Thought exercise: If you couldn't engage in political caterwauling on X, would you have anything to say? Seems like there should be more to talk about. Journalists are trained to be critical of all sides, to strive to be objective and nonpartisan (within human limits, obvi, 'human' is the operative word here). The only 'side' we are allowed to be on is the side of facts.

JERSEY 1/4: I am getting quite a few S.O.S. messages from people on the UK tax haven island of Jersey. These point to continued human-rights abuses, threats by the authorities and vulnerable people asking how to gain asylum. 2/4 Bear in mind, Jersey already has compelled prominent senior Senator and government health minister @StuartSyvret to seek asylum in the USA after he repeatedly received death threats for speaking up against the island's atrocities against vulnerable people, rampant child abuse and child endangerment issues. According to the messages I am now receiving, these issues have not abated. It is beyond the pale. #UK #CSA

JERSEY: Do you think this $2 trillion tax shelter might have a money-laundering problem? The Jersey Financial Services Commission has repeatedly declined to comment on these issues. Yet its website says: "Our mission is to maintain Jersey's position as a leading international finance centre, with high regulatory standards..." : jerseyfsc.org/about-us/

JERSEY: Jersey Law Officers' Dept is learning that when you let a powerful Russian oligarch like Roman Abramovich stow billions on your tiny island, he will bite you back when you raid his den -- then force you to apologize (?) None of this looks good. reuters.com/world/europe/j… In this case, Roman Abramovich is the fox and Jersey is the henhouse. It's unclear why the Jersey police raid of offices linked to Abramovich was deemed unlawful -- no one seems to want to talk about that -- but it did lead to more than $7B of assets tied to him being frozen.

NEW Column C: American Heiress: A Dark Fairytale -- Tanya lived a life of luxury, fancy homes & a butler from Buckingham Palace. But when she discovered a massive global fraud at her family's manor on the island of Jersey, her life would never be the same: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/col… Tanya Dick-Stock tells a cautionary tale of how she learned that her life was not at all what she thought it was, how she and her husband became whistleblowers -- and how she's slowly unraveling decades of secrets to reveal truths that affect us all.

If you're not sure what a central bank digital currency is (aka CBDC), you're not alone. The Fed calls it central bank digitnal fiat “widely available to the general public.” Except that it isn't. My piece on why American CBDCs still don't exist @iimag: institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1z3gj… Many central bankers see CBDCs as a government answer to crypto. But is it? One prominent member of the crypto community (@ericvoorhees) denounced CBDCs earlier this year as "all the worst aspects of fiat today in your bank — plus Orwellian spy surveillance nightmare." #CBDCs

Russian intelligence’s Cozy Bear & Fancy Bear (of U.S. election hacking fame) may have found a new outpost. While getting ice cream in the Adirondacks this week, we appear to have found the third bear in this sinister triumvirate. cnbc.com/2020/07/17/fan… ⁦ @gregolear @StuartSyvret @SpyTalker @ericgarland @burgessct

Just something to note: Ivana Trump's death has led to NY AG now postponing deposition of Donald Trump scheduled for this week -- as well as similar interviews with Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. That's quite a stroke for the surviving Trumps, no? nytimes.com/2022/07/15/nyr… These canceled interviews with the Trump family were part of a civil investigation into whether former President Trump and his company had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets, according to the above article @nytimes.

Friends, I am hearing about substantial pain for those of you who are carrying credit card debt...especially with everyone's interest rates going up and inflation running amok. Some great tips the credit card companies will not tell you. #1... My top tip right now: If you cannot bear your APR and monthly minimum payment, call your company and tell them you are in "hardship" due to rising prices (use the magic word, say 'hardship') and you need to know your options to set up a payment plan with a lower interest rate.

Ghislaine Maxwell gets 20 years in prison for recruiting teenage girls for pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse from 1994 to 2004. Judge notes Ghislaine Maxwell did not express accountability or remorse.

https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1541851280590635008

From Ghislaine's statement to the court: "It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein. I have had plenty of time to think, having spent two years in solitary confinement..."

BREAKING: Ghislaine Maxwell is about to be sentenced at Manhattan federal court -- live link here, with survivors of Epstein and Maxwell arriving at the court to speak out publicly, both to the press and to Ghislaine herself, about their experiences: In a case that's haunted the nation (not to mention many in the UK and beyond), Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, faces up to 55 years in prison after being convicted for trafficking minors to pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

NEW: Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell were never about just sex-trafficking. It was about the money. Deep-dive I did w/Pulitzer-winning @KevinGHall @OCCRP & @benbwieder @MiamiHerald, whose work helped put Epstein & Maxwell behind bars: occrp.org/en/investigati… Leaked files from #UK tax shelter Jersey exposed the Wall Street trading activities of Ghislaine Maxwell's family, revealing how they occupied a parallel financial universe while hiding their finances offshore. All of it requires further investigation.@SECGov @FBI @TheJusticeDept

OK, I've been distracted (from Twitter) last few days, which basically means I have not been distracted at all, but focused on non-Twitter things, aka real life, but going to have to pipe in on the Jeffrey Epstein news... So, the Epstein chaos continues with U.S. Virgin Islands AG citing his estate co-executors' "direct participation in virtually all of the business operations & financial activities of Epstein's trafficking network, including facilitating forced marriages among Epstein's victims."

Media: 'Is Ghislaine wearing suffragette white today?'
The rest of the world: 'Is anyone going to ask why Ghislaine was trained to fly multimillion-dollar, private, unregulated aircraft and licensed to operate submersible (underwater) vehicles across international borders?' Media: 'Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier.'
The rest of the world: 'Please name one American financier who needs a 53-lb shredder, a tile-and-carpet extractor, a 30,000-lb Carmix self-loading concrete mixer and a 40,000-lb, portable jaw crusher.':theintercept.com/2019/07/09/jef…

While he was alive, Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly dodged exactly when he met Ghislaine Maxwell and flat-out denied to @VickyPJWard he ever knew Robert Maxwell. The below nugget paints a very different picture.

https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist/status/1468642777428893696

Epstein also denied meeting the high-ranking British defense contractor Sir Douglas Leese, who brokered major arms deals in Middle East. Leese's son, Julian, appeared surprised at Epstein's denial, telling @VickyPJWard, his father was a mentor of sorts to Epstein in the 1980s.

“Jersey is one of the most significant tax shelters in the world…If you speak up about corruption, you will have a very hard life. It’s made easy for you to do the wrong thing and your life is made very hard if you do the right things.” – Jersey Senator Stuart Syvret #UK This note looks like a joke, but it is real. It was left in the letterbox of two brave Jersey politicians, Trevor Pitman (find him @bald_from) and his wife, Shona Pitman. Shona is not on Twitter, but you can follow or ask questions of Trevor on here.

The Queen's PR firm, Farrer & Co, do not like journalists asking about possible money-laundering on one of the Queen's tax shelters. They also object to journalists checking the facts with additional sources and, generally, doing journalism. One such example -- and my response.

I see lots of coverage of the Chris Cuomo statement, but few members of the media weighing in directly, which is unfortunate. We in the media need to do a better job of explaining ourselves when we write or broadcast stories — & if there is a conflict, we must not sugarcoat it.

https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1427450474400296963

Received lots of calls this week from non-journalist friends asking about this situation. In journalism school, we are taught to be nonpartisan, to be objective, to not even participate in a political march or social demonstration in our free time. To be publicly neutral.

Just a reminder: Ghislaine Maxwell, accused of recruiting teenage girls for Jeffrey Epstein from 1994 to 2004, was slated to go to trial this week. The trial was moved to Nov to allow her more time to assemble a defense against sex-trafficking charges: apnews.com/article/nh-sta… Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now 59 -- and is likely to turn 60 while on trial for sex-trafficking -- has been denied bail three times now. Maxwell is also under investigation by the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Justice Department in connection with Epstein's private island.

U.S. OFFICE OF THE WHISTLEBLOWER: How do you confront a billionaire who's stealing your money? What's it really like to be a Wall Street whistleblower? Inside the SEC's top-secret arm exposing the biggest financial violations in the world. My story @iimag: bit.ly/3qi5ec3 I went into this piece with so many questions, and the research process was quite challenging, because the SEC's Office of the Whistleblower is cloaked in secrecy. It does not give out whistleblower names or describe the cases it's working on -- so how to write about it?

To everyone who's reaching out as a result of my appearance on @gregolear's Prevail podcast, please know your kindness and support mean the world to me. I came to Jersey island having really no idea what I would find there -- I first just went there to see friends. But over time, I came to love the island and could not bear to see what was happening to hundreds of children there. I could not understand it. How can anyone close their eyes to the pain of children? And often, when I cannot understand something, I write about it.