I confess to have often linked to Alan Macleod’s pieces a MintPressNews. He seemed to know a lot about South America politics and general media manipulation. It is thus sad to see him take part that practice.
In one of his latest pieces Macleod is smearing Noam Chomsky and his wife for their years-long relation with Jeffrey Epstein.
It is a smear piece and a disgrace.
Macleod falls for the media manipulation or manufactured consent which claims that Epstein was some extraordinary monstrous beast.
Just look at the attributes he uses to describe him. It starts with the headline which calls Epstein a ‘notorious pedophile’.
Merriam-Webster defines pedophilia as
a psychiatric disorder in which an adult has sexual fantasies about or engages in sexual acts with a prepubescent child
Jeffrey Epstein was notoriously involved in sexual activities (not intercourse) with female teenagers. In the known cases the youngest was fourteen at the time of her first encounter with Epstein (but had been told to lie to Epstein about her age before meeting him). There is no suspicion and no credible allegation that Epstein did ever do anything sexual with prepubescent children.
The girls were paid by Epstein to perform massages on him while being bare breasted or naked. While they were doing so he tended to masturbate. These contacts were consensual. No force was applied. The girls received $200 to $300 for each session. That’s a lot of money for an hour long effort for someone at that age.
It is certainly a weird habit for Epstein to have but it had nothing to do with pedophilia.
Macleod writes that Chomsky:
.. expressed his desire, on multiple occasions, to visit Little St. James Island, the location of many of Epstein’s worst sex crimes.
There is no evidence that Epstein, on his island or wherever, ever committed any ‘sex crimes’. Macleod does not and can not even name one.
Macleod goes on:
After 36 survivors – some as young as 14 – came forward, billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 on charges related to child sex crimes. He was, however, given only an 18-month sentence, and served only 13 months in a minimum security prison that he was allowed to leave six days per week.
One wonders why girls who were paid to do consensual massages are suddenly classified as ‘survivors’. There are no allegation that any of them has ever been forced or threatened. These weren’t ‘survivors’ and not even ‘victims’ but service providers. That is exactly why no criminal procedure was initiated over most of those cases.
In 2008 Epstein was found guilty and convicted on two points in the circuit court of Palm Beach County:
[T]he statutes Epstein pleads guilty to violating are “Felony Solicitation of Prostitution” and “Procuring Person Under 18 for Prostitution.”
…
In the plea hearing, Judge Deborah Pucillo asks the Palm Beach prosecutor, Lanna Belohlavek, if the “victims under age 18” are in agreement with the State’s disposition of charges against Epstein. “That victim is not under age 18 any more,” says Belohlavek, but reports she had conveyed her agreement through counsel. Note: only one “victim” — singular — is identified as having been under the age of 18 at the time she was allegedly victimized by Epstein.
The ‘victim’ under 18 was Ashley Davis. She did massages for Epstein for over a year while receiving money and occasional presents. Interviewed by the Palm Beach police department ..:
.. she said on one occasion, she had full-blown intercourse with Epstein. Again, if you’ve been burdened with learning the intricacies of Epstein’s sexual gratification preferences, you’ll know this was relatively rare for him. Epstein would typically service himself during the dubious massage sessions, and even when some sexual activity would be initiated, seldom did it rise to the level of intercourse. But according to Ashley — and for the record, she seemed entirely credible — there came a time when Epstein sought to have intercourse with her, and she obliged. “It was the day before my 18th birthday,” she said. Asked by Recarey if the intercourse had been consensual, she said it was.
Having consensual intercourse with a person a day before that person’s 18th birthday is not a crime in most of the world.
It is certainly not ‘related to child sex crimes’ as Macleod asserts.
Nor is it something that I, or any other sane person, would consider so morally bad that I would have to break contact with persons who did have such sex.
Macleod writes:
Key to Epstein’s crimes becoming known was the testimony of his victim, Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre alleged that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell operated a worldwide sex trafficking operation, where women and girls were kidnapped and forced to have sex with the world’s rich and powerful. This allegedly included royals like Prince Andrew, politicians such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, and academics, like Alan Dershowitz. Epstein reportedly made his fortune by keeping copious evidence of their sex crimes and extorting his clients. Previous Epstein Files releases have strongly indicated that Epstein, like Maxwell’s father and family, worked for Israeli intelligence.
Maclead forgets to mention that the FBI found Virginia Giuffre to be a notorious liar. The FBI did a deep dive into the Epstein case and found little to no evidence of what Giuffre had claimed:
The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people.
But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.
Videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands didn’t depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo.
An examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019.
While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he “lent her” to his rich friends, agents couldn’t confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said.
The FBI memo which above the AP report is based on was uploaded by the Justice Department but later removed. Michael Tracey thankfully provides a copy of it (pdf). The FBI summary and refutation of Virginia Giuffre allegations starts on page 55.
Michael Tracy has also summarized it:
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York found the marquee Epstein “survivor,” Virginia Roberts Giuffre, also known as VRG, to be so lacking in credibility that they were impelled to compose a lengthy December 19, 2019 memo detailing the many preposterous flaws with her many fantastical tales.
— They said they were “unable to corroborate” the central claim of VRG’s purported victimization, which had also given rise to the very essence of Epstein mythology as we now know it: that she was “lent out” for sexual services to prominent men, such as Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz.
— They noted that VRG’s accounts of her own sexual abuse were “internally inconsistent,” and not just over long periods of time, but within a single interview they conducted with her on September 9, 2019.
— They noted that VRG admitted to repeatedly lying about basic facts, destroying evidence, and telling falsehoods to the media.
— They noted that VRG schemed with a tabloid trash journalist, Sharon Churcher of the Daily Mail, to generate “big headlines” by accusing lots of prominent people of heinous child-sex crimes, in hopes that this would entice prospective publishers to buy their forthcoming “memoir” for big bucks.
…
Virginia Roberts Giuffre indeed made big bucks from the case. Media sensationalized her false allegations. Her lawyers then used these to blackmail the accused persons into paying for silencing her.
The ‘key to Epstein’s crimes’ that Macleod presents is all fake.
Throughout his piece Macleod continues to describe Epstein as “pedophile”. He lists the false allegations made by the notorious liar Virginia Giuffre as if they were facts. He insinuates that anyone who had contact with Epstein should be shamed.
Noam Chomsky had a long relation with Epstein. That is not astonishing. Epstein was spreading his money, most which he has scammed from Les Wexner, the billionaire owner of Victoria’s Secrets and other brands. The MIT, were Chomsky had worked through most of his carrier, was one of the grantees. Chomsky and his wife evidently liked, as many others did, to spend time with Epstein. He was a friend. They met and gave gave gifts to each other. Epstein had several houses and apartments which he occasionally offered Chomsky to use. There was nothing nefarious about it.
But by making false claims about the ‘pedophile’ Epstein Maclead is trying to smear Chomsky for it.
Over the years, Epstein became not only Chomsky’s dearest friend, but his closest and most trusted legal and financial advisor. This relationship even damaged the bond with his children, who expressed their alarm at what they called a “dramatic and unexplainable” increase in his spending since his 2014 marriage. “This unexpected outflow is placing your financial future at risk,” they warned.
Chomsky’s first wife had died in 2008. In 2014 he married another women, Valeria. During his career Chomsky had made a considerable amount of money. This had been put into a family trust to benefit him and the grown-up children from his first marriage. After Chomsky had married again he drew from his trust to finance his and his new wife living. The children, seeing their future inheritance dwindling, were alarmed about it.
Chomsky was pissed. He asked Epstein for help and hired Epstein’s accountant to the board of the trust:
Chomsky bitterly condemned his children’s behavior, characterizing them as “three multimillionaires” who cared more about the money than his own quality of life. Valeria, meanwhile, compared them to Nazis. The saga took its toll on Noam, who described it as a “painful cloud that I never would have imagined would darken my late years.”
Macleod claims, without evidence, that it was Chomsky’s relationship with Epstein “that damaged the bond with his children”. And the obvious selfish greed of those children had nothing to do with it?
At the end of his smear piece Macleod writes:
Again, there is no indication in the files that Chomsky was involved in any illegal behavior with Epstein, let alone sex crimes.
So why did he write the piece in the first place?
The Chomsky/Epstein relationship is one of profound contradictions. The academic publicly presents himself as an anti-state anarchist, but in private, collaborates with the very embodiment of the so-called “deep state.” And while Chomsky has been one of Israel’s loudest critics, his close friend was an Israeli agent.
The revelations have seriously weakened Chomsky’s standing in public, and his dying years will no doubt be marred by a renewed questioning of both his moral character and his body of work.
Ultimately, then, with his financial clout and know, Epstein may have been able to save Chomsky some cash and provide him with a few days of luxury. But it has cost Chomsky something far more valuable: his reputation.
I am not aware that Chomsky ever presented himself as “anti-state anarchist”. I always though of him as a rather mild leftist. Chomsky was a member of good standing in the U.S. academic system.
But it may well be that Macleod had delusions about him.
Chomsky’s most famous book is “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media”. Macleod’s second book is “Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent”.
It seems like Macleod is disappointed that the admired ‘anti-state anarchist’ he had followed turned out be a normal human being. He thus uses, and contributes to, the manufactured consent that has been build up about the Jeffrey Epstein case, to smear Chomsky over his totally normal relation.
To do such is indeed a disgrace.