Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/23/25: GOP Blocks Epstein Vote, Former Inmate Rips Epstein Coverup, PodSave Fires Back At Hunter

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss GOP shuts down House to dodge Epstein vote, former inmate rips Epstein coverup, PodSave bros fire back at Hunter Biden.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right

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and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Happy Wednesday, welcome to Breaking Points with Ryan and Emily. That's amazing. Right? Emily, by the way, programming though, will be in the new media chair at the White House later today

asking Caroline Levitt something. Something, we don't wanna give anything away. I've got an idea. So my paperback came out yesterday. You should ask Caroline if she has read the squad Yeah, and say like by the way, it came out and paperback yesterday So if you've been waiting to get the cheaper version, so this is a good idea for the question itself I can say right amazon.com paperback out today Whatever 1999 however much it costs yeah tell if she

wants to understand how a pack operates in Washington this would be the book for her I think they are curious these days they could learn right I have a gift for you what you got all right so you were gone last week so I couldn't give it to you but look at that this is a teenage mutant ninja turtle it's a turtle boy shirt ride the turtle It's a Turtle Boy shirt. Ride the Turtle. Oh, from Turtle Boy. Oh my goodness.

That's from the Turtle Boy merch shop. Well, I went to University of Maryland and their slogan is, fear the turtle. That's right. So there we go. It works either way. You could be walking around the, like, Rehoboth. We had a bunch of people angry about that interview. Oh, I saw.

Yeah. Because, I mean, he's kind of crazy. He's a controversial man. Yes. He's a controversial man. Now you can rock his merch. It's the craziness and craziness is putting it lightly perhaps that allows him to be so dogged in some of these cases. Does not mean I endorse everything the man has done. No. Or will do. Nor should you have to endorse everything that he has done or will do in order to interview him on a really important case. And anyway basically how this all happened

is that I was on his website and I noticed he had a merch shop and I was like, oh boy. That's amazing, thank you for this. That's pretty funny. I was like, there's something there. Amazing. Anyway. Well, thank you for that. My pleasure, truly. Much appreciated.

Yes, now to the news. I came in to Hawk Merch and instead I'm leaving with merch. But it was an exchange. Oh, perfect. I mean, this is, what were you asked for? Out now in paperback, it's so light. You can take it to the beach. You really can.

Everyone will know that you're smart, erudite. There's perfect beach read, you got it. All right, so we're gonna be talking about the latest attempt by Donald Trump to distract from Jeffrey Epstein. This time, he's accusing Obama of high treason. The man is off his game. He even said to the fake news media, you need to focus on this instead of the other thing.

He did say it out loud. He's just saying it out loud. The guy has really lost his touch. We're going to talk about the Democratic autopsy is being conducted among the Pod Save bros and Hunter Biden. They're working their stuff out. You're going to enjoy this one. Microsoft workers told their bosses yesterday that they are no longer going to work on Israeli tech.

Microsoft supplies, as Dropsite has reported in the past, a lot of the tech for their AI, their cloud computing, their war machine. And now their workers are standing up and saying, we're not doing that. Not all workers at Microsoft, of course, but a substantial chunk of them. We'll talk about that. We'll also talk about the ongoing siege, the number of people that continue to die of starvation, as well as getting killed at aid distribution sites.

I'm going to have a little look back at a piece about the 1990s when a certain prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu at the time, yeah, he's been in office that long, not continuously but that long, was alleged to have blackmailed Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky tapes. Turns out there's a lot to it, so you're gonna wanna stick around for that. We're also going to have an inmate who served basically alongside Jeffrey Epstein.

And when they removed Epstein's cellmate, after he died, he went to Martin Gaddisfeld's cell. So we're gonna talk to Martin Gaddisfeld about what he knows about that correction center, what he heard from Epstein's cellmate. Because missing in the reporting of this controversy is the voices of the people who were actually in the building.

Because there were plenty of people in there. So let's talk to some of them. And then the wife of the guy who made the ice block app is going to join us as well. She somehow thought that she wouldn't be fired by the Department of Justice for this. Yeah, seemed unlikely. We're going to ask her, we're going to say, hey, cool app,

as far as I'm concerned. But you thought that that was going to be OK? Didn't seem like that would fly. Anyway, can't wait to hear from her. A lot to get into. Let's start in the Oval Office yesterday, where Donald Trump, to the point Ryan just made, did kind of say the quiet part aloud, which is... Although let's start with Massey, right?

With the Massey... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so basically, here's what's happening. Let's break it down this way. There were efforts among Democrats, as we've covered here, to end among Thomas Massie, so Republican, a couple other Republicans, to get a vote done before August recess on the Epstein files. Then Donald Trump yesterday also waited on the future of the Epstein files.

So we can start here with A2. This is Thomas Massie weighing in on- Oh, Mike Johnson. Sorry, I'm totally throwing you off here. All of it. But House Speaker Mike Johnson shut down the floor, basically yesterday, and said, we are not going to take lessons on transparency

from the Democrats who covered up for Joe Biden's health crisis. That was the line. Let's roll the clip. The House rules resolution, sets a good standard, and requires all credible evidence to be released, and that's exactly where the White House is. As I've said many times, over the last...

As I've said many times, there's no daylight between the White House and the House. You have to allow the legislation to ripen, and you also have to allow the administration the space to do what it is doing. The president has said clearly and he has now ordered his DOJ to do what it is we've all needed DOJ to do for years now and that is to get everything released. So they're in the process of that. There's no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they're

already doing. And so this is for political games. I'm not going to address anybody individually, but I'll tell you that some here are much more frustrated than others. There's a small, tiny handful, but one in particular who's given me lots of consternation. I don't understand Thomas Massey's motivation. I really don't. I don't know how his mind works.

I don't know what he's thinking. Thomas Massey could have brought his discharge petition anytime over the last four and a half years. Over the last four years of Biden administration, he could have done that at any time. And now he's clamoring as if there's some sort of timeline on it. It's interesting to me that he chose the election of President Trump to bring this, to team up with the Democrats and bring this discharge petition. So do I have some concern about that?

I do. Okay, but the timeline is that Attorney General Pam Bond, he closed the case a couple of weeks ago. That's basically why this has resurfaced. Ryan, you made this point about Thomas Massie while we were watching the clip. He posted a pretty hot tweet. Yeah, maybe we can add this in post. He responded, Speaker Johnson, why are you running cover for an underage sex trafficking

ring and pretending this is a partisan issue? MAGA voted for this. And in fact, Johnson's own post on X About This has a community note saying over half of the sponsors of Hres 581, which he is blocking, which he is shutting down the house so that there won't be a vote on it. And this is massicana. That's the Massicana bill.

Yes. Over half of the co-sponsors are Republicans. So the effort to paint this as a Democratic thing kind of falls flat in the face of that. And yes, to your point, the reason that there's movement now in the White House is because of the public pressure. And separately, if it's the case that they're already doing the thing, then it wouldn't be offensive to push them to just do it. Well, yeah, absolutely.

And again, the only reason that this has now become the news cycle every single day is because Pam Bondi came out and said, no further disclosures are warranted in the case. And then Trump has doubled down and tripled down on that point. So let's actually get to this. And then literally they're shutting down the House of Representatives early so that they don't have to vote on this. It's incredible. Reading from Playbook right now, Johnson is adjourning House business this afternoon.

The last votes are scheduled for 3 p.m. and canceling further action ahead of August resource recess in order to quash an effort To force a floor vote that would hasten the release of the Epstein files Republicans want to get back to their districts because they think that's this is how they're spinning it But also I think they truly believe this an important time for them to be able to go out and talk about the big beautiful Bill and sell it in their districts because obviously it's not polled with great popularity since its passage. So they're really eager, A, not to have to take their Epstein vote and B, to get out of town and talk to people. Now I think some Republicans actually would like to take the vote so that they

don't get, it's a talking point when they're back home during August recess. And I asked about a bunch of House Republicans last week about this and they told me yeah they do expect to hear from people in their district about it. So it's very clear that they know they're gonna get these questions. And why not just vote? It's not as if the Senate's gonna pass it tomorrow. Right. And so I don't even understand why Johnson even needs to go to the mat. Like, so he put up his own resolution that's pretty toothless. Yes. In exchange for this one to say like, don't vote on this one that has like actual teeth,

vote for this one instead, and then we won't vote on that one. Okay, but he did that. What's the difference though? Because it doesn't have teeth if it doesn't pass the Senate. Yeah. It's a symbolic vote, either way. So what are you doing? Yeah. Like, you can still be cynical.

We know what they're doing. This is the first clip. Because Donald Trump basically put it clearly. This is A1. Let's roll Trump yesterday in the White House. I didn't know that they were going to do it. I don't really follow that too much. It's sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the White House. I didn't know that they were going to do it. I don't really follow that too much. It's sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt.

The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold. They tried to rig the election, then they got caught. And there should be very severe consequences for that. Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader. Hillary Clinton was right there with him, and so was Sleepy Joe Biden, and so were the rest of them. Comey, Clapper, the whole group.

And they tried to rig an election, and they got caught. And then they did rig the election in 2020. And then because I knew I won that election by a lot, I did it a third time, and I won in a landslide. Every swing state won the popular vote. Look, he's guilty. It's not a question, you know, I like to say, let's give it time. It's there.

He's guilty. This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election and we have all of the documents and from what Tulsi told me she's got thousands of additional documents coming. So President Obama, it was his concept, his idea, but he also got it from crooked Hillary Clinton crooked is a three dollar bill. Now it looks like Adam Schiff really did a bad thing.

They have him. Now let's see what happens. It's not up to me. It's not up to, I stay out of it purposely, but it's mortgage loan fraud. It's a big deal. He defrauded banks and insurance companies and the federal government.

Okay, so Ryan, you may disagree with me on this. I think two things are true in this case. It's not just that two things can be true. I think two things are true that the documents that are being released from Trump's intelligence community, so from Tulsi Gabbard and then John Ratcliffe a couple of weeks back are important consequential significant scandalous and they are using it to distract very clearly from Trump's bungling and Peabody's bungling both of them of the Epstein case the political fallout because you see Trump put it that way

saying directly you should be focused on this witch hunt against me, not the witch hunt towards me right now on Epstein. He basically just- Calling Epstein a witch hunt. Yes. Like, bro. Yes. He's saying that.

Yes. Guy was much worse than a witch. Yeah, that's for sure. But this is the timing of the Gabbard document dump is very convenient for Donald Trump, obviously, because it sucks oxygen away from the Epstein story. And also for Gabbard, who had been in the doghouse.

And then yesterday at the White House, Trump says she's the best one in the room right now. Something like real pat on the head for Gabbard, who's kind of now back in good graces. And tell me if I'm... So just for people that aren't following exactly what the revelations are here, essentially, and you correct me if I'm getting the narrative wrong here, essentially throughout the 2016 election, the intelligence community, according to these documents, assessed that Russia was not actually trying to hack into election systems that's actually contradicted by what reality winner leaked because they the intelligence community believed that they try to get into North Carolina and

some other election systems with some with these fishing expeditions that they found they didn't they didn't they don't know what they were gonna do when they're in there so because like oftentimes these foreign actors or hackers will just get in and Sometimes steal stuff just just to hang out there in case they want to do something later in any event. Let's say I See is saying they're not trying to change the votes or do anything like cyber hacking around the election Well, and we do have emails of them saying that, saying that was their belief at the time. That's sort of what Tulsi's releasing.

Yeah, right. And there's no evidence they did. There's that reality-winner evidence that they tried. And these documents are after the election. So this is December of... So Tulsi Gabbard on Friday dumped a bunch of documents and put them together sort of in this narrative framing to show how Barack Obama, this is a contention, Barack Obama directed the intelligence community to first enhance its interpretation of what happened between Russia and Trump.

Right. And so it's a December 9th meeting, which includes Clapper, Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, and others, December 9th, 2016, with Obama. Then they say there's an email to the IC leaders asking them to create a new assessment, quote, per the president's request. And that's from Clapper's executive assistant that details the, quote, per the president's request. And that's from a Clapper's executive assistant that details the, quote, tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election, unquote.

Now, here's where what Democrats are doing is dirty. So they are acknowledging that there's no attempt to kind of hack the election. Right. What they're doing is they're redefining what hack means and what cyber means. Yep. Tools Moscow used and actions it took

to influence the 2016 election. What they will eventually find is like a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads. Memes, yeah. Yeah. And like attempts to organize Black Lives Matter rallies that like three people showed up for.

Basically these ham-fisted attempts, you can go back and read the 2017 Senate report, these hilariously ham-fisted attempts to like stoke the anger of boomers over trans issues, BLM and all that. And so what Democrats would say, if they had a legal defense here, they'd say, those are cyber attempts.

That's what they're... So they're changing... That is cyber. Totally. That is cyber. But they're playing with your understanding of the word cyber. The problem for Trump here is that's dirty. But politics is dirty.

Is that illegal? Now, is it an assault on the dignity of our democracy? Yes, it is. Is it gross? Is it awful? Yes, it's all those things. It's also pretty standard politics. So that's my view, at least.

Now, I think, and I was critical of them the entire time, because the other reason that they wanted to focus on Russia is not just to undermine Trump, but was to also undermine the Bernie wing of the Democratic Party and get in the way of an actual audit of why did we lose. They were using some of the same language to talk about Bernie Sanders and actually Tulsi Gabbard at the time. They were saying Russia boosted Bernie and stuff like that. And Tulsi.

Yeah. And they were using this like wink wink nod nod language about cyber infrastructure and they knew what people thought they meant by that. And Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union they used to point out. Yes. Which was true. Totally true. Also weird.

But anyway, they knew. Burlington had a sister city in the Soviet Union. Still doesn't explain the honeymoon, but your honeymoon story is equally entertaining. Oh, Burning Man. Anyway, so to your point, dirty, dirty stuff, right now, also, Stuff right now also absolutely being used as a shield to suck oxygen out of the Epstein

story and Donald Trump basically made that explicit yesterday by saying, focus over here. Look away from that. Look at this. And that's the plan right now. Discover the exciting action of BedMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption. UFC Gold Blitz. Make instant deposits or same day withdrawals. Download the BedMGM Ontario app today. Visit bedmgm.com for terms and conditions.

19 plus to wage your Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connx Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Then MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories

are set free. I'm Ebene, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house.

Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines.

Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab,

we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To finish this, Gabbard's document says, after months of investigation of the matter, the facts reveal this new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved

to be manufactured, i.e. the Steele dossier, or deemed as not credible. Yes and no. Who said it was not credible? There were some Intel assessments that said that the Steele dossier wasn't credible. But then there's lots of feverish lunatics in the IC who are like, no, we think there

might be something here we're going to investigate. And that's what the IC does. Anyway, so- The new documents reveal that Obama directed this. So there's an email saying, per the president, I think it's from Clapper, Clapper's team, it says, per the president, we're basically coming up with a new intelligence report other than this one that downplays the confidence that we have that Russia influences. But your point is exactly right. You can weigh on your own how much, how important you think these documents are, but clearly

they're an attempt to distract from what's going on with Epstein. And the problem, I think, for Republicans here is that, you know, I've spent the last almost decade watching Republicans organize most of their kind of subcultural politics around pedophilia and the idea that there are pedophiles everywhere and that there are these organized sex trafficking rings that are being operated by Democrats and Podesta and Clinton. And, you know, the entire Q phenomenon is heavily organized around these sex trafficking rings.

And it was more MAGA than the GOP apparatus. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Now it's become the culture. Which is actually interesting with Trump. Yes. So this whole thing that MAGA used to get people worked up over the last seven, eight years, that there are these hidden sex trafficking rings run by elites

Is not going to just be brushed aside Because it turns out that Trump was heavily involved in it Mm-hmm, and and they're not going to look away just because there's some new Russia gate documents No, it's pretty funny that we're gonna be using new Russiagate documents. No. No. It's pretty funny that we're going to be using Russiagate, both parties will use Russiagate as a distraction from other things for the rest of our lives.

But it's, you know, it's actually, I was thinking about this yesterday. It's so depressing because both stories speak fundamentally to the same thing, believe it or not, which is that in the shadows of Republican government, lowercase r, Republican government democracy, however you want to describe it, are these very undemocratic, unaccountable powers operating in the shadows that you have no idea about until 10, 20, 30, 40 years later. We're still waiting on JFK documents right now because there's just no accountability in the intelligence community. And so they're, and yet they're exerting so much control over information and policy and all of that. So in some way, they're the same story, like on that basic fundamental level, which is really depressing.

Let's get to this video of, to the point Ryan made about this not going away. Here is Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith getting asked by Casey Hunt about subpoena power. Would you ever use subpoena power to try to find out more information about Jeffrey Epstein? You may use subpoena powers at any point. That is not a common thing that I have utilized within the Ways and Means Committee. But if I felt like that it was a priority for Americans, then of course. But like I said, this has not been something that's been a

driving force. But you did use subpoena power with Hunter Biden. Exactly. We have the authority to use it, but that is the only time that I have used it. Epstein is not the priority of everyday American who's working nine to five just trying to put food on their table, closing their backs and gasoline in their cars. That is not their focus. And I don't think their focus was Hunter Biden either, but this is another point where two things can be true. Hunter Biden, important story. Epstein, important story.

Trying to put food on your table, important story. And people can care a lot more, and rightfully so, about putting food on their table, feeding their families, and creating a good- Also about child sex rings. You can care, yeah. We do have room in our hearts and minds for all of these things and certainly people had room for Hunter Biden when inflation was even worse than it is right now. So that's not a good excuse. It does show to the point you were making Ryan how silly it is

they are not just voting on this and it seems as though they're not voting on it because of the president not wanting to Continue giving an inch an inch an inch and fearing that they'll eventually have to give up a mile And do even more disclosures from the Department of Justice. Well, yeah, Trump clearly told Johnson don't vote on this Voting would make it all easier. Yeah, but Trump don't care even cynically. Yeah So the other thing they're gonna they're're doing is bringing Galeen Maxwell out. Yes. You can put up. So they're inviting her to testify, tell us like, hey, actually, are you and your dad

Mossad agents? Mossad says you're not. So I don't know. So Galeen Maxwell's attorney, David Marcus, told CNN, quote, I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that galane will always testify truthfully We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case unquote so it is likely that we'll get to hear from Galane if she makes it to the to the hearing. Mm-hmm. So that'll be it now

What like okay she if she says she's not Masad, do we then just wrap this up? But that's the thing. Like this story, it's actually really good for people in power in a sense. Like it's constructed in such a way, or it exists in such a way, that it's the sprawling network of different threads that you can keep pulling on to distract from

never pulling on the big thread that unravels everything. And so you can say okay we're gonna go talk to Galane and you can run out the clock by saying we're pulling on this thread and then taking a really long time to pull it and then you never actually have to deal with everything. So it's actually not the worst scandal in the world to have to deal with from like purely public relations perspective because it's so sprawling that you can say that you'll never exhaust new angles to say that you're looking into basically. And it's so easy to run out the clock and delay.

So I mean, that's probably what the next three years of the Trump administration looks like. Yeah. So in order to talk about more about like what Epstein's life in prison was like and the end of his life was like, let's bring in Martin Gottesfeld, a former inmate from MCC. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction,

abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on the street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of your life. That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lea TraTate.

On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of Black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in.

We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to The Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So one thing that's missing from the coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is the voices of people who served in the Metropolitan Correctional Center with him or near the time that he did where he met his end. And so to try to rectify that, we're joined now by journalist, activist, and former MCC inmate Martin Gottesfeld. Marty, thank you so much for joining us.

No problem, Ryan. Thank you for having me. So to set the stage here, can you talk about the time that you served inside the MCC and how that relates to Jeffrey Epstein's time there? Okay, so I was there from November 2016 to early February 2017 Epstein died there about two and a half years after I left but at the time I arrived at MCC two and a half years after I left. But at the time I arrived at MCC, Epstein had not yet been there, El Chapo had not yet been held there, and the facility was really kind of flying under the

radar. People really weren't aware, but even though that, you know, attorneys and prisoners had been active trying to reform the facility for a long time, the facility was already dilapidated, the staff were already out of control, Disaster was very clearly on the horizon. Anyone could see it. But at the time I was a contributor for HuffPost, you were my editor there. We published quite a bit about the facility before it rose to national prominence.

And so we were really kind of like the early warning system that something was very likely to happen here. All right, and so one of Epstein's, tell us about your connection to one of Epstein's cellmates. So Epstein's, I understand, was Epstein's first cellmate, Nick Tartaglione. I was in the shoe on G-Tier, so the shoe's got like different halls,

they're called tiers, where you can have cells, right? And like G tier in that shoe is like the most elite. It's where the high profile guys tend to go. And so I was already on G tier when Tartag Leone came in, like was arrested fresh off the street, had never seen a jail cell from the inside before. Here's a cop, so he had seen lockup, but never actually experienced it for himself. And then, I understand that Nick was not Epstein's cellmate at the time of the death.

I think that's important to understand here. Right. Yeah. So what can you tell us about the way that the cameras work? I can tell you a lot. And we have this on A5, by by the way we can loop this. This is the video that Pam Bondi released and Martin you've certainly seen this by now. It's obviously as Wired has said spliced together. It's missing a second and now people are actually saying we're in three seconds. So three minutes. Yeah I'm sorry. Yeah and they tried to explain

away one minute as like a nightly systems reboot, but then there's apparently two other minutes. I should add, I've not double checked the digital forensics on this myself. One thing, given my background, the government alleges I'm a hacker with Anonymous and that I single-handedly orchestrated one of the largest cyber attacks the government had ever seen.

So I just have to say I've not double checked the digital forensics on this. So I'm going off of what Wired wrote. To my understanding, there's no meaningful contradiction. No one's come forward with an alternative theory or whatever. But I can't personally vouch for the digital forensics on the files. But that's a view from another tier. And so the tiers are stacked like one on top of another and they're in different like arms shooting off from the main area in the shoe. And you can see the officers stationed there from visible from that tier. But obviously, there's no cell doors.

Right. And so this doesn't really make a lot of sense. The video is not particularly useful for anything. And in that shoe, just so you guys know, because this is something that's not been covered, there's a camera in every cell. And on GT Air, there's two cameras in every cell. And the problem is that guys cover them up. Like you're trying to use the bathroom.

There's a camera pointing at you. Like, what are you going to do? You cover the camera up. And so pretty much at any given time in the occupied cell in that shoe, the camera's covered. Now that's against policy, but the facility, I mean, what are they going to do? Send a team to every single cell every single day to uncover these cameras because the guys are just covering back up again. You also though expect that they would have cameras in the hallway, that we would have a camera that's facing Epstein cell door, right? And there's no explanation given for why that tape is missing or, you know, what happened to that camera. And they're trying to say

the cameras weren't working, the DVR system had problems with the hard drives, all this. Okay. In the floor above that shoe is the 10 South Special Administrative Measures Unit. Okay. This is national security stuff. This is the 10 South Special Administrative Measures Unit. Okay, this is national security stuff. This is like where the 911 guys were held. These are the guys who don't even get attorney-client privilege. Even their attorney-client meetings,

their visits with their attorney are listened in on by DOJ. Right, this is the highest of high security. And they're saying that, you know, the floor right below it that someone could use to access the 10 South unit had no working cameras or the drives were bad. Epstein died a month, two months after El Chapo left. It strikes me as very unlikely the cameras would be allowed to get into that position, and very scary if in fact they were. So what's your sense of knowing people who kind of come in and out of that place?

What's your sense of whether or not he would have been in a state of mind to have given up on his defense? Like you've seen other white collar criminals come and go. Cause one argument is this guy's, he felt like his life was over. And so that's a reason why he would just take his life. He had this high flying life, jets, mansion, partying, the elites,

and now all of a sudden he's here, so it makes sense that he would just be like, you know what, I'm out of here. I cannot take this abrupt shift. What's your read on knowing other people who've gone through that situation? First, I obviously can't comment to his particular state of mind or his mental health. I can say that generally speaking, I have two problems with the narrative that he took his own life. The first is that any good attorney would have told him that he's got two things that

are very important going for him. First, he's got the money to retain a vigorous defense team. This can really matter because I put this in my write-up. You only need to look as far as Sean P. Diddy Combs, right? Who just beat federal sex trafficking charges in the same courthouse brought by the same prosecutors who are going after Epstein, right? He had a big legal team, he did it.

If you read the media and the press, you would have thought he was done for, but he had the money for the lawyers and they squeaked it out. So I don't really buy it. And you know, Sean Combs, he didn't kill himself. It's called hanging it up in prison parlance, but he didn't do it. Facing a very similar racket in the same courthouse, they actually held him in a different facility,

but it's also very poor conditions. It's the ADX Maxx shoe in Brooklyn. I've also done time there. I've done time in the shoe where Biddy was and at a time where Epstein was. So you know what I mean? He didn't hang it up. And then the second thing is that Epstein was in a position potentially to cut a deal, either with the Trump administration or with some future administration.

He had no shortage of people that he could have informed on, right? And there's actually a federal rule of criminal procedure. It's rule 35B, right? Where the government can, the court can depart downward, can give a much lighter sentence. It can give a sentence lower than the statutory minimum. So even if he was facing, like say,

a statutory minimum of 10 years, the court could go below that statutory minimum if he even if he was facing like say a statutory minimum of 10 years, the court could go below that statutory minimum, if he had provided substantial assistance in prosecuting another individual. So the guys that you think of in prison as being desperate enough to take their own lives are generally the ones whose all their boys

have figured them out. Everyone's right on them. They have no one left to sell out for a deal. That's the guy who's, in my opinion, the very large suicide risk. Here's the other thing, too. Epstein was a Wall Street quant. If you do any game theory study, you hear about the prisoner's dilemma, which is basically the question of, do you rat someone else out in jail? That's one of the core exercises in game theory. I'm sure Epstein was familiar with it.

It would be very unlikely in my mind that he would not have heard of the prisoner's dilemma. And so I've got these problems with the narrative. And from your understanding of the layout of the jail, does the footage that we have cover all the ways in and out or are there would there have been other ways that people could move around? Also, the footage doesn't even show the main entrance to the ship. That camera does not even show the main entrance to the ship. The main entrance to that shoe actually has written

above it or had written above it when I was there, America's strongest shoe. It says that right as you walk into that shoe. Right. So if it showed the front door, that's what it would show. This is the footage from some ancillary tier that is, and again, it's built with this central region where you have a little law library cage and you have the officer station and then there are hallways shooting off in different directions and they're stacked one on top of the other. So you'll have G tier above H tier, right?

Like J tier above I tier, right? And they shoot off in all these different directions. The narration of the footage that I've seen shows that Epstein's tier was somewhere off, way to the right of the footage that's been released, right? And there should be another tier camera, like the camera that you're seeing here, right? It's recording the people walking onto a tier, the entrance of which is below the camera.

Anyone coming onto this tier has to cross this camera and be seen. There should be a camera just like that on the tier where Epstein cell actually was, but we've not seen footage from that camera. Are there other things, as you've thought about this for years now, about the facility that people don't know? You wouldn't know if you were just sort of a member of the public that influenced the way you see the allegation that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Are there things going on there that make you see this story differently than if you've

never stepped foot inside the shoe, people would see it? there that make you see this story differently than if you if you've never stepped foot inside the shoe people would see it? I think mostly the stuff that I've gone over I mean obviously knowing the facility itself and having experienced the staff you know and you can this is all public record I published it back in 2016 and 2017 at Huff Post and Shadowproof. And we dropped an article at The Intercept, I think in 2018 or 2019. Right? So, you know, it's all out there,

but you know, I sued over this facility. I filed a federal court because of the conditions there. So yeah, I mean, it is, it is, I will say that it is a place where people can feel particularly desperate, especially in the winter or the summer, because you freeze in the winter and you boil in the sun in that shoe. Uh, there's no air conditioning.

The heat is insufficient. You know, I had leaky water, there's cockroaches and rodents and everything in this shoe. You have to like put something under your, in the gap under your cell door. So stuff doesn't come in at night. Um, you know, so that, I mean, I can see how someone could potentially get, uh, under the gap under your cell door so stuff doesn't come in at night. So that, I mean, I can see how someone could potentially get somewhat desperate. But again, you have all these guys

who are facing like frankly worst situations who don't have the money for the attorneys who have their friends fingering them and they don't commit suicide, they don't die by suicide. About three or four dozen guys were on death row sentenced to die for really heinous crimes Right on the day that the Biden administration announced the commutation of their death sentences, right? None of those guys Had killed himself. Okay. Can I ask also about the guards? You just mentioned that and that's part of the story is that the guards just who were

subsequently fired just were they were distracted, they were asleep, they just missed what was happening. That also is an element that it seems insane to a lay person and maybe it is insane but what have you made of that? So when I was there you had a couple couple of CEOs who were good, a whole mess that were lazy, and some of that were outright malicious. That's pretty much the mix wherever you go in the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. It's going to be that way in pretty much any facility. Certainly they're supposed to do half-hour rounds in any shoe. So a shoe is a special housing unit and you know SHU and it's pronounced like you know like footwear like shoe. But there's certain rules in the shoe and they're

supposed to be the same wherever you go in the federal prison system right. So they're supposed to do these half hour rounds. You know we haven't seen camera footage that definitively answers one way or the other whether those rounds were done but we're told that they were not done and that you know there had been this long period You know before anyone had gotten to him I find that realistic from my time there because you pay attention you hear when the guards are coming on rounds and they definitely Did miss rounds more than this? Yeah, I would I would think yeah that that part actually did square for me, too, just knowing people. And in the middle of the night, if you

can get away with staying in your chair and closing your eyes and sleeping, you're probably going to do it. So that part of me kind of did track. In the Army, they call it pencil whipping, when you're told to go make sure all of these Humvees have oil, a sufficient amount of oil in it. Instead, you don't do it, and you just check off that you did it.

That's actually pretty standard bureaucratic laziness. I mean, again, you see it in the Bureau of Prisons everywhere. But there were a couple of CEOs. There was one, his name was Ortiz, and he would make his rounds every half hour. And you'd see it from the light because the lights off in the hallway at night, right? So you can see the flashlight, like coming and going. And I was up late writing a lot. I took 500 pages of notes in that shoot, because Rolling Stone had asked me to write down everything for a piece that they were working on about my case. So I have 500 pages of notes, date and time stamp about everything that happened in that

shoot. And yeah, so there were a couple who were diligent. I'm not trying to throw everyone under the bus, but for the most part, lazy and some outright malicious. Yeah. Yes, if people want to learn more about it, I would encourage they go Google Martin Gottesfeld. You can look up HuffPost or Intercept for his piece on the conditions at MCC.

And then also his story on serving alongside Chapo. That's a pretty interesting one that people can go find if they want to. Well, for a minimum security guy, for a guy who is supposedly minimum security the whole time. Yes, indeed. Well, Marty, thanks so much for joining us very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

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On your feet! Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Adams and Sheeran, Fade, Glorilla, Jelly Roll, John Fogarty, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McCrack, The Offspring, Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Today, AXS.com. The Bravo worthy feud between Hunter Biden and the Pod Save America hosts rages on and not surprisingly, here's Tommy Veeder yesterday and actually John Lovett as well, reacting to some of Hunter Biden's comments about them on Andrew Callahan show just the other day.

Let's roll the clip. You were on the board of Burisma because of who your dad is. And that is what people hate about Washington. And it was part of the problem. And like, there's some other weird shit. Like he said he did blames the debate on his Biden staff saying they gave him ambient on his foreign trip. But like, Biden got back from the G7 on June 14th, the debate

with June 27th. A lot of fucking Ambien. If Ambien was the issue, like I don't think it's Ambien, it's age. Also like he was tired, so they gave him Ambien? Also like, just like, allow me to rant one more second, like his big beef is that Republicans stick together and Democrats are united, but he's obsessed with this show, obsessed with George Clooney. They don't talk about Gaza until two hours and 50 minutes into the interview. I'm guessing that that was the bigger threat to party unity than George Clooney op-ed. You know what I mean?

It's just this sense of entitlement that like from Biden, from his family, from the inner circle, that he was like owed the presidency, owed a second term. It's just very fucking grating. That Hunter Biden throughout Joe Biden's presidency was a terrible liability for him and put the addiction aside. It is because he was on Burisma because he became an artist, uh, because he was part of a kind of like sleazy Washington that as Tommy said, people hated. You were a liability. You should be ashamed of the ways in which you made your father's political life worse. And the idea that we're going to listen to you now, give me a fucking break. It's ridiculous.

So you may remember that Hunter Biden actually really was cooking, right? When he slammed the Pod Save America host for basically being guys holed up in multi-million dollar mansions in LA Yeah in Beverly Hills and then giving the Democratic Party advice based on their time in the Obama White House You know at least ten years ago at this point and saying this is how the Democratic Party can like Recapture the hearts and minds of the American people Party can like recapture the hearts and minds of the American people. Hunter's kind of right and they're kind of right. Yeah, Hunter's definitely right. On the other hand, who is Hunter Biden to

be talking about? It's incredible. He goes on and on about all of these people who he says have insignificant life accomplishments, including James Carville and David Axelrod. By the way, if all you ever do in your life is get a president elected, you actually accomplished a pretty significant amount. But without looking inward and being like, oh wait, I'm Hunter Biden. I was born on third base and I just got tagged out, like standing off the bag.

So, while his brother was governor of Delaware and was possibly on his way to being president, I think, if he had not gotten killed by the burn pits in Iraq. So anyway, let's hear a little bit more of Hunter Biden's griping, particularly about Clooney and some others. He's not a big fan of Clooney. And this is not on Callahan's show. This is from... So it's actually sort of funny.

He's been making the rounds. Well, he's done two podcast stops. So the first one was his good friend Jamie Harrison's new podcast that is being pitched in all seriousness as like a real effort to reconnect with the American people. To connect with the American people, yeah. Weigel made that joke in his semaphore exclusive, to connect with the American people. Yeah. Weigel made that joke in his semaphore exclusive, like debuting the podcast.

And it actually isn't like you can tell Jamie Harrison thinks that's what this podcast is. And anyone who's funding it thinks that's what this podcast is. But Jamie Harrison didn't like have any idea how to promote his newsy conversation with Hunter Biden. So like nobody discovered what he said to Jamie Harrison until after he was going on that he had said anything interesting on Jamie. He had all the good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So here's Hunter Biden with Jamie Harrison on George Clooney.

The president of the United States didn't know who the actor was. They had written him and his staff, I don't know, 10, five, six, four letters, texting the staff over and over again, saying he's gonna pull out, he's gonna embarrass the administration, he's gonna embarrass the Democratic Party, he's gonna pull out of the biggest fundraiser

because he disrespected his wife, because you don't agree with the policy as it relates to an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, whether that's right or wrong, I don't give a shit. That's good for the party, and I'm not saying he's not a good Democrat, I'm, whether that's right or wrong, I don't give a shit. That's good for the party. I'm not saying he's not a good Democrat. I'm not saying that he's not smart. I'm not saying that he's not a brilliant actor.

I'm not saying that he's not a good friend to the friends that he's friends to. But in that moment, no, he wasn't. He didn't do the right thing. And to say something that is so patently untrue in order to justify what you did afterwards is cowardly, is weak. He's also right that George Clooney was kind of cowardly. He wrote that New York Times op-ed not until after Joe Biden had his debate crash and burn right when Clooney said-

It was pretty close, right? Yeah, it was a couple weeks. But Clooney, and this is, I think, reported out in the Tapper Thompson book, people at that LA fundraiser were really apparently kind of shocked by Biden's state. And if you remember, it was televised. It was a huge, one of the biggest fundraisers ever. We covered it afterwards. So there's video footage of it, where he wanders off

the stage and Obama has to grab him. And that was one of the times that they called it a cheap fake. So it wasn't just Clooney. Now, Clooney had the interaction where Biden's aide was like, sir, this is George Clooney. George who? What?

George what? That's when Clooney was like, what? this is George Clooney. George who? What? George Clooney. That's when Clooney was like, what? Now, what Hunter Biden is referring to there is that Amal Clooney is an advisor to the International Criminal Court. And Biden was threatening sanctions on anybody involved with the ICC, which would mean that perhaps Amal Clooney would

be barred from the country and would have her bank accounts frozen and couldn't do financial transactions. So Hunter's saying that Clooney actually had an axe to grind there. Which is great. I mean, that's a huge story. Also, it's like Biden. What are you doing?

Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge story. You're choosing the side of this war criminal who's trying to cost you the election, and you're going to sanction Amal Clooney election and you're going to sanction a mall Clooney over this get a grip. It's such a crazy set of circumstances that Hunter Biden is casually revealing on this podcast appearance but Ryan that's a crystal flag that he took credit for Leonard Peltier's commutation.

I asked somebody who was involved with that, and they said it is a fact that that last minute commutation was done with the family. So that's a credible, we can confirm that that's a credible claim, at least, from Hunter Biden. I mean, he went pretty deep with Callahan on Leonard Peltier. Like, he was pretty, yeah. And to overcome Biden's instinctive hostility to somebody like Peltier who was convicted

of killing two FBI agents, it must have taken somebody like Hunter to overcome that. So I actually, did you watch the whole Andrew Callahan interview? It was three hours long. Not yet. I think I actually really like it, to be honest, because I found his comments on narcotics and addiction to be really interesting. He's a smart, charming guy. He's very smart.

He's obviously beyond messed up, and in the most tragic ways, and some of which he's aware of, others of which he's not aware of at all. But I was thinking about yesterday, like, there's this part of him right now that's the jokes about him being the new Joe Rogan. There's, it's funny because it's actually, he's kind of like the new Trump in the sense

that Trump, the reason that people are making this joke about Hunter being the new Joe Rogan is because he comes out and laughably of course flames the dumb establishment and positions himself as a victim of elites, him and his family as a victim of scheming elites who just couldn't wait to get rid of his dad which is obviously not true but he's flaming the political establishment he's flaming elites in a way that Jamie Harrison sure as hell isn't going to do none of these influencers Harry Sisson sure as hell isn't going to do. None of these influencers, Harry Sisson sure as hell isn't going to do. That's why they got rid of David Hogg. And that's the thing that Hunter Biden is doing, that Trump forced Republicans to do in 2015 and 16. He went out there. He wasn't scared to

criticize Fox News. He wasn't like, oh, I won't get on Fox News or, oh, Pod Save America will go after me if I say something mean about them. And Hunter Biden's kind of forcing them to reckon with the reality that people want to hear you flaming the establishment right now. And that's the best way to get traction. I don't want it to take away from his art career, but Hunter should do a podcast, right? And with Hunter, there's so many pun names you can come up with for a podcast.

Yeah. But yeah, Hunter, I mean so many pun names you can come up with for a podcast. Yeah. But yeah, Hunter, I mean, the right should love him. He loves guns. He loves liberty, freedom. I think the sad thing is he doesn't actually love guns. Not probably not anymore. No, maybe sober Hunter doesn't love guns as much as addict Hunter. But yeah, three hour conversations with Hunter and like whoever. Just about Leonard Peltier.

Like I'd listen to three hours from Hunter Biden on Leonard Peltier. Get Netanyahu on there like with the Nelk boys. That was wild. and I'm going to be back. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. But I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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