Epstein's Dead, But Pizzagate Lives On

Intrepid Journalist Liz Crokin Sets the Record Straight

Liz Crokin and President Trump

Independent journalist Liz Crokin said quite what I was thinking while watching the latest spike in Jeffrey Epstein noise. Said Crokin: “Phony lawyer Gloria Allred speaking at the Jeffrey Epstein survivors press conference today should tell you everything you need to know to understand why President Trump has called Epstein a Democrat con job like the Russia hoax.” That’s not to deny the depravity of what Epstein did, but rather to suggest the political travesty of what “Epstein” has become.

Crokin knows whereof she speaks. A veteran reporter and columnist, she sacrificed any career ambitions she might have had to report on child sex trafficking. Said Crokin, “I was basically embraced by the mainstream media until I started reporting on Pizzagate.”

Like many, I had written Pizzagate off as a hoax, that is until I started investigating QAnon for my book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6. Although I knew or cared little about QAnon, the media were obsessed with it. As journalists looked at the women of January 6, they saw simple minded souls enthralled by “conspiracy theories” like QAnon. Indeed, in its first article on Ashli Babbitt the New York Times ignored her own self definition as “#veteran #America #libertarian #2A #KAG.” (kick ass girl) and defined her in its own light, “Woman Killed in Capitol Embraced Trump and QAnon.”

In reality, QAnon was one minor tributary among the many conservative communications streams. Most people who “followed” QAnon did so the way they might follow a daily horoscope or the interpreted musings of a Nostradamus. That said, the Q phenomenon has a strong association with Pizzagate. This reputed high-level ring of pedophiles involves, most prominently, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair.

The left, of course, ridicules Pizzagate, and the respectable conservative media dare not even mention it, but before readers dismiss it, they might watch the movie Out of Shadows. Among the people featured in the film is Liz Crokin. Her deconstruction of the coded language in the Podesta emails obtained by Wikileaks could make Gloria Allred sweat. “I’d be willing to debate anyone who thinks Pizzagate has been debunked,” said Crokin. She is dismayed that “there has not been one single investigation into any of it.”

Allred is not about to demand any such investigation. At her press conference, in fact, she bizarrely insisted there be ”no more talk of the word ‘pedophiles.’” In light of this background, the media’s eagerness to tar anyone who addressed the pedophilia issue with the “QAnon" brush says more about the media than about the person tarred. If one googles “Liz Crokin,” for instance, the first item that appears after her Wikipedia page is a CNN article from 2022, headlined “Trump poses with QAnon, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist at Mar-a-Lago.”

In the summer of 2023, Sound of Freedom, a film about real life DHS agent Tim Ballard’s efforts to stop child sex trafficking, proved to be a box office hit. The film’s success surprised the media. Critics were anticipating a dud. Disney, after all, had sat on the finished product for five years before selling the rights back to the producers.

The film’s marketability was not the issue for Disney. The film’s message was. Explained Time, the film became “mired in controversy over criticisms that it features misleading depictions of child exploitation and plays into right-wing conspiracy theories associated with the QAnon movement.” The fact that the the film was made before anyone even heard of QAnon only made Democrats more anxious. Those “theories” suddenly seemed less fanciful.

Allred’s attack on Trump is perverse and politically motivated. As the Wikileaks release proved, Allred was a Hillary Clinton operative who recruited women to smear Trump. Allred’s presence at the Epstein press conference, writes Crokin, “is proof that disclosure of his sex trafficking ring has been sadly hijacked by bad actors and Clinton operatives. This is why Trump is calling it a Democrat hoax!”

The Democrats had four years to unearth any Epstein dirt on Trump. They found none. Trump famously kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago. As president, he took the child trafficking issue seriously, claiming in a 2024 campaign video that under his leadership the US did "more than any administration in history to combat human trafficking.” And in 2023, to reaffirm his commitment, he hosted a screening of the Sound of Freedom at his New Jersey golf club.

The Democrats meanwhile were palling around with the very people they allegedly want to investigate. Ghislaine Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s intimate 2010 wedding. Malia Obama interned with Harvey Weinstein. Bill Clinton logged frequent flyer miles on Epstein’s “Lolita Express.” Hillary Clinton intimate Huma Abedin married Anthony Weiner. A few years earlier, Hollywood gave admitted child rapist Roman Polanski a standing O and an Oscar. In 2020, Barack Obama did a one-on-one interview with influencer Hannah Bronfman a month after her aunt Clare Bronfman was sentenced to 81 months in prison for her role in a sex-trafficking ring. Oh, yes, Clare’s father Edgar Bronfman was a Democrat mega donor.

Perhaps the most pressing scandal of all is the missing 300,000 or so children “lost” during the past four years. “This Inspector General report confirmed that the Biden Administration’s Health and Human Services failed to take necessary steps to protect and find [missing] migrant children,” wrote Sen. Charles Grassley earlier this year. “Last Congress, my oversight attacked these failures on behalf of these children.The Biden Administration obstructed my oversight.”

The real question is whether the loss was intentional.

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