Oh Puhleaze. We need to revisit critical thinking

Remember back in 2017, when the QAnon appeared on the scene with its crazy conspiracy stories about the liberal elites are pedophiles, with the Clintons seeming to be the leader? There was stuff about them having bizarre rituals, drinking some kind of fluid and maybe eating faces? (I don’t know, I don’t remember very well. It was just crazy at the time.)

Trump was supposed to battle those evil elites, most especially the Clintons and Soros, and clean up the government that was just infested with pedophiles, hunting for children.

We may be having a similar type of crazy conspiracy but aimed at the left/liberals/Democrats.

Over the past 2 or 3 days, some videos about Sascha Riley kept showing up in my feed. After a while, I’m like, “What is this?”

But instead of clicking on one of the videos, I decided to visit the internet to see if there are any news percolating out ther about this Sascha. The topic showed up but not under any major newspapers or news authority. That alone is suspicious.

Basic thrust of allegations

I pulled up one of the news articles which turned out to offer the briefest explanation of what the topic what. Very sensational. It named names. And did not give a lot to drill down.

Some barest facts I got:

• It was a male who apparently suffered sex trafficking as a child.
• The maleficent force in his life was…wait for it…Trump/Epstein.
• He was adopted in 1977.
• The years of sexual abuse was between 9 and 13.
• The names mentioned was of course Trump and Epstein plus Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Lindsey Graham, and Clarence Thomas.
• His stepfather or adopted father or some relative was the one who introduced him to the Trump/Epstein network.
• There’s rape, torture, killings, being forced to participate in child pornagraphy and snuff film.
• There is supposedly evidence to support these claims, especially those of William Kyle Riley (I think his father or maybe some kind of relative).
• Lisa Noelle Voldeng wrote about her conversations with Sascha.
• The conversations occurred over the phone and there are 6 audios.
• Apparently the FBI contacted him, maybe after Lisa delicately reached out to some people, and Sascha was then moved out of the country for safety purposes.
• He’s willing to testify publicly and take lie detector tests.

First off, before I go further, this salacious story remains unverified. No FBI, police departments, courts, news organizations have confirmed these details.

I have not listened to the audios which I’m glad. One of the content creators that I often listen to advised not listening to those tapes because the stories were so disturbing that she was having trouble processing it. So, for those who have been traumatized by sex trafficking, it was advised by a couple of creators to NOT listen to the tapes as they were so gross.

Putting on my critical thinking cap

1 Trump/Epstein timeline

I first took the date of adoption of 1977 and made the basic assumption that this adoption was close to the birthdate. From there I got the years 1986 through 1990 as the period when he was trafficked (by his relative/father or Trump/Epstein I don’t know.)

Michael Wolfe, who has written books about Trump, and has interviewed Epstein, has said that Trump first met Epstein “in the late eighties”. So, the 1986 through 1990 time period might work but I’m dubious about 1986 year. It’s kind of weak.

2 Jim Jordan timeline

Next, looking at Jim Jordan, he was born in 1964 so the years 1986 through 1990 would mean he was ages 22 through 26. He was some kind of wrestling champion in 1985/1986. The idea that he would be part of Trump/Epstein network during 1986 to 1990 is highly dubious because Epstein dealt with wealthy people or elite and powerful people. Jim Jordan, while he might have been an elite athlete, I don’t think he was elite enough to be in Epstein’s circles. That’s really dubious.

Jim Jordan is alleged to have known about (not engaged in) sexual abuse going on at a university competitive wrestling program and thus he becomes an inviting target for this trafficking story. It is quite possible naming him was designed to hook those who might dislike Jordan and buy into this Trump/Epstein network story.

3 Andy Biggs timeline

Andy Biggs was born in 1958, so he was between 28 and 32. He suffers from the same problem that Jim Jordan does: he simply was not wealthy enough or elite enough to be in Epstein’s circles. It is highly dubious that he would have met Epstein. He did not reach the state legislature until sometime after 2000.

Biggs is not known to have any suspicious sex activity. But he is widely reviled on the left/Democrat side as being an extreme right ideologue. So, he may be another hook to bring in people to this story.

4 Lindsey Graham timeline

I will say he appears to be the weakest of the lot. I don’t sense any widely noted hate or revulsion on the left for Lindsey. I don’t know of any scandal, especially of the sex kind, in his background. He may be gay but that is not enough to hook the liberals, I don’t think.

Since he was born in 1955, the years 1986 to 1990 would mean he was between 31 and 35. Again, I don’t think he was elite enough to be in Epstein’s circles. As a matter of fact, he was in the military between 1986 to 1989.

Again, highly dubious he would be involved in any kind of trafficking.

5 Clarence Thomas

He was born in 1948 so he would have been between ages 38 and 42 during the supposed network period. He became a Supreme Court Justice around end of 1991. It was during that time that he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill.

It’s possible he could have been part of Epstein’s ring, but I doubt it solely because he would not have been in Epstein’s elite circles, despite Thomas reaching the upper levels in government service.

6 Hooking the liberals

The names of those 5 men would certainly attract the interest of the left/liberals/Democrats since they are widely reviled. It is very plausible that those names could be used as a hook to get the left interested in a false conspiracy if someone on the right wanted to do a gotcha.

7 Who is Lisa Noelle Voldeng?

Lisa Noelle Voldeng is a writer on Substack where the sex trafficking network allegations began. I don’t believe she has ever been a journalist under a mainstream organization so her “reporting” probably doesn’t entail verification of facts. And that’s a problem.

She might be earnest about bringing to light this supposed child predation crime, but why would anyone reach out to her to get their story out? She might be being used.

8 Did he go to the FBI?

So, a few women lodged accusations against Epstein with the FBI (I think) but probably not all due to the need from privacy, ongoing trauma and for historical reasons. I have heard that maybe about 1200 girls were abused, so I think only a small number lodged accusation.

It’s hard to tell when the abuses began for the females, but I found an article from Fox which indicated that the first known victim was a 13-year-old girl in Michigan and incident occurred in 1994, so significantly later than 1990.

If this Sascha Riley guy wanted to let the world know about his trauma or add to the allegations of sexual trafficking by Epstein, why doesn’t he report to the FBI? Why go to some unknown writer – not a journalist known for fact checking?

It is problematic the guy chose to go to an unknown writer rather than go through proper channels for an investigation. He says he is open to publicly testifying or submit to a lie detector. Yeah, anybody can lie, like Trump easily lies about stuff that can be fact checked. He can say he will testify and then not show up. Not a strong statement.

Keep your eyes on the ball

If you want the full story of the Epstein crime, including names of the wealthy men involved, it is best to stay focused on the FBI investigations that began back in 2005. The claims of abuses will have been investigated and verified; the names of the conspirators will be in those documents.

Don’t get side-tracked on a story that comes out of left field and may end up being fake. Don’t waste time tracking down the facts of the Riley story. Focus more on the documents already with the FBI, if you really want the fact to come out.

We don’t want another Pizzagate or QAnon conspiracy. Those were crazy enough.

Just keep your eyes on the ball.

Update

I have some updates since I wrote this and it further impresses on me the need to really put on your critical thinking cap.

I was watching some kind of news update when the host started talking about Sascha Riley with the “journalist”. I put journalist in quotes because she does not work for any news publication; she is another one of the individual writers.

But during that conversation before the Sascha Riley was mentioned, she appeared to be levelheaded and not prone to conspiratorial thinking.

The host said that this said individual journalist will be on a podcast the next day to discuss her findings on the Sascha Riley mystery.

I decided to see whether I could find her on a website and whether she had written up anything on this mystery. And it turns out she did.

According to her writing, I think she was approached by Lisa Noelle Voldeng which is how she came to listen to the tapes. I guess after going through those tapes, she requested some documents from Lisa to try to verify the claims.

So, she is doing true detective work by trying to get some kind of documents or backups to the details in the tapes.

One of the things she tried to do is get a confirmation that Riley adoptive father and mother did exist and were not figments of his imagination. Unfortunately, the names were too common, so she did not get a conclusive hit.

She mentioned that she received an image of his adoption papers but had no way of truly verifying that those adoption papers were real.

Already, we’re not getting strong indications that his stories could be real.

Then the individual “journalist” worked on one of the stories.

Okay, this story was gruesome and I won’t go into details just because it’s gruesome. Needless to say, she gave the barest bones of the story and then tried to think through the logical coherency of that story by doing research about what was possible back then.

She didn’t say that it was not physically possible to have occurred, but the implication was very strong. It is highly dubious that such a scenario occurred. If you want to read her findings, her name is Ellie Leonard.

Meanwhile, if you truly want to help the Epstein survivors, then keep your eyes on the ball. (The latest batch came out, and I still don’t know what to think. They seem highly incredible.)

Again, we really need to lean hard on our critical thinking skills. As a matter of fact, our education system needs to work on that rather than rote memorization. We need digital, AI and media literacy. There are just too many nefarious individuals out there.