Day: August 19, 2019

Ghislaine Maxwell’s Mystery and Scandal-Plagued Family

We  begin with the mysterious woman who was reported to be Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend turned procurer and pimp last seen reading a book about the CIA at an In-N-Out burger joint across the street from where “Background Briefing” is broadcast from.  Dana Kennedy, a former correspondent for ABC News and MSNBC, joins us from Paris to discuss her article at The Daily Beast, “Jeffrey Epstein ‘Friend’ Ghislaine Maxwell has More Skeletons in Her Family Closet Than a House of Horrors” and the extraordinary Maxwell family which like Epstein, is similarly shrouded in mysterious ill-gotten riches, sex scandals, scientific experimentation, ties to intelligence services and untimely deaths. We  speculate whether the mystery woman most wanted by the press is cooperating with prosecutors since Maxwell is apparently staying in Malibu rather than hiding from the authorities out of reach in some tax haven for fugitives. Although one of her older twin sisters is an accomplished tech entrepreneur and the other a doctoral student in humanities at the University of Texas, financial scandals seem to have embroiled two of her brothers while another two siblings suffered untimely deaths.

An FBI Insider on How the Bureau Is Chasing the Wrong Targets;

Then, with a young white supremacist arrested in Ohio with an arsenal and plans to attack a Jewish Center and another arrested in Florida with plans to break a record in mass killings, we will look into whether the FBI is focusing on the right targets today since a recently leaked memo suggests the Bureau is more interested in chasing after Black Identity Extremists, anti-authority extremists and animal rights and environmental extremists. Mike German, a fellow with the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice who served as a special agent with the FBI specializing in domestic terrorism and covert operations and is the author of a new book, just out, “Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy”, joins us.

A Reality Check on the Economy Trump Claims the Fake News Is Crashing

Then finally we speak with economist Dean Baker, a senior economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy Research who writes the popular economics blog “Beat the Press” to get an accurate reading on the state of the economy which President Trump is claiming the “fake news media” is deliberately crashing. We  assess whether a recession which could doom Trump’s reelection hopes, is on the horizon.