In 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. That conviction is the fixed point in this story. Everything that follows happened after it.

Why? The system that should have removed Epstein from power instead credentialed him as someone the system couldn’t touch. The conviction didn’t function as punishment. It functioned as a rating agency.

In November 2014, Peter Thiel as the co-founder of Palantir Technologies, known for his long-standing and consistent extreme white nationalist beliefs, personally emailed the convicted sex offender to solicit $10 to $20 million for Valar Ventures. The venture capital fund Thiel had founded. Not a subordinate. Not an intermediary.

Thiel himself. With Epstein. Sex years after conviction. Oops, I mean six years.

A meeting followed in December 2014 at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, which was the same property that would become notorious as a location where numerous women said they were sexually abused.

Thiel brought with him two principals, Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald. Whatever happened in the infamous abuse townhouse meant that by June 2015, Epstein had committed $15 million through his Southern Trust Company as a limited partner in a Valar Ventures fund.

That was not the end of the relationship.

It was the beginning.

As Nafeez Ahmed reports in Byline Times, more than 100 documents from the Epstein Files released by the US Department of Justice show that Thiel’s firm treated Epstein as an active premium partner for the next five years.

In June 2017, Valar Ventures sent Epstein exclusive investment opportunities marked “super confidential.” In November 2018, Thiel’s firm solicited additional capital from Epstein. As late as March 2019, four months before Epstein’s final arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, Epstein’s accountant was requesting detailed portfolio information for “presentation to Mr Epstein.”

The expanding investigation about abuse of underaged girls seemed only to deepen the Palantir relationships.

The original $15 million commitment grew to approximately $40 million. Epstein’s Valar Ventures stake is now worth approximately $170 million, making it the largest single asset in his estate.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Thiel and Epstein as “owners” of the fund in an email released as part of the Epstein Files. Thiel’s spokesman of course denied the characterization yet also confirmed Epstein was a limited partner. Whether you call it ownership or partnership, Peter Thiel personally solicited a convicted sex offender’s money, hosted him as a premium investor, and maintained the relationship until Epstein’s suspicious suicide.

Now add the intelligence dimension.

Christopher Steele, former MI6 Russia desk head, assessed that Epstein’s fortune likely originated from the former Soviet Union and Russian organised crime.

The documentary record supports this. In 2015, Epstein recommended that Thiel meet Sergey Belyakov, an alumnus of the Russian FSB spy academy who had served as Putin’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development. Thiel’s assistant arranged an in-person meeting. In October 2016, Epstein arranged at least one meeting between Thiel and Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations and a veteran Kremlin operative.

When Churkin died suddenly and suspiciously in February 2017, Epstein emailed Thiel:

My Russian ambassador friend died. Life is short, start with dessert.

Thiel later told the Wall Street Journal that the meeting contained “nothing memorable” and tried to DARVO the situation by falsely claiming himself the “rather naïve” victim.

Now add the UK infrastructure.

Palantir Technologies holds more than £670 million in UK Government contracts spanning nuclear weapons systems at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, NHS patient records, Ministry of Defence operations, and police intelligence databases. In September 2025, Palantir bizarrely grabbed a £240.6 million MoD contract without competitive tender, awarded under a “defence and security exemption.”

This system led by the man giving white supremacist extremist sermons of Nazi Lebensraum, funded through a fortune that MI6’s former Russia desk head assessed originated from Russian organised crime… now processes data across “all security classifications” for “critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making” throughout Britain’s defence apparatus.

And how did Palantir take control over British defense? In 2018, while Epstein remained an active Valar partner receiving confidential investment opportunities, Palantir hired Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel. The explicit purpose was to position a toxic Palantir as a respectable partner to the British government. Global Counsel brought former Health Minister Nicola Blackwood on board for “political risk analysis.” Matthew Swindells, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS England until July 2019, joined Global Counsel two months after leaving and immediately began advising Palantir on NHS contracts. He went on to chair Palantir’s health advisory board while simultaneously chairing four NHS hospital trusts.

Mandelson, of course, had his own Epstein problem. Between 2009 and 2010, while serving as Business Secretary, he leaked market-sensitive government information to Jeffrey Epstein. When this came to light, the British government moved swiftly:

Mandelson was sacked as US Ambassador, resigned his Labour Party membership, and was forced to quit the House of Lords. He now faces potential criminal charges for misconduct in public office.

The principle established by Mandelson’s removal is unambiguous: those who compromise the UK’s secrets to a foreign intelligence-linked sexual predator forfeit their access to power.

That principle has not been applied to Palantir.

The company whose radical right-wing founder personally solicited a convicted sex offender as a business partner, who received meetings with Russian intelligence operatives through that sex offender, who hired the lobbying firm of a man now facing criminal charges for leaking state secrets to that same sex offender? That company? It now processes Britain’s nuclear weapons data, military operations across all classification levels, NHS patient records, and police intelligence.

Thiel, infamous lately for giving extremist sermons promoting “ACTS 17” Nazi Lebensraum, says he is the naive victim. We would be naive to believe him. Thiel targeting Epstein in 2014 to be his partner makes perfect sense. Epstein had just publicly survived a child sex trafficking process that should have destroyed him. That’s not a liability for Thiel. That’s a due diligence result. It told him the asset is protected.

The two also met with several CEOs for dinner in Palo Alto in Aug. 2015, which Epstein described as “wild”…. “Does my bad press give you pause?” Epstein asked Thiel in one email. Thiel’s response was unfazed: “If I was intimidated by bad press, I would not have gotten anywhere in life.”

The MoD says there are “robust processes in place.” Palantir hired four Ministry of Defence officials in 2025 alone.

These processes seem to be working exactly as designed. They’re NOT designed to protect Britain.

Almost every finding in a BBC article called “How where you grow up affects your personality” is about how culture shapes you.

Almost.

Buried deep is another finding. Your political identity shapes your perception of someone else’s authenticity. Rather than “culture influences personality” it’s proof how “ideology determines who gets to count as real.”

…researchers asked people with different political views to evaluate the morality of a Christian man who was attracted to other men. People who identified as liberals thought the man was acting according to his true self, while people who identified as conservatives believed instead he was going against his true, Christian self.

The article frames it as a curiosity about the philosophy of selfhood. What it actually demonstrates is the mechanism by which political identity becomes a tool for defining other people’s inner lives.

The ideologue doesn’t just disagree with their opponent about policy, they disagree about what’s actually happening inside another human being. And vice versa.

Each side arrogates the authority to adjudicate someone else’s ontological status.

Sartre is rolling in his grave.

That’s not a personality trait shaped by geography. That’s a power claim disguised as an observation about human nature. And this article tries to bury it between paragraphs about twin studies and underwater scene descriptions as if an antithesis isn’t what it is.

The American firearm regulatory framework treats guns as one serialized part. Revoke a dealer’s right to sell that part, and they can legally pivot to sell every other component of the exact same weapon with no oversight.

That’s a loophole by design.

Parts sales do not require a license, a background check, a Form 4473, or any recordkeeping. Parts for what? How about an automatic rifle or a machine gun?

Custombilt Firearms Manufacturing of Overland Park, Kansas lost its Federal Firearms License in July 2023 because ATF found that it wasn’t tracking who was buying. There were 43 documented failures to record acquisitions, dispositions, and background checks. ATF said the failures were wilful.

On February 6, 2026, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the website still lists parts for sale: complete uppers, complete lowers, multi-cal stripped lowers, CFM M16 bolt carrier groups, and trigger guards. Everything you need to build a functional AR-15 except the serialized lower receiver, which is the only part that legally counts as a “firearm” and requires an FFL to sell.

This company that ATF determined couldn’t be trusted to track firearm sales is legally selling some of the most concerning firearm components with zero oversight.

The M16 bolt carrier group is the part worth flagging. It’s legal to own and common in semi-auto builds. But it’s also a prerequisite for converting an AR-15 to full-automatic because the geometry of a standard AR-15 carrier won’t work with an auto sear. Under ATF’s constructive possession doctrine, possessing an AR-15 lower alongside M16 fire control parts and an M16 BCG constitutes possession of an unregistered machine gun under 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), meaning a felony carrying up to 10 years, even without any assembly, just parts.

Custombilt isn’t openly selling the auto sears. It’s selling a major component of the full-automatic equation from a bankruptcy liquidation inventory, with no record of who’s buying. The part is called an M16 bolt carrier group because, well, it’s the bolt carrier group from the M16. Custombilt is plainly listing it as “CFM M16 bolt carrier group.”

They’re literally selling a machine gun designation without keeping records.

This fits into the Trump administration removal of ATF’s zero-tolerance policy. Gun dealers who failed to keep their licenses “may reapply” now. Kansas Rep. Tracey Mann even created a RIFLE Act to reinstate revoked licenses and reimburse the affected dealers.

You can find Rep. Mann’s office at 7011 West 121st Street, Suite 100, Overland Park, KS 66209.

And Custombilt is not too far away at 6201 Robinson Street, Overland Park, KS 66202.

Mann isn’t actually from Overland Park and he doesn’t represent it. He’s from Western Kansas, an area known for two things lately.

1. Mann was born in Gove County, which during the COVID-19 pandemic was called the “deadliest place in America“. People there apparently were so anti-life, they maintained the highest death rate from COVID-19 compared to any other county in the nation: One death out of every 132 people.
   

   Gove County is 93% white. … “Rural America has always been insulated to some degree to the problems that plague more urban areas,” [county health officer] Rempel says. “I think that gave some people a false sense of security. I think there was maybe a public perception we would be OK.”

   Disinformation about “urban people plague” gave a false sense of security? Apparently being a white supremacist didn’t stop COVID. And for the record, rural Americans are more at risk. They typically are air rescued direct to urban areas when someone wants them to live.

   The county’s sheriff, Allan Weber, remains hospitalized 300 miles west in Denver, where he was flown by medical plane on Oct. 18.

2. Speaking of heavily armed white supremacists being anti-life, Mann today still lives in an area known for the 1989 naming of “noose road“, near a sundown town of many lynchings. It was said in Hays, Kansas that “Blacks were not allowed to stay overnight”, keeping alive a Jim Crow “legacy that kind of hung over the town going back to the lynching.”

That’s a very particular legacy, just like this one:

Trump refuses to apologize after posting racist meme…

On the same day Custombilt filed for bankruptcy, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against distribution of 3D-printable ghost gun files and machine gun conversion devices. One state is suing over digital blueprints. Another is goosing a revoked dealer to liquidate physical machine gun components from a bankruptcy warehouse into unknown hands, no questions asked.