"Epstein Didn't Call Himself," Nazi Stock Bubbles and Their Willing Collaborators: How Involved Is Peter Thiel With Wirecard?
Does Palantir even work?
Wasn’t it all so much easier when we pretended that money laundering was actually technology?
What if the real story of our post-cold war world is that those middle manning immigrants get replaced by Beijing, Moscow, and Washington working together when they must against these rather annoying, rather distracting, rather loud strange South Africans?
After all, it’s becoming pretty clear that both Thiel and Musk are a part of a system of control and oppression. You can watch this report about those ties.
Of course Thiel’s connection to the Nazi world have been very well analyzed here as well as elsewhere.
A recent report charts the historic and genealogical components:
Culmination of the multi-generational Nazi project means the 1940s were able to bubble along via the tech industry into 2020s American authoritarianism by families who never accepted defeat, just adapted their methods and hid among American and Afrikaner enclaves. Peter Thiel represents a direct genealogical link between Hitler’s Germany and Trump’s America.
Why didn’t Peter Thiel’s father naturalize as an American citizen? Maybe he couldn’t become one because of what he had done?
Maybe the Thiels are a continuation of the same California - Nazi stock frauds in our own time?
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In this piece I’ll take on Peter Thiel’s strange connections with the former Soviet Union and how it’s my contention that Thiel was likely recruited by the Russians back during the negotiations over Gawker Media’s bankruptcy — an event in which I played a bit part. Why I even got a settlement out of it myself!
In those days I even introduced Thiel to some of my friends in Chabad, which is a religious organization whose members were long known to be how Putin preferred communicating with oligarchs around the world.
I had learned during the course of my investigations that Gawker was being financially supported by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian-Israeli oligarch. Moreover the servers where Gawker was alleged to be operating were in Hungary in a building owned by the Russian federation. (Later Gawker’s proprietor Nick Denton and his husband decamped for Switzerland in a very Russia part of the country. My understanding is that Denton has since moved to Hungary. Hungary is one of the most pro-Russian countries in the European Union. Rather interestingly, I think, to some extent that the real beef between Denton and Thiel was over who could be the alpha gay man. I think Denton acted as a kind of policing Hungarian who blocked the German money laundering Russian and Chinese cash.
Having bested Gawker, my concern was that the Russian mafia might take out the Pay Pal Mafia. I wanted to have a peace deal and Denton and Thiel met with Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman who brokered just such a deal.
Interestingly, a mere two years thereafter Renova Group — which Vekselberg had used to back Gawker — was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2018. Had we merely waited the whole thing would have imploded.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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A few years ago I wrote a rather comprehensive piece where I noted, en passant, that Peter Thiel’s uncle had worked for the East German military and how strange it was that the nephew of someone in a foreign military had built something like Palantir and that Palantir was allegedly so trusted by the U.S. government.
Peter was irate that I had published this material and I soon learned that the picture he had presented of himself wasn’t exactly as accurate as we might have expected.
I began to suspect that Peter Thiel was himself something of a fraud though whether he was a threat or a mere curiosity I couldn’t say.
We had discussed a number of verbotten topics over the years and he had given me books to read. I still have the photographs I had taken of his bookshelf from one of the first times we had met. I vacationed at his rather glorious home in Hawaii and occasionally stayed over at his place in San Francisco.
During the first Trump term I encouraged him to take up a more prominent role in Washington D.C. and I understand that I am the person who introduced him to future Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, from whom Peter bought that house. It was Peter Thiel who first introduced me to J.D. Vance and I, in turn, introduced him to Steve Bannon and a number of other political figures. For many years I was seen as “Peter’s guy” though, of course, I had my own ideas — don’t all consiglieres? — and there was never a formal arrangement. But then again, I don’t think that’s how it works in actual mafias.
Why am I coming forward and discuss all this now? Well, I believe in comity between America and Germany and I’ve come to believe that much of what Thiel has done is rather fake and endangering much of our world. Whatever good Palantir may have done in the past — and I have my doubts — I think the whole thing is a rather elaborate stock fraud, not too dissimilar from other Nazi-themed stock frauds in the past.
Is Peter Thiel a Nazi? No, I can’t say that he is, at least not precisely. So what is he? Well, I had said that Peter “not a Nazi, Nazi-curious, maybe” to one of Thiel’s biographers.
My own grandfather had served for a time in the post-War Germany and my uncle Carl speaks German as if it were his mother tongue. I’ve dated German women, including one from a rather prominent family. I’m not terribly the best judge of these things and I don’t get see Nazis everywhere. Some of my dearest friends have served in the German military and a family member or two was involved in interrogating some Nazis as they were brought over to the United States.
Over the years I have had a great number of conversations with Peter Thiel since he and I first met one another in Claremont in 2009 at a Leo Strauss book club.
In 2022, Thiel more or less cut me off, ostensibly because I had been a source for Max Chafkin’s book, The Contrarian, but in reality because he was getting pressure from his Israeli-connected handlers to cut me loose. There began a fiction originated that I was angry with Thiel because he hadn’t come through with promised investment in my ventures. Hardly. While it’s true that he hadn’t delivered as he promised the real reason I exposed him was to protect him from those who would have turned him into the next Sheldon Adelson or Elon Musk. He ought to be thanking me but that’s not really his style.
Anyway I had recruited Thiel as confidential human source and later outed him in large measure to protect him. When Special Agent Jonathan Buma recruited me as a confidential informant he mentioned that there were three oligarchs who had, in effect, acted as fronts for the Russian government. I knew all three of these figures and I began to introduce Buma to them one by one. Some, like Peter, were more helpful. Others, like Elon, were not.
We began with Elon Musk, in part, because I thought it would be relatively easier, given his ties to Igor Kurganov, the mob-backed poker player, to whom Musk had entrusted billions in Tesla stock for Musk’s fake charity.
(I had not counted on the fact that former acting director of the FBI Andy McCabe’s son — Sean McCabe — was the liaison between SpaceX and the FBI. Buma interfaced with the younger McCabe — and surprise! — there was no appetite to “go there” on Elon.
This corruption within the FBI can’t really be appreciated unless you’ve experienced it yourself — something I seemingly have in common with a whole lot of people. To give you a sense of it, I ask you to take a look at a report that was given to me and nominally claims to be a part of the FBI’s confidential human source system.
I simply did not say many of the things I am accused of saying within this report. So who planted the fake material attributing it to me?
To be sure I have my own complaints with how poorly run the FBI’s confidential human source program is. For what it’s worth I support a full pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell but then again, I wasn’t pictured with her.
In reading the New York Times article detailing Epstein’s investment in Peter Thiel’s venture fund
I wonder, if, perhaps Thiel was being set up by Epstein who was, in turn, working on behalf of both the CIA and Russian interests.
We know, for example, from reporting that Epstein met frequently with future director of the CIA, Bill Burns, in Washington D.C. and in New York. In fact Epstein even met with Thiel and Bill Burns in the days after the anniversary of September 11th.
The logs show that in September 2014, Epstein's schedule listed Thiel under 'people to see'.
The two men met for dinner at Epstein's New York mansion on the 12th with Woody Allen present, the schedule says.
The following day Epstein met Thiel on his own from 2pm to 4pm after which Bill Burns, the current director of the CIA who was deputy secretary of state at the time, joined them for an hour.
The day after that, Epstein planned a lunch and said that 'maybe Peter Thiel' would come.
The two men were scheduled for lunch the following week and the entry lists Thiel's personal assistant and their number.
The late Edward Jay Epstein (no relation) notes in his 2023 memoirs, Assume Nothing: Encounters with Assassins, Spies, Presidents and Would-Be Masters of the Universe, that Jeffrey Epstein was very much at the center of things even after he had been convicted.
In the anteroom, along with the Clinton photos were photos of Epstein with Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirate prince Mohammed bin Zayed, some in beachwear and with snorkel gear. I asked, “Are these clients in the Middle East?”
He answered that some were and that he was planning to buy a house in Riyadh since that was becoming the new center of international finance.
“What about Russia? Any clients there?” I asked.
He shrugged and said he often flew to Moscow to see Vladimir Putin.
The elder Epstein didn’t quite believe young Epstein’s claims of a closeness with Putin but, in fact, it looks like he very much did have that relationship.
In a letter published in the Wall Street Journal, Epstein wrote to Thiel that his “Russian ambassador friend [Vitaly Churkin] died. Life is short, start with dessert.” I wonder, was this a threat to Thiel? Or was it a recognition to Thiel that Epstein was in charge?
A recent New York Times article noted that during that time Epstein had put $40M or so into Valar Ventures.
The obvious question, given his closeness to the Russians, is whether or not that money really was Epstein’s money. I suspect that that money may well have been Russian, maybe even Putin.
Epstein had had a number of Russian contacts over the years.
Note, for example, his closeness with Masha Bucher (né Drokova), who was awarded a medal for service to the fatherland from none other than Putin himself. She was a part of a pro-Putin youth group.
Masha asked me about Epstein after he was arrested but not before he allegedly committed suicide in New York. (We’ll get to that in a moment.)
That meeting at a San Francisco cafe was facilitated by my friend, Abie Katz, who worked at the very same venture firm — August Capital — that had provided the initial money to Microsoft so many years ago.
There’s even a subplot here about how Epstein had written to Gates about a Russian bridge player with whom Gates had had an affair, in essence chiding Gates that he knew what was up with Gates. Since Epstein’s relationship with Gates was exposed Gates has suddenly announced that he’s planning to be a lot more charitable.
Do we have Jeff Epstein to thank for essentially making Bill Gates be a more charitable guy? And is the Gates Foundation, in effect, being nationalized?
Returning to that meeting in 2019, Drokova seemed nervous. I think, given the tenor of that conversation, that she might have been recording me. I wondered then and wonder still: Is it possible that Drokova had been sent to sting me? She mentioned sex on several occasions. Was this the fabled honeypot? And if it was, whose was it? Can honey pots be joint operations? Is there such a thing as Schrödinger’s honey pot?
I have heard elsewhere that Drokova had turned Fed and that it was she who had helped arrest Epstein. I generally agree with Edward Jay Epstein’s assessment that Epstein wasn’t in a state of mind to commit suicide as discussed in his memoirs.
Martin Weinberg and other of Epstein’s defense lawyers expressed to me doubts about this find. Unlike the coroner, they had direct knowledge of Epstein’s state of mind less than eight hours prior to his death, since they had met with him in the MCC. Telling Epstein that they were about to file an appeal for bail with additional security measures designed to meet the judge’s stated concerns, in addition, Weinberg told him there was a high-level Department of Justice witness who had agreed to swear that the prosecutors in Florida had illicitly transferred material about Epstein to prosecutors in New York, an error that provided grounds for Epstein’s indictment to be quashed. Since when they left Epstein seemed buoyed over these developments, and expressed hope about being released on bail, his lawyers could not see any clear motive for him killing himself a few hours later.
Since Epstein’s death Thiel had been rather transfixed and obsessed about Epstein. He asked anyone and everyone about how Epstein had died — almost as if he was worried that it might happen to himself.
One of the more glaring examples of Thiel telling on himself was the question about whether or not Bill Clinton had “wanted to be compromised by Epstein.”
Did Peter want to be compromised?
And more chillingly: Did Peter have to be compromised?
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Of course it is now time to fess up that I knew a bit more about Thiel’s ties to the Russians than I had hitherto admitted and that those ties run right through Austria, where Thiel got married in 2017. Special Agent Jonathan Buma has intimated as much in a discussion with German TV and that claim has since been corroborated by The Guardian’s DC correspondent.
This Russophilia, of course, goes beyond the Lee Hanley-hosted-Rebekah-Mercer-and-Ann Coulter-attended Christmas parties. Recall further that Mercer is rumored to fund Candance Owens’s British husband George Farmer, who was formerly CEO of Parler, and that they met thanks, in part, Allie Hanley, Hanley’s wife. (Did you know that there’s a pending lawsuit against Mercer and her 1789 Capital outfit for being a Russian front?)
And it goes beyond Peter’s brief interlude working for Credit Suisse, which, as you know, is supposedly quite Russian.
I’m talking mostly about Thiel’s connections to Wirecard, a controversial German payments company which has been called variously “Germany’s PayPal” and “Germany’s Enron.”
Of course it doesn’t take much to establish that relationship between Thiel and Wirecard.
There’s Christian Angermayer of the Russian-Austrian “Friendship Society” who worked closely with Thiel and who introduced him to Daniil Bisslinger, who worked in Moscow at the Kremlin's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Angermayer made a lot of money when he introduced Wirecard to SoftBank, for example.
“Wirecard board donated 70,000 euros to Sebastian Kurz’s election campaign. [Its CEO] Braun became a close advisor…”
If you go with me, though, that Thiel is closely affiliated with the Russians, we might also ask obvious questions about whether or not all the drones that Thiel purportedly supplied to Ukraine — drones which did not work by the way — might be a way of him maintaining his cover.
Thiel even dispatched Jeff Giesea to spy on a drone company which did work but in which Thiel did not invest.
Isn’t it curious how Thiel never seems to have money for tech that actually works? Why is that?
Could it be the same reason Founder’s Fund didn’t invest in an American satellite company but had plenty of money to invest in a Bulgarian one?
Could it be that the real story behind Palantir is that it doesn’t work at all? That the whole thing is something of a fraud? And that while there have been efforts to make it real, Palantir hasn’t really lived up to the hype?
Think about these companies and ask yourself, “Why don’t they work?”
I think it’s because Thiel’s real business is in moving money—and taking a cut. I think his real business is using that cut to influence American politics.
It’s interesting that all the people surrounding Wirecard’s Jan Marsalek went to jail and yet he got away, more or less unscathed.
A friend of mine notes that perhaps Marsalek is being ordered to destroy the network that he had built in Europe. She writes:
The German BND was using Wirecard but they are also particularly close to the Israelis and Russians. It seems like Germans didn’t clamp down on the Wirecard scandal until after the kompromat operation against the German federal police. Marsalek also had a meeting with German BND Bernd Schmidbauer after he was boasting in London about having the recipe for the neurotoxin used in Salisbury. Yet he’s never arrested.
In 2017, Marsalek had lunch with Nicholas Sarkozy then in 2018 Sarkozy is indicted.
He’s meeting with Dimity Firtash who was hiding in Vienna. Martin Weiss, then chief of Austrian intelligence operations, and Egisto Ott, a former police officer and agent who had worked under Weiss helped Marsalek escape. Both indicted. The British and the CIA warned that Ott was a “mole” in the BVT passing information to the Russians. The Bulgarian spy ring was caught because the UK had all the Telegram messages between them and Marsalek.
The banks involved with Wirecard were fined for failing to prevent money laundering.
If I was a Russian mole, I’d think Jan Marsalek was cursed or a fake Russian spy.
That could well be true.
My sense is that Maršálek was always a Russian asset and that he was actually taking down a number of Nazis within German and Austrian society. After all, what better way to take down Nazis than to pretend to be one of them?
He was, in other words, doing his grandfather Hans proud.
Hans fought the Nazis, and so, it would appear, did Jan.
And so did mine. And so have I.
I somewhat think you can tell a lot about
When our grandparents were liberating Japan and Germany, Elon’s grandpa was plotting to move to racist South Africa.
This week Musk will roll out self-driving cars in Austin.
And yet we know that NHTSA and the Department of Transportation has been investigating Musk for killing people.
I think it’s time for us to consider the possibility that Elon Musk might be getting indicted soon.
It seems Marsalek was useful to more than one country—until he wasn’t.
“By November 2018, the news had reached Bernd Schmidbauer, a former German minister who in the 1990s earned himself the nickname “008” as coordinator of the German intelligence services and who met with Marsalek to discuss how he came about the formula.
Mr. Schmidbauer has ignored requests for comment from The Telegraph, but he told a German parliamentary inquiry that “it was also discussed crisscross through intelligence services all over the world”.
He told the Bundestag that he believed that “every service that had influence at this point was eager to talk” to Marsalek about the access that he had through Wirecard “to closely monitor certain money laundering operations, organized crime”.
He revealed that Marsalek boasted to him during their meeting that he had security authorities across the world “in my pocket”, claiming that he had “been talking to them for years”.
Mr. Schmidbauer said he believed that “every intelligence service that respects itself had to have had Marsalek on their radar”,adding that they “would have been stupid if they had not used the services that he could have offered”.
One agency that took up this offer was the US Department of Justice, who in 2019 contacted Marsalek to help trace a fugitive, a source with knowledge of the communication has told The Telegraph.
While the department has said that they cannot confirm or deny the allegation, it is understood that Marsalek provided information.
Petlinsky said that alongside the US he “had a very good connection with a representative of MI6 in London” and was working with the Austrian, German and Russian services and “Mossad for sure, I personally met a few people with him in Tel Aviv.’”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/07/marsalek-russian-spymaster-wirecard/
Based on patents filed in joint development with the US Army, PALANTIR should work and would not be that hard to make work using people with simple bachelors in EE and Compsci if they had access to the encrypted data.