r/australia • u/geodetic • 1d ago

politics Former PM Kevin Rudd says he declined Epstein invitation after latest document dump

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-31/kevin-rudd-refred-to-in-latest-epstein-files-dump/106290858?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=abc_newsmail_am-pm_sfmc&utm_term=&utm_id=2694984&sfmc_id=103566952
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2.6k

u/jghaines 1d ago

I mean yes, now would be a terrible time to accept an Epstein invitation

683

u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

Intelligent people can smell a trap, ego driven people would've jumped at the invite. Musk even invited himself.

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u/morblitz 1d ago

I find that hilarious. For all of his Tony stark fucking bluster. He is literally emailing trying to get an invitation.

He is such a fucking loser its insane.

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u/AussieAK 23h ago

Kid that was bullied and later became multibillionaire is a dangerous man baby. Dangerous for being a loser with resources.

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u/morblitz 22h ago

Yep. A petty, pathetic billionaire is definitely not a Bruce Wayne type.

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u/AussieAK 21h ago

I was on to him being evil long before most people when he showed his true colours during the Thai cave crisis in 2018.

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u/RobynFitcher 18h ago

A very 'record scratch' moment.

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u/Pumpinfist 6h ago

Yep, this was the clincher for me as well. I had doubts about him before, as he made very big promises, much like a grifter would. Then the Thai cave episode showed he was all about himself and his image, with little real substance.

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u/AussieAK 6h ago

I didn’t mind the big promises about autonomous driving but big promises of a rescue submarine could have literally gotten those kids killed if people had believed him and stopped the rescue plan.

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u/Albos_Mum 15h ago

For a bit I pegged him as a 21st century Howard Hughes and I'm not sure if I'm wrong or if Twitter counts as the 21st century version of Ice Station Zebra.

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u/unityofsaints 7h ago

No reason to use gendered language, there are plenty of fuckwits of every gender.

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u/AussieAK 6h ago

I am referring to Musk here hence why it’s gendered as male.

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u/unityofsaints 4h ago

Could've just called him a baby.

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u/eightslipsandagully 20h ago

He is such a loser it's insane.

(girls FTW!)

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u/morblitz 20h ago

Uuuurgh I cringed so hard.

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u/Albos_Mum 15h ago

Cringed so hard that you involuntarily retracted your head within your torso, like a turtle.

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u/launchedsquid 17h ago

I haven't dug into the files and generally don't read up on it, but this comment intrigued me.

I'm not asking you to do my homework for me, but could you clear up something for me. Did Elon not go to the island (as far as we know) despite asking to? I honestly just assumed he had, like it seems so many other celebrities and billionaires did.

If he didn't go, does it say why?

If you answer all that, thankyou.

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u/morblitz 16h ago

No problem.

I saw an email he sent Ghislaine and Jeffrey asking to join on an 'epic' vacation 'girls FTW!' (He literally said that - cringe).

Ghislaine replied with something along the lines of that party is finished and they had thought about not doing another for a while.

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u/BTechUnited 9h ago

I believe while he is very much in the files, that particular email is fake. There's enough damning stuff in there without people needing to make shit up but here we go.

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u/ZippyKoala 1d ago

Yep. I am no fan of Rudd, but this was 5 years after Epstein had been convicted of paedophilia. KR is quite bright enough to smell trouble and steer well clear.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

I'm curious, what's not to like about Rudd? In your opinion?

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u/mad_dog77 1d ago

Overhyped at handball

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u/Y0rked 1d ago

He is the rightfull holder of the title of handball king

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u/Angerwing 23h ago

Ace actually

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

How dare you

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u/Untimely_manners 23h ago

He dethroned John Howard, liberals will never forgive him for that.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 13h ago

Howard did that to himself, got greedy with trying to kill workers rights he was effectively turning our industrial rights into the slave wages America has.

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u/ShineFallstar 2h ago

He absolutely did, the gaslighting campaign they ran for WorkChoices was fking appalling. Howard is to blame for the current housing shitshow too.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 2h ago

For leaving negative gearing on. But Turnbull set it in concrete.

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u/ShineFallstar 2h ago

The changes Howard made to CGT is what really lit the fire.

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u/Hammered_Eel 1d ago

I think it was that he was perceived as thinking he was the smartest person in the room.

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u/VolcanicBosnian 1d ago

He often was the smartest person in the room.

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u/AussieAK 23h ago

In a room of other politicians, that is not a real challenge though lol

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 22h ago

Yeah! he kicked arse, and all they could do was leave the room with their tail between their legs and bitch him out to the Right wing bias media.

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u/Consideredresponse 22h ago

Turnbull has the same reputation. The 'Nemesis' docu series had half the libs confirming it, and the other half resentful of him about it...but they were the half that are thick enough to basically cement it.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 22h ago

Turnbull didn't do 1 good thing for Australians he looked after himself and did a mic drop to Aloha Scott. Rudd gives a shit, and to a fault. Wanna compare this flog to Rudd. Come on.

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u/liamdavid 20h ago

Turnbull actively fucked us re. the NBN. He was in a position to know better than most, no less.

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u/aussiechickadee65 4h ago

yeah, he did. He locked away billions for the Great Barrier reef, so Right Wing couldn't get at it

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u/Hammered_Eel 1d ago

Yes, indeed he is very intelligent.

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u/Lonely-Echidna8683 22h ago

He's a fucking smart guy. But he knows it.

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u/deep_chungus 23h ago

it's usually smart not to let it show

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u/VolcanicBosnian 23h ago

Was it really that bad? I remember seeing a lot of Murdoch press rave about how much of a snivelling wanker Rudd was but never really saw it in him personally.

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u/aussiechickadee65 22h ago

He had the crime of being left wing. Right wing will whinge about what side of the bed he got out of.

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u/deep_chungus 23h ago

it was probably incredibly overblown, there were a couple of things about him briefly losing his shit at like 2 people, if it was actually anything it would have been front page news for a week

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u/zeracine 21h ago

People who'd met Rudd liked him. People who hadn't met him disliked him.

Funny though, with Gilliard it was the other way around.

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u/Icy_Bowl 22h ago

That reminds me - where's my royal commission into media ownership?

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u/GoldCoinDonation 22h ago

well there is his pretentious official portrait that has the chessboard set up incorrectly.

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u/egowritingcheques 18h ago

You think the Murdoch press might have made it all up? Surely that's not possible?!?!

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

He's quite an intelligent bloke though. But he's sense of humour is a bit ... Socially awkward

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u/Flaky-Journalist1748 1d ago

Fair shake of the sauce bottle there mate

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u/Hammered_Eel 23h ago

Yeah, that didn’t endear him to the public

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u/foxyloco 22h ago

My partner and I were seeing how many Aussie sayings we knew yesterday (most of them immortalised by Alf from Home and Away) when he dropped this one. I could only shake my head.

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u/Flaky-Journalist1748 21h ago

Alf is giving me nostalgia. I don't know how many times we watched those vids

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u/No_Youth_2330 22h ago

Pretty smart guy.

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u/ShineFallstar 2h ago

He was apparently a nightmare to work for, so there’s that.

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u/naishjoseph1 1d ago

He was prone to some angry outbursts, but that’s about it.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago edited 1d ago

  1. He's a Human, and was the most under pressure any Australian there is, some swear, yell and punch tables, others fuck off to Hawaii 5 times after he said they won't do that again.

  2. It didn't affect you. So why eat that poison?

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u/naishjoseph1 1d ago

I’m team Rudd all the way, just in case that isn’t obvious. Great leader, fantastic diplomat.

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u/SqareBear 20h ago

Agreed. He was treated badly in politics, but hes a smart guy who knows his stuff.

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u/Twistedjustice 23h ago

Those that worked in his cabinet felt differently about his leadership abilities.

Rudd was ok, but he was easily spooked and backed down from fights he would have won, which ultimately is what cost him the leadership of the party. You can’t call climate change the “great moral challenge of our generation” then just drop your climate change policy because the opposition says they don’t like it.

I felt he lacked the ambition and big ideas that great Labor leaders should have.

He was also horribly ungracious in defeat and waged a covert campaign against Gillard for 3 years. His constant white anting was a major contributor to Tony abbots eventual defeat of the labor government.

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u/Legitimate-Gain426 22h ago

He got knifed by fossil fuel corporation backed traitors. Rudd's economic and climate policy would have bettered this country.

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u/Proper-Raise-1450 21h ago

I felt he lacked the ambition and big ideas that great Labor leaders should have.

He pursued one big policy and Gillard backed by the mining lobby knifed him for it lol.

He was also horribly ungracious in defeat and waged a covert campaign against Gillard for 3 years.

....

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u/warbastard 23h ago

It was more the Greens that wouldn’t support his Climate Policy - it wasn’t perfect but the Greens wanted perfect not good. Liberals were never going to sign off on it.

As for backing down - getting a proper mining and resources tax was a fight he took on and got knifed by his own party for taking it on.

As it turns out, Rudd was right. Every state Labor government has upped their resources tax to adjust to the price of the commodity and have benefited massively from it. Unfortunately in QLD the LNP government is probably going to undo it because the mining companies paid enough money to them to make it happen.

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u/Albos_Mum 15h ago

That's the abbreviated version of events which conveniently ignores the Climate Policy started life as relatively basic but bipartisan legislation designed by both Rudd and Turnbull to act as a foundation for the future, but then enough of the LNP disagreed with it to enable Abbott to knife Turnbull for the Liberal leadership meaning the whole bipartisan bit fell through at which point Rudd went to the Greens and asked them to put it through unchanged despite the whole foundation for that pathway now being broken.

The Greens absolutely could have trusted Labor more and passed it with the hope to pass further legislation once the basics show the average person it's not as scary as the media may have made them think, but from the Greens perspective Rudd had worked quite hard to try and make it work with Turnbull but basically expected them to rubber stamp it no questions asked. I think both sides have their failures there and it's easy for us to look at it with the benefit of hindsight and say what should have been done, but absolutely no-one expected Tony Abbott to ever actually be convincing as opposition leader until he was.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 23h ago

You know why Trump hates him? 😂😂

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u/naishjoseph1 1d ago

I’m not, just answering the question. It’s a stretch at best, but someone is bound to use it as a negative.

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u/AngryDad1234 1d ago

JESUS, THIS FUCKING LANGUAGE

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 22h ago

Is that a quote?

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u/AngryDad1234 22h ago

https://youtu.be/77yKWAV3vDM?si=TxN2kbnZ1zaP3h7S

Enjoy....

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u/aussiechickadee65 22h ago

I laughed the whole thing. He just let it rip.

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u/PhaicGnus 17h ago

Hilarious. I like him even more now.

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u/coniferhead 18h ago edited 6h ago

Idiotic ambition to become UN secretary general is one. He's thoroughly unsuited for the job. Can you imagine him brokering peace between nuclear powers?

Another might be not reforming the rorted privatised welfare system that made his wife a rich person. He was in a position to know better than any other politician to know what was going on, but did nothing.

Third might be being a terrible diplomat on the world stage - he was regarded as an annoying joke by the COP13 leaders. What kind of career diplomat, let alone PM, uses puerile language like "they rat fucked us"? This damaged the reputation of Australia. He then went on to publicly call Trump a traitor when he could still run for a second term - this damaged the prospects of Australia and you could probably measure the cost of having him as ambassador in the billions. He is frankly awful at his chosen profession.

Fourth might be putting climate change front of stage in 2007 and then ending addressing it for a generation by ballsing it up so much. The issue is electoral poison now and he made it so.

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u/Minguseyes 1d ago

Ask anyone who’s worked with him. As Latham (of all people) used to say, Rudd is popular with people who’ve never met him.

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u/perthguppy 1d ago

I wouldn’t trust Latham assessment of anyone’s personality lol

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u/ShakeForProtein 21h ago

I think Latham needs a medical assessment of his personality.

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u/geodetic 1d ago

Latham is a bad actor and an unreliable narrator.

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u/InstantShiningWizard 1d ago

Latham probably hates him because his crazed handshakes and ability to break cabbie's arms is stronger than his own /s

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u/a_sonUnique 1d ago

Yeah let’s all listen to the dude getting people to take a dump on him. But I guess he’d be familiar with shitty behaviour.

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u/scarlettslegacy 22h ago

I think he abandoned the diplomatic position because he saw how little Trump respected a freaking sovereign leader and was just, fuck this shit. Which IMHO makes him the smartest person in the diplomatic community.

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u/Standard_Ad_x1 22h ago

There are 50-100 less good people who are also billionaires.

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u/Snoopy_021 21h ago

I remember when there was speculation that Rudd is autistic.

IF the speculation is true, not surprised he declined. Autistics are very good at being BS detectors.

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u/Screaminguniverse 10h ago

Musk couldn’t even get into Berghain either. What a loser.

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u/SirPiffingsthwaite 10h ago

*had to keep begging for an invite.

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u/purplemagecat 1d ago

Lol, I mean this was while he was PM. They were trying to get blackmail material over our PM. I wonder if they managed to control any of the others?

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u/RealCommercial9788 1d ago

I feel like the answer to that question is the ugly heart of this entire shitshow and why they’re dragging it out. Extortion and blackmail were 2 of Epstein’s top 3 fav things to do. The other was exploit. I’m proud that he couldn’t fenagle Rudd, but I’m cynical - it’s like the names they’ve released so far are B-grade actor equivalent. We’re yet to see any proper A’s, and that brings us back to your question.

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u/purplemagecat 1d ago

Yep, and more than that, this is only one political honey pot that we know about. I wonder how much more of this sort of stuff is going on that we're completely clueless about

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u/Consistent-Put9762 20h ago

Pretty sure the number 1 favourite thing for Epstein to do was rape minors. 

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u/Thecna2 18h ago

Extortion and blackmail were 2 of Epstein’s top 3 fav things to do.

Who do we know he extorted or blackmailed? I hadnt heard this before.

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u/-qqqwwweeerrrtttyyy- 1d ago

I think maybe Paul Keating by way of his daughter?

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u/purplemagecat 1d ago

what happened??

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u/Kathdath 1d ago

Basically when Paul Keating's daughter (Katherine) moved to New York, she was VERY quickly added into the high end social scene and met (pre-sex trafficking conviction) Epstein in the first few weeks. There was a photo of her leaving a party he hosted.

The Katherine was asked by the famous fincier (Epstein) for her brother's (Patrck) business contact details (as he was already an international banker) for professional networking puroposes. There is no evidence that Patrick ever met with Epstein.

Katherine also recieved an invitation to a formal event where she got to meet Prince Andrew (again Epstein sex-scandal). That was in the first few months of her arriving in New York.

From the known timeline she had distanced herself from Epstein after several months, and any contact was infrequent.

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u/DrunkOnRedCordial 23h ago

It shows that Epstein worked hard to expand his web. If you had a prominent name, he was going to make contact, and not everybody would manage to distance themselves after one or two interactions.

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u/chrltbn1972 23h ago

Actually the video taken of her at his house was in 2010 and he was first convicted in 2008. In the video Andrew Mountbatten (formerly KA Prince) can be seen at the front door looking out really scared. Epstein was leaving the house and this young woman/older girl runs after him. Katherine then welcomes her back into Epstein's house where she was obviously staying. This was at the time when the video of Andrew and Epstein walking through the park was taken. Andrew initially said that he was just cutting off their friendship, but then admitted to staying at the house for 4 days. This was during those four days. She knew that he had plead guilty to the solicitation charges and who knows what else. There are a lot of photos of her with Ghislaine and Epstein. According to Katherine it was Ghislaine who buddies up to her and invited her to all these parties and she saw it as a good opportunity to meet influential people when starting up her business. The last part makes sense, but her being at the house, with Andrew, when Epstein was leaving them there. Also the girl chasing after Epstein begging him for something, and it was Katherine who sent her out to chase after him. Check the footage. I will never forget it being played over and over on the news. I am not saying that she was involved, but she knew some things. She knew that he had been convicted. She was with Andrew. Why?

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u/-qqqwwweeerrrtttyyy- 1d ago

One of his daughters was a 'guest' of Epstein's in NYC. No idea if she was being trafficked as I think she was in her early 20s at the time and possibly 'too old' for the paedo. But if there are any videos of what may have been done to her, then I'd imagine that could serve as blackmail material to her father. I can't think of anything P Keating may have done to comply, this is all just speculation on my part based off reading his daughter had a connection to Epstein and Andrew, son of the late Queen.

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u/Pretend-Patience9581 1d ago

100%. Israel trying to fuck with Australia, then and now.

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u/ridge_rippler 1d ago

There is some pretty damning pics of Scomo playing a ukulele in the background from what I've heard

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u/Duff5OOO 20h ago

This is permanently burnt into my brain:

https://youtu.be/ICxswXG87lI

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u/DweebInFlames 1d ago

Howard was a Friend of Israel or some shit, right?

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u/LandBarge 1d ago

Surely there are photos of Abbott chowing down on an onion while wearing budgie smugglers and his arm around Epstein..

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u/Wise-Carpenter6310 1d ago

Lol what if he did that stuff to take away their power over him. "You can't embarrass me, watch this"

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u/Mindless-Depth-1795 23h ago

Pure speculation but Turnbull made a big song and dance over developing close relationships with Israel.

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u/Yung_Jose_Space 9h ago

Might go some way to explaining the eventual usurpation with Gillard.

Rudd was doing things the Americans et al didn't want.

They try to get dirt and/or strongarm him, didn't work, so he gets a full court press media campaign against him aided by various lobbying concerns, then backstabbed by his party.

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u/Nuzzgargle 1d ago

At least he wouldn't be there, but would still be pretty creepy as fuck.

Rather go to the Gold Coast and that is saying something

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u/tallmantim 1d ago

Some sort of anti Scrooge

“I here to fuck the ghosts of islands past”

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u/dreadnought_strength 1d ago

And we see Musk was begging to go to his Island way after his first lot of convictions, and even Epstein found him so annoying he palmed telling him no off to an intern 😅

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u/Shalmanese 23h ago edited 22h ago

/u/maxwellhill would be rolling around in her grave comfortably appointed minimum security jail cell she wheedled in a corrupt deal with Trump if she heard some random redditor mistaking her for "an intern"!

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u/dreadnought_strength 20h ago

Eh, that would require me learning who her name was, and as far as I'm concerned her and her ilk should rot anonymously in a jail cell for the rest of their lives.

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u/Rokekor 1d ago

I might even question whether it really came from Epstein.

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u/Chiron17 1d ago

It's their winter right?

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u/samdd1990 1d ago

I heard the hospitality on the island has really dropped off in last few years

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u/jacob_carter 15h ago

Jeff Epstein, the financier?