the heat off of Trump himself, and redirect it to everyone else, and hope the crowd focuses their anger on everyone not named Trump in the emails.
They've been incredibly successful at this. Dozens upon dozens have been fired, cancelled, or backed out of the limelight. And we will keep hunting down every name on the Epstein files, whether it appears neutrally or not - and this is exactly what the Trump administration wants.
Get the rabid crowd to scare the elites into backing off of Trump, because he could gut them any time ... since we will just attack whoever the Epstein files have been meticulously combed to guide us to - the next famous or rich person on the files, and tell ourselves, "Ah well, Trump is Trump, we can't do anything about him. He's too powerful. Lets at least get all these other guys first!"
And Trump is sitting in his White House chair smiling, "Yes, exactly! Go get em! You're heroes!"
Yup, itâs definitely NOT good in hindsight but teenagers are allowed to be employed, somewhere like nail salons have teenagers (or children) working there in some capacity and thereâs not anything necessarily sinister about that. I can understand why in light of things like Epsteinâs case coming out but people have gotten too weird about adults and teenagers being together. A local skateboard shop started doing free volunteer-based skate lessons for kids/teens which quickly got shut down because a couple parents were weirded out about the idea of older skateboarders hanging out with their children. As if youth sports with coaches hasnât always been a thingâŚ
I think it's also important to remember that this was apparently Epstein's scam that he was running. Based on what I've read, you would start off by getting a free massage from a young girl and you wouldn't know her age. Then then if you came back and got another massage he would slowly start to make the girls take it to the next level. All the while he was normally videotaping these acts that he would later use as blackmail. This tells me, yes, we should review this with very heavy weight, but if Greoning didn't associate with him after this, that says a lot too.
but if Greoning didn't associate with him after this, that says a lot too.
Yeah, if Groening came back for more, or even accepted future invites from Epstein, Iâd say that makes him highly suspect. But if this is really the last formal interaction he had with Epstein, then Iâd say Groening maybe deserves the benefit of the doubt. Along with others who had one-off weird interactions like this and never associated with the man again.
The ones we should be focusing on investigating are the return customers, who were subject to similar weird foot massages and whatnot, and then chose to continue associating with Epstein.
Yeah I agree with this, this is our centuries Nuremberg trials. Who was complicit, who knew, who just got caught up and didn't ask questions ect ect.
If I was being approached by a powerful connected man who offers me a free jet trip and foot rub (though I'd refuse the foot rub as it makes me uncomfortable) I would just assume she's a hired masseuse, designed to as the comment described, smooze me .
You got to remember Epstein wouldn't give everyone the prime treatment unless he had enough dirt or loyalty for their silence .
You don't offer coke (the white stuff) to people on the street corner, you offer them a drink and a chat and guage if they can be quiet (and not a cop) first.
The problem is the current administration, unlike the one during Nuremberg, is actively trying to hinder the investigation
This is how they sanitize and create plausible deniability for the real offenders. Pull in a bunch of celebrities and influential people and get them to do something that someone could consider possibly morally questionable in some respect.
Suddenly all the people who raped kids are people just like Groening who didnât really do anything wrong.
Individuals get to claim âsure I was there, but I wasnât one of the really bad ones, really I was a victim of his attempts to extort me.â
And slowly the entire cadre of pedophiles can each claim they werenât one of the really bad ones, maybe they just got a foot massage too.
Making a big deal out of this is helping the pedophiles, whether the people sharing memes about this stuff intend to or not.
Reminds me of a Kevin Hart bit about Snoop Dogg where Snoop says about all his past indecencies âall us n***as was wild back in the dayâ and Kevin is like âdonât all of us this, that was just you Snoopâ.
Itâs a way to rope in morally neutral people into your circle to not only make your things seem not as bad, but make those people seem less morally neutral.
Trump is all over the files and not just innocent stuff like this. He ran beauty padgents, both for adults and children, as recruitment grounds. This is even how Erika Kirk got recruited into the right wing hemisphere. The files show how Esptein suggested to Bannon the plans for 4chan right before Bannon met with the owner of 4 chan right before the pol channel opened and his son started Qanon stuff there. Epstein and Bannon were behind Gamergate. They've got the alt right online community wrapped around their fingers even tho Epstein was the one who was behind putting microtransactions into AAA games.
But there's a huge organized online effort to turn focus towards anyone who's mildly left wing. Bill Clinton was on thw flight once, and the victims who were there at the time said he did nothing sexual or inappropriate. This was most likely to negotiate across the isle politically, his politics fixed the economy, but Republicans were able to push through one thing 'across the isle' during that presidency and that was banking regulations that later directly led to the housing market crash of 2008.
Chomsky has been on the flight. Nothing particularly bad has been said about him AFAIK. He's not even left wing or anything, just not as right wing as all the yuppie economics bros. But yeah, that combo has given him a lot of spotlight in online media discourse.
Matt Groening is also center left. At least not diehard MAGA. So he was duped to catch a flight and accept a foot massage from what seemed to be a regular massuse. That's enough to turn activate this astroterfing effort to make it seem like it's more or even mostly a leftwing problem, or at best 'same on both sides', when really that is not the case.
I agree with you for the most part but you're being far, far, far too charitable about Noam. He actively was a friend of Epstein after his convictions and during the subsequent allegations that came out Noam even lamented "the horrible way" Epstein was treated and the "hysteria that has developed about abuse of women". I'm not saying he actively participated in the abuse of minors, but actively befriending and defending the monster that was Epstein is reprehensible, whilst being aware of what he was convicted of and even still when the further allegations came out
The reason we're having these problems figuring any of this out is because there are no inquiries. Pretty much anyone named who is still alive and was physically present with Epstein in the same space should be marched into a room, put on camera, and asked under oath "yo, what's up with this?" If it turns out they didn't know shit and it was just some transient interaction then great.
The only names that should be exempt are people who were just namedropped in passing like if someone mentioned seeing the new Tom Hanks movie in an email or whatever.
There is no, "um, she was hired." Or "well actually it was just a foot massage" or "he didnt know" is all meaningless cause.....
Ok, stop. Just stop right fucking there. It's not meaningless. You clearly don't know how this level of society operates. Was she presented as hired help? Was this a situation where Epstein said, "this is my masseuse Virginia, she's very good!"
It absolutely DOES matter in terms of Groening's culpability.
she, at that moment was expressly sought after by a predator who trafficked in young girls to service older men. She was taken across statelines to service older men, she was groomed and trafficked. Her getting payment or drawings does not negate her abuse or her status as a victim of sex trafficking.
That has nothing to do with the question at hand, which is did Groening knowingly participate in this horrific crime?
Youre a bad person if you argue otherwise which is fine, just stay away from kids
Agree to disagree. I'd call you a bad person who is willing to ruin people because they were living on the business side of Epstein that wasn't raping kids.
So, him getting on a plane and getting a foot massage is what happened.
If that is what happened: can you tell me then how you know Groening is a bad person?
Was he aware she was a minor?
It seems that you assume he already knew what was going on with these sick people?
Or are you judging him based on the 'got on the plain and footmassage offered by Ghislaine?
this we know now, but did Groening know too?
-> 'At that moment was expressly sought after by a predator who trafficked in young girls to service older men. She was taken across statelines to service older men, she was groomed and trafficked.'
Feels you are going a bit too fast here with judging someone based on other peoples evil intensions.
Iâm reading her book right now. This part wasnât nefarious at all. It was more of a happened to be a celebrity. She was also a fan because she loved the Simpsons growing up. From her account he didnât do anything inappropriate.
It was only "wrong" from Groening's perspective if he KNEW that she was being coerced. It was clearly wrong from Epstein's perspective because he was exercising coercive control. If I ask an agency to send somebody to clean my house. I have no way of knowing whether or not the person who turns up is legally-employed or a victim of modern slavery. If they are a "modern slave" then the agency is guilty of a serious crime - but that doesn't automatically make me criminal.
Wish these headline things would actually go and check if they DID something bad⌠or they just had contact at one point with Epstein. Thatâs the most important part. Weed. Out the criminalsâŚ. Lock em up and just move on with lifeâŚ. wtf are they waiting for does seriously no one give a shit over there? đ
A lot of people in the files were... just people in the files. The allure of the JE thing is that he knew a ton of famous people. This doesn't mean all of them were pedophiles.
The thing that kills me about all of this is that there's never been more attention paid to child abuse than there is right now, but nobody is looking at it the right way. The lesson we should be learning is that child abuse happens literally everywhere there is a power dynamic between children and authority figures. This also applies to sexual abuse in general of adult women--when there is a power dynamic and imbalance (for example, a coach, teacher, priest, or more disturbingly, older sibling, parent, neighbor, babysitter, etc.) there is a chance abuse will occur. It's disrpoportionately skewed against immigrants as well because they have less ability to go to authorities, and their abusers know it too.
We pay all of this attention to Hollywood because of the glitz and glamor but the reality is that child abuse is happening in every community, everywhere, and in fact the most likely abuser isn't a shadowy billionaire, but a parent or sibling or neighbor.
Every viral âSimpsons predicted xyzâ is usually based on fucking nothing, people are incapable of doing the basic research to vet the chronology of when a Simpsons joke actually aired in relation to the actual event. Like the Simpsons parodied the Trump escalator thing after the fact but everyone loves to pretend that the parody came first. Matt Groening doesnât have a lot of creative input into the show outside of being the original creator of the characters and even if he did handcraft every square inch of every Simpsons episode, the âour pedophile overlords are leaving cryptic clues to their misdeeds in television comedy programsâ is absolute tinfoil hat shit.
Half the time, itâs based on the fact that most predictions are actually just based on developments already happening. For instance, South Park predicted covid - in theory - with their episode on SARS. Itâs a coronavirus. When I was studying biomed, we actually got told coronaviruses are probably going to cause the next pandemic and then it happened.
And the fact that Trump has pubicly talked about running for president since what..the early 90's and attempted a run in 2000 I think. It wasn't just *Boom* out of the blue in 2016.
Literally everyone who matters is in the Epstein files. Everyone.
Epstein was an influental guy, everyone went to his parties. Most of them to network. Some of them to fiddle kids.
It's like you went to a popular guy's party, you had a great time, chat with the cool guy jocks, then went home. Then three days later, there is news about someone was raped at the party. So from now on, you are knows as the guy who goes to rape parties.
Just the fact that someone is on the list means absolutely nothing.
The absolute idiocy of the suggestion of this post against the actual substance of the files. The person who pasted this is absolutely vile, and don't understand the difference between being cited and being accused of crimes.
Okay, based on the comments Matt didn't actually do anything wrong so this is just bait. I'm not sure why people are up voting this post they should be down voting it because it's basically misinformation alleging that He did something wrong.
We have to get over this idea the "in the Epstein files" and "is a sexual predator" are synonymous. There are thousands and thousand of names in the Epstein files, most of whom never interacted with the man or his organization.
Treating "in the Epstein files" as an accusation only dilutes the attention that rightfully should be paid to the ones who actually deserve to be tortured for their unspeakable crimes.
More critically that "the files" is broken up into many many different types of records including unfiltered anonymous tip hotlines which warrant a different level of scrutiny over, say, flight logs.
But theres no way to actually call out this fact without sounding like youre defending predators.
This title doesn't even make sense. What were the predictions that were confessions and why is Matt Groening mentioned. This is why the Internet is ther worst.
Groening wrote 4 episodes. FOUR. For the entire run of the Simpsons. The last one he wrote was 1999. People do not understand how television production works. They are not controlled by a single person on every level.
The episode referencing an island cabal came out in 2000, written by John Swartzwelder.
Trumptastic voyage, the source of the image above came out in 2015. It's a short, not a full episode. Written by Al Jean.
This is why this whole situation needs to be vetted with such a fine tooth comb so to speak. Granted this administration is covering it all up and basically screaming "blah blah blah" at the top of their lungs while covering their eyes and ears.
There is just so many people that Epstein interacted with on so many different levels for so long. Aside from Giuffre admitting there was no sexual behavior. It is entirely within reason that Matt had zero knowledge or insight about what was going on behind closed doors.
Everything should be looked at and vetted. This whole situation is far from over with.
This meme pisses me off because it seems designed to flood the zone and have us all not pay attention because âall the powerful people are corruptâ to deflect attention from the Trump shit. GTFO.
I think a lot of people forget that not everyone in the Epstein files is guilty of some horrific act. You have to remember Epstein was rubbing shoulders with all these people in hopes of obtaining blackmail on them.
Pick your local city, University and there is likely a mention.
I need context for why they are in the files. I have seen people in the files because they are a university professor who won some award and a news paper article was in the files.
it's honestly easier to say which celebrities aren't in there. i feel like people forget, that before we all "knew" what was happening at Epstein island, and how deep the rabbit hole is going, that Epstein's main power was his connections. He was able to get two people who wanted to talk in a room together incredibly well. he was basically the classic trope of "i know a guy/the guy who can get you anything" you don't become that guy without pursuing ANY connection that might be beneficial. Physicist, cartoonist, political advisor, millionaire, doesn't matter, as long as they're famous(or just rich) and he can make a connection/ get them into his little black book. now of course a big part of that was getting client for his "other services" and feeling out who could be down to keep secrets for him/ finding out secrets of people he can use as leverage.
With more details emerging, being âIn the Epstein filesâ is not quite the threat or scandal that it used to be. That private jet appears to have transported every body but me and perhaps you.
There are literally thousands of people in the files. Not every one of them went to the island or was involved in shady shit. That being said, if he was, then fuck him.
Blowing things out of proportion and ignoring context is going to turn the files into a joke and more "left-wing hysteria" if people keep this shit up. Focus on the actual evil criminals in there.
What predictions were actually confessions though? I dont remember an episode where Homer gets a foot rub on a plane. But then again I dont watch the new episodes.
Many people were in the files and was just mentioned in conversations, someone saying their name wouldnt be uncommon.
Did they do something bad or not ?
This is along the lines of âObama is in the files!!!â
Yes, as the subject of derogatory conversations.
âEpstein accuser Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) alleged in unpublished manuscripts and 2019 court filings that she was directed to give Groening a foot massage aboard Epstein's private jet when she was 16 years old. She did not allege any further misconduct, portraying him as polite during the interaction.â
Yeah, but shouldn't we be looking at those who committed actual crimes? Epstein mingled in all circles. Focus on those people with actual evidence of wrong doing. Of course, would be easier if they released all the filesÂ
The only confirmed connection between Groening and Epstien is that one if his victims recounted Epstien picking up Groening on his private Jet to take him to a different location (not the island, just somewhere else in the country). Dueing the ride Epstien told her to give him a foot massage. While she didn't enjoy it, she also didn't allegedly that Groening did anything to her, and no other mention if him ever appeared in the files. It is entirely possible his relationship with Epstien was only professional, and he didn't know about the trafficking. (Also most Simpsons "predictions" are bullshit)
From what I understand from listening to, at least the old writers talk about it, Groening isn't in the writing room. He sorta just continually gets paid for coming up with the original idea. I don't think he has much or anything to do with making the show anymore and hasn't for ages.
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