Part 60: Scandalism from Los Angeles to the Caribbean – Dirty Secrets of Hunter Biden and Jeffrey Epstein
Published January 4, 2024
Photo of the December Full Cold Moon rising over Mount Waterman by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).
By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
The funny thing about really good scandals is that they revolve around a whole lot of evidence that in turn refers back like a loop to other scandals. Commonly defined and used it means the “focusing of attention on and publicizing information about scandals.” Obviously Hunter Biden and Jeffrey Epstein aren’t in the same category of conduct, but as far as media coverage, they’re part of the revolving door of scandalism that has plagued American politics since, well, basically after 1776.
The idea that dirt and secrets are part of the political trade is nothing new. As the Los Angeles Times reminded me this morning in their full length story on Hunter Biden and his ally Kevin Morris, there’s a lot that can be said about this art of intrigue in a place like LA! And so Matt Hamilton and Stacy Perman do, and out of the whole piece it’s this gem that caught my eye: “Los Angeles is a city swarming with Democratic boldfaced names eager to shell out millions in support of President Biden. But many here are loath to attach themselves to his only living son” for obvious reasons.
Wait is Matt Hamilton talking about Rick Caruso in a Hunter Biden exposé? What’s the deal? Hamilton who won a Pulitzer for his work investigating USC over disgraced USC gynecologist George Tyndall and has covered Caruso himself. The boldfaced billionaire so well cut that there’s a parody account for him on X, formerly known as Twitter, that’s entitled “Rick Caruso's Big Bronze Statue,” the newfound, recently converted from Republican to Independent to Democrat right before the election Romanesque magnate was seriously just courting President Joe Biden himself at a star-studded fundraiser on December 8th in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of West Los Angeles. People seem surprised that I even write like this about Caruso!
News flash: Rick Caruso is so disturbed by what he’s seen from Donald Trump finally after years of waffling over it that he wrote on X afterwards: “We can't afford the chaos of Trump and his disdain for the fundamental principles of our democracy. We need a stable leader who has the experience to guide America through the complications of our world. President Biden is that leader.” So it was that I found the reference amusing in an otherwise focused longform on the President’s only living soon as a way to contextualize just why a Hunter Biden might find refuge out West.
“The Hollywood lawyer funding Hunter Biden’s defense” alternately titled “Who would lend millions to Hunter Biden? Meet the Hollywood lawyer who has” estimated that attorney Morris has ostensibly loaned “$4.9 million through 2022, with more than $1.2 million coming in 2020 for housing, legal fees, car payments and payments to advisors.” The younger Biden has been targeted by multiple Federal investigations over his business relationships, tax payments, drug usage and even gun ownership as part of a checkered past. For what it’s worth, Hunter Biden is doing better lately.
Caruso could have surely afforded the $4.9 million that Morris sprung out of his many billions in wealth and the disposable $104 plus million he spent last November trying to become Mayor of Los Angeles, a long held dream. If the asking price for leverage over the First Family is such a measly amount as one Republican operative quoted by the Los Angeles Times suggests, then what’s the point of a presidential election much less a local race? The Times makes sure to note that both Biden and Morris are Catholic: “Both hailed from tightknit Irish Catholic families in towns southwest of Philadelphia” noting that they attended rival high schools and importantly “Both were lawyers living in Los Angeles who in middle age had turned to creating art.”
Wonderful! Just wonderful, I can see the Hunter Biden pieces going up in the planned renovations for The Commons at Calabasas which promises to bring “24,000 square feet of mixed-use development, including 119 apartments, new buildings, new stores and restaurants.” I’m sure there will be plenty of space available on the sparkling white walls of the new center. Now mixing politics, Catholicism and a little congeniality is nothing new in American history, just consider the Kennedy family for a reference on how people focus in on the things that matter! The rush to judgment is a human feature, but only when scandals strike at our core identity do they shock us versus providing fodder for amusement and further speculation.
Most importantly scandals, so while I understand why the Republicans have so deeply committed themselves to scandalizing Hunter Biden, his path to sobriety in Malibu is nothing new in the annals of Los Angeles. Nor is it even a secret it seems, try as the Los Angeles Times may to speculate on Morris’s motivations for helping Biden as something less than wholesome. Morris who is “California sober” as they write was recently photographed smoking a bong on the balcony of his home in Pacific Palisades, and presumably the younger Biden is likely of similar mind and company, and is it really anyone’s business?
Readers of the scandalous history of the University of Southern California may recall that disgraced USC Keck School of Medicine Dean Carmen Puliafito would not only pay for his mistress Sarah Warren’s rehab in Malibu, but he would in turn undermine her sobriety by driving out to her with drugs, as painfully written by Los Angeles Times journalist Paul Pringle in his much debated 2002 book “Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels,” which told that story as well as the lead into the George Tyndall gynecologist sexual abuse scandal.
The tension of Pringle’s book perhaps was in the end whether you believed Puliafito was not only of a corrupted mind, but actually dangerous, with the much speculated on death of infant Boaz Yoder from possible methamphetamine exposure as a reminder of the lethality of hard drugs. Yes, Hunter Biden smoked crack, but lots of people do such drugs, so what point is there in going after him so aggressively as the Department of Justice and IRS has other than to prove what we already knew? People with serious drug problems do incredibly stupid things.
Now Rick Caruso isn’t on the purported list of associates of disgraced major Democratic donor, and Epstein has no known connections to Los Angeles, but when perhaps the most damaging scandal for Caruso, the DOJ’s Operation Varsity Blues struck the thing most people remember is that the daughter of actress Lori Laughlin was at the time socializing with Caruso’s children on his yacht Invictus in the Bahamas. People often remark that Tyndall, whose death has now been certified in court according to ABC7 Los Angeles following his October 4, 2023 death awaiting trial is comparable to Jeffrey Epstein.
Attorney Gloria Allred made such a comparison noting the lack of justice for the victims of Tyndall after the death. To the extent that Epstein’s operation including principally his consort Ghislaine Maxwell, which involved a private jets and an island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, it is a little bit like USC’s response to Tyndall even if they sexual abuse that their name connotes occurred very differently in terms of intent and the numbers victimized. Epstein is widely regarded as both a highly organized criminal and pervert, and died allegedly by suicide on August 9, 2019 while awaiting trial in New York City. Tyndall maintained his innocence until his death and a pervert, but it’s the organization of USC in allegedly executing a successful cover-up that pre-occupies the room for speculation in scandalism.
You can hear it on the leaked LA Fed Tapes that rocked Los Angeles last year in the biggest acoustic October Surprise in local history. The Tapes are a form of scandalism not unlike the unsealed court documents from the defamation case of Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, they promise in their contents more scandals on top of the scandal, and through their publication draw additional attention to the matter. Former LA City Council President describes how Rick Caruso “sent a helicopter to get the kid off the yacht in the Bahamas,” before muttering “Shit, what a life, huh?”
Huh is right? If you’re among the people wondering if the news about Bill Clinton and Donald Trump is really true, just as Rick Caruso was having kids plucked off yachts in the Bahamas were they worrying about their widely speculated on relationships with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, much like Prince Andrew of the British Royal Family who its widely rumored was much more active in the disgusting duo’s sex trafficking ring. Now Caruso is no sex trafficker, but he did promise the entire USC Community in 2018 a thorough investigation into Tyndall in writing to be completed by international law firm O’Melveny and Myers.
This report remains a secret. USC under Caruso and now his successor Suzanne Nora Johnston have first disputed that it exists in any major form beyond a brief presentation to the USC Board of Trustees, and now with no criminal trial on the way it seems assured that it won’t become a piece of evidence in the public record. What did USC know and when did they know it? The U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights investigation ended inconclusively with finger pointing at former USC General Counsel Carol Mauch Amir for allegedly interfering with an internal investigation into Tyndall to protect the legal interest of USC.
Last October I joined with victims of Tyndall, fellow alumni of USC and others to once again demand the release of this report and all of the promised changes to protect students in the future. Needless to say, apparently our voices weren’t loud enough, nor was inquiry from student operated USC Annenberg Media sufficient to secure a response. This even as we have learned from Rick Caruso’s own admission in a leaked deposition from the Tyndall civil case that he spoke with an unknown LAPD captain about the case after receiving a call direct to his cellphone about the matter.
Caruso says he directed the Captain to Mauch Amir’s office. The LAPD refuses to comment or provide any public records in relation to the admission by the former president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Days later we would learn from a completed investigation into CBS formerly lead by Les Moonves that there was in fact a captain orchestrating a cover-up of sexual assault on behalf of Moonves, his name: Cory Palka. The NY AG’s investigation recovered text messages between Palka and Ian Metrose, a former official at the television enterprise attempting to systematically obstruct and undermine the sexual assault complaint of Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore at the time issued a statement condemning Palka. Still more than year after an Internal Affairs investigation was announced there has been no outcome. People who know their Hollywood will recognize Palka’s name in relation to actress Leah Remini who’s missing person complaint in regards to Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige was allegedly also mishandled. The LAPD has denied Remini’s claims in public statements just as they denied the Los Angeles Times report before Christmas that Moore himself engage in political influence.
According to the December 20, 2023 report by Libor Jany and Richard Winton of the Los Angeles Times, and for which Hamilton was a contributor, “Two detectives in the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division say they were ordered to investigate Mayor Karen Bass shortly after her election at the behest of Chief Michel Moore, allegations the chief has strongly denied.” LAPD denied this, calling the story “patently false” and describing the claims as “fictitious.” The LA Times has not responded, nor have they published additional stories on the allegations to date.
The Times report notes that according to the Office of Inspector General complaints in the Times possession, the IA investigation into Palka centered not around the sexual abuse cover-up allegation, but rather an internship with CBS for his daughter. This despite a prior report last February, that Federal prosecutors were now involved with the matter, which previously was on the radar of California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Similarly, Bonta has promised an investigation into whether the discussion heard about redistricting on the LA Fed Tapes by Martinez, Councilman Kevin de León, former Councilman Gil Cedillo and Ron Herrera, the former President of the AFL-CIO’s branch in LA.
The Times previously reported that the LAPD’s case against the alleged leakers Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez had “shortcomings” and that it was almost entirely reliant on unnamed private investigation by the LA Fed. Scandalism runs on evidence, when it’s there, everyone talks about it because it’s as good as it seems. Pictures of Hunter Biden smoking crack on an abandoned laptop, depositions from victims discussing just who ran in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit, and recordings of elected officials in Los Angeles secretly captured and packaged for release just over a month before an election.
Without the evidence, your scandal is snuffed. It’s not what you can say, it’s what you can prove. People who don’t like what I have to write will often say that I’m no journalist, and nothing I write is news, it’s just an opinion. I have to agree, in our world of the Internet turned into social media phone obsession, there’s an app stew just like there’s a scandal stew. Feeding the beast, our ceaseless appetite for the next scandalous news takes work, and that’s where “fixers” people who can both procure and manipulate evidence come into play like a character straight out of Ray Donovan, which featured Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight doing their best Irish Catholic impressions.
Perhaps the best known fixer is Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney or some sort, but you don’t have to be an attorney to be a fixer, and if there’s one trait a good fixer masters its public relations. The art of managing perception, with the difference being that a fixer is perceived as using both legal and illegal means. One time someone told me I was USC’s “fixer” and while this wasn’t quite the truth, there’s nothing quite like dirt and secrets. Everyone has them, and while I in fact have a Hollywood “fixer” per say in my own family, it’s not what you think, and you should mind your own business!
I’m sure at this hour there may be a number of people whose names surface as part of the new document releases, but mere association by itself is no cause for conviction. Even as surely a number of those people shop for their own fixers, it’s important to remember that from the names we do learn in the new Epstein files, there are a number of Jane Does who simply wish to move on with their lives and not be part of the frenzy. That Virginia Giuffre was able to effectively take down Epstein and Maxwell with her lawsuit says a lot about the power of personal testimony.
Even as Prince Andrew denied that the notorious picture of him with her and Maxwell was real. The truth was becoming more awkward and complicated in the world of scandalism, such that basically now no one believes him. The power of scandals in the ability to shape our beliefs about events even absent the actual evidence being presented sometimes, much less that which is suggestive if unproven. Did Bill Clinton and Donald Trump get down and dirty on Epstein’s island? I have no proof, but given the pasts of both men you have to wonder. As Epstein once claimed to his brother Mark, “If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the election.’ That’s what Jeffrey told me in 2016.”
Los Angeles with Hollywood as its shining jewel is a bit of a Company Town as it’s termed. That Hunter Biden has turned to an ally in the world of Hollywood for salvation shouldn’t surprise us, any more than the idea that there just might be some serious corruption issues in the LAPD leadership, or that Jeffrey Epstein died in the strangest of circumstances. Many people after Tyndall’s death went well he must have been Epstein’d too and all that I can say is I certainly hope not! That doesn’t mean some dirty things don’t happen in this town, because if you know what I know about how business operate, you’ll keep your mouth closed about its dirty secrets.
Link: Who would lend millions to Hunter Biden? Meet the Hollywood lawyer who has
Link: Detectives claim LAPD chief sought investigation of Mayor Bass over USC scholarship
Link: Here is Rick Caruso’s Entire Deposition About the USC George Tyndall Scandal
Link: George Tyndall, former USC gynecologist accused of sexual abuse, died of natural causes, county says
Link: Demand Justice for the Victims of George Tyndall and Change at USC
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Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.
