More Damaging Epstein Emails Emerge While the Real “Smoking Gun” Remains Epstein’s Ties to Israeli Intelligence
Today we are continuing our retrospective of the major news stories of 2025 from the Background Briefing archives and we go to an interview from November 12, 2025 on House Democrats releasing incriminating emails from Epstein, expressing surprise that Trump had not been tied to his and Maxwell’s sex trafficking victims. In one email Epstein said that Trump spent hours with him and young girls at his house, going on to describe Trump in a 2018 email to Larry Summers as “borderline insane.” In response, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee just released 23,000 pages of documents from the Epstein estate. We discuss how the real “smoking gun” yet to be fired is Epstein’s ties to Israeli intelligence. Joining us was Nina Burleigh, a senior editor at The New Republic, best-selling author, documentary producer, and publisher of the Substack American Freakshow. A professor at New York University’s Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute, she’s written seven books, the latest of which include Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women, and she has a new novel, Zero Visibility Possible. She is the Producer of a documentary series on Apple TV, “Epstein’s Shadow.”
An Investigation Into the CIA-Run “Kill Or Capture” Zero Units the D.C. Shooter Worked With
Then we go to another interview from November 30, 2025 on the Trump administration’s racist focus on the Afghan shooter of 2 National Guard soldiers in Washington D.C., one of whom has died, prompting Trump’s call to deport all immigrants from the third world. We investigate the CIA-run “kill or capture” Zero Units the shooter worked with in Afghanistan and speak with someone who has covered the U.S. war in Afghanistan from its outset after 9/11, Robert Young Pelton, an author, filmmaker, journalist, and explorer. He is the publisher of Dangerous magazine and has a first-hand perspective on the war on terror from direct contact with the world’s most infamous jihadi, rebel and insurgent groups. His books include: The World’s Most Dangerous Places, Come Back Alive, Three Worlds Gone Mad, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror and his autobiography, The Adventurist. He is working on a documentary about Jared Kushner’s secret deals ahead of the Abraham Accords which lined his pockets and has a podcast at YouTube: Come Back Alive.
A Former JAG on Hegseth and Trump’s Murder Spree Which Are Not War Crimes Because We are Not at War
Then finally we go to an interview from December 7, 2025 on emerging evidence of murder on the high seas following a closed-door intelligence briefing at which a select group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers saw the full video of the September 2 strike on a small boat allegedly shipping drugs to the U.S. In spite of the alternative reality expressed by Senator Cotton, it appears that the second missile strike on Hegseth’s orders to “kill them all” was murder on the high seas and that if and when the public saw the video, the case against Hegseth would be devastating. Joining us was Rachel VanLandingham, a (ret.) USAF Lt Col., the Co-Associate Dean of Research and a Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School as well as a former judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force. During her military career, she served as a senior legal advisor on the international law of armed conflict, military prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, appellate defense attorney and nuclear surety inspector, stationed in the United States, South Korea, and Italy with deployments to the Middle East. She was the legal advisor for international law at Headquarters, U.S. Central Command, where she advised on operational and international legal issues related to the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Background Briefing offers an educational approach to providing information in an era of “fake news.”