Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we are continuing our retrospective of the major news stories of 2025 from the background briefing archives.

And we will go to an interview from November the 12th of 2025 on House Democrats releasing incriminating emails from Epstein,

expressing surprise that Trump had not been tied to his and Maxwell sex trafficking victims. In one email, Epstein said that Trump had not been tied to his and Maxwell sex trafficking victims.

In one email, Epstein said that Trump spent hours with him and young girls at his house,

going on to describe Trump in a 2018 email to Larry Summers as borderline insane.

In response, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee just released

23,000 pages of documents from the Epstein estate. We discuss how the real smoking gun yet

to be fired is Epstein's ties to Israeli intelligence. Joining us was Nina Burley, a senior editor at the New Republic,

best-selling author, documentary producer, and publisher of the Substack American Freak Show.

A professor at New York University's Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute, she has written

seven books, the latest of which include Golden Handcuffs, The Secret History of Trump's

Women, and she has a new novel, Zero Visibility Possible, and she's a producer of a documentary

series on Apple TV, Epstein's Shadow.

Then we go to another interview from November the 30th of 2025 on the Trump administration's

racist focus on the Afghan shooter of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., one of whom has died, prompting Trump's call to deport all immigrants from the third world.

We investigate the CIA-run kill or capture zero units the shooter worked for in Afghanistan and speak with

someone who has covered the U.S. war in Afghanistan from its outset after 9-11. Robert Young

Pelton, an author, filmmaker, journalist and explorer. He is the publisher of Dangerous

magazine, has had first-hand perspective on the war on terror from direct contact with the world's most

infamous jihadi, rebel and insurgent groups. His books include the world's most dangerous

places, come back alive, three worlds gone mad, licensed to kill, hired guns in the war on terror,

...