Infrequently Asked Questions About Jeffrey Epstein, Appendix A: Totally Tricked Out by Uncle Jeffrey Today!
An addendum to the mammoth Epstein Q&A, in which we discuss Karyna Shuliak, Zorro Ranch, the Huffines family, nuclear secrets, Neil McCasland, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, and Kathryn Ruemmler.
See the pyramids along the Nile,
Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle,
Just remember, darling, all the while,
You belong to me.
—Jo Stafford
I thought we were done with this gimmick.
Yeah. Me, too.
There are already four of these FAQ pieces, and all of them are really long.
I know, I know. But stuff keeps coming out, and it keeps getting weirder and weirder, and this is the best way to discuss it all.
If you say so.
I mean, he bombed Iran to get us to stop talking about the Epstein Files. Depleted our stockpile of Tomahawk missiles, put us on the brink of global financial disaster, shut down the Straits of Hormuz like it was an FBI investigation into Jane Doe 4.
Trump might drop a nuke before all is said and done. There’s that expression, “the nuclear option?” He might literally invoke the nuclear option, in order to stop…whatever it is he doesn’t want us to find out.
We might as well start there.
With Iran?
With nukes. What do you make of the Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez story?
Which one? She’s on an absolute heater lately. I hope folks are subscribing to her Substack.
The one about Zorro Ranch and the comms networks.
Ah, yes. The piece with this oh-so-subtle title:
Wait—there are two nuclear labs in New Mexico?
Right? I didn’t know that, either.
Even folks who (wisely) saw Barbie instead of Oppenheimer know about Los Alamos. The other one, Sandia National Laboratories, is on an Air Force base in Albuquerque.
A lab in Albuquerque, you say? Are we sure it isn’t these guys?
No, smart-ass. Although things sure did break bad.
I’ll let Valdes-Rodriguez explain:
It is one of three Department of Energy nuclear research facilities, responsible for the non-nuclear components of American nuclear weapons — the triggering systems, the delivery mechanisms, the engineering that makes a warhead function. Los Alamos National Laboratory, roughly ninety miles northwest, is where the weapons themselves are designed, and where J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team created the world’s first atomic bomb. Together, these two New Mexico facilities represent the operational core of the American nuclear arsenal.
It always seemed weird to me that Epstein had a ranch in the New Mexico desert. The Upper East Side mansion? Yes. The Paris flat? Absolument. The Palm Beach residence? Not unusual. Even the two little Virgin Islands make sense. But New Mexico? Why?
Well, it’s because the Zorro Ranch—that’s what the Epstein compound is called—is smack-dab in the middle of these two nuclear labs. (It’s also not that far from Roswell, but let’s not go there.)
That could be a coincidence.
When it comes to Jeff Epstein, there are no coincidences. Check out this précis of Zorro Ranch:
The chronology is as follows: Robert Maxwell, alleged Mossad and multi-agency intelligence asset, penetrated Sandia National Laboratories with surveillance software in 1985. His daughter Ghislaine became Jeffrey Epstein’s operational partner in the 1990s, after Robert’s mysterious death in 1991. Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch — positioned near the midpoint between Sandia and Los Alamos — from the governor of New Mexico, built a private microwave communications link to Sandia Crest, and operated the ranch as a hub of what federal prosecutors described as an international sex trafficking and blackmail network for nearly three decades. Upon Epstein’s death, his estate — including Zorro Ranch — passed to Karyna Shuliak, a Belarusian national introduced to Epstein through Russian contacts, who was in Russia the day he died. The ranch was subsequently sold to a Texas family whose documented Russian contacts include a secret Moscow meeting with sanctioned officials, whose son sits in the Trump White House, and who has kept Epstein’s private microwave link to Sandia Crest running in Epstein’s company name.
There’s basically a closed-circuit communications network running between Zorro Ranch and the Sandia Crest Tower, near the lab:
FCC records show that Zorro Development Corp., registered at 49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley, New Mexico, holds two active Microwave Industrial/Business Pool licenses — call signs WQXY316 and WQXY300, both granted July 12, 2016, both expiring July 12, 2026. License WQXY316 carries transmissions from the Zorro Ranch main residence to Sandia Crest Tower in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque. License WQXY300 carries transmissions from Sandia Crest Tower back to Zorro Ranch. Together they constitute a permanent, fixed, bidirectional private microwave communications link — a dedicated two-way data channel operating entirely outside commercial internet infrastructure, through channels where traffic cannot be monitored, intercepted, or logged by third parties.
Microwave…industrial…?
Let Valdes-Rodriguez explain:
To understand the significance of this infrastructure, consider who actually uses Industrial/Business Pool microwave systems: NSA field stations, CIA operational facilities, FBI secure data operations, Department of Defense installations, electric utilities, natural gas pipeline operators, high-frequency trading firms, and major bank data centers. None of those descriptions apply to a private vacation ranch in the high desert.
Okay, that’s weird for sure. But Epstein is dead, so what difference does it make?
He’s dead—at least, we think he’s dead, pace all the AI slop of an unkempt Epstein milling around Tel Aviv—but the calls signs are active. The LLC is active. It’s now owned by Donald Huffines, a Texas MAGA politician and his wife, Mary Catherine Huffines, a ride-or-die Ron Paul disciple who is so Russia’d up…
[pauses]
She’s so Russia’d up…
How Russia’d up is she?
She’s so Russia’d up, she went with Rand Paul to Moscow when he hand-delivered the letter from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.
Охренеть!
Well put.
Wasn’t Epstein’s last girlfriend Russian? The dentist? Karyna Shuliak?
“Girlfriend” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. And she’s from Belarus, not Russia.
Valdes-Rodriguez has an interesting theory about her, too. She posits that Shuliak took over Ghislaine Maxwell’s role as Epstein’s handler after GMax ran afoul of the law. Shuliak, she explains,
came from Belarus — a Russian client state, the last dictatorship in Europe, whose intelligence services are answerable ultimately to Moscow. She spoke fluent English. She was emotionally sophisticated, gracious, already an adult. She was already in her 20s. In college to be a dentist. Confident. With supportive parents.
She was by every account unlike Epstein’s type. He preferred desperate children who’d been abused and neglected. Helpless, terrified, tiny people so used to being hurt they did not know how to fight back.
What the DOJ files show about Karyna Shuliak is remarkable for what it excludes. She was verbally and emotionally abusive toward Epstein. She slapped him on multiple occasions. She took control of his household staff, his finances, his schedule. She managed his operations. The terror and degradation that saturates every account of Epstein’s actual victims is entirely absent from the accounts involving Shuliak. She was seemingly never trafficked by him to anyone else.
She appears at the same time Ghislaine is likely headed toward a conviction and jail, too. His former “girlfriend” handler is soon to be incapacitated.
Enter Karyna.
Epstein altered his will two days before he croaked, naming Shuliak as his primary inheritor. After his death, the Zorro Ranch passed to her. She owned it for five years, before selling it to the Huffines.
Guess where she was on the day Epstein died?
Starbucks?
Russia.
That tracks. But—back up a second. Why would Zorro need to be in constant, covert communication with the Sandia Nuclear Lab?
That’s a question I don’t know the answer to. But this is an LLC, and these are call signs that are managed by the federal government. So it’s not like someone in Washington didn’t know about it. Or someone in New Mexico.
Like who?
Like—oh, I don’t know—the retired Major General William Neil McCasland, who walked out of his home in Sandia Heights, outside of Albuquerque, on February 26, and hasn’t been seen since.
Who’s Major General William Neil McCasland?
Just the retired supervisor of, basically, all the most top secret of top secret operations the federal government’s been up to for decades. He ran the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Amber Woods wrote a great piece on his disappearance a few weeks ago. She explains:
McCasland is not a retiree. He is not a grandfather who wandered into the desert confused. Not a troubled man with mental fog who left his glasses on the counter and never came home.
He was the executive secretary of the Special Access Program Oversight Committee. The single body inside the Department of Defense with full authority over every classified program the United States government runs. Not some of them. All of them.
He knew what was in every room.
Like, if Stranger Things was real, Matthew Modine’s character would have reported to Maj. Gen. McCasland.
And he just…vanished?
Yes.
I don’t know anything about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
I didn’t, either. This is from an ABC News report:
Long before it became the subject of UFO speculation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was one of the most important research centers in the US military.
“If there was ever a center of gravity for research and development and for all the spooky things that the US government works on, Wright-Patterson’s right there at the top of the list,” said Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense intelligence officer who has advocated for greater transparency about unidentified aerial phenomena.
The base traces its origins to 1917, when the US Army established aviation facilities near Dayton, Ohio, during World War I….
Eventually, the base evolved into one of the Pentagon’s primary hubs for aerospace research, engineering and intelligence. Today, the base hosts several key organizations, including the Air Force Research Laboratory, where scientists and engineers develop technologies ranging from advanced aircraft materials to cutting-edge propulsion systems.
UFO speculation?
Settle down. Things are weird, but they’re not that weird.
Even his wife said, “Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt. Though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership.”
Is she confirming…?
People are reading too much into that statement. She was clearly throwing shade.
You’re no fun.
Let’s stick to things we know for sure.
Like what?
Like how a businesswoman named Lynn Forester de Rothschild is who introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew—and how she Forrest Gump’d her way into the same networks Epstein penetrated.
Rothschild Rothschild?
Yes, but no. Her late husband—her third—was Evelyn de Rothschild, of the famous banking family. But she’s from New Jersey.
So what’s her deal?
Like Epstein, she’s a connector. Kaitlyn Pierce—aka Kait Justice—wrote a nice summary of her various Epstein-adjacent associations. As she puts it, “Lynn Forester de Rothschild connects the Clintons, British royalty, the legal protection apparatus, banking infrastructure, and the physical transportation network.”
Her family owned the aviation company at the airport Epstein used more than anywhere else, gave Ghislaine Maxwell housing after Robert Maxwell died, introduced Epstein to the lawyer who negotiated his plea deal and she joined Deutsche Bank’s advisory board one month before they accepted Epstein as a client despite his conviction. According to Maxwell’s own testimony to the Deputy Attorney General, Lynn introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew and there is a letter where she was discussing Epstein with President Clinton in 1995.
Pierce offers more detail in her piece about Eyes Wide Shut:
[de Rothschild’s] documented connections to Epstein’s infrastructure include:
Transportation: Her father J. Kenneth Forester founded aviation operations at Teterboro Airport in 1946. Her brother ran Million Air there. Million Air is listed in Epstein’s black book.
Housing: According to multiple reports, in 1991, immediately after Robert Maxwell’s death, she provided Ghislaine Maxwell a Manhattan apartment. According to Business Insider’s review of tax records, in October 2000 she sold a Manhattan townhouse to a shell company with the same address as Epstein’s business office for approximately $8.5 million below its assessed market value of over $13.4 million. Business Insider noted they could not independently confirm the seller was the same Lynn Forester who appeared in Epstein’s flight logs. Maxwell moved into the property.
Banking: According to Der Spiegel, she joined Deutsche Bank’s advisory board in July 2013. Consent orders show Deutsche Bank took on Epstein as a client approximately one month later despite his registered sex offender status.
Introductions: Alan Dershowitz has publicly stated she introduced him to Epstein, calling him “an interesting autodidact.” According to Ghislaine Maxwell’s proffer testimony released in 2025, Lynn Forester de Rothschild introduced Prince Andrew to Epstein.
Lynn Forester de Rothschild seems important. Why is this the first I’ve heard of her?
Good question.
Epstein sure knew a lot of well-connected women.
He did. And they adored him. Peggy Siegel, the Hollywood publicist. The late Clare Hazell-Iveagh—the socialite, interior designer, and wife of Edward “Ned” Guinness, of the famous brewery family, the 4th Earl of Iveagh.
And Kathy Ruemmler, of course.
Kathryn Ruemmler, you mean? President Obama’s White House Counsel? The chief counsel at Goldman Sachs?
That’s the one.
Epstein played her like a Stradivarius. Stroked her ego. Played to her vanity. Bought her fancy gifts—clothes and accessories, and also spa trips and that kind of thing. In one email, she writes him, “Am totally tricked out by Uncle Jeffrey today! Jeffrey boots, handbag, and watch!”
Gross. How many Ruemmler emails are there in the Files?
Emails that reference her? Not that many—a mere 7,238.
Seven thousand…
…two hundred thirty-eight. And those are just the ones that we have access to. There are others, apparently, that haven’t been released because of attorney-client privilege.
Was she his lawyer?
No. Not formally. But she sort of made it seem like she maybe was. In her recent statement about the matter, Ruemmler said, “I was a defense attorney when I dealt with Jeffrey Epstein. I got to know him as a lawyer and that was the foundation of my relationship with him. I had no knowledge of any ongoing criminal conduct on his part, and I did not know him as the monster he has been revealed to be.”
Hang on. If Ruemmler was a defense attorney when she dealt with him, and she got to know him as a lawyer, how could she not have been aware of his criminal conduct? Like, why else would a defense attorney get to know him “as a lawyer?”
You tell me, Perry Mason.
Was Ruemmler in contact with Epstein when she was working at the White House?
Yes. For at least a few months. At one point, she allegedly gave him non-public information about an internal White House investigation.
So she was a spy?
I wouldn’t go that far. The investigation was into a White House advance staffer, and also some Secret Service guys, getting drunk and soliciting prostitutes during a trip to Cartagena, Colombia.
WaPo did a big story on it in 2014. It was a huge scandal at the time. Imagine! A scandal because a volunteer allegedly hired a prostitute in a city where prostitution is legal! Fast-forward 12 years—one of the world’s biggest pimps is the actual president, and half the country doesn’t seem to care.
Wait—wasn’t Ruemmler floated as an AG candidate when Eric Holder stepped down?
Yes. There are a lot of emails in the Files about this. She sent the link to a story about it to Epstein. From what I can tell, they discussed it—but not via email.
But she wasn’t nominated.
Ruemmler withdrew her name from consideration. The excuse was that her friendship with Obama would complicate her confirmation. But for all we know, the real reason might have been that she didn’t want to have to explain—under oath, before the U.S. Senate—her cozy relationship with a convicted sex offender.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
We haven’t even scratched the surface.
The relationship was problematic for any number of reasons—not least of which was the fact that, as Kathryn Rubino writes at Above the Law, Ruemmler’s “literal job description is reputational risk.”
Rubino continues:
Ruemmler isn’t some inexperienced legal rube who brushed elbows with a toxic client once upon a time. She is the top attorney at Goldman (chief legal officer and general counsel), a member of the management committee, head of the firmwide conduct committee, and co-vice chair of the reputational risk committee. Avoiding the sort of reputational damage that could arise from blurring professional and friendly relations with a toxic client isn’t just expected; it’s the whole job. Which makes emails calling Epstein “sweetie” while advising him on sexual misconduct allegations feel less like a lapse and more like a flashing red warning light.
Then there are the pricy gifts from Epstein — a $9,400 Hermès bag, a $4,200 Fendi fur-trimmed plaid wool coat, and a $1,700 Fendi bag amongst them. And she dutifully thanked her “Uncle Jeffrey” for the largesse. Now, a spokesperson said, “Ms. Ruemmler didn’t ask for anything and didn’t want anything,” which may well be true, but surely it’s obvious that the excessive gifts, and referring to Epstein as family (she also referred to him as an “older brother” in another exchange) is not exactly a master class in character evaluation.
Sounds like she had a blind spot for Epstein.
Totally.
Epstein glamoured her, like Edward from Twilight. And Ruemmler was, to paraphrase the detective from The Third Man, born to be glamoured.
It’s astonishing, how far and wide Epstein’s network was.
Not was. Is. Present tense. He’s gone, but the vacuum has been filled—if not by one individual, then by a few.
Ian Osborne?
Maybe.
Jared?
There’s a dearth of emails in the Files about Jared. So either Epstein kept those discussions offline, or Kushner-related emails are what Bondi is keeping under wraps. As Nina Burleigh writes, all of Jared’s forays into Middle East diplomacy have Epstein’s fingerprints all over them:
It’s the same cast of characters every time: Israeli intelligence, Russian intelligence, European diplomats, Saudi royals…
[long pause]
What is it? Why are you staring off into space like that?
Something just occurred to me.
Epstein was connected to all these intelligence agencies: U.S., British, Israeli, Russian, Saudi, and then big machers from the other Gulf States—the UAE, Qatar, and so on.
But something is missing.
ایران?
Exactly. If you search the emails for “Iran,” and scroll through, it’s clear that Epstein didn’t seem to care for the Iranians. Nor did any of his associates.
Maybe he developed a distaste for the Revolutionary Guard during his Iran-Contra days? Remember, Manucher Ghorbanifar, the arms dealer who was the driving force behind that arrangement, was from Iran.
Do you think Epstein’s disdain for Tehran had anything to do with Trump’s decision to bomb Iran?
Probably not. But it’s notable that Donald’s “military excursion” is something his old pal Jeff Epstein would likely have approved of—and would certainly have figured out multiple ways to profit from.
But it’s 4 am, and we’re past 3,000 words, so this is a good place to wrap up.
You don’t want to discuss the UFOs?
Not unless they’re going to transport Elon Musk and the rest of the Epstein class to Mars, no.
Photo credit: Ruemmler, from the Files.
I have a headache. I've said it before but one more time, epstein is about a cabal of intelligence services that is running amuck. One time disciplined, now out of control. The orange imbecile trump is a bit player, the stooge the cabal uses to bring chaos to the planet that benefits a very select group of money grabbing, power hungry hedonists. trump’s predilection for sadistic sexual "excursions" made him the perfect fool. Bibi is an added benefit to chaos, one prone to destruction as the preferred method of problem solving, just flatten it.
Does this mean Iran is the savior? David bringing down the Goliath cabal? BTW if the cabal is so powerful, how did they let the trump espstein files exist?
Where did I put the aspirin?
“You tell me, Perry Mason.” Only you could make me laugh while reading about such horrors. Thanks for being you!!