The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Truth About The Epstein Files: CIA Agent Reveals The Connection Between The Mossad, Epstein, & Trump

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Can the Epstein scandal still shake U.S. power—and did foreign intelligence already weaponize it? Former CIA operations officer Andy Bustamante joins host Johnny Mitchell to unpack the DOJ’s sudden claim that “no co-conspirators” exist, the long tradition of sexual-blackmail ops, rumors of Mossad’s hand in Epstein’s network, the collapse of the Diddy trafficking trial, and what it all means for America’s economy, politics, and future. 📚 GRAB ANDY’S BOOK 🔥 “Shadow Cell: A CIA Memoir”—the suppressed story of a mole hunt and a new spy war. https://a.co/d/j5w86HF https://everydayspy.com/ Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Deepop. Where taste recognizes taste. We've been hearing for months, even years now, about how the Trump administration planned on releasing all of the names contained in the Jeffrey Epstein file once Trump became president. They promised the American people that they would release all of the names connected to Jeffrey Epstein in the abuse of over a thousand minors. But this week, the Department of Justice, along with the FBI, announced to the American people that there were no co-conspirators in the Jeffrey. Epstein case. So I thought it would be a good idea to talk to Andy Bustamante, the former CIA spy, about the Epstein case, along with Diddy, how it ties into the history of blackmail with the Mossad and the American CIA and what that means for America at large. And of course, do me a quick favor. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Smash that like button and leave a comment.

What do you think this means for the Trump administration now that they have betrayed yet another one of their promises to the American people. What does this mean for us as a country at large? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Okay, without further ado, enjoy Andy Bustamante right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Mr. Bustamante, good to see you. I'm glad to be here. Johnny, how are you, man?

Man, just busy as ever trying to figure out how I'm going to avoid the coming crisis. Dude, that's what everybody's not wondering how they're going to avoid the coming crisis, they're living in a different planet. Yeah. You're going to be a victim. Really? It's true. There's this phenomenal article for here's here's a periodical not many people know about.

There's a periodical out there called Foreign Affairs. And Foreign Affairs is academically, empirically, peer tested, peer vetted. It comes out every quarter. It usually contains about seven to ten. 10, you know, 15-page articles written by smart people about the state of the United States through the lens of foreign partners, right? And it was just this quarter's journal is off the chain. And it's it's funny because unless you're super into politics or super into foreign affairs, super into geopolitics or are very academically inclined, you probably don't even know the

the journal exists, right? But one of the articles talks about the United States having to decide essentially what kind of country it wants to be in the post-Trump era. Because what we've really seen for like the last four presidencies is a very confused country. It doesn't know what it wants to be. It's kind of like what you and I were in middle school. Remember when you used to wear like like sweatpants to like elementary school and then you got to middle school and you started getting boners in the middle of the day and you were like what do I do now? Because you didn't know how to wear jeans yet and you didn't really understand, you know, how to hand, like how to, how visible or not visible your body really was to other people. So it was just this awkward phase.

United States is like right in the middle of that. What do we want to be when we grow up? Right. Yeah. And there's a pull. There's, it seems like we're being. pulled in two directions politically in the body politic. One, the globalists, which it looks like Trump is completely capitulated to, or perhaps was a part of the whole time. And the other is like this kind of constitutionalist George Washington. We want to be a, essentially what the Constitution laid out was to be a non-interventionist, you know, more federalist kind of isolated communities.

based off of land and Christianity and capitalism, I guess. But most people are just fat and want to get high. Anyways, but let's get into that at the end. I have you here this morning. God, you're a get this morning, dude. I feel like a real journalist. The DOJ has come out after all this cap'n and, propaganda about releasing the Epstein files and look at all the Democrats that we're going to be

exposing that we're on Epstein's plane and on Epstein's island and involved in the crimes against like over a thousand victims, a thousand minors. At the end of all that, the DOJ has come out and said, there is no incriminating Epstein list. So first of all, before I ask your opinion on this, You being a former CIA agent, kidding, you being a former CIA agent, do you, are you aware of the history of what is called sexual blackmail by the, you know, not just the CIA, but definitely the FBI. And it goes back to Roy Cohn in the 1950s in New York. Can you shed light for our audience on what that is? how it may relate to Epstein and Galane Maxwell and the Mossad and potentially the CIA? Yeah, I mean, it's not quite as cut and dry as I think people think it is because it's evolved, right? What you're talking about in inside professional intelligence terms, we call it sexual exploitation operations,

which are operations that are used to exploit an individual's sexual urges, sexual behaviors, sexual drives. we all have them. Now, the United States is kind of uniquely situated to be sensitive to sexual exploitation operations because we are a very sexually repressed society. We don't have a lot of nude beaches. We don't allow nude advertising. You don't see, I mean, if you remember when we were kids in the 80s and 90s, it was a big deal if you saw bare breasts for two or three seconds in a movie, right full frontal nudity was like massively taboo in the 90s and early 2000s so i know that like we've become an era or we've come into an era of like internet porn and accessibility for porn but that hasn't been our culture for a long long time so while we've been building this wealthy ambitious

driven nation we've been repressing our sexual urges in the united states It's in a way that Europe and other parts of the world just don't do, where sexual liberties are much more significant. So the reason I bring all that up is because when you go back in the histories of FBI and CIA and working against mafia, et cetera, the idea that we call blackmail, which is essentially getting pictures of people in sexually suggestive scenarios or compromising positions. Correct, correct.

That was a big deal in the past, and it was something that was identified as being questionable in terms of individual rights to privacy, which is why as we've evolved from the 50s to the 2020s, sexual exploitation operations in the United States have largely fallen out of favor by use of intelligence and law enforcement inside the United States against Americans, but the opposite is true about foreign intelligence agencies collecting against Americans. They've actually ramped up their sexual exploitation operations to include transgender, homosexual, and the whole LGBTQ plus movement has all been exploited through those operations. Can you tell us who some of those foreign intelligence groups are specifically?

Yeah. So I'll say that many use the, many, many use the exploitation operations. Everything from the Russians to the Chinese, you've got the Latin Americans. So some of your Mexican, Venezuelan, Colombian, even cartels will use these operations, right? Across Europe as well. So your Romanians and your Bulgarians and your stands, the Turkmenistan, etc., the Pakistanis, the Indians, many people use it. They don't all use it well. There's only a few that really use sexual exploitation operations well.

The Russians are very, very good at sexual exploitation operations. The Chinese are also very good at sexual exploitation operations. One of the big differences between the two, and this is kind of funny and mildly racist, the Chinese only know how to use other Chinese people to execute a sexual exploitation operation. So unless you're into Asian girls or Asian boys or Asian trans genders, you're basically not going to fall victim to a Chinese sex operation. But the Russians will literally find anybody that fits your favor. They'll go find a Nigerian.

They'll go find a Japanese. They'll find a Cambodian. They'll go find a Swiss lady. They'll find anybody that fits your needs and then basically turn them into a sex pawn to collect on you. Okay. So in the case of Jeffrey Epstein and the whole sorted history, of his penthouse in New York City all the way to his private plane and his island in the Caribbean. There were all these rumors circulating over the past couple of years when all this started to really, like, kick up dust in the podcast space and in the mainstream media about his links to Galane Maxwell.

Well, not his links. He was obviously a working part and parcel with Galane Maxwell. but her father was a big newspaper man. I can't remember his first name now in Israel. And so obviously there's rumors about his ties to the Mossad and how they basically recruited Epstein as a pawn, I think of the 70s or 80s, and started using him to, yes, get these powerful people,

whether they be American politicians, dignitary, business people, whoever, into, yes, these compromising situations with minors. The worst of the worst, right? It used to be homosexuals back when homosexuality in the United States was illegal and a taboo. But now it was used, obviously, with underage girls. So what about that? Are you aware of the Mossad and or the CIA collaborating with, Epstein to do this.

So I don't know, I don't know any concrete facts, but there's a couple of things that make sense and a couple of things that don't make sense when we talk about the conspiracies that surround Epstein, right? So one of the things that makes sense is that Jeffrey Epstein and his network of powerful people would be a wildly attractive target set for a sophisticated intelligence agency. And we also know that the Mossad is a very sophisticated intelligence agency. Now, one of the things that doesn't make sense, though, is that Mossad isn't really interested in many threats other than Iran. So if Mossad was using Epstein as a tool to collect intelligence, to collect sexual exploitation intelligence, against Americans, then that would essentially be Israel collecting on the United States, which is not unheard of.

want to make this very clear because Israel has been caught several times spying on the United States. So it's not, it doesn't make sense, it's not that it's illogical. It's not that it's nonsensical. It's not even that much of a stretch to think that Israel would identify and spot a guy like Epstein and then collect on him actively by encouraging, supporting, even possibly engineering part of his capabilities to collect and put people in compromises. situations. It wouldn't be beyond the stretch of what we've seen Massad do in the past. Now, CIA being a collaborator in that, that's where it starts to become more of a stretch because Epstein was a U.S. citizen and for the, for CIA to cooperate and collaborate with another U.S. citizen becomes a bureaucratic process. It involves FBI. It involves Homeland Security. It involves the Department of Justice and the office of the executive, which is the president.

it just becomes an administrative nightmare so much so that it makes it that much more plausible that a foreign intelligence service would do it instead because then that foreign intelligence service could report to the United States anything that it found that might benefit the relationship, right? So now if Mossad finds out that, you know, some senior intern in the White House is having hanky-panky with a minor, they can report that back to CIA and they can and CIA can prevent a flap before it even occurs, right? And they can have evidence that's submitted by a foreign intelligence service, and they can use that to seek legal retribution.

So there are certain elements there where it's plausible. It seems, okay, but it does, I guess, taking all that into consideration, it seems more plausible that the Mossad would have their hands on something this sensitive as opposed to the CIA because if they are collaborating, with a U.S. citizen that would leak, that is more of a potential to leak to the other bureaus and have a blow up into being this scandal, whereas it doesn't sound like the Mossad has to tell the DOJ or the FBI that it's involved, that it's flipped one of a U.S. citizen and is funneling all of these powerful people onto his airplane, right?

It allows for much more secrecy. Am I getting that? Yeah, you're getting it exactly right. So there's a couple of elements here that make the spy game fun, but also make the spy game practical. So when it comes to any kind of spying by a U.S. agency against a U.S. citizen is very, very difficult, especially in the post-S. day, right, where justice and elements of the Department of Justice are even more focused on protecting American rights, even than they were before, right? we're almost more willing to risk a terrorist attack now than we were in the past because it's been so long since we've had a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. So the, the, those duties and flexibilities, the authorities that used to exist just don't exist anymore. So in the spy game,

when you collect secrets, it's almost like collecting money. It's literally, it's, it's almost like being a little leprechaun collecting gold from everywhere. Because once you have a secret, That secret has value. And some people will pay more for the secret that you have than other people will pay. But the secrets are yours. So you can collect from everybody. So if Mossad is running Epstein, they're collecting tons of sexual exploitation secrets about Epstein's network. Well, some of those are valuable to the United States, but most of those probably aren't.

However, the Russians, the Cubans, the Chinese. the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Colombians, cartel members in Mexico. For them, those little nuggets that the United States may not be interested in are super valuable to them, right? Are you telling them Assad, are you telling me the Assad would actually sell these exploitation secrets to Colombian drug cartels or to Russia? Would they actually sell these secrets to Russia? That's how the intelligence world works.

I mean, the United States does it too. We trade and we bargain and we sell the secrets that we have on other countries so that we can make stronger alliances so that we can feed what's known as malinformation. Everybody everybody's heard of misinformation and disinformation, right? But malinformation is called malicious information. It's facts that are delivered with malicious intent. So you can deliver malicious information about, let's say, your political opponent. And that becomes a very valuable secret. Hey, your new incumbent prime minister is having sex with a minor.

Wouldn't you love to have this intel from us? We'll give it to you if you promise that when you win the election, you'll give us access to your telephone records. Oh, well, that's a good deal. So now we'll trade you secrets in exchange for access to your sensitive networks. Wow. Wow. Now, on the flip side of all this, kind of what we're saying is,

Well, look, I guess we'll never really know because they refuse to to reveal who the victims are and therefore who are the other people involved in the abuse of these children, right? Unless you're going to take what they say at face value, that it was just Jeffrey Epstein in these thousands of pictures and videos with all of these victims, even though he has hundreds of people in his flight log, many of them scumbags. The public at large just don't believe it. That's pretty obvious. But the other side of this could be that conspiracy theories mostly are just that hype, hyperbole, overblown. Most conspiracy theories that are true usually come to light, especially when it comes to, you know, the history of intelligence agencies. I just watched the movie Barry about Barry Seal with Tom Cruise about his collaboration with the CIA funneling weapons from to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, et cetera, et cetera. It all comes out, even if it takes decades. So could this just be like one of the chances that this just isn't a conspiracy, that this was a guy, a perverted, you know, rich socialite.

who also had his pause on all of these powerful people because he had access to all this capital that he could give them, you know, give Bill Gates for, you know, some research projects. Yeah, because Bill Gates needs your money or whatever, right? Like what are the, and they were just, they happen to come party at his island, and he was just himself alone, wolf, you know, abusing children.

Like, what are the odds that, like, that's also true? What do you think? So there's the, I am not one to subscribe to conspiracy because as a professional, we are trained how to identify what is hidden facts versus what is essentially just unknown or lost facts, right? So I say that because when you're dealing with a conspiracy, you're right. Conspiracies by and large can't be trusted because all a conspiracy, is is a series of events with missing facts. And then in order to, because the human brain doesn't like to have this open loop, it doesn't like to not know what's happening. It closes the loop with this fictitious story. And now you have a conspiracy. And that's why one fictitious story,

or that's why one gap in knowledge can have several different conflicting conspiracies like JFK, right? Or area 51. There's a gap in knowledge, but multiple different conspiracies. fill in that gap in knowledge. And nobody really knows what the answer is. But I will also say that when you mix a gap in knowledge with a classified government agency, when you mix those two things together, it's less likely to just be conspiracy. Because the facts are out there, but they're not being shared. So it forces you to ask the question, why? Why would you? not share a fact if it isn't directly implicated in national security, if it is a direct, if it does have direct ramification on our rights and privileges as U.S. citizens,

why wouldn't you share that secret? Right? Why do the JFK files continue to be classified, continue to be hidden? Why do the Epstein files continue to be classified, continue to be hidden from the public unless there's information in those files that absolutely does pertain to national security or absolutely does pertain to some sort of government protection that's that's intentionally being covered up that's that's kind of the requirement in order to keep a secret it has to have ramifications in those two areas so whatever the spokespeople for the government say they're not saying the truth because at one and you know kind of out of one side of their mouth, they're saying, don't worry.

But out of the other side of their mouth, they're saying, but we're still not going to tell you. And they know, but they won't share it. So why? What's so sensitive that you can't share it? Well, with JFK, that's baffling because everybody's dead. Everybody's been dead for like 20 years that could have been involved in the killing easily, right? This happened over 60 years ago.

You could argue that in the Epstein list, there contains names of Donald Trump, who is the president, and to have that leak, to have it leaked that perhaps he's in photos with Jeffrey Epstein posing with minors the way that Prince Andrew was, or even worse, sex with a minor. Or even if it's not Trump, somebody high up in the government, that then leaves, to expose that leaves the country vulnerable to chaos. So you could justify it however, however you want. That's maybe what they tell themselves. And so that's... And this is important for people to understand. The United States government has, it's a protective privilege that if they have information

that would cause a public panic, they do not have to share that information. Right. So if missiles were inbound from Russia right now and they and the U.S. government determined that it would cause a panic, which would mean it would create instability and create chaos, causing death and harm to innocent civilians, the United States government could say, never mind those lights in the sky, there's nothing happening. Like, they have the right to say that to us because it's, it's this whole idea of protecting the whole. And that's how our constitution was built, right? We're supposed to be able to protect the institution of the United

States first and foremost, even above individuals. Spring weekends are, all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local Total Wine and More to grab a great bottle to share. With such a wide selection and the lowest prices, it's easy to find something amazing for everyone to enjoy. If you're not sure what to pick, their friendly guides can help. Find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and more. Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people who would argue that, but for in practice, you're absolutely right. It's almost like this is the JFK of our time,

these Epstein files. Would you not agree? I mean, it could be. There's huge differences, right? JFC was the president of the United States. He was assassinated. in public on television, people watched it happen. Like it was absolutely earth shattering at the time that it occurred. Where Epstein is kind of like a marginal character, very intensely followed because of the mystery afterwards. Let's also be honest, Johnny, like we live in a country that doesn't really care that much about crime. We really don't. We do, but we don't. As soon as Russia invades Ukraine, we don't really care about crime anymore. And as as soon as like there's a new reality TV show about old people and young people hooking up on a beach,

we kind of don't care about crime anymore. But cartels have been around, sexual or exploitation operations have been around, drug use has been around. People have been disappearing for a long time, right? It's just there are pockets of people who have an intense interest, and then there's larger pockets of people who are distractible. So it's easy to change the subject in the headlines. Well, I do think that this is now gained enough traction. I think this is yet another betrayal of, you know, the MAGA promises, just like the continued wars overseas and the spending bill that just passed. But anyways, that's just how I see it. And I definitely, you know, I just personally, I don't think the powers that be give a fuck.

I think they know the implosion is coming. And they're just trying to grab the drapes. As the house is on fire, they're trying to grab all the China and the silver they can before they have to flee the house. Well, the violation, I mean, the violation of MAGA promises shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Because presidents don't keep their promises. Let's just look at the track record from Biden to Obama, et cetera. Biden promised that Saudi Arabia would be brought to justice. Never happened.

Obama promised to, like, bridge the gap between, besides, never happened. Donald Trump had all sorts of promises in the first term that he totally backfired on. And now, you know, whatever. I mean, he and Elon Musk were best friends until they weren't best friends. So we can't, if we as Americans are still counting on our politicians, our presidents to keep their promises, we are, we are just as stupid as they think we are. What we need to do is we need to start asking ourselves, how do we get into a practice of electing people into office that actually represent us rather than people who represent themselves, their own interests or some special interest group. How do we get out of the cycle of the celebrity

politician that we have gotten into? Yeah. Well, I think also the incentives. We have poor incentives built in terms of the rules of getting elected and the lobbying. That's for a different day, though, because we have more to talk about when it comes to Epstein and, of course, Diddy, right? Which, who was another, you know, shrouded in conspiracy for a year and a half, especially online after his arrest. He just more or less walked. Now, before I ask you about that, when you look at the Epstein suicide, right? his brother went on Tucker Carlson and was basically like, dude, Epstein was, Jeff, like, he thought he could actually beat this thing. Like, he was not, you know, he was not suicidal. He was not despondent. Yes, he did put up or offered to give the government half a billion dollars, basically all of his wealth to bail out, right?

just like Diddy. Did he offered everything he had to the feds, and they still didn't let him walk. They were like, this guy's a flight risk, yada, yada. But at the end of the day, after all of these people came out, all these bodyguards and all these male prostitutes and all these artists and his assistants, everybody said they were willing to testify. Neither of us are legal experts, but he just beat the most serious charges, the RICO charges, and is now effectively just facing time for what, hiring prostitutes, even though it looks, you know, they released a ton of footage of Epstein's cell right from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, trying to prove, hey, nobody went in there. But it does, I don't know. I think it lacks motive, to be honest with you.

What about this Diddy Trial? Did you find surprising? What did you not find surprising? And what does that tell you about the justice system? Like, does this speak to a larger issue in America and with intelligence and with child exploitation or sexual exploitation? What are your thoughts? So there's a, I mean, there's a couple of different ways to take the question. And I think they're all really interesting.

So first of all, the question of motive in Epstein killing himself is an interesting question. One of the things that I'm actually very blessed to have been able to contribute to is oftentimes when wealthy people are being sent to prison, they'll have a consultation with me and my company because they kind of want to know what to expect in prison. and they want to know how to build the mental toughness and how to build the resiliency to make it through prison because prison is hard. It's very, very hard. So I've had a number of opportunities now to sit with very wealthy, very smart, very successful, usually men, almost exclusively men, who then are put and tried and found guilty of white collar crimes, majoratively, that send them to prison for anywhere from, you know, one year to four years. So what I will say people don't understand is that the most brilliant, successful mind in the world, once it lands in that concrete room and your clothes are taken from you and your identity is taken from you and you are sharing a cell with some actual like hardened criminal and your neighbors are hardened criminals and you don't know where you fit in this larger ecosystem, the mind changes. I've seen grown men with multiple children with tens of millions of dollars in the bank. I have seen them talk to me on the first day of our consultation and say that they don't even

think they're going to live and say that they're considering killing themselves because it would be better for their family if they just died in prison rather than run their family through the shame of watching the rise and fall of their dad, right? Just put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's worth $100 million. And then your kids are going to a private school and your trial has been all over the newspaper. And now for the next two years, your kids are going from middle school to high school with the shame of their dad who's in jail for whatever crime. Like it really weighs on people. So I wouldn't say that it's without motive because we don't know what was happening in Epstein's head when he landed in that cold locker.

Although, however, Epstein, no family, right? No family. It's fair. I mean, we have no idea what was going through his head. So I just say that because I'm still torn on what happened to the guy. I'm still torn on whether or not it was organized or it was self-induced or it was premeditated or otherwise. Now, the other part of your question was related to. Diddy.

And what does the Diddy thing teach us? Yeah. The first week of the Diddy trial, I was invited to speak on a podcast called Women of Impact with Lisa Bilu. And Lisa Billu is a brilliant, business-minded woman. She's got a fantastic podcast. But she was doing this series with a quote-unquote legal expert, a woman who came from the UK, who was part of Scotland Yard, who's changed legal policy related to women in the United States, and in the UK, and she was convinced beyond all measure of a doubt that Diddy would be found guilty.

She's like, this is a rock solid case. And I have to think that HSI also must have thought they had a rock solid case. Because to bring charges as a federal prosecutor, you don't want to lose that case. When you lose that case, you're a laughing stock for the rest of your career. So there are multiple people who thought this was a rock solid case. I said in that first week, I was like, we have to be prepared for Diddy to walk. You have to be prepared for him to get off because the two charges of sexual trafficking and and racketeering. Yeah, like the conspiracy for racketeering, racketeering conspiracy. These two charges are super difficult to prove, especially to a jury of peers that are selected by both the prosecution and the defense. So for me, what I think is important here is

it shows that our legal system works because people who, it's so hard to find people who truly don't have an opinion about the case, because a jury has to not have an opinion, not have a predisposed opinion. But when you actually bring in people that don't have an opinion, it's very, very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody is guilty. So it really does show that our rights as individuals, our rights to person. severe in a panel in front of a panel of our peers are strong, which I think is how our legal system was supposed to work. I totally agree.

There's this quote, I think it's Benjamin Franklin. Better that one guilty man should walk. No, better that a hundred guilty men should be found innocent than one innocent person found guilty as a person who hates power and who is totally for what the founding fathers really wanted, which is completely limited government. I am so in agreement with that. Yes, I totally agree. Like the whole, he was found guilty in the court of public opinion

even before he got arrested, right? And still, you got to prove it, motherfucker. That is the beauty of the, not the Napoleonic legal system, but what we have, which is you could probably tell me it comes from England. What can you tell me? Can't remember. Yeah, I'm not quite sure what our legal system, what the actual title is.

But it's essentially it's you got to find, I don't have to prove I'm innocent. You just have to find me guilty. Right. And my peers get to decide. So that's a great take. That's a great take. This actually shows why our legal system, even though it's flawed, just like every legal system, is still probably the best, most fairest in the world.

Exactly. And I say that because anybody who sees the Diddy trial as a failure of the legal system, is looking at it the wrong way. The truth is the Ditty trial is a failure of our judicial system because the fact that the Department of Justice chose to hold him accountable for certain crimes and fail to prove those crimes, but in the process, they spent how many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars

in legal fees, an investigation, in surveillance, in collection, like how much money from our pockets was spent for the DOJ to not take this guy and find him guilty of crime. They could have found other charges. They could have held them accountable to other charges, but instead they chose these very difficult charges and they lost their case. For me, that's the frustrating part, right? Well, they're political. They're driven by politics. And I think on the heels of the Epstein thing, the Epstein scandal, I think they were

more motivated than ever to try to put Diddy away. And, you know, it makes sense to me, too, because if what Diddy participated in would have been found as precedent for sexual trafficking and racketeering, we would have seen a whole domino set fall next. There would have been professional athletes. There would have been more professional musicians. there would have been more people in the R&B industry. There would have been more people in the movie and entertainment industry.

Like the whole house of cards would have come falling down had, did he been guilty of those two charges. But because his defense did this very good job of saying, hey, he's a shitbag, but he's not racketeering. He's a domestic abuser, but he's not a sexual trafficker. right they they kind of gave the jury um buckets to put the information in that were predefined by the defense attorney which was a brilliant move because all people need is some way of organizing information so when the defense said let's organize the information in these buckets and the prosecution did not the prosecution was like hey one big bucket scumbag equals sexual trafficking equals racketeering which was exactly what many legal experts were saying at the time.

They were saying, hey, you know, if he engaged in racketeering on two occasions, he's guilty. If he engaged in sexual trafficking on two occasions, he's guilty. We're showing you 50 occasions, but you only need to see it in two before he's guilty. So that just gave everybody one big bucket to kind of throw up in. But the defense said, no, no, no, it's not quite that simple. Here, let's categorize everything. and you decide what bucket it goes into.

At the end of the day, the jury put most of the stuff in buckets other than trafficking and racketeering. And what's so ironic is that if the state governments, whether that had been in New York or California, had just taken one or two charges, rape, they could have maybe found him guilty, even though it's hard, it's notoriously hard for prosecutors to get wins, to get guilty verdicts, on sex crimes, especially if they happened so long ago because, you know, for various reasons, because the victims don't remember, it's just difficult. But if they had just found him guilty on one or two of the charges that the government was trying to paint as this big mafia conspiracy, they could have given them 40 or 50 years. But instead, the feds came in, and people are so sick

of this, too. This is my theory, because we talked to a lot of mobsters on this show and who are telling me about these cases now of these of these former mob bosses that are walking that are walking free from these huge federal trials because the juries are fucking tired of the overreach of the federal government and then putting these huge cases trying to paint everybody as John Gotti or Pablo Escobar they're tired of it and I think this is an example and look you have a lot to lose. I don't. Part of me is kind of happy that did he beat this shit. If only as a blow to the overreach of the bureaucracy. Now, of course, I hope he wroughts in hell. And, you know, nobody gets away with anything. But yeah, this is why people are celebrating, in my opinion.

It's like the O.J. Simpson thing. We're tired of the racism from the courts and from the cops. And so, yeah, we know he's guilty, but we hate the system more. I think that had something to do with it. The only thing I would say that's different is I wouldn't say did he beat anything, right? Diddy did not beat this? Did he made the decisions that he made? He abused the women he abused. He took advantage of the employees he took advantage of.

Like, he made his choices. The whole trial was after the fact, right? It was a judgment of the decisions that he made. So the people who really beat this were his defensive team. And his defense team did the right process in the legal system to get the best jury on the bench for themselves. They did the right thing to frame the information and frame the case as they did. And the prosecution, the federal government, didn't do a good job. So the real war here was between the defense attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys.

So Diddy was basically just, he was just arm candy for the whole thing. It was his choices in the past that led to the current situation. And I say that because I don't want, I don't want to celebrate or applaud or make any kind of comment like Diddy had an active role in how this whole thing shaped or how this whole thing turned out. The way this turned out was shaped by the way that our legal system was built and by a defensive team that were masters of their craft more than the prosecuting team were masters of their craft. Yes, yes. And also you need that consulting money coming in. So, Brian, take that part out. I wish, take that part out, dude.

This is what happens with you podcast with Johnny Mitchell. I sometimes just, I just get wild. Sometimes I regret what I say. Anyways, I don't know why people don't pay me before they go to go to the joint. I've been to the joint. Pay me, dude. Andy, if you ever get too busy, shoot some of these people off to, you know, you got my number now. And I'll kick you a percentage of what these rich fucks give you.

I know you're making jokes, but the truth is, like, that's exactly how it works. I have not been to jail. So what I do is I bring in ex-cons who have been in jail and they get a chance to directly consult with my client. That's exactly how it works, which you can imagine why that's sensitive to the client, because rich people don't want to be seen in the same room as an ex-con on their own dime. Sure. This is a great, this is an unbelievable reality show idea. You know that. You know that, right?

What's it called? Jail Tomorrow, something like that. Well, we'll holler at Mark Burnett. I think he's now that Shark Tank's done. These are wild times. This is all, I feel. And I know you feel the same way. It feels like we're, we as a people, as a society now,

are kind of just treading water, waiting for the other shoe to drop, which for me is a sovereign debt crisis, the breaking of the bond market. But let's, this is a perfect way to get out of here. You yourself have come out publicly many times and talked about how you're leaving the United States. I am actually seriously considering it now. especially if I think, you know, the sovereign debt crisis and the, you know, the way that we just passed another, the big beautiful bills, another $3.5 trillion added to the debt. What happens next in your view? What happens over the next five years in America? It's a great, it's a great question. It's the right kind of question to be asking, right?

So the stimulus intentions behind the big beautiful bill are mathematically sound, but they're only mathematically sound for the short term. Meaning if we see a benefit, which we should empirically, when you think about the probabilities, we should see interest rates drop, we should see more people taking loans, we should see more money spent. So we should see an economic benefit in the next six to 18 months. But after that 18 to 24 month window, unless the economy has changed its momentum, we're going to be right back in the same situation that we are now. Only now we'll be in that situation with more inflation, with less foreign investment,

and with less of an appetite for people to buy you. U.S. debt. Right. Because they don't believe that U.S. debt is ever going to get paid off. Yeah. Right. So you can offer people the highest bond interest rates in the world, and they're not going to take it.

Like, no one's going to, there's a reason none of us invest in Venezuela, even though it has like a 28% yield, because we don't believe it's going to ever actually pay the yield, right? Right. Right. I always tell people, don't focus on the stock market. The Venezuelan stock market. market is like parabolically high. It just keeps going to the moon because the currency is worth shit. It's worth what you wipe your ass with. And already this year, the U.S. dollar has lost 10%

of its value. So what do you think is going to happen after another $3 trillion gets added to the $37 trillion worth of debt? Yes, there will be a lot of money in the economy. People will still have jobs, but the money that you get is worth so much less, and foreigners don't want it anymore. Correct. And that's the big thing that Americans need to understand that if you live in America and you only deal with American currency and you only deal with American customers,

and if America is you, then you live in a little bubble. And anywhere that bubble floats, whether it floats up or whether it floats down, you're just along for the ride. for anybody who has money and for anybody who deals across international borders, you have to understand that there's a larger currency game at play. And as the U.S. dollar loses value, people who have the U.S. dollar try to get rid of their U.S. dollars to exchange it for a currency that doesn't have so little value.

And every time somebody trades a U.S. dollar for a European euro or for a Japanese, or for a Japanese yen, every time a U.S. dollar is traded for a foreign currency, that U.S. dollar loses even more value because of supply and demand. There's so much supply and so little demand, the value of the dollar just keeps on dropping. So to your original question, what do the next five years look like? I think we're looking for one to one and a half years of positive increase, where inflation declines, the economy is stimulated. Maybe people, people even buy a house or a car again. And then, unless there has been a major shift in our economy, like a wartime economy, right, if Russia prosecutes more war across Europe, if China invades

Taiwan, if Israel decides to go head to head with Iran again, it would take a massive change like that to change our economy. Because if what Donald Trump is trying to do is benefit from a wartime economy without having the United States be actively engaged in a war. He understands that if we're selling our weapons, our intel, if we're giving training to foreign troops, we don't have to worry about American citizens dying, but we get all the economic benefit of producing weapons, selling weapons, selling maps, selling intelligence, etc. renting our equipment basically out to other governments and taking loans and getting leases on the area and territories that are being destroyed. Somebody's going to rebuild Ukraine. Why wouldn't it be the United States? States. Somebody's going to have to rebuild Taiwan at some point. Why wouldn't it be the United States? So Trump is really playing this game of can he stall a massive recession in enough time to change the economic engine so that the economy can bounce back. For me, I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think we're going to see a bounce back that's strong enough, which is just one more reason

why I'm happy to take my company's money, convert it into foreign currency, and live outside of the United States. Totally. And I mean, let's not forget about gold. I mean, for the last 10 years, but certainly since the Ukraine-Russia war, we'll call it a conflict, but it's a war. The central banks have been dumping U.S. dollars and stockpiling thousands of tons of gold every year. So that, you know, a lot of people speculate that what's coming will be kind of a new monetary reset in the global order. So the powers will sit down and say, okay, we are coming to, we're now going to back the U.S. dollars no longer going to be what currency we use to settle international trade. It's going to be gold because we can't trust

you, fucks. You know, all you do is create more of this thing, which is printing U.S. dollars, and it's fucking everybody else. That being said, that being said, do you, I think about, that's not going to be an easy process. That doesn't. Trump and the powers that be in the central banks, they're motivated to keep the ball going as long as possible. They're not just going to say, hey, you guys, let's sit down and discuss the new system about how the dollar's not going to be the world's reserve currency anymore. Nobody in our elite want that. They'll do it because they have to do it. So I think about the USSR.

and I think about how at the end of the Cold War, it was just that they were bankrupt and their top-down system, this, you can call it communism if you want, but it was a top-down bureaucracy, was just so inefficient, and they spent so much on their military build-up since the end of World War II

that Miguel Gorbachev did something heroic, and he said, you know what, we're done. We're done. We're dissolving this. Do you see that happening, say, in the next five to 10 years? Could something heroic like that happen in the United States where somebody from our generation or my generation, somebody that wasn't, you know, didn't come of age during the U.S. Empire and the rise of the fiat bubble? Could that happen to where we say, okay, no more of this. We're going to back our money by. something tangible like gold or Bitcoin or whatever and no more empire. We're going to agree to this kind of new regional, multipolar world. Or is it going to take something like a war and us, for us to become, us to really fall to our knees before that happens? So, yeah, it's a great

question. Here's what I, here's what I think is most likely. And again, anything can happen. But what I think is most likely is that we are we are setting up for between five and 15 years of pain of just economic geopolitical pain where the United States has a very very ungraceful fall from power and influence it doesn't mean that we are no longer the only superpower it just means that people realize that the way we have maintained our superpower strength is through being the biggest bully on the square. You know what I mean? And people are going to stop wanting to do business with us.

They're going to want to start to diversify away from the U.S. dollar, diversify away from U.S. technology, diversify away from U.S. financial markets, diversify away from U.S. diplomacy and diplomatic efforts, and they're going to look for alternatives. But that's not going to happen overnight. That's going to take time. And I think what we saw with the first Trump presidency is that Donald Trump,

if anything, his activities as president has kind of act as a catalyst to prime that pump. People were thinking about it before, but now they're taking much more active steps to do it, right? And you're seeing it all across Europe. You're seeing it with NATO. You're seeing it in East Asia. You're seeing it in Latin America. People want to decouple from U.S. supremacy. Now, the U.S. is going to try to solve that somehow. It's going to try to use tariffs. to bully people back in line. It's going to try to use, you know, humanitarian aid to try to win people's influence and love back. Like we're going to go through this ungraceful decline where we where we grasp and we try to get the pretty girls attention again. And it's just not going to work.

I don't think that anyone from my generation or your generation or even the next generation is actually going to be able to reset the way that we do business, banking, currency, etc. However, I do believe that it is somebody from one of those three generations who will set the narrative in place that becomes like tomorrow's next great movement. Whether that next great movement is cryptocurrency, whether that next great movement is pegging us back to gold, or whether it's something that we've never even heard of, right? I think there's a chance that somebody will start the conversation in the next 30 years that will change the way the United States works in the next 50 years. I'm just not optimistic that, I mean, you and I are going to sit on rocking chairs with gray hair and knee replacements before we see a big change in the United States.

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Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So you recommend, it sounds like you recommend, like, people, what can people do? Well, yeah, start your own business if you can. Like, really be your own man and deal in dollars or wherever you're at, deal in fiat. And then, yeah, go to either the most stable fiat currency, which, yeah, is probably the Swiss franc. or for me, like, I buy Bitcoin.

I put it in Bitcoin or a lot of people buy gold, real estate, whatever it is, whatever the government, especially central banks, can't manipulate, you know? That's basically it. And it's, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make a personal recommendation. I'm just going to tell you what my wealthy clients do and what I do. And the name of the game for the wealthiest people that I know is diversification. You keep a little bit of money in U.S. dollars. You keep a little bit of money in cryptocurrency.

You keep a little bit of money in different types of American financial investment vehicles. You keep a different amount of money in offshore bank accounts. And your goal is that when any one of those five or seven options really starts to tank, you flood your money out of the thing that's tanking into the thing that's working. So then everybody loses, but you limit how much you lose. Whereas when you have all of your money tied up in one American bank account, you're fucked when the US dollar goes under. Yeah.

Just like everybody who had all of their money in a Venezuelan bank account in the 1980s was fucked as soon as the Venezuelan dollar crashed or the Venezuelan Peso crashed, right? So you've got to like, you've got to be prepared to diversify. And if you're not going to diversify, then you at least have to be able to control the income that you make where if you work harder, you make more. And if you're doing a nine to five job for some other asshole, you can't do that. If anything, your nine to five job is a slave job to the asshole and whatever they decide to pay you. They could call you tomorrow and say, hey, we're not going to pay you $11 an hour anymore.

We're going to pay you $9 an hour. Or we're not going to pay you as a manager anymore. We're going to make you a supervisor. And what are you going to do? You're going to quit and go find another job in an economy that's recessed and tanking with a U.S. dollar that's on the recession? Like, come on. you're going to be fucked.

You're going to say you're an asshole, but I'll take that $11 an hour job and I'll just suck it up. That's what you're going to say. And that's how the economy works. The economy works on the people who shape the economy and the people whose lives are shaped by the economy. I think more likely it'll be everybody has a job. And hey, you're not going to make $11 an hour anymore. You're going to make $25. But that $25 buys you $9 worth of shit.

You know what I mean? Like that's kind of it's going to be a, it's going to be a recession up. So. And if you can, as what you're doing, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're getting out of dodge until things cool down. Correct. So if anybody wants to know kind of my personal recipe for success, I plan, I'm, I'm starting, I have created a subsidiary business to go along with my business. That subsidiary business is based in Europe. and it will be a housing, a place to hold euros.

So US dollars will be paid to the foreign account as and then converted into euros. And I'll pay all the right conversion fees, but then my euros will sit there stable as I get to see if the US dollar goes up or down. If I'm right and we see the US dollar go up in value for the next 18 months, I'm going to keep buying euros because now I can buy even more euros with a stronger US dollar. And if in the future the U.S. dollar continues to rise, I'll cash out my euros and buy U.S. dollars again. But as soon as my U.S. dollars start to crash, I'm going to have a reserve of a foreign currency that I can use in, I forget how many states are in the EU right now or how many countries are in the EU right now. But it's a currency that's stable that might fluctuate two or three percent, but it's not fluctuating, you know, eight to 10 percent. Right, right. Well, hey, look, dude, we are, that was, that was, that was awesome.

We appreciate your, your take. And, yeah, things don't look good. And I think, I don't know, it's pretty fascinating, though, to think that there is, there could be a substantial outmigration of Americans to different parts of the world. Just like for centuries, everybody was coming here. Everybody wanted to come to, if we, think about countries as clubs. Everybody wanted to come to our club. Now you're going to see so many Americans going to Mexico City. You already do. Europe, Portugal, these places, perhaps places

in Asia, right? And I wouldn't say you're going to see it, Johnny. I would say it's already happening, right? The rise of the Golden Visa program about four or five years ago was the beginning of it. When people would get Golden Visas to Dubai or Golden Visas to the UAE, Golden Visas to Saudi, Golden Visas to Portugal, Spain, Italy, right? Those programs were so popular that in the last two years, those countries have had to stop those programs. Wow. Think about this, man.

Wow. So many foreigners, mainly Americans, so many Americans, flooded these countries with investment, with property buying, with all the things that they needed so that they could have a diversified portfolio for where to live. so that they could have a second passport. So much money came in that it actually created housing crises in these other countries. So then those countries had to stop accepting people on the Golden Visa program. So the fact that we're talking about this is not new news. The difference is that it's only been the option of the very, very wealthy.

Thanks to COVID, we all realize the benefit of remote work and digital nomad businesses. So now it doesn't, you don't have to be a deca millionaire to be able to live in a foreign country. You can literally live in a foreign country and make $12,000, you know, or $24,000 a year and get a digital nomad visa and start earning your money in a foreign currency that's more stable than the U.S. dollar. Totally. For me, it's like, it depends if war breaks out in the Middle East. I'm looking at Uruguay, dude. I'm looking at a place that nobody gives a fuck about and nobody will give a fuck about.

That's where you got to go. Mexico is not further enough south to get out of the nuclear blast zone. You know what I'm saying? You got to go to a nice, tucked out of the white place with very, very limited government. And, you know, I think it's kind of unfortunate, but... It's the reality.

It's the reality. And you, Mr. X. CIA agent, certainly do live in reality. I hope you found some religion since we spoke last. I hope you've now found the Lord as I have. But that's for another day. Andy Bustamante, can't wait for you to be in studio with us in a few months. But please plug your new book and tell us what it's about, where they can get it,

and we're going to link to it in the description of this episode, sir. Yeah, absolutely. So my CIA spy memoir has been blocked by CIA. for the last three years. We finally threatened them. We threatened them with a First Amendment lawsuit, and that was enough to get them to say yes. So going back to, you know, your Diddy and Epstein's, like the legal process in the United States works out and you can't block someone's First Amendment rights. So our book, Shadow Cell, is the ops memoir of my wife and I and our operation against to start, basically, a brand new spy war and execute a new spy war. And execute a new spy

war on behalf of the United States against multiple major aggressors at the same time that CIA was covering up a mole inside of CIA. So it's the story that nobody's heard before. CIA has been trying to cover it up. They successfully covered it up in the news for a long time, but we finally get to share all the details through our own personal story, which is why we had the ability to potentially sue on First Amendment. So you'll find it all over the world. In Europe, in the UK, in Australia, in the U.S., it's a global release with one of the top five publishers in the world, Hachette. The link is, of course, in the description below, but you can also find it online if you look up the words,

Shadow Cell. Amazing, amazing. And we're going to talk about that at length and in detail when you're here with us in studio in a couple of months. Andy, great to see you, man. We love your insight, as usual. And, yeah, I can't wait to... to kind of see what happens in the next five years in this country,

because it will be nothing if not entertaining. I like that. That's the most optimistic take I think we can put on it. That's it. All right, you guys, go check out Andy's book, and we will see you very soon. Take care. See, man.