Candace Owens introduces her Epstein Files series with a deep dive into Robert Maxwell's intelligence background
Candace Owens launches a multi-part investigative podcast series on Jeffrey Epstein, beginning with the history of Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell.
Summary
Candace Owens opens this introductory episode of her Epstein Files series by framing the current media environment as one designed to erase historical memory and suppress sustained public attention. She argues that the Jeffrey Epstein story cannot be understood without first understanding Robert Maxwell — Ghislaine Maxwell's father — whom she describes as a Mossad agent, media magnate, and intelligence intermediary whose real birth name was Abraham Leib Hoch. Owens traces Maxwell's career from his origins in what is now Ukraine through his roles in British and Soviet intelligence, his publishing empire, and his alleged role in the Iran-Contra scandal. She presents testimony from former Mossad operative Ari Ben-Menashe, who claims to have met Epstein in Robert Maxwell's office in the 1980s — directly contradicting the media narrative that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell only met in the 1990s. Owens also addresses a Truth Social post by President Trump calling the Epstein matter a "Democrat hoax," pushing back on that characterization by noting that Epstein was arrested in 2019 during Trump's own administration and first arrested in 2007 under President George W. Bush — making the "Democrat hoax" framing difficult to sustain. She also notes that Congressman Thomas Massie has launched a discharge petition to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files.
Owens devotes significant time to the Mordechai Vanunu case: Vanunu was an Israeli nuclear technician and peace activist who discovered Israel's secret weapons program at the Dimona nuclear facilities, brought the information to Robert Maxwell's Mirror, and was then betrayed by Maxwell to Israeli intelligence. Vanunu was subsequently lured to Italy, drugged, abducted, tried in a secret closed-door proceeding, and imprisoned for 18 years — more than 11 of them in solitary confinement.
Owens introduces Xavier Bousard as her research collaborator on the series, connecting the Epstein investigation to his earlier work on the Brigitte Macron story. She also identifies Samuel Pisar — Robert Maxwell's lawyer and business representative in France — as a figure who later held essentially the same role for Jeffrey Epstein, and she flags Edgar Bronfman Senior, the Refusenik crisis, Sir Douglas Leese, and the Al-Yamamah arms deal as threads to be developed in future episodes.
In her closing segment, Owens discusses allegations made by Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor Miklós Grüner that Elie Wiesel — a distant relative of Robert Maxwell — fabricated portions of his Auschwitz memoir Night and stole the identity of a fellow inmate named Lazar Wiesel. Owens frames this as part of a broader pattern of identity concealment she argues runs through the entire network under investigation. She draws on a personal anecdote from an honors English class at UVA where her professor, after assigning Night, told the class that Wiesel had fabricated certain claims — prompting a class discussion about why someone might do so.
The episode closes with viewer comments and Owens's responses, including discussion of Ghislaine Maxwell's potential future testimony, the Bilderberg meetings, and the work of researcher Whitney Webb, whom Owens intends to invite onto the show in a future episode.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Media Strategy and the Epstein Files
Candace Owens: Jeffrey Epstein — where should we begin? There is so much happening right now, and in the background, a lot of chatter but very little fact. What I've realized about the media is that their strategy is very 1984. They want to make our reality a sort of ever-present now. There is no such thing as history. You're supposed to forget yesterday, the week before, the years before. Whatever they tell us in this moment, you should accept as truth. At the same time, they're totally perverting our focus. There are so many social media apps. Everyone has ADHD. Who in the future is going to have enough focus to read books, produce reports, or even listen long enough to stay focused on a podcast series? I would say we had better strike while the iron is still hot. So, welcome to an introduction of the Epstein Files.
I'm excited to be teaming up again with Xavier Bousard. He has done incredible work. He has been working on a forthcoming book regarding Jeffrey Epstein for years, just as he was working on the Brigitte Macron story. And of course, this is a story that impacts France, definitely the United States as we're going through what we're going through right now being gaslit at a very executive level. It impacts certainly Israel, Ukraine, Russia — everybody is going to get a feature in this story. And I'll tell you this right at the top: the Jeffrey Epstein story really is one that begins with Robert Maxwell.
Who Was Robert Maxwell?
Yes, Robert Maxwell — for those of you who are not aware — is Ghislaine Maxwell's father. While he was still alive, he was considered to be the Rupert Murdoch of the left. He controlled a media empire that stretched from England to Israel to France and beyond. He was mostly famous as the owner of Mirror Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mirror. He also owned the Maxwell Communication Corporation, Pergamon Press, Nimbus Records — that was the first British record company to release CDs — and also the American branch of Macmillan Publishers. We should talk about that further down the line. He was a shareholder of MTV Europe, and so on. He was also a shareholder of the French media group TF1. He was very much involved with the French elite — we'll discuss that as well in a later episode. He was even a Labour member of parliament in the House of Commons from 1964 to 1970. We could go on and on, but you get the point. He was a very big fish, almost untouchable, really.
Now, I'm going to tell you how he came to be that big fish, because it's really interesting. Robert Maxwell was born not Robert Maxwell at all. You're going to notice that a lot as we go through this series. It's a very sophisticated network of what I would refer to as name laundering. You could be one person here and somebody else there. And to this day, Robert Maxwell's birth name is still misreported. If you look it up, it'll probably tell you his birth name was Jan Levik or Yan Levik. That's what the media says. But that was just another one of his aliases. His real birth name was Abraham Leib Hoch. He was born in a town called Seleš Latína, which is today a part of Ukraine. Ukraine just keeps consistently coming up in all of my research, and it's starting to unsettle me a little bit.
At the time he was born — 1923 — that town was a part of Czechoslovakia. In terms of his known family, he was apparently a distant relative of Elie Wiesel. Now, Elie Wiesel is very controversial and we don't have that much time to get into him today. We'll have to save his story for another day. But he essentially became the face of Auschwitz. He published a great deal of literature about what happened while he was there as a survivor. Then other survivors of Auschwitz said he was making it all up and was never there. They couldn't find him in the records, and another Auschwitz survivor alleged that he had stolen the identity of another person who actually was there. It gets quite extraordinary. I only mention that because you will again see that identity crisis could have been the name of this series — it seems to be a running theme in this family, and also a running theme with anything that involves Israel.
Maxwell's Early Life and Intelligence Connections
Anyway, back to Abraham — or Jan, or Robert. The story goes that he came from a Hasidic family. He studied at the Yeshiva and his parents wanted him to become a rabbi. At the age of 12, he joined what's known as the Betar movement — a young Jewish nationalist, Zionist movement. And if you're wondering where Betar is, it is in fact a location in Palestine, present-day Palestine in the West Bank. From there, it is said that he joined the Czechoslovak army and then, as a refugee in exile, apparently participated in the French campaign. I say apparently because Robert Maxwell presented no fewer than five different versions of what his activities were from 1939 to 1940.
What we do know is that he was arrested as a communist agitator and was among the Czech refugees who made it into the English camps. Then the story gets a bit strange, because despite being a communist agitator, he was allowed to join England's Pioneer Corps — the only British unit that was open to foreigners. He then began using two other names: Ivan Leslie du Maurier and Leslie Jones. He was assigned to work in Paris, and that is when he met Ghislaine Maxwell's future mother, Elizabeth Maynard. He married her on March 14th, 1945, at a Parisian town hall. When he married her, his name was suddenly Robert Maxwell — the pseudonym he used at the wedding and would carry forward into the future.
So at this moment, our family chart looks like this: Robert Maxwell, also known as Jan Levik, Abraham Leib Hoch, Ivan Leslie du Maurier, and Leslie Jones. Nothing to see here, folks.
He then got stationed in Berlin as a liaison officer with the Red Army. The task he was given was quite significant. British intelligence agencies tasked him to partner with a German publisher — Springer — under the guise of selling scientific journals that had been published under the Third Reich and were therefore banned from export around the world. He was essentially saying, "I can move this product for you." Then in 1951, just a few years later, he took control of that German publishing house, Butterworth Springer. Again, he remained very focused on these scientific journals published under the Third Reich. Why were they so focused on them? Why did they want these scientific journals? It may make more sense as we get further into the story.
Butterworth Springer was then renamed Pergamon Press. And you should know that this was not out of any personal interest in publishing. He didn't pursue this because he wanted to be some big publishing magnate. He was actually funded to do this by extremely powerful people. This was an MI6 intelligence operation funded by Sir Charles Hambro — the director of the Bank of England. Sir Charles Hambro came from one of the most prominent families of the British banking establishment. He had headed special operations during the Second World War. In essence, I want to make it very clear: Robert Maxwell was just an intermediary.
The British decided they needed him to be an intermediary elsewhere as well — in Russia. So in 1954, they sent Maxwell to Russia, where he put forth the idea of publishing and translating Russian scientific articles. Again, this interest in science — Germany, Russia — he was going in there, and they gave him access to Russia and its scientific secrets. I think we can connect the dots. They were also interested in German scientific secrets. This man was going over there pretending to be friends and translating material, presumably for England.
But actually — no. Because here's where it gets interesting. People at the very top of England were becoming quite suspicious about Robert. They thought: I don't actually believe he's working for us. I think he's working on behalf of Russia. I think he's working for the KGB. And according to British Foreign Office files that became public and were published in 2003, they were able to confirm that he was funded by Russia. So they kicked him out of Pergamon Publishing and allowed an American to run the company instead.
Now, on the KGB side, they eventually did acknowledge that he was in fact a very high-ranking Soviet agent — but he was so high up that even senior Soviet spies were not permitted to deal with him directly. And so his allegiance to the Soviet cause was also questioned. What was this man truly loyal to? Eventually, it became apparent that he was not loyal to the Crown, and not loyal to the Soviets. It was actually Israel that held his true allegiance.
Maxwell's Loyalty to Israel and the Mossad
As early as 1948, he played a major role in the decision of the anti-Stalinist Czechoslovakian government to arm Zionist paramilitaries. He personally participated in the smuggling of aircraft parts during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the state of Israel. The man whom British intelligence agencies eventually described as a Zionist loyal only to Israel was, throughout his career, a prominent Mossad agent. It makes total sense given his earlier association with Betar, that Zionist group, after his parents had wanted him to become a rabbi.
We learn more about Robert Maxwell through the lens of Victor Ostrovsky. If that name sounds familiar, it is because he is the man who notoriously defected from the Mossad. If you don't know him, you should become familiar with his work. He felt he had to defect because the Mossad's activity was fundamentally unconscionable. He ended up writing a book revealing Mossad secrets entitled By Way of Deception. He claims, by the way, that that is the Mossad motto: "By way of deception, thou shalt do war." He was confirmed as an Israeli agent — so he's not some random person publishing a book. He was trying to alert the public to a lot of their tactics.
I'll give you one example of what Victor Ostrovsky had to say about the Mossad:
Victor Ostrovsky: "When I was in the Mossad and we had a guy that gave us problems in the US — he was speaking out, talking like Pete talked once and said, 'Israel is bombing Lebanon with cluster bombs' — we used to say, 'Hey, who's that guy?' We used to call him Pete Maki — which means Pete the cockroach, because he makes a lot of noise and you can't get rid of him. So what you do is you get in touch with a guy in the station in New York or in the station in Washington, you say, 'Tell the guys at B'nai B'rith to label him.' And of course the campaign starts, and before you know it, the guy's labeled — he's an anti-Semite, because that's what we say he is. And that's one stain you cannot wash. Now, it shames me as a Jew to tell you that, but that's the fact. And it's wrong."
Candace Owens: Very honest. We've been seeing a lot of that as of late as we start asking meaningful questions that we deserve answers to, particularly as they deal with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Victor Ostrovsky claims that regarding Robert Maxwell, quote: "The Mossad financed many of its operations in Europe with money that was stolen from Maxwell's newspapers' pension fund. They got their hands on the funds almost as soon as Maxwell bought the Mirror — his newspaper group — with money that was loaned to him by the Mossad."
I want to slow that down to make sure you understand what he is saying. The Mossad gave Maxwell the money to go ahead and buy the Mirror Group publishing, and then the moment he acquired it, they took all of the pension fund money and spent it to fulfill Israel's interests — robbing pension funds to support Israel.
What I think we can call this whole strategy — him pretending to be a publishing magnate, operating in Germany, in Russia, opening businesses in the UK — is the Midas Touch. We saw this in the story of Emmanuel Macron: a person who is essentially selected, given a historical background, and suddenly we're meant to think this person is really powerful, amazing, and intelligent. It's pretty much the exact same strategy here. Robert Maxwell had somebody giving him money behind him, and he was growing more and more powerful in business.
Maxwell's Blackmail and the Mossad's Insurance Policy
Now, in return for his status as a publishing behemoth — a status I would call fake — Israeli intelligence services allegedly satisfied Robert Maxwell's sexual appetite by supplying him with prostitutes. This is a direct quote: "The service maintained blackmail services," since it was revealed that the hotel he was staying at was actually rigged with cameras, which allowed the Mossad to acquire a small library of video footage of Maxwell in sexually compromising situations. So even though he was working for Israel, Israel was taking out an insurance policy. They were recording him. He had a thing for prostitutes and they had him on tape, just in case he got any ideas.
Knowing that they perhaps had this catalog of evidence against him — since they were the ones supplying the prostitutes — that might explain why Robert Maxwell was so loyal to Israel that he even ratted out fellow Israelis who tried to do the right thing.
The Mordechai Vanunu Case
There was a man named Mordechai Vanunu. He was a nuclear technician and an Israeli, but also a peace activist. He did not believe in weapons of mass destruction. When he was working in that capacity and discovered that Israel was in fact building weapons of mass destruction related to the extremely controversial Dimona nuclear facilities — the nuclear facilities that for a long time they claimed they didn't have — he tried everything in his capacity to alert the world to what they were building. He took pictures and then took the information, unfortunately, to Robert Maxwell's Mirror publications. Rather than doing what he should have done as a British citizen — sensing a threat to the UK and saying, "Hey, they are building a nuclear stockpile" — Maxwell alerted the Israelis. He decided to take that information and warn the Israelis that this man was defecting.
What did the Israelis do? They lured Vanunu to Italy, drugged him, abducted him, secretly transported him to Israel, and ultimately convicted him in a trial held behind closed doors. The only democracy in the Middle East. Vanunu then spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 of those years in solitary confinement. He is still being harassed by the Israeli government to this day, who view him as a traitor.
That's what it means to be friends with Robert Maxwell.
Maxwell as Mediator and His Final Years
Ever the negotiator, Robert Maxwell also played mediator between Edgar Bronfman Senior — remember that name — who at that point was the president of the World Jewish Congress, and the Soviet authorities during what came to be known as the Refusenik crisis. Essentially, Israel wanted to get a lot of their people out of Russia. Russia was refusing to allow these people to simply emigrate to Israel, and Maxwell played negotiator and made it happen.
He later partnered with the Soviets to take over the pharmaceutical company Teva. He also took ownership of the Jerusalem Post in Israel, where he already controlled the right-wing daily Maariv publications. All of that took place in 1989. What you could say, looking at that from the outside, was that the appearance was of a hotshot publisher expanding his portfolio — now into pharmaceuticals, now picking up publications in Israel. Truly, he was in his prime.
Unfortunately, on November 5th, 1991, Robert Maxwell's naked body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands, where he had been enjoying himself on his yacht — a yacht named the Lady Ghislaine. Interesting, given that he had nine children, but he chose to name the yacht after Ghislaine. A few weeks after his death, a $560 million hole was discovered in the Mirror's pension fund.
The British investigative journalists Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon explained how his death came about. They say that Maxwell sealed his fate when he threatened Mossad leadership — threatened to disclose certain operations they were involved in unless they helped him save his media empire, because people were beginning to realize the business was not doing well. He was feeling the pressure and essentially said: "Hey, I gave you $560 million, maybe more. Give me something to save my company, or else." And they didn't have the decency to do that. Instead, they deemed that Maxwell was too dangerous, and so Mossad leadership reportedly ordered his assassination three months later.
No hard feelings, though, because they did still show up to his funeral. They wanted to show their appreciation for all of his work and commitment. On November 8th, 1991, in Jerusalem, they held a funeral for him on the Mount of Olives. It was attended by the cream of Israeli intelligence. There were no fewer than six service heads, and politicians including Chaim Herzog, Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, and the then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who delivered the eulogy. Prime Minister Shamir celebrated Robert Maxwell as "the man who did more for Israel than we can explain today." A prayer was then read by Samuel Pisar — another name you should remember. We'll get into him. He was Robert Maxwell's lawyer and business representative in France, and he later held essentially the same position for Jeffrey Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell
Anyway, enough about Robert Maxwell. This brings me to Ghislaine Maxwell. She really was the apple of her daddy's eye. He loved her so much — so much that he named that yacht after her. Let's get into some interesting facts about her and her upbringing.
According to the press, the story about her shifted depending on when you checked. At various times they told us she was an interior designer, sometimes a socialite, sometimes an internet operator — whatever that is. It's all very confusing. Factually, Ghislaine Noël Marion Maxwell was born on Christmas Day, 1961 — December 25th — in France, in Maisons-Laffitte. She spent her childhood very well-to-do, very wealthy, at Headington Hill Hall, a casual 53-room Italian mansion rented from the Oxford municipality by her family. She is the youngest of nine children.
Back in 2003 — before Jeffrey Epstein was ever charged for any crimes — the Evening Standard published an interesting article about Ghislaine. They were discussing how she had settled in New York after her father's death and was picking up her own life. They wrote, quote: "Ghislaine has expanded her social surface largely thanks to what the real estate developer Epstein has done for her. She has become the queen of the billionaire social circuit." They also wrote, quote: "Jeffrey only likes billionaires and very young women, and uses Ghislaine as his social pimp." That is very telling. That same article elsewhere mentions rumors that quote, "the bizarre parties held at Maxwell's house where she invites a dozen young girls, then brandishes a whip and teaches them how to enhance their sexual performance." But again, this was 2003 — Epstein and Ghislaine were just getting away with so much, apparently quite openly allowing journalists to know what they were into.
The Summer of 2019: Epstein's Death and the New York Post
Now I want to fast-forward to the summer of 2019 — the notorious summer when Jeffrey Epstein quote-unquote kills himself. Leading up to this moment, Ghislaine Maxwell had sort of gone missing. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in mid-June. He was transported to a special housing unit, and then after only a few weeks in custody, he apparently decided he just couldn't take it anymore and had to exit life. During those few weeks leading up to his quote-unquote suicide, Ghislaine Maxwell was being hunted down by the media. Epstein landed at Teterboro Airport coming back from Paris, and instantly the press was in a frenzy: "Where's Ghislaine? Where's Ghislaine?" Because she was likely very guilty too. The public wanted her arrested as well.
Then, of course, Jeffrey Epstein's suicide happened. It was apparently a very big week for the New York Post, because on August 10th, they got the world exclusive photos of Jeffrey Epstein just following the suicide attempt — shady photos of him being transported from the prison to the hospital. Waiting there was a New York Post photographer who captured the exclusive images at around 7:30 in the morning. Totally not weird at all. That photographer also has another name, another alias, and he doesn't want to talk about how he captured those photos, how he got the scoop so quickly, or how he got there so fast. He just kind of falls off a cliff.
Three days later, on August 13th, the New York Post joined the chorus of people going, "Whoa, Jeffrey Epstein is now dead — where is Ghislaine Maxwell?" They pretended to be investigating Ghislaine Maxwell in earnest, publishing a piece on Page Six detailing her alleged escapades. A source told them that while Ghislaine Maxwell posed for photos in a publication promoting a vintage fashion collection, she allegedly also dropped hints about her twisted double life. The source told them, quote: "She didn't mention Epstein, but during the session, she recounted how she had just hosted a dinner party for a number of young girls and that she had put sex toys on every chair." The source described how during a dinner party, two of the guests — a couple — began demonstrating a sex act in front of everybody, and that Ghislaine laughed about it. A friend of hers had a theory that Epstein was just like Ghislaine's father, Robert Maxwell, who himself had practiced strange sexual tastes.
So that's August 13th — they're like, "Yeah, we want to find this person too." And then magically, on August 15th, the New York Post got lucky again. The world was searching for Ghislaine, and miraculously the New York Post found her. Here is the cover of the New York Post which ran on August 15th, 2019, just five days after Jeffrey Epstein suicided himself. They ran with the headline: "The Post Finds Her." Don't worry, world — you don't have to look for Ghislaine anymore because the Post has located her. It's so predictable.
According to the story embedded in the piece, the person who took the photo was just a regular person who happened to realize that Ghislaine Maxwell was sitting at an In-N-Out Burger and then gave the photo to the New York Post. And the New York Post diligently reported: here she is at the In-N-Out, right in the middle of LA.
But that photo of her at In-N-Out turned out to be quite the scandal itself, because there were apparently a few things wrong with it. The Daily Mail decided to check the metadata of the photo after hearing rumors that something had been photoshopped. What they discovered was that in the metadata, it was tagged as a photo taken by Meadowgate. Meadowgate turned out to be a company owned by a woman named Leah Saffian. When they began looking into Leah Saffian, they discovered she had a dog that looked a lot like the dog in the photo of Ghislaine Maxwell at In-N-Out — appearing to sit under her. So was this a random person who took the photo, or did Leah Saffian take it?
It turned out that Leah Saffian was the attorney and fixer for the Maxwell family — one of Ghislaine's defense attorneys. This was a staged photo.
And as if that couldn't get any worse for the New York Post, the photo itself had peculiarities suggesting it was photoshopped as a twisted joke. Foremost: the poster in the background. Behind the In-N-Out, there's a bus stop, and it has a movie poster for the film Good Boys — a comedy that was coming out that week about the sex lives of pre-teens. I'm not kidding. Her lawyer apparently captures this photo of her at the In-N-Out, and behind them is a movie poster about the sex lives of pre-teens.
The only problem was that the owners of that bus stop advertising space — Outfront — came out and said that poster was photoshopped. They never put up that advertisement. A media spokesperson for Outfront named Carly Zip gave an on-record statement. She said, quote: "We do not have any records of this Good Boys poster being posted there. Outfront keeps meticulous records of exactly which posters are displayed at bus shelter locations across the US." Zip insisted that the bus shelter outside the In-N-Out Burger where Maxwell dined did not have that poster. "We have no record of Good Boys having ever been posted. We had our installers check the logs. They even went out there to check. There is no evidence that Good Boys was ever posted."
Instead, Zip claimed they had been running since July 28th a poster advertising the Providence St. Joseph's Medical Center. The Daily Mail then got their reporters down there and saw that there was indeed an advertisement for the Providence St. Joseph Medical Center. My team went back on Google Maps and, even though they didn't have anything captured from that exact August day, we saw that even back in May of 2019, sure enough, they were running a Providence St. Joseph's Medical ad. So who put that poster in the background? Who did that, and why?
And that's not all. The book Ghislaine is reading in the photo is really just an FU to the public. The title of the book she's reading in front of the In-N-Out is The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of the CIA. Just fantastic. Her lawyer captures her — or a photo. Was she even there? Who knows?
It looks like an alibi was being created. The New York Post might actually be an outfit — and I don't want to say it definitively, but looking at all the facts available to me — of Israel. They were protecting their agents, but also doing it in a really sadistic, wink-at-the-world, "what can you do about it?" way.
The Mossad Link: Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein
Anyway, back to Ghislaine, because she is the daughter of a Mossad agent — there's no question about that. Robert Maxwell was her father, and the Mossad does not deny that Robert Maxwell was an agent. Therefore, the most obvious link between Epstein and the Mossad would be Ghislaine. But currently, we are being told by the media, by the mocking Israel puppets, by Israel's former prime minister who has come out against Tucker Carlson on X, that it is ridiculous to suggest that Epstein could have been working for the Mossad — that there is no evidence, and that it's anti-Semitic. What happened to Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens? This is newspeak. This is them doing that thing where they delete history right as it's happening and think that nobody's going to go back and look at what actually happened.
The new story that's emerging is that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell met in the '90s — after Robert Maxwell was already dead — which thereby deletes any possibility that Epstein could have been connected to the Mossad via Robert Maxwell. He really just genuinely met Ghislaine Maxwell in the '90s. And I really hate to destroy that narrative. Actually, I'm lying — I don't hate to destroy it. I just hate liars.
Ari Ben Menashe: Epstein in Robert Maxwell's Office in the 1980s
Here is a man I'd like to introduce you to. His name is Ari Ben Menashe. He is a man who claimed to have had several meetings with Jeffrey Epstein in Robert Maxwell's office throughout the 1980s — a decade before the media is telling you Ghislaine met Epstein. Ari Ben Menashe would certainly know, considering he worked for the Mossad and even spent time in prison due to his work for Israeli intelligence — he got caught being an agent for Israel.
Zev Shalev has a podcast called Narativ, and he interviewed Ari Ben Menashe in 2019. Here are a couple of clips. If you're listening on audio, it might be difficult to follow, but I'm going to break down everything afterward.
Zev Shalev: So Maxwell introduces you. He says, "Here's this young guy." And did he go by the name Jeffrey Epstein, or did he go by a different name?
Ari Ben Menashe: I remember Epstein.
Zev Shalev: Okay. Because he had a different passport that he was traveling in and out of.
Ari Ben Menashe: That's right. Yeah. But that came later.
Zev Shalev: Okay. So he says to you, "Here's this guy Jeffrey Epstein, who I know from around," and your Israeli bosses have already approved?
Ari Ben Menashe: Oh, okay. Already approved. So it came down from up above.
Zev Shalev: So what did he do? Can you say what he did for you? What kind of work did you guys do together?
Ari Ben Menashe: No, no, he didn't do anything.
Zev Shalev: Oh, so you just met him and that was it?
Ari Ben Menashe: I met him a few times in Maxwell's office. That was it.
Zev Shalev: And did he do any arms deals for anybody else that you were aware of?
Ari Ben Menashe: Not that I'm aware. He wasn't very competent. He didn't seem to be a competent guy. But he was a good-looking guy, and Miss Maxwell — Ghislaine — yeah, fell for him early. Early 1980s.
Candace Owens: So he is describing how he met Jeffrey Epstein in Robert Maxwell's office, and he is making it clear that Ghislaine loved Jeffrey Epstein. I'm going to let you listen to another clip where he describes how both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine were agents for Israel.
Zev Shalev: She got involved with Israeli intelligence together with him, right? But not in this deal — in Iran or business. Would you say she was an agent as well? Was she someone working for Israeli intelligence?
Ari Ben Menashe: Oh, definitely. Military intelligence as well.
Zev Shalev: And when that happens — because I have no idea how that world works — do you get orders and you have to do certain things, or is it more like —
Ari Ben Menashe: No, you get projects. And what really happened — my take on it, and the later thing — is that these guys were seen as agents. They weren't really competent to do very much. And so they found a niche for themselves: blackmailing American and other political figures for the Israelis. It's hard for people to understand why Israel would want to get blackmail on an American. I'm asking a question that I can answer, but for most people it's hard for them to think about Israel as blackmailing their leaders in the United States. Seeing around is not the crime — it may be embarrassing, but not the crime. But sleeping with underage girls is the crime.
Candace Owens: That's a lot to unpack. He is telling us first and foremost that Epstein did not seem like a very competent guy. That's incredible, because it tells us the hand of Midas was upon him. We've discussed — and will again discuss — Epstein's incredible career. Just like Emmanuel Macron was presented as a savant, this man who worked for Israeli intelligence says Epstein wasn't a competent guy. He was a good-looking guy. He tells us Ghislaine Maxwell fell in love with him for that reason.
According to Ari Ben Menashe, Epstein was part of the Maxwell family business. His theory is that perhaps Robert Maxwell thought Epstein would be a good fit for his daughter. He tells us that at this time Epstein was traveling back and forth between London and the Middle East and would often pass through Robert Maxwell's office. This interview is very long and we are going to link it below so you can watch it in its entirety.
According to Ari Ben Menashe, Ghislaine Maxwell would accompany her father often and was involved at least to some extent in his intelligence activities. He is very clearly stating that the two of them were not particularly competent but found a niche — collecting blackmail on American politicians. They were facilitating this blackmail and therefore became valuable to the Mossad. This is coming from Ari Ben Menashe, now an Israeli-Canadian citizen who worked for the Mossad in arms deals, which is the reason he says he met with Epstein in Robert Maxwell's office.
The Iran-Contra Connection
Ari Ben Menashe's meeting with Epstein in Robert Maxwell's London office dates back to the Iran-Contra scandal. You might not remember this if you're like me — born in 1989 — but this was a very big scandal that happened in the '80s under President Reagan's administration.
Essentially, Iran was under an arms embargo from the United States — meaning the US was not going to give Iran any weapons or military equipment, because you can't fund or support terrorist activities in the Middle East. But then suddenly the American government did a 180. They said, "We actually are going to ship some arms to Iran." The American people were informed that the only reason the government was doing this, the only reason they were temporarily removing this embargo, was to get back some American hostages. They claimed Iran would be able to work with their partners in Lebanon to return American hostages being held there. Seven hostages — the public was told there were seven hostages we would get in return. Officially, we were justifying this shipment of arms for seven US hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah.
Except it turned out they maybe lied about that. What was discovered was that what they were really doing was trying to get the American public on side for a deal that was actually for Israel. In reality, they were going to send that shipment to Iran on behalf of Israel, because Israel wanted to arm and train militants in Nicaragua. By way of deception, thou shalt do war — they deceived the American public. Iran was going to give cash for weapons, and that cash wasn't going to go directly to Israel. Instead, Iran was going to give that money to Russia — essentially laundering the cash through Russia so that it could be used to arm and train militants in Nicaragua.
And you know who helped facilitate that whole Russia-through-Robert-Maxwell arrangement? According to Ari Ben Menashe, who was part of the Iran-Contra scandal and went to prison for it, Robert Maxwell was the person who brokered the lucrative deal between the Mossad and the KGB that allowed the Israelis to hide money from the arms sales to Iran. And Ari Ben Menashe says that Robert Maxwell wanted to involve Epstein in this operation.
Ari Ben Menashe says, quote: "What happened was Maxwell introduced Epstein to us. He wanted us to accept him into our group." But despite Maxwell's insistence, Ben Menashe claims that Epstein just wasn't competent and wasn't accepted by them — not by him, and not by Nick Davies, who at that time was the foreign editor of the Daily Mirror and was also involved in this operation. The Daily Mirror was just a whole operation unto itself. They weren't impressed with Epstein.
Nevertheless, Ari Ben Menashe says that Epstein was in fact able to develop close ties with several arms dealers — again, this was in the '80s, so you can dispel the new media story about him having met Ghislaine in the '90s and them forming a friendship with nothing at all to do with the Mossad. That's just a lie. He fashioned those arms-dealing relationships since the '80s, particularly with a British man named Sir Douglas Leese, who was involved in a series of contracts known as the Al-Yamamah deal.
We're going to stop there because that's going to bring in Saudi Arabia. It's going to bring in Adnan Khashoggi — you remember Jamal Khashoggi, just a journalist, all that stuff. Yeah, a little bit more going on there. Certainly Adnan Khashoggi, his uncle, was in the mix. A lot of players are in the mix. We've already got Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Israel, America, the UK, France, Lebanon. Are you guys starting to understand why they don't want anybody touching the Epstein files? Because the blowup is not just going to have to do with America and American politicians. It is a very, very sophisticated network.
Trump Calls the Epstein Matter a "Democrat Hoax"
And by the way, what Trump is saying about it right now — what he posted this morning — it is looking like some people behind him might be terrified.
Trump posted on Truth Social: "The radical left Democrats have hit pay dirt again. Just like with the fake and fully discredited Steele dossier, the lying from the intelligence agents, the laptop from hell — which the Dems swore had come from Russia, no, it came from Hunter Biden's bathroom — and even the Russia Russia Russia scam itself, totally fake and made-up story used in order to hide crooked Hillary Clinton's big loss in the 2016 presidential election. These scams and hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at. It's all they have. They are no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates. Also, unlike Republicans, they stick together like glue. Their new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. And my past supporters have bought into this hook, line, and sinker. They haven't learned their lesson and probably never will. Even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years, I have had more success in six months than perhaps any president in our country's history. And all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the fake news and the success-starved Dems, is a Jeffrey Epstein hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats' work. Don't even think about talking about our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don't want their support anymore."
A lot going on there. He doesn't want the support of anybody who wants to know more about the Jeffrey Epstein matter. That's a pretty big statement. Calling it a Democrat hoax — as we uncovered a couple of days ago — is interesting given that Epstein was arrested during the time Trump was in power in 2019. The first time he was arrested was back in 2007, when George Bush was president. So it doesn't really seem like this might have been a Democrat hoax, given that these were federal charges and Republicans would have been in charge. And people from both sides are calling for this. It's not just Republicans or just Democrats who want these files. It's like the first time everyone is together on this.
It's interesting to say we should move on from Jeffrey Epstein in a post where you are also throwing it back to all of these other hoaxes. We get to keep talking about the laptop. We get to keep talking about the Russia hoax — which we fully agree were hoaxes. That's why we were behind you as your supporters, saying these are hoaxes. There is no fire here. And we followed you. We are that same base of people who have the wherewithal to know when we are looking at a hoax and when we are looking at something that is deeply sinister. You can't just edit our ability to see that. We were clever enough to perceive a hoax then, and we're clever enough to perceive what is clearly not a hoax now. That's what I would say. That's what I would offer back. But Mr. President Trump, respectfully, if you'd ever like to come on my podcast, I'd welcome you to explain in long format how you perceive this to be a hoax and who particularly you see as facilitating it. I also invite you to blink twice. You've got some Zionists behind you that are making you real nervous to talk about this.
Thomas Massie's Discharge Petition
Congressman Thomas Massie is one such Republican who is basically saying, "Nope, we're not getting away with this." He has launched a longshot attempt to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. He announced on X that he is going to force a vote on this, and if nothing else, we will at least know who is voting against the release of the Epstein files.
He wrote: "We all deserve to know what's in the Epstein files, who is implicated, and how deep this corruption goes. Americans were promised justice and transparency. So we're introducing a discharge petition to force a vote in the US House of Representatives on releasing the complete files."
He then explains: "A discharge petition is a procedural tool for bypassing leadership. In seven days, we can start collecting signatures. At 218 signatures, the House must vote on our bill requiring a full release of the Epstein files. If your representative will not sign the discharge petition, ask why."
Certainly do that, everyone. We'll keep you posted on that. When he gets his position going for signatures, I will get that up and make sure I'm promoting it, because this matters.
Viewer Comments and Closing Thoughts
Let's get into some of your comments. What are you guys thinking about all of this?
Our first comment comes from Will Wallace, who writes: "Ghislaine Maxwell sits in prison yet no solicitors, no victims naming perpetrators. We're not stupid, America. It's obvious that there's a powerful influence keeping this information under wraps, which makes me believe it is definitely not unalived." I think you mean Jeffrey Epstein there.
Epme writes: "In relation to the deep state and the few elites that are calling the shots, I think it's worth looking into the annual Bilderberg meetings. No journalists are allowed in, and they are really high-profile people that are invited each year." Yes, I'm aware of those meetings and this is definitely something people should be aware of.
Albert Zampiri writes: "God bless your work, Candace. Here's a little something for Baby Roman." Thank you so much for the support. I appreciate everybody. Every dollar that goes toward supporting independent journalists — many of whom are involved in this series, and obviously first and foremost Xavier Bousard — matters. He has effectively risked his life to bring forth the Brigitte Macron series, and all of it is connected. It is a web.
Speaking of web, I know that he relied on the reporting of Whitney Webb. Many of you have mentioned her. I do intend throughout this series to eventually get her on the show to speak about all of her work after we kind of lay out all of these files. There are just a ton of people who have been trying to bring this into the forefront of the public who have been shut down, smeared, and lied about, because their network is incredibly powerful. But it seems like there's a new frontier. Tons of people are now waking up at the exact same time, recognizing that all of our countries are feeling the squeeze and asking the question of which country is causing that. And yeah, the Jeffrey Epstein story makes that very clear and can furnish a very clear answer.
Moderator Marsy writes: "So I hear Ghislaine Maxwell will be attempting to speak about the Epstein client list. Hopefully she doesn't have a suspicious accident." Yeah, I saw that. I would say she does not do anything without permission from the Mossad. So I'm not sure what that is. If that's supposed to be a fake — you know, everybody take a look at what's happening, this is definitely legit — a show trial of sorts. That would be my suspicion, because they would never allow her to speak were that genuinely the case.
Safar writes: "Candace, what if Epstein wasn't the end but the blueprint? His network touched media, politics, and finance. Exposing that isn't just about justice — it's about dismantling the system that protects him. I would love to hear your take." Yes, it's pretty obvious that this is a blueprint that has been happening for a very long time. That's why I'm saying you're going to start to see elements of this — Ukraine keeps coming up, these people are from that modern Ukraine that came into our country, a lot of the time under the guise of programs, a lot of the time mentioning Elie Wiesel, the people with the most extraordinary Holocaust stories.
I took a class at UVA — you can fact-check this. I think it was my freshman year, possibly my sophomore year. It was an honors English course and we were made to read Night by Elie Wiesel. My professor was a Jewish woman. We read it and it was horrific. I remember vividly being impacted by the story where Wiesel said that the Nazis took babies — infants — and smashed their backs against the walls at Auschwitz and burned them in a pit. And then it came out that that couldn't have happened and that it was made up. This kind of began the whole Elie Wiesel scandal. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize and there were calls for it to be revoked, back around 2008 or 2009. At the end of reading the book, my professor told us that he had made up these stories, and then we had to assess as a class why someone would do that. It was a really interesting class. She obviously wasn't saying the Holocaust didn't happen — to be clear, she was saying that some people were lying about what happened, and asking what would motivate somebody to do that.
When we think about the disappearance of the totally sadistic, psychopathic Bolsheviks who went on and murdered something like 60 million Christians and were never held accountable for it — it would be, I would say, a good idea to launder your names when you know that a bunch of people are leaving camps, to launder your names through those camps when there's so much chaos in the world and nobody knows who you are or where you came from.
I never forget that class and thinking, "Why would anybody ever lie about something like that?" It was a huge scandal — the Elie Wiesel scandal. It was actually another Holocaust survivor who called him out on it. Let me look up his name live. The guy's name — let me see. "Auschwitz survivor doubts Elie Wiesel's Holocaust past." A Hungarian-born Jewish survivor. So it was literally survivor-on-survivor. This survivor was saying that Wiesel completely made up the story. Let me see what this man's name is. He said that Wiesel stole the identity of a fellow inmate whose name was Lazar Wiesel. And this Holocaust survivor — his name is Miklós Grüner — said that the person whose identity he stole had actually saved his life. Lazar Wiesel had saved Miklós Grüner's life, and Grüner spoke out and said, "This man is lying and he stole the identity." So it was a massive scandal. Incredible. You can look into that yourselves and we'll discuss it more later.
Again, there's just a ton of people who have been trying to bring this into the forefront of the public who have been shut down and smeared, because their network is incredibly powerful. But something very significant is happening, and it's going to take brave people to expose it to the world.