Another Podcast of the Lotus Eaters look at how the Epstein files implicate a whole lot of UK’s ruling Labour Party
“The Starmer Cabinet [has] completely fallen apart in the past week since a lot of this information has come to light.”
Peter Mandelson’s “heavily heavy involvement with Jeffrey Epstein” was already known.
“Something that, again, the Epstein files has made very clear to everybody, was that all of these elites, whether or not there is quote unquote hard evidence of them being involved in a ring to traffic young girls to one another. That was just organized by Epstein. At the very least, they all knew that this guy was in prison for having groomed and assaulted a 14 year-old girl. And they were all more than happy to speak to him anyway while he was in prison and even offer condolences.”
“Here are some of the major resignations from the Labour party and from people in high positions. So first of all you had Peter Mandelson himself, who has resigned from the party. And while he has not forgotten his peerage, has stepped down from the House of Lords.”
“There was Morgan McSweeney who was the chief of staff under Starmer who was the guy who put forward Mandelson as being the ambassador to the US in the first place. He has resigned due to his advice for that appointment.”
“And then you have other people in the crossfires like Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s former director of communications, unrelated to Mandelson, but it seems to have dredged up a lot of extra stuff with the Labour Party, who is in trouble due to campaigning for a Mr. Sean Morton, a former Labour counselor convicted of possessing indecent images of children in 2016.”
“It may have been Morgan McSweeny, his chief of staff, but ultimately Keir Starmer was the guy who said, ‘Okay, we’ll go ahead with Peter Mandelson.’ He might not be Matthew Doyle or Shawn Morton. He might not have campaigned for this pedophile back in 2017, but he was the guy who gave two thumbs up to this guy becoming a lord back in January.”
“And there are questions of whether Keir Starmmer, despite having said just in January, a few weeks ago, that he’ll be sitting in the seat by 2027 in an interview he gave at the beginning of the year, There are questions whether he’s even going to make it to the end of this year. Some are even suspecting that it might not be within the next few months.”
“One thing you can be sure of in this country is that if your policies are terrible, if you screw over the country in the worst ways imaginable, you are fine. There is nothing that can touch you because most of the time your party will be absolutely fine with it. But what does take you down? Salacious media scandals, right? And that seems to be what is taking down Starmer.”
“It’s not just that Mandelson was friends with Epstein, or that he even supported him while he was in prison. It’s also that he was trading insider government secrets with Epstein back in 2008-2009 when he was was he deputy leader.”
“After Epstein was in jail, he stayed at his townhouse and was emailing him ‘when you get out we’ll have liberation day and go see strippers.’ And in 2024, Starmer allowed him to choose the candidates for Labour’s electoral run and then do the cabinet reshuffle afterwards.”
“Wes Streeting [Secretary of State for Health and Social Care] is signing off his his messages to Mandelson with kisses.”
“It’s getting more and more common to hear the weary conclusion that Starmer will later or sooner perhaps have to go.”
“I think [long serving hard left female MP Labour kicked out of the party in 2025] Diane Abbott had the best analysis, weirdly, surprise surprise, which is they want him to lose the May election and then clear house afterwards.”
“You’d be the fall guy for May election. It’s going to be brutal.”
“They are already cancelling some council elections, but the ones that are going ahead probably not going to be great for Labour. I would expect a bit of a Reform sweep.”
“Quite unsurprisingly, the party is now starting to gain a reputation as the pedophile party.”
“Ed Davey [leader of the Liberal Democrats] got up and said, you know, Prime Minister, appointing one is pretty inexcusable but how did you appoint two pedophile pols?”
“We have this conception of Keir Starmer that he’s Mr. Cool essentially, and controlled. In reality, he keeps on losing his temper these days, and you can see how much pressure he’s under, and you can see that he’s going to break.”
Starmer’s response to being criticized by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was to scream that the Tories still had Liz Truss. “He’s like, I might be harboring pedophiles, but Liz Truss is still in your party. What? What? These are not moral equivalents.”
“Say what you want about Jeremy Corbyn. You could call him mad or socialist, anti-Semitic, whatever. As far as I’m aware, he’s not a pedophile. Not buddies with Mandelson.”
Some are suggesting Harriet Harmon should be Labour’s new deputy. Guess what? “Harriet Harmon, for those who do not know, when she was a higher figure within Labour in the 70s and 80s, was a supporter of and associated with PIE, the Pedophile Information Exchange.”
“She was literally the number one advocate in the Labour Party, because they were trying when they were trying to advance gay rights, for some reason, the Pedophile Information Exchange was a part of that coalition and Harriet Harmon was their champion in the Labour Party.” Later: “Harriet Harmon’s name should always be prefixed with ‘noted pedophilia advocate Harriet Harmon.'”
“It’s interesting that Harmon is involved in these opposition attempts to spin the subject from like, no, no, no, no. Ignore the pedophilia. Think about the women.”
“Labour MPs have told Keir Starmer they’ve been branded as pedo lovers on their doorsteps.”
“People are pointing out that when he was director of public prosecutions, that Starmer did nothing about [BBC personality and sex offender Jimmy] Savile, and everyone knew and everybody knew about Savile, but Starmer never did anything about Savile.”
“This is something in polite society everyone accepts, but this is something in normal society everyone despises.”
“Pedophilia is not disqualifying in the Labour Party.”
They’re calling Labour “The Nonce Party,” nonce being British slang for someone who’s committed sex offenses against children. “This is just everybody else in the country looking at a duck that quacks like a duck and walks like a duck and going ‘that’s a duck.'”
“This guy Jody McIntyre, I’m not familiar with him.”
“Bit of an insane leftist, if I remember correctly.”
“He posted this huge thread just saying about how Starmer’s Labour is now infested with sexual predators and child rapists.”
“The communist types, the Jeremy Corbynites, you know, like, you know, they’re insane, but they’re not Blairites. And the Blairits seem to have a lot of nonces in there.”
“You’ve got this guy, Labour MP Dan Norris, sat on the board of the Snowden Trust, supports disabled students, and the Kidscape Child Safety Charity, co-wrote a book called Don’t Bully Me: Advising School Children on How to Deal with Abuse, launched a booklet to educate parents about pedophiles. Yesterday, and this would have been the 2nd of February, he was charged with new counts of rape and sexual assault. His initial arrest was last April on suspicion of child sex offenses and child abduction. Still an MP at the time when this was written.”
“Before the 2024 election, Starmer was warned that Norris was facing legal action, but let him stand for Labour anyway.”
“He goes on to trace some of the lobbyists and people who were funding him, and there’s more to it as well, where you’ve got just more cases popping up every day.”
“Just the other day there was this bloke, former Labour counselor Liron Velleman pleaded guilty to a series of sexual offenses against a 13-year-old girl, sent naked pictures of himself to her and asked whether she was a virgin and at home alone.” Just today there’s this Daily Mail piece saying that both Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves campaigned for Velleman, the latter as recently as 2022.
Naturally, Velleman was a campaigner for Hope Not Hate and drafted the pro-censorship Online Safety Act.
The “campaign to get Margaret Hodge elected was supported by Hope Not Hate in the 1980s. Whilst head of Islington council, Hodge dismissed allegations of severe sexual abuse in children’s home under her watch.”
“2023, Tom Dewey, another Labour counselor and Labour First activist, plead guilty to charges of possessing five category A [the most serious category] images of children. Six days after his arrest, he was reelected as a Labour counselor.”
“2022, Labour counselor Sean Coughlan was convicted of trying to groom a 14-year-old girl.”
“Ivor Caplin, [the] vice chair of the LFI [Labour Friends of Israel], was caught by pedophile hunters last January and arrested for sexual communication with a child. When he was arrested, his Twitter account was full of explicit images, apparently. And he was still being followed by Labour front benchers.”
“It just goes on and on. There’s just so many of them.”
This may be the Jody McIntyre list the podcast is drawing from. There are a lot more Labour insider names on it, not all of which are listed as pedophiles or pedophile enablers. More research is probably in order…
Revelations continue to surface from the giant Epstein files data dump, so let’s do a roundup of some of the more interesting bits.
By far the most frustrating revelation for TDS-obsessed Democrats is learning that Donald Trump’s main tie to Epstein was being one of the first people to report him to the police. “Unsealed court docs reviewed by the Miami Herald show DONALD TRUMP called Palm Beach police about Jeffrey Epstein in 2006.”
Mar-A-Lago is a mixture of everyone. DONALD TRUMP told [blacked out] that he threw EPSTEIN out of his club. TRUMP called the PBPD to tell him “thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this”. TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said [GHISLAINE] MAXWELL was EPSTEIN’s operative, “she is evil and to focus on her”. TRUMP told [blacked out] that he was around EPSTEIN once when teenagers were present and TRUMP “got the hell out of there”. TRUMP was one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating EPSTEIN.
Snip.
Trump’s comment came in direct response to reporters asking if he had any knowledge that Epstein had molested girls. He was denying awareness of Epstein’s crimes or the allegations of molestation/sex trafficking that surfaced prominently around Epstein’s 2019 arrest.
Nowhere in this FBI interview does it indicate he had specific knowledge of the criminal molestation, sexual abuse, or trafficking details that later emerged in the full Epstein investigation or his 2008 plea deal. It’s Trump saying he had heard from others about “disgusting” behavior and how he was so creeped out that he had to remove Epstein from his club.
Countless people in Palm Beach social circles noticed Epstein had a pattern of questionable behavior with young women, without having direct evidence or knowledge of the felony-level crimes. Good try, media.
“Nothing within the FBI report even alludes to Trump knowing about Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes. Sometimes your gut tells you something is off about people.”
You know Democrats and their MSM familiars must be gnashing their teeth as their Great White Whale swims away again…
But you know who did pal around with Epstein? Noam Chomsky.
Valeria Chomsky, the wife of Noam Chomsky, issued a statement about their longtime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Noam Chomsky, 97, suffered a massive stroke in 2023 and is unable to speak.
Noam and I have felt a profound weight regarding the unresolved questions surrounding our past interactions with Epstein. We do not wish to leave this chapter shrouded in ambiguity.
Throughout his life, Noam has insisted that intellectuals have a responsibility to speak the truth and expose lies — especially when those truths are uncomfortable to themselves.
As is widely known, one of Noam’s characteristics is to believe in the good faith of people. Noam’s overly trusted nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts.
Ah. Another brilliant and successful expert in human behavior who hung around Epstein at length and just never noticed anything unusual or suspicious about him. It’s amazing how often those keen, long-honed skills at reading people just disappeared once Epstein entered a room. Valeria Chomsky continues:
Noam and I were introduced to Epstein at the same time, during one of Noam’s professional events in 2015, when Epstein’s 2008 conviction in the State of Florida was known by very few people, while most of the public – including Noam and I – was unaware of it. That only changed after the November 2018 report by Miami Herald.
A reminder: That conviction was for “felony solicitation of prostitution and, pursuant to the NPA, to a criminal information charging him with procurement of minors to engage in prostitution.” It was public record and covered in the Palm Beach newspapers.
We had lunch, at Epstein’s ranch, once, in connection with a professional event; we attended dinners at his townhouse in Manhattan and stayed a few times in an apartment he offered when we visited New York City. We also visited Epstein’s Paris apartment one afternoon for the occasion of a work trip. In all cases, these visits were related to Noam’s professional commitments. We never went to his island or knew about anything that happened there.
We attended social meetings, lunches, and dinners where Epstein was present and academic matters were discussed. We never witnessed any inappropriate, criminal, or reproachable behavior from Epstein or others. At no time did we see children or underage individuals present.
Here’s the biggest and most prominent problem with Valeria Chomsky’s “we just had no idea” excuse. Several months after the Miami Herald published the series, on February 23, 2019, Epstein emailed Chomsky looking for advice on how to handle his bad press.
In a response purportedly from Chomsky, the famed linguistics professor advised Epstein “the best way to proceed is to ignore it” and “not to react unless directly questioned.”
Chomsky drew parallels to his own experience with “hysterical accusations of all sorts,” writing, “I pay no attention, unless I’m approached for a comment on a specific matter.”
“What the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts,” the email said. “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”
Does that sound like a man who’s deeply concerned about what Epstein may have done?
But Valeria Chomsky insists that message is being taken out of context.
Noam’s email to Epstein, in which Epstein sought advice about the press, should be read in context. Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in. It is now clear that it was all orchestrated, having as, at least, one of Epstein’s intentions to try to have someone like Noam repairing Epstein’s reputation by association.
Noam’s criticism was never directed at the women’s movement; on the contrary, he has always supported gender equity and women’s rights.
Oh, shut up. You don’t get to send a message to Epstein reassuring him that “hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder” and then turn around and tout yourself as a feminist.
But there’s more. Back in 2023, Noam Chomsky confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he received a March 2018 transfer of roughly $270,000 from an Epstein-linked account. That too was just an innocent favor, Valeria Chomsky insists.
Regarding the reported transfer of approximately $270,000, I must clarify that these were entirely Noam’s own funds. At the time, Noam had identified inconsistencies in his retirement resources that threatened his economic independence and caused him great distress. Epstein offered technical assistance to resolve this specific situation. On this matter, Epstein acted accordingly, recovering the funds for Noam, in a display of help and very likely as part of a machination to gain greater access to Noam. Epstein acted solely as a financial advisor for this specific matter. To the best of my knowledge, Epstein never had access to our bank or investment accounts.
Now, keep in mind, for just about all his intellectual career, Noam Chomsky has been a furious critic of American capitalism (“a grotesque catastrophe”), the wealthy elites of the U.S., and corporate influence over politics. He has written, “in this world there happen to be huge concentrations of private power that are as close to tyranny and as close to totalitarian as anything humans have devised… The corporations are just as totalitarian as Bolshevism and fascism.”
Recall that Epstein ran a financial management firm that catered to billionaire clients.
Let yea who has never had a convicted pedophile wire $270,000 into their account cast the first stone.
Top donors to Wisconsin politicians are mentioned in the latest release of files related to investigations into pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, including top Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, who appears in the documents more than 2,500 times.
Hoffman, a venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn, has donated $15 million to the state Democratic Party since 2019, contributions that include a recent pair of donations totaling $275,000, state campaign records show.
Hoffman was among those who visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island called Little St. James in 2014, six years after the American financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution of a minor and registered as a sex offender, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported the Democratic donor’s ties in 2023. Hoffman has not lived in Wisconsin, but the Silicon Valley billionaire has dedicated his spending in part because of Wisconsin’s battleground political dynamic.
The new batch of documents show scheduled meetings between Hoffman and Epstein between 2013 and 2018.
At one point in 2015, Epstein invited Hoffman to visit him to “play.” In 2014, Hoffman told Epstein he had sent gifts to his New York home that included ice cream for Epstein to try or “for the girls.”
I don’t have a team of researchers like The New York Times to review the Epstein files, but I have flipped through them and found a couple things that you won’t read in the Times — and you definitely won’t see on MS-NOW.
Criminal defense lawyer David Schoen sent an informative email to Epstein, saying no one would ever take the Russia investigation seriously because special counsel Robert Mueller had selected a legal team that was a “murderer’s row of the worst.”
Schoen’s case-in-chief was Andrew Weissmann, frequent Times opinion writer (Title of actual column: “A Former Prosecutor on the ‘Incredibly Strong Case’ Against Trump”). He appears so frequently on MS-NOW, he has a cot and toothbrush under Lawrence O’Donnell’s desk.
Weissmann, Schoen said, was known in the U.S. attorney’s office as “The Pathological liar,” because he “literally would withhold exculpatory evidence throughout the case.” When defense counsel complained, Weissman waited until the guy “went to the bathroom or lunch, stick the documents under other [papers] on his table, and tell the judge the lawyer had it all along.” He did this even in murder cases, which Schoen knew because, “his rats have come to me to admit their role in it.”
If true, this is a Brady violation, about as bad as it gets.
The Times has frequently discussed the rule, saying it ought to be “obvious,” to “prosecutors with any sense of fairness” that they have to “inform a defendant’s lawyer of evidence that could be favorable to the defendant’s case.” The paper complains about the “near complete lack of punishment for prosecutors who flout the rule.”
Democrats are demanding that ICE agents be stripped of their qualified immunity? Federal prosecutors like Weissmann have absolute, blanket immunity for their actions.
Schoen noted that Weissmann’s unsavory tactics “ruined” some of the biggest criminal cases ever tried. For example, he led the federal prosecution of Arthur Andersen LLP, a major player in the Enron scandal. But because of his extreme overreach on jury instructions (agreed to by the pliant judge) the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction.
In terms of Weissmann’s appearance of fairness, Schoen said Weissmann is a “Trump hater and Clinton sycophant.”
Saying he could “go on and on,” Schoen singled out only two other Trump/Russia investigators with personal and political baggage: Jeannie Rhee, who “was actually Clinton’s lawyer in the email investigation,” and Greg Andres, “100% in the pro-Clinton, anti-Trump camp.”
Snip.
The media may want to ignore Barry Krischer, but the Epstein files don’t.
Palm Beach’s Democratic district attorney, Krischer spent years going after Rush Limbaugh for pain pills — raiding drugstores, seizing records, and leaking to the press — before finally dropping all charges. But when the Palm Beach police handed him a child sex ring implicating Epstein, a major Democratic donor, Krischer intentionally tanked the case.
There was no excusing it: The police’s meticulous investigation gave us pretty much everything we know today about Epstein’s crimes. The media have raged against U.S. attorney Alex Acosta for his sweetheart plea deal with Epstein a few years later, solely because he was Trump’s first Secretary of Labor. Krischer makes Acosta look like Elliot Ness.
Instead of locking up Epstein and putting an end to his sexual predations on young girls back in 2006, Krischer’s office treated the girls as if they were the ones on trial. Prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek accused the teens of prostitution, asking them, “You’re aware that you committed a crime?” She also grilled them about their drug and alcohol use, body piercings and posts on MySpace.
After a presentation like that, the grand jury ended up charging Epstein with only one count of soliciting prostitution. Krischer released him on bond. No prison sentence, no fine — and no ankle monitor to get in the way of massages.
One of Epstein’s semi-literate emails gives us some insight into Krischer’s thinking. Reporting a conversation between the Democratic prosecutor and the Democratic former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Epstein says Krisher believed that “what i did was barely crimianl but basically inapporritate,,, “ [spelling in original].
Perhaps this was merely Epstein’s self-flattering version of the conversation. Except we know what Krischer did. Back pain pills: Bigger than the Manson murders! Raping 14 year-olds: Basically “inapporritate”
A few days ago we talked about the appearance of the word “jerky” in Epstein communications. Well, the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters (Sargon of Akkad, Firas Modad and “Nate” AKA MrHReviews) delve into the Epstein files and notice a lot more weird food references that appear to be codeword for…something else. Including:
Shrimp
Tuna
Pizza
Grape soda
And they watch the Asmongold jerky clip as well.
“There’s not enough evidence to say that this is a satanist network or that this is a child eating network.”
“That’s very restrained of you.”
“Yes. And I’m willing to accept that they might be all of these things.”
“Epstein is messaging [I assume Peter] Mandelson saying, quote, I love the torture video. It’s [hard] to think of a good context for that.”
They also note how a journalist who dismissed “Pizzagate” as a “right wing conspiracy” later went to prison for child rape.
I don’t know what to make of this, but the possibilities range from dark to very, very, very dark…
We touched on the deepening unpopularity of UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer in yesterday’s LinkSwarm, but Beege Welborn has a more in-depth and amusing look at a PM whose poll numbers are hitting record lows.
It’s no secret what I think of this milquetoast cockroach.
And the prime minister of England has been doing a pretty thorough job of making himself dispensable to the British public all on his own with his authoritarian carrying-ons, his embrace of foreign cultures and peoples over his own, onerous economic burdens, and his unfathomable drive to obliterate whatever respectable standing the United Kingdom still had in the world.
Popularity of Amelia meme snipped.
[There’s] a new theme song in the streets when Brits get together for a protest – one that they all know the words to.
Numerous versions of this ditty can be found on YouTube.
Keir Starmer’s fortunes were wobbling so badly that he cancelled twenty-seven local council elections scheduled for this May in an attempt to keep his Labour majority.
OOPS
Make that 29.
He had to withdraw the deal to pay to give away the strategically essential Chagos Islands to the Chinese-cozy, rapacious Mauritians when the United States blew a gasket over being lied to about the ‘why,’ and invoked a 1966 treaty he and his toadies had overlooked.
But it wasn’t until this week, when the avalanche of Epstein files dumped by our Department of Justice reached out and touched more than the formerly known as Prince Randy Andy that Starmer’s future suddenly looked bleak.
Known as ‘The Prince of Darkness,’ Lord Peter Mandelson was an intimate of both Starmer’s and, as we now know, Jeffrey Epstein’s. There had been questions about the relationship between the two of them, especially with Mandelson’s position high atop the Labour pyramid, but he denied any close contact.
Or so Starmer says now.
Starmer, however, had always acted a bit impulsively around Mandelson. Like when he reportedly appointed him as the UK’s ambassador to the United States without anyone’s by-your-leave.
Well, darn it, says Two Tier Keir now after the revelations.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer remains under pressure this evening over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador in 2024 – despite his connections to the late financier Jeffery Epstein.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch have pushed for MPs to have votes of confidence in the PM, with Badenoch saying “it’s a question of when, not if he goes”.
Reform leader Nigel Farage called it “the biggest scandal for 100 years”, and said Starmer’s apology was “weak”. Green Party leader Zack Polanski, meanwhile, told BBC’s Newsnight yesterday that it was “the right thing” for Starmer to step down.
And there is also pressure inside Labour.
Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey has called it a “catastrophic misjudgement” for the PM to appoint Mandelson, while Rachael Maskell told the BBC that it’s “inevitable” that Starmer has to step down.
Mandelson was the frontman for massaging the Chagos deal.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the reason Starmer sent Mandelson to Washington, despite his long history of scandals and his friendship with Epstein, was to lobby for the Chagos Islands, with Diego Garcia at the center, to be handed over to a Chinese vassal state. https://t.co/ZY2HoOJOrL
The Epstein files have revealed that Lord Mandelson was leaking sensitive government information to the disgraced and convicted millionaire paedophile, something Starmer was specifically quizzed about last September.
“That enquiry led to a response on November 19 that no departmental record could be found of any information or communication from Lord Mandelson to Mr Epstein on these issues.”
And the litany of lies, obfuscations, and prevarications from Starmer regarding Mandelson and his relationship with Epstein is astonishing.
There were years of photographs and evidence, even without the absolutely damning refuse floating up from the DoJ release.
Yet Starmer still forged ahead.
…A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on Epstein in 2019 revealed that Mandelson had phoned Epstein in prison trying to arrange a meeting with the boss of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon.
Mandelson has been a Labour functionary at one level for decades, and yet his only idea to try and contact a prominent American businessman was to call up a convicted pedophile in prison? Doesn’t sound like the sort of man who should run a post office, much less an embassy.
It was public knowledge that as well as staying in Epstein’s homes in New York and Paris, he had stayed on Little St James – Epstein’s private sanctuary that the press widely referred to as “paedo island” – and that he had flown on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the Lolita Express.
I KNOW NUZZINK
…No wonder, then, that Labour MPs are now fuming at Sir Keir’s suggestion that it was somehow the fault of the security services that he was blinded to Lord Mandelson’s dodgy past.
Sir Keir announced in December 2024, before any Foreign Office vetting had been done, that Lord Mandelson was his choice to replace the highly capable Dame Karen Pierce as British ambassador to the US.
The Prime Minister wanted George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, to do the job, but was persuaded by his chief of staff – and Mandelson protégé – Morgan McSweeney that the man who had twice resigned from the Blair government over his ties to wealthy men was the right person for the job.
Sir Keir had been given a two-page report on Mandelson by the Cabinet Office propriety and ethics team, which carried out preliminary due diligence on all of the candidates for the ambassadorial role, and which amounted to a summary of publicly available information.
A sitting Labour MP openly saying ‘the PM has to step down’ is the kind of sentence you expect in a political thriller, not a Thursday morning. If backbenchers are talking like this in public, imagine the group chats right now.
Can Starmer survive? Possibly. All sorts of of politicians have brazened out scandals that were thought to be sure career-enders (Bill Clinton comes to mind). But Starmer seems historically unpopular:
Sir Keir Starmer’s popularity has hit a grim low, new polling shows. Three-quarters of Britons now have an unfavourable opinion of the Prime Minister, according to YouGov’s tracker.
This is up three points from last month, when 72% had a negative view of Sir Keir. Just 18% see him in a positive light, giving him a net score of -57. It marks his worst rating to date and equals his predecessor Rishi Sunak’s lowest point as prime minister.
If Starmer falls, “Labour candidates to replace him as PM include Red Queen” Angela Rayner, Blairite Wes Streeting, retread Ed Miliband (face of their 2015 general election defeat and a NetZero fanatic), and Shabana Mahmood, who, despite her ethnic background, is evidently an immigration hardliner, so its questionable whether the Islamophilic Labour cadres would elect her. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, another rumored candidate, isn’t currently in parliament.
But expect many more chants of “Starmer is a wanker!” as long as said wanker continues to occupy No. 10 Downing Street.
More fraud in California, Homan declares victory in Minnesota, Virginia declares war on lawful gun owners, a lefty drops the N-Word on a black ICE agent, Musk shuts off bootleg Starlink to the Russian army, NOPD hires an illegal alien, and Illinois declares that no Democrat can express #WrongThink about trannies.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
I did get that second check from my closing 401K, so I have a few months worth of food and utilities in the bank.
The massive hospice fraud racket thriving under California’s lax oversight is finally getting the spotlight it deserves, as the Trump administration’s CMS chief Dr. Mehmet Oz hits the streets of Los Angeles to call out the billions in stolen taxpayer dollars.
With organized crime rings, including Russian-Armenian mafia elements, infiltrating the system through ghost patients and fake companies, the scam highlights how globalist policies have opened the door to foreign exploitation of U.S. resources. As fraudsters traffic beneficiaries like commodities, real Americans suffer denied care while the deep state looks the other way.
Los Angeles County alone accounts for 18% of the entire country’s home health care billing, a staggering figure that screams foul play.
One California physician billed the government $120 million in a single year, claiming to oversee 1,900 patients—a workload that defies logic and reeks of corruption.
The county boasts almost 2,000 hospice agencies, more than 36 states combined and 30 times the number in Florida or New York.
Dr. Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was forthright during his on-the-ground tour: “Hospice is crazy here… You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has admitted the problem’s scale, calling it “an epidemic in California, specifically in the greater Los Angeles area.”
The fraud operates through recruiters who lure seniors with freebies like walkers or cash, harvest their Medicare numbers, and sell them to providers for $1,000 to $3,000 each. Providers then bill the feds $260 per day per patient, often for nonexistent services, while shuffling enrollees between sham outfits to evade detection.
In LA’s San Fernando Valley, particularly Van Nuys, the density is absurd: 210 agencies crammed into one square mile, with one building listing 112 hospices showing no actual operations.
Vice President JD Vance is poised to chair a new White House task force aimed at rooting out potential fraud and abuse in government programs in California, according to CBS News.
Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, is expected to serve as the task force’s vice chairman and handle day-to-day operations, CBS News reports. President Donald Trump is anticipated to issue an executive order in the coming days to formally establish the group, the news outlet said.
The White House task force would operate separately from a related Justice Department effort led by Colin McDonald, a Trump nominee for a new fraud-investigation role at the department. McDonald is expected to also probe fraud in Minnesota uncovered by YouTuber Nick Shirley and other independent journalists.
California has long grappled with documented issues of waste, fraud, and weak oversight in state and federally funded programs. State auditors have for more than a decade flagged problems including persistent cost overruns, inadequate internal controls, and unimplemented reform recommendations across various initiatives, CBS News reported last month.
California’s Employment Development Department faced acute criticism during the pandemic, when unemployment-insurance fraud resulted in an estimated $20 billion or more in improper payments, while many eligible claimants endured lengthy delays in receiving benefits, according to NPR News.
Separately, federal officials have recently scrutinized fraud risks in hospice and home-health services, particularly in Los Angeles County. Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visited the area to draw attention to the issue, citing the rapid proliferation of hospice providers and potential billions in improper billings.
See above. Given the vast scale of graft Democrats rake in from various fraud schemes, I can only imagine they’re experience quiet panic at the prospect…
Tom Homan declares victory, says city and state officials in Minnesota will now cooperate with ICE and turn over illegal aliens. Just think of the deaths that could have been avoided if they had only done this in the first place.
California Democrats are taking a victory lap, celebrating the fact that their election system has no way of verifying that the people who are casting votes are legitimate, registered voters.
The Supreme Court of California effectively struck down Huntington Beach’s voter ID law, refusing to review a lower court decision that blocked the law. The city argued that it could impose a voter ID requirement for citywide elections, but California Democrats passed a law in 2024 banning localities from requiring voter ID in elections. California law not only does not require you to prove you are who you say you are when you vote, but it actively prevents cities and localities from having that requirement in place at all.
The Trump administration will publish a notice in the Federal Register on Friday that will demolish the slow-moving process of deporting illegals. The proposed rule aims to streamline the current process and reduce the backlog of cases that has nearly brought the system to a screeching halt. That said, we know it faces an uphill fight as federal judges, acting without jurisdiction, will certainly declare the changes improper at some point.
The Federal Register notice titled RIN 1125-AB37, Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals, extensively overhauls the current process that could lead an immigration case to the Supreme Court.
The first part of the system seems to remain intact. An apprehended illegal is brought before an Article 2 Immigration Judge and given a hearing. The judge either lets them stay or tells them to go home. If ordered deported, a removal order is entered. As we’re seeing from the cases popping in the news, it is not uncommon for an illegal apprehended today in Minneapolis, perhaps a contractor working for the Quality Learing Center, to have a removal order dating back two decades.
Breaking the logjam at the Board of Immigration Appeals is the target.
The filing lays out how Trump 1.0 tried to fix the problem.
Among other changes, the Appellate Procedures NPRM proposed: (1) simultaneous briefing schedules for both detained and non-detained appeals before the Board; (2) shortening the reply brief deadline; (3) limiting briefing extensions; (4) harmonizing the 90- and 180-day Board adjudication timelines to both start from when the record is complete; (5) limiting the Chief Appellate Immigration Judge’s ability to hold a group of cases while awaiting certain outside actions; and (6) removing the process for Immigration Judge review of proceeding transcripts.
Snip.
The new regulation will “change the deadline for filing an appeal with the Board from 30 to 10 days, except for cases involving certain asylum applications.” This is not as trivial as it could appear. The current filing fee for the BIA is $1,030. There are provisions for filing “in forma pauperis.” This requires jumping through more hoops to prove you are indigent. The illegal now has 10 days to find representation and prepare an appeal, as well as pony up money. Historically, claiming you are broke is a good way to get the next flight back home.
Once you appeal, there is no requirement that the BIA will hear the case. Rather, “the default will be summary dismissal unless a majority of current Board members vote to consider the appeal on the merits.” There is an expedited hearing process that will “require simultaneous briefing within 20 days of the Board setting the schedule in all cases not summarily dismissed, with no reply briefs and limited extensions.”
Plus, there are deadlines for the BIA: “the Board shall dispose of all cases assigned to a single Board member within 90 days of completion of the record, or within 180 days of completion of the record for all cases assigned to a three-member panel.”
So an appeal is no longer a way to buy time before a final decision is rendered. The 10-day window makes it difficult prepare, and the BIA will focus on “selecting decisions for review that present novel issues warranting the Board’s attention.” If you are lucky enough for your case to be heard by the BIA, it has no more than 180 days to render a judgment. There is still an appeal to a federal appeals court; however, this requires representation and a $600 filing fee.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a wide-sweeping investigation into alleged abuse of the federal H-1B visa program by Texas businesses, issuing civil investigative demands to three North Texas companies suspected of operating sham enterprises to fraudulently sponsor foreign workers.
Paxton said his office has issued the demands—known as Civil Investigative Demands, or CIDs—seeking documents identifying company employees, records detailing the products or services provided, financial statements, and communications related to business operations.
Standing outside a single-family home listed as the office address for one of the companies highlighted in recent reporting, Paxton credited BlazeTV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales with prompting the investigation.
“Thanks to you, we’re here today,” Paxton said during an interview with Gonzales. “We’ve started an investigation of three different companies that we think might be scamming people with these H-1B visas.”
Paxton did not publicly identify the three companies that received CIDs. However, his office said the investigation includes “entities identified in videos that were widely circulated online.”
A portion of Paxton’s interview with Gonzales was filmed outside a residential home listed as the office address for 3Bees Technologies Inc., a location that Gonzales reported appeared vacant, despite the company’s sponsorship of multiple H-1B visa holders.
According to Paxton’s office, reports indicate that businesses under investigation may have created sham companies featuring websites advertising nonexistent products or services while listing residential homes or unfinished buildings as offices. Despite those irregularities, the companies allegedly sponsored numerous H-1B visas in recent years.
“Any criminal who attempts to scam the H-1B visa program and use ‘ghost offices’ or other fraudulent ploys should be prepared to face the full force of the law,” Paxton stated. “Abuse and fraud within these programs strip jobs and opportunities away from Texans.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking a court to shut down Bexar County’s taxpayer-funded deportation-defense program for illegal aliens, arguing it violates state law and the Texas Constitution.
The Bexar County Commissioners Court voted on December 16, 2025, to allocate $566,181 in county funds to provide legal services to individuals unlawfully present in the United States through the county’s Immigration Legal Services fund.
Paxton’s office noted that, with additional commitments, total spending on the program could ultimately exceed $1 million.
The money is earmarked to pay lawyers to represent illegal aliens in federal deportation proceedings—a role typically handled either by private counsel or nonprofit organizations, not county governments. Paxton’s lawsuit names Bexar County, the Commissioners Court, and multiple county officials as defendants.
Paxton’s petition argues that subsidizing deportation-defense work for people in the country unlawfully “confers no public benefit,” serves “predominantly private radical interests,” and falls outside any lawful power granted to counties under Texas law.
He framed the program as an attempt by local officials to interfere with federal immigration enforcement while using statewide taxpayers as the funding source.
“Leftists in Bexar County have no authority to use taxpayer dollars to fund their radical, criminal-loving agenda,” Paxton said in a statement, adding that “state funds cannot underwrite deportation-defense services for individuals unlawfully present in the country.”
Not just Minnesota: “HS Reports More Than 180 Vehicle Attacks On Law Enforcement.”
Immigration officers have faced 182 vehicular attacks since President Donald Trump took office last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a Feb. 3 statement.
Out of the 182 attacks between Jan. 21, 2025, and Jan. 24, 2026, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers faced 114, up by 124 percent from the 51 attacks during the same time period the previous year. The remaining 68 attacks were faced by officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Attacks on ICE are up by 3,300 percent from two assaults previously, according to the DHS.
So part of the huge Epstein data dump includes a conversation with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak from 2014, discussing bringing Russians (I assume Russian Jews) to Israel. Weirdly, I think it makes it less likely Epstein was Mossad (or at least current Mossad). In 2014, Barak’s left wing (Labor/One Israel/etc.) had been out of power for a while and Benjamin Netanyahu was in the midst of a long run as Prime Minister, despite Obama’s best efforts. It just seems unlikely that a Mossad asset would just be shooting the shit with a former PM of an out-of-power party. (Of course, maybe he was team Barak/Barack.) And the message “Goyim were born to only serve us,” that’s so outlandish it could have come from The Protocols of Elders of Zion. Like the LARP Nazis chanting “Blood and Soil!” at Charlottesville, it reeks of someone trying too hard to fit in with a culture they’re largely ignorant of.
The Epstein revelations might indeed topple one world leader: Keir Starmer.
Already-struggling UK Leader Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure to step down over the latest scandal involving his former ambassador to America’s shocking close links to Jeffrey Epstein.
The prime minister, whose popularity was already at a near-record low since his 2024 election, faced revolt even from his own party over the fresh revelations about former diplomat Peter Mandelson, who was even seen in his underwear with an unknown woman in photos in the latest Epstein files.
Starmer went into a desperate damage-control mode Thursday, accusing his one-time close ally of “deceit” — even though Mandelson’s friendship with the now-deceased pedophile was well known when Starmer gave him the cushy role as the UK’s ambassador to Washington in December 2024.
Starmer is indeed a nasty piece of work, but the sad truth is that any replacement Labour PM is likely to be every bit as committed to importing unassimilated illegal alien Islamic rapists as Starmer is.
It took almost a year, but the White House finally chalked up its first objective in implementing the newly revitalized Monroe Doctrine. Or, as we call it, the Donroe Doctrine.
Its very first manifestation came almost immediately after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Panama president Jose Raul Mulino and told Mulino in no uncertain terms that the US would not allow China to control ports on the Panama Canal any longer. On February 3, 2025, Muloino repudiated Panama’s Belt and Road Initiative agreements with China and would force the sale of control of those ports. China began a two-front strategy to reverse that decision, with parallel diplomatic and legal tracks. Diplomacy gave way to trade negotiations, which ultimately proved fruitless.
Late yesterday, so did the legal challenge. Panama’s top court annulled the country’s contracts with China’s CK Hutchinson to operate both ports, effectively severing China from control of the Panama Canal.
A woman who received a double mastectomy at the age of 16 under the guise of transgender-related healthcare was just awarded $2 million in the first successful medical-malpractice lawsuit brought by a detransitioner.
Fox Varian sued her New York-based psychologist and plastic surgeon for facilitating her gender-transition double mastectomy in 2019, independent reporter Benjamin Ryan who attended Varian’s recent trial, said. Although a host of detransitioners have sued doctors who rush to “affirm” gender confusion with life-altering surgeries, Varian’s is the first known successful lawsuit.
Claire Deacon, Varian’s mother, was led by her daughter’s psychologist to believe that breast removal was the only way to heal Varian’s gender dysphoria, she told the jury. At first Deacon told Varian’s psychologist Kenneth Einhorn that top surgery was “never gonna happen” if she could help it.
“This man was just so emphatic, and pushing and pushing, that I felt like there was no good decision,” she said, according to an Epoch Times report. “I think it was a scare tactic: I don’t believe it was malice, I think he believed what he was saying … but he was very, very wrong.”
Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender opposes the Democratic Party’s general elevation of gender identity over sex in public policy, especially subjecting gender-confused people to the lifelong consequences of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical interventions so they more closely resemble the opposite sex.
The nonprofit’s leaders could allegedly be fined or go to prison in Illinois if they register as “Democrats” without the state party’s permission.
The Land of Lincoln’s bespoke “party name provision” in its 40-year-old General Not for Profit Corporation Act, which Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias repeatedly invoked to deny DIAG’s applications to solicit charitable contributions in the state, is the target of a First Amendment lawsuit on DIAG’s behalf by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“Not only would they likely face an uphill battle in getting approval from the Illinois Democratic Party, they refuse on principle to seek permission from the very party they plan to criticize,” a flagrantly unconstitutional condition on protected speech, said FIRE, which also filed a motion for preliminary injunction.
While the state party officially supports so-called gender affirming care as “health care,” without age or other restrictions, DIAG opposes throwing “gay, lesbian, and gender non-conforming/gender-distressed children and vulnerable adults under the wheels of a regressive ideological bus” through “predatory medical harm.”
It portrays the standard Democratic position on medicalized gender transitions as pseudoscientific and harmful to both physical and mental health.
The Illinois Democratic Party told Capitol News Illinois it hadn’t received a request from DIAG, but “the fact that they’re proudly anti-transgender does not align with the Democratic Party of Illinois’s values” of “progress and inclusivity.”
Evidently men who believe they’re women have replaced black people in the Democrat Party’s Victimhood Hierarchy.
Canadian comedian with a solid international fanbase just watched six sold-out shows vanish in Minnesota. Ben Bankas lost his gigs at Laugh Camp Comedy Club in St. Paul after clips of his routine on Renee Good’s death blew up online – the routine hit raw nerves in a city still reeling from the January 7 shooting.
Club owner Bill Collins cited threats, media frenzy, and street chaos as the reasons for the cancellation.
Snip.
Bankas opened his bit by calling for a moment of silence for Good, then pivoting to say he hoped “that dog’s okay…and her pet,” a reference to Good’s dog, who was in the car with her, and her wife, Becca, who had been in the vehicle but left shortly before she told Renee to drive off while the agent was in front of her car.
“That’s what you don’t want when you’re dealing with the police — your lesbian wife saying ‘drive, baby, drive,’” he told the crowd. “Her last name was Good; that’s what I said after they shot her in the face,” he continued. He then backed off slightly, saying, “I’m not a liberal, so I don’t celebrate the death of people that I… I didn’t hate her, I didn’t know her, but now that I know her, I hate her”.
Old and busted: Leftists demanding police bodycams to prove they’re killing innocent black people. The new hotness: Leftists demand we stop using bodycams because they’re showing police shootings are justified.
“Couple Sentenced After Fake ID Bust by Dallas ICE. According to ICE, the manufacturing of fake identification documents by the couple took place from August 2020 until their arrest in February 2025. ”
A Mexican couple living in Oklahoma has been sentenced for manufacturing fake identification documents for illegal aliens, a scheme uncovered by ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Dallas.
Karina Garcia-Salazar, 47, was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for Conspiracy to Transfer Identification Documents and Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Use or Transfer Five or More Documents.
Her partner Jorge Augusto Prieto-Gamboa, 41, was sentenced in December to 15 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release following conviction for Conspiracy to Possess Five or More Documents with Intent to Transfer.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma reported that Garcia holds a Lawful Permanent Resident card, while Gamboa has been living illegally in the U.S. since 2002.
Sounds like authorities have reason to strip Garcia of their green card and deport them.
Winning: “Texas A&M Ends Women’s & Gender Studies Programming. The university cited low enrollment as the reason for the decision.”
Ukraine said last week it was working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to block the use of Starlink terminals used on Russian attack drones and was trying to compile a “white list” of all Ukraine’s terminals so the Russian ones could be turned off.
“Starlinks included in the ‘white list’ are working — Russian terminals have already been blocked,” Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took office last month, wrote on Telegram, adding that the list was still being updated.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk said on Sunday that moves by SpaceX to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Russia seemed to have worked.
Russia used to be home to space-faring superpower capable of launching its own communication satellites. Now its dependent on western COTS technology that can be turned off by Elon Musk.
Russian GRU military intelligence General Vladimir Alexeyev shot in assassination attempt in Moscow. No word if Ukraine or internal enemies attempted the hit. Alexeyev is a nasty piece of work with several planned assassinations and war atrocities laid at his feet, so he’s exactly the sort of person Putin would assassinate if he feared internal dissent.
Please note that nowhere does he say the Washington Post should stop doing this:
· ‘Melania’ Doc Is a Box Office Flop Hoax · The Rural America Can’t Live Without NPR/PBS Hoax · The ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Hoax · The Hegseth ‘Kill Everybody’ Hoax · Trump “Destroying” White… https://t.co/KvkR7nfdcj
Follow-up: Louis Rossmann’s war against Austin paying for AI cameras in its parks has paid off in the form of a new proposal. “If you go down to item 61, approve a resolution directing the city manager to return to council with an ordinance regulating the city’s use of surveillance technology. Mayor Pro Tem Jose Cheto Vela, Council Member Mike Siegel, Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, Council Member Krista Laine, Council Member Jose Velasquez are involved and sponsors of this.”
Except … it’s not the John my husband remembers. My husband was confused and said the following things were odd:
– John has different hair and now wears glasses.
– John is talking extensively about working in a garage because his three children and wife are home. In the interview, he made references to being single and was visibly in an indoor desk area.
– John can’t answer a number of questions that they previously discussed in the interview, things pretty pivotal to the position.
– Husband describes John as being aloof and pretty timid whereas John was confident and articulate when they interviewed him.
He is convinced this is not the person they hired.
Snip.
They heard back from legal … who are less than thrilled about the situation! They approved HR to have a conversation with John regarding what has been reported (more in the vein of “there’s been some concerns about performance and you overselling abilities” and less of the We Think You Are a Liar route).
Snip.
As soon as HR got on the call with him, before they could get through their first question, John said the words “I quit” and hung up the calls. He has since been unreachable!!