The public response to the words and testimony from Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre’s book “Nobody’s Girl is a powerful war cry vs. the monstrous, entitled rich.
(The Pedophile formerly known as Prince Andrew (l), puts his arm around the waist of Jenna Roberts Giuffre (center), while Ghislaine Maxwell, who also sexually abused Gioffre, looks on, in a photograph taken on Giuffre’s camera by Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein & Maxwell—who both raped Giuffre— sexually trafficked the young Giuffre to Prince Andrew and hundreds of other “clients.” (From the book “Nobody’s Girl.)
My mind has been completely blown.
Earlier this week, I wrote an article that contained many direct quotes from Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s explosive book, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice.”
My decision to pack the piece full of direct quotes from the Giuffre book was purposeful: I wanted people who had not yet read “Nobody’s Girl” to get raw exposure to the sexual abuse, rape and sexual trafficking this young girl experienced at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their accomplices.
My piece was entitled “How Cute! She still wears little girl’s panties,’ Epstein laughed to Maxwell, as they stripped Jenna.” I intentionally used a photo of Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre at 16 years of age, (which was published in her book) to increase public interest.
I am still reeling from what happened next, and has been happening since I posted my piece:
THOUSANDS of people have read it; hundreds of readers have “restacked” it all across social media; dozens of readers have left comments, and I’ve spent hours responding to all those comments. In my decades of writing and in public service, I have never encountered anything which people have responded to so viscerally.
I thought I was aware of the power of the “Epstein Files” issue, but until I posted the exact words of Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre, I had no idea of the depth, breadth and intensity of the emotions and feelings uncorked by her actual words and walloping witness of her constant physical and emotional torture by Epstein, Maxwell, and a line-up of wealthy & influential men who brutalized her, and thought they could get away with it.
I’ll be re-publishing more from “Nobody’s Girl” because the story must be told and told and told again. Revelations printed in the book are monstrous crimes vs. humanity and must be shared as far and wide as possible. This is not a snapshot of a horror story of child abuse, child sex abuse, sex trafficking, sex abuse, bribery, extortion, money laundering, and the perversion of our courts, US Attorney’s Offices, the FBI, the DOJ and our justice system to cover up crimes of the arrogant, wealthy, criminal Epstein class. It is, and has been, a never-ending nightmare for the the past several decades.
Despite Epstein’s death by suicide or murder in prison; despite the imprisonment of Ghislaine Maxwell for rape, sex abuse and child sex trafficking; despite the suicide in a French Prison of Jenna’s repeat rapist Jean-Luc Brunel the modeling agency big shot who procured thousands of underage girls for Epstein to rape; and despite, the eventual suicide of Virginia Roberts Giuffre who could not, in the end, escape the unspeakable trauma inflicted upon her, THIS IS A STORY WHICH IS STILL HAPPENING.
Maxwell is still lying about and denying her heinous crimes, and cruelly continuing the criminal cover-up with her banal blackmail of Donald Trump for a pardon or clemency.
Thousands of sex tapes meticulously recorded by Epstein over the years to use as leverage over his wealthy accomplices and friends having sex with underage girls are in the possession of the FBI, and could rip this case wide open if they are ever released.
And, despite a federal law passed overwhelmingly by Congress requiring the complete Epstein files to be released, millions of pages of Epstein File materials containing information about public officials, foreign leaders, corporate executives, banks, international businesses, governments and global intelligence agencies are being dangerously & illegally redacted–covering up the names of pedophiles and their enablers, hiding such monsters from all Americans.
Each of us must make certain that nothing remains hidden from us that has anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein and his filthy-rich friends who still believe they operate above-the-law, and without consequences for their actions.
(Virginia “Jenna” Roberts (Giuffre) as a teenager, around the time she met Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell. From: Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse & Fighting for Justice, by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 2025, Knopf, A Division of Penquin Random House, NY)
I am a non-violent human being, but would castrate any man who sexually abused, raped, or sexually trafficked my daughter or one of my granddaughters. I would cut off every single one of the fingers off anyone who used any single one of those fingers to abuse my child or grandchild. I know I am fully capable of that kind of justice.
If, after reading these excerpts from the book Nobody’s Girl, by Virginia Roberts Giuffre—about the barbarism and brutality Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and their wealthy collaborators committed against the hundreds of child sex abuse victims they raped and sex trafficked to the world’s elite—you don’t believe you are capable of the same kind of response to such horror inflicted upon children, talk to me.
Here are the excerpts from the book, Nobody’s Girl, in the words of Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre, who committed suicide in April, 2025:
“Epstein liked to share with me what he insisted were ‘scientific’ justification for his yearnings for young girls. For example, he would only have sex with girls who had started menstruating . Why? So that he could assert that—they were biologically able to bear children—they were ‘of age.’ (p. 109)
“No matter how young a girl looked, or how sexually inexperienced she was, if she had her period, he felt he could defend his abuse of her as part of the natural order of things.” (p. 109)
“He (Epstein) took a certain glee in what he saw as a loophole in society’s moral code, and no one could convince him sex with minors was wrong…” (p. 109)
“Epstein asked me questions: ‘Do you have siblings? Two brothers, I said. ‘Where do you go to high school? I told him I quit after 9th grade, but I was only 16—I hoped to get my GED. “Do you take birth control? Epstein asked. (p. 71)
“Maxwell peeling off her clothes a mischievous look on her face; Maxwell behind me, unzipping my skirt and pulling my Mar-A-Lago polo shirt over my head; Epstein & Maxwell laughing at my underwear, which were dotted with tiny hearts. ‘How cute—she still wears little girl’s panties,” Epstein said. (p.72)
“Go down on him,” Maxwell said…Eventually, Maxwell ordered me to straddle Epstein so he could penetrate me.” (p. 73)
“Yes, I was sexually abused. My body was used in ways that did enormous damage to me. But the worst things Epstein & Maxwell did to me weren’t physical, but psychological…From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.” (p. 75)
“Abusing me in a therapeutic setting jibed with how Epstein though about sex. He would soon explain that he needed to climax at least three times a day. It was a biological imperative, he said, like breathing or eating. For him, sex wasn’t connected to intimacy or love. It was purely a physical release. Epstein viewed sex almost as a procedure—one that he preferred to be performed by nubile young girls, like me.” (p. 79)
“I would come to see Epstein & Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole.” (p. 87)
“A germaphobe, Epstein was meticulous about what he touched. He mostly refused to shake hands, and he required his sheets be changed every other day. And yet, he relentlessly sought sexual contact with young girls who were strangers to him—some who lived rough, terrible lives outside his gated compound—and he never wore a condom…Epstein believed he didn’t have to follow the rules that everyone else did.” (p. 88)
“Epstein often preferred girls with little to no sexual experience. Many victims often described how he seemed to enjoy watching inexperienced girls suffer the discomfort of being introduced to sex by him, an older stranger.” (pps. 95-96)
“One thing that was happening, and with increasing regularity, was that I was being sexually trafficked by Epstein & Maxwell…I came to be trafficked to a multitude of powerful men—candidates for Governor, Senators, billionaires…(pp. 110-111);
“French modeling Agent Jean-Luc Brunel raped me repeatedly in NY and on Epstein Island. Brunel ran MC2, a modeling agency Epstein invested in. Epstein liked to boast that he’d had sex with more than 1000 girls supplied by Brunel. On one occasion Epstein told me, Brunel sent him three French 12-year olds—I think they were triplets—for his birthday.” (p. 112)
“On another occasion, Brunel had a group of “talent” scouts fly to Brazil in Epstein’s jet to recruit underaged girls off the soccer field there. They were delivered to Epstein for his use and then returned to Brazil.” (p. 112)
“Just like Cinderella, I was going to meet a handsome prince. Maxwell’s old friend, Prince Andrew, would be dining with us. When Prince Andrew arrived at the townhouse that evening, Maxwell was more coquettish than usual. ‘Guess Jenna’s age,’ she urged the Prince after she introduced me. The Duke of York, who was then 41, guessed correctly: 17. ‘My daughters are just a few years younger than you..” (p. 122) EDITORS NOTE: (the famous photo circulating on social media of Prince Andrew with his arm around Jenna’s waist, with Ghislaine Maxwell standing in the doorway and smiling, was snapped on Jenna’s camera by Jeffrey Epstein.)
“When we get home, you are to do for him (the Prince) what you do for Jeffrey,” Maxwell said. Maxwell told me the following morning, ‘You did well. The Prince had fun.’ Soon, Epstein would give me $15,000 for servicing the man the tabloids called “Randy Andy”—a lot of money. I hadn’t wanted to have sex with the Prince, but felt I had to.” (pp. 123/4)
“Epstein trafficked me to a man who raped me more savagely than anyone had before. We were on Epstein Island when I was ordered to take this man to a cabana—a well-known Prime Minister, as I described him in legal filings. He repeatedly choked me until I lost consciousness and took pleasure in seeing me fear for my life. Horrifically, the Prime Minister laughed when he hurt me…I emerged from the cabana bleeding from my mouth, vagina and anus. (p. 139)
“Afterward, I tearfully begged Epstein not to send me back to the Prime Minister. I got down on my knees and pleaded with him. I don’t know if Epstein feared the man or if he owed him a favor, but he wouldn’t make any promises, saying coldly of the politician’s brutality “You’ll get that sometimes.” (p. 140)
“Today i know that Epstein liked to tell friends that women were merely ‘a life-support system for a vagina.’”
“I know that Epstein made the following chilling distinction: ‘I’m not a sexual predator; I’m an offender. It’s the difference between a murderer, and a person who steals a bagel.’”
“At that point, I hit bottom. I now knew I wouldn’t survive. I saw only two possible options: either someone Epstein trafficked me to would kill me, or I would take my own life.” (p. 140)
“About 8 weeks or so after my encounter with the Prime Minister, Epstein informed me, as he often did, that he wanted me to service an important friend on one of his jets. Epstein told me what time to be at the private airport in Palm Beach and said I’d only be up in the air for an hour…I had no idea who I was meeting that day as I climbed the stairs that led to the plane. Then I ducked my head and stepped inside. ‘Hello again,’ said the Prime Minister, the man I feared more than any other. The blood rushed to my head and I could barely breathe. Will he kill me this time?…I thought I might faint. For the next hour, I was on high alert, braced for a fatal blow. As it turned out, this second encounter with the Prime Minister was more typical of those I’d had with other men—his only goal was ejaculation…” (p. 141).
When my almost-17 year old granddaughter talks, I always listen and pay close attention to what she is saying. She knows exactly what’s going on and is fearless in expressing it.
Academically brilliant, with an exceptional emotional intelligence, and her finger exquisitely on the pulse of music, social media and the cultural zeitgeist, my granddaughter is my guru and my muse.
At Sunday night dinner, this week, she told us how worried she was that her high school yearbook photos—she graduates next year—could be used by sexual predators to pick out potential targets.
“Our Yearbook company is Lifetouch,” she told us, “and it’s all over social media that the billionaire who owned it, may have given yearbook photos to Epstein to recruit young girls for sex.”
“Whoa,” I said, “are you sure about this? I’ve been following the Epstein Files story pretty closely and I don’t know about this.”
“Yes, Grampy,” she said. “This Leon Black guy they just identified as being close to Epstein owned Lifetouch, which produces all our yearbooks.”
Quickly, I took out my I-phone and Googled Lifetouch, and Leon Black, to find out what I could. I discovered that Leon Black, had, indeed been identified as one of Epstein’s biggest cronies, having shelled out some $158 million to the Grotesque Sex Trafficker over a five-year span, after Epstein had already been convicted in Florida of being a pedophile and a sex trafficker.
I learned that Leon Black, the former Chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC who had purchased Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” for $120 million, was the long-time CEO of Apollo Global Management, a multi-billion dollar investment fund, which purchased Lifetouch’s parent company Shutterfly one month after Epstein’s death in 2019.
While Black was all over the Epstein files, and Shutterflywas mentioned, Lifetouch wasnot. I read the USA Today story of February 13 to my granddaughter, which spelled all of this out.
When I mentioned Shutterfly, she told us that the name Shutterfly was printed on every student portrait photo produced in her school. I told her how the timing of Apollo’s purchase of Shutterfly, which owns Lifetouch, made it impossible for her photos, or the photos of her classmates or others were done by Lifetouch, to be passed on to Epstein.
While USA Today reported that Leon Black met continuously with Jeffrey Epstein from 2010 (the year after Epstein’s sex crime conviction) into 2017, when Trump was first elected, Apollo Global Management would not buy Shutterfly/Lifetouch for another two years, after Epstein was already dead.
To calm my granddaughter’s fears, I read to her the official statement which came out from Lifetouch CEO Kevin Murphy, because the company was immediately experiencing pushback from local school districts across the country. Students and their parents (and grandparents) were justifiably upset that the privacy rights of their children may have been violated:
“When Lifetouch photographers take your student’s picture, that image is safeguarded for families and schools, only, with no exceptions. Lifetouch does not – and has never provided – images to any third party.
“Lifetouch images are shared only for the purposes of school records and to allow parents or guardians to purchase them. Additionally, as part of our decades long relationship with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Lifetouch prints SmileSafe cards free of charge for each student we photograph that families can use with law enforcement if a child goes missing.
“Lifetouch follows all applicable federal, state, and local data privacy laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). In fact, Lifetouch was the first school photography company to sign a voluntary and enforceable privacy pledge—reaffirming our deep commitment to protecting school communities.
Funds managed by subsidiaries of Apollo Global Management are investors in Shutterfly, the parent company of Lifetouch. Neither Apollo nor its funds are involved in the day-to-day operations of Lifetouch and therefore no one employed by Apollo has ever had access to any student images.
Lifetouch is not named in the Epstein files. The documents contain no allegations that Lifetouch itself was involved in, or that student photos were used in, any illicit activities.”
It was a remarkable statement for an American company to make in 2026—”Lifetouch is not named in the Epstein files.” The CEO of Lifetouch was compelled to issue that statement because his company’s owners— Apollo Global Management—and its immediate parent company Shutterfly were mentioned throughout the Epstein files, along with the name of Apollo’s longtime billionaire CEO, Leon Black.
In the USA Today article entitled, ”What we know about Lifetouch, school photos and the Epstein Files” reporter Melina Khan wrote that:
“Black is also mentioned in an email thread between FBI employees. The email says someone “stated Epstein told her to give Black a massage while Black was naked and that someone stated another female gave Black a massage and he made her perform oral sex.”
That kind of information, along with reports in the Financial Review that Epstein, “the convicted sex offender had helped Leon Black manage an angry mistress and IRS questions about gifts showered upon another woman,” wasn’t very comforting to school districts still under contract with Lifetouch for Yearbook services this year.
USA Today reported that:
“Prescott Valley Charter School in Arizona announced on Feb. 10 that it was canceling upcoming picture days “out of an abundance of caution,” citing “recent media coverage and online discussion related to the photography company Lifetouch.”
“While we do not have any information indicating a direct impact on our school or our students, our highest responsibility is always the safety, security, and trust of our families,” the school said.
In Salinas, California, Mónica Anzo, the superintendent of Alisal Union School District, addressed unfounded rumors that Lifetouch “has shared photos with unauthorized third parties without consent, for nefarious purposes” in a letter to parents on Feb. 11.
“The safety and security of our children is the District’s most important concern, and we want to reassure you we verify our third party vendors adhere to the same safety standards,” said Anzo, who also shared a copy of Lifetouch’s statement.”
To Lifetouch’s credit, the 80-year old company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, addressed the “Epstein Files,” issue directly; something which Shutterfly, parent company of Lifetouch, failed to do.
Still, the statement exonerating Lifetouch didn’t satisfy one very smart almost 17-year old.
“Why do billionaires think they can get away with everything?” my granddaughter asked. “It’s always about money, isn’t it?”
“ They think they are above all the rules,” I said, “That’s why we have to keep insisting on the truth.”
I knew that I had not completely convinced her that justice would be forthcoming, especially since I’ve struggled with convincing myself. I want to believe it for her sake, and for all her friends and classmates whose lives are far more challenging than ours were, when I was 17, in 1966.
The great Nevada Independent writer John Smith, in a February 15, 2026, column entitled “As Epstein sleaze spreads, the specter of former Apollo CEO Leon Black reappears,” described it this way:
“Like the overflowing sewer that it is, the ooze boiling up from the vast investigative files of the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein continues to splash on the billionaire class and the political elite.”
It’s hard to feel sorry for the school Yearbook company Lifetouch, and how it’s reputation is getting torched because it’s parent company, Shutterfly, fell into the dark orbit of Apollo Global Management and Leon Black, Jeffrey Epstein’s biggest source of money in the final years of his life.
It’s hard to feel anything for them, since money is the company’s first thought, and mine is building a world of love and honesty, compassion, trust and beauty for a granddaughter who has every right to expect all of that, and much, much more.
Healdsburg, California has become a haven for outstanding food, wine, art and community, and our new TRUE WEST Film Center is serving up a feast of “Big Night” on the Big Screen for Valentine’s Day.
(Stanley Tucci’s transformative film, “Big Night,” written & produced 30 years ago, was an ode to life, love, food and art, and his first screenplay. It won the prestigious Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, launched Tucci’s incredibly diverse acting career, and helped change stereotypical roles being written for Italian-Americans in movies. Pictured with Tucci above are (l. ot r.), Minnie Driver, Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, and Isabella Rossellini.) Promotional photo from Rysher Entertainment.)
Thirty years ago this month, a little film entitled “Big Night,” with a screenplay written by two young Italian guys from New York, Stanley Tucci and his cousin Joe Tropiano, swept the Sundance Film Festival off its feet by winning the career-making Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting.
This coming Valentine’s Day, Healdsburg’s phenomenal new, 3-screening room cinema arts center, TRUE WEST, (https://truewestfilmcenter.org) is bringing “Big Night” to the foodie haven of Healdsburg, for two Saturday night showings, at 5 and 8 pm. It’s perfectly fitting, because in this small cosmopolitan community which boasts world class chefs like Charlie Palmer and Dustin Valette, and first-rate restaurants such as Single Thread, Dry Creek Kitchen, 106 Mathieson, Folia at Appellation and Le Montage. every night is a big night for culinary delights.
“Big Night” is much more than a moving story about two Italian immigrant brothers struggling to make it on the Jersey Shore in the 1950’s with a small Italian restaurant called “Paradise.” It’s much more than a tale of two talented dreamers, for whom English was not a first language, pursuing their futures in the “land of fucking opportunity,” as their unsentimental competitor, played by the actor Ian Holm, crudely put things.
It’s a love song to food, and art, and longing, and love, directed by Tucci’s life-long friend and fellow actor Campbell Scott (the son of actors George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst), and punctuated by delirious dancing, drinking, eating and the irresistible music of Louis Prima and the pull of a party. From the opening word spoken by Primo (Tony Shalhoub) in Italian, “taste” (which, 25 years later became the name of Tucci’s New York Times best-selling memoir) to the closing, intimate kitchen scene between the two brothers, “Big Night” is an emotional, visual and artistic feast. And, as an added treat, the nourishment joy and tears lavished upon the audience by the screenplay, the film and the entire experience , gives us all front-row seats to Stanley Tucci’s yet-to-take-off career.
Before Stanley Tucci played Caesar Flickerman in The Hunger Games movies; Nigel Kipling in Devil Wears Prada (with a sequel coming this May); Paul Childs, the husband of Julia Childs, in Julie and Julia; or Adolf Eichmann in his Golden Globe winning performance of the HBO film, Conspiracy; and before his string of best-selling cookbooks, or his Emmy winning CNN Food Travel Documentary Series “Searching for Italy,” Tucci found himself stuck in an ethnic acting rut.
I first talked to Tucci about his being type-cast in “mobster” roles, when I interviewed him the year Big Night came out, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan set of Deconstructing Harry, a movie he was making with Woody Allen. The interview was for Ambassador Magazine, and I asked Tucci if he felt that because he was an Italian-American actor he was being stereotyped into many “mafia” roles on television and in movies:
Villano: You’ve played heavies on television and in the movies—Richard Cross in “Murder One,” Lucky Luciano in “Billy Bathgate,” mobsters in television’s “Wiseguy” and tough guys in “Men of Respect”, & “Prizzi’s Honor, and as the assassin stalking Julia Roberts in “The Pelican Brief. Did you feel you were being stereotyped?
Tucci: With Richard Cross, I said specifically to Murder One DirectorStephen Bochco that I did not want the character to be Italian…I hate Mafia film characters because Italians have given so much more to this country and to the world. Also in most Mafia films , there is never a reason given for the gangsters behavior: they are just innately evil.
Villano: With Big Night, did you consciously set out to make a movie that would not have any Mafia figures in it?
Tucci: My cousin Joseph Tropiano and I co-authored the screenplay and we did not want to have any Mafiosi or gangsters in it at all…Big Night makes a very different, pointed statement that runs counter to the prevailing image of Italian-Americans portrayed in film. Primo & Secondo are bright guys; they’re articulate, not violent; well read, they appreciate art…I’m sick of young directors who want to do that tough, shoot-em up Mafia stuff. Their pictures are completely false and worse, they’re boring. I want to tell them: “You’re not Scorcese; you’re not Coppola. Isn’t there another story you can tell? Scorcese and Coppola told great human stories with tremendous internal conflicts. The only obligation an artist has is to tell the truth, whatever it is. That’s the artist’s obligation. And if artists don’t do that, then they aren’t doing their jobs.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s Scenario Magazine (Fall 1996, Vol. 2, No. 3) which published the complete Big Night screenplay similarly asked Tucci (and his cousin Tropiano) about them intentionally wanting to present a different picture of Italian-Americans from what is usually seen in films:
Tucci: The way these portrayals have evolved into caricatures in so many movies now has really affected how people look at Italians in everyday life. I remember somebody saying to me not that long ago, “isn’t your mother one of those big, fat Italian Mamas?” As a matter of fact, my mother is very slender and looks Irish, if you want to know the truth. All of these stereotypes are really insulting. I’ll do interviews with people who will be shocked when they find out that my Dad is an art teacher, or that Campbell Scott and I grew up together or that my cousin Joe (Tropiano) went to Yale….
Tropiano: So that was definitely one of the driving forces behind us wanting to write this…
It took Tucci and Tropiano six years to collaboratively write the screenplay because they not only wanted to craft the characters just right, but they had so much to say on art, love, relationships, food and family. The constant conflict between an uncompromising dedication to art or craft, and the cloying, annoying, soul-destroying commercial call to compromise to be a “success,” is a persistent tension throughout Big Night.
I asked Tucci about the central role played not only by food in the movie—which he considered as important a “character” as any of the human characters in the film—but also by “the artist’, represented not only by Primo, the chef, but by Louis Prima, the special “guest” at the timpano dinner. Both Tucci & Tropiano saw the musician Louis Prima—who popularized the “jump blues” in the late 1940’s and 1950’s— as having realized “the American Dream,” by successfully combining being a great artist, an excellent musician and a commercial success.
Villano: Your character spells out Primo’s specialness as an artist to Ian Holm’s character, Pascal, a crass businessman only interested in money, who wanted Primo to come to work for him. “You would never have my brother,” you tell Pascal; “he lives in a world above you. What he has, and what he is rare.” You put Primo on a pedestal that only a pure artist could occupy.
Tucci: That’s what I was brought up with. In our family, to be an artist was the highest rung on the ladder, especially when you see your father, whom you admire and idolize, is one.
And Food?
Tucci: We knew that food would have to play a major role, because we were making a movie about an artist, and food is his art. It had to be there.
California’s Prop 50 put us in a new Congressional District #1, and one of the most natural and authentic politicians I’ve ever encountered should become our next Congressman.
(Photo by Steve Villano, at Luther Burbank Center, Santa Rosa, for Mike McGuire’s “One Big Night” campaign kick-off rally, February 5, 2026).
I attended Mike McGuire’s kick off rally for his campaign for U.S. Congress (CA-1) last night, and was overwhelmed by a rush of memories going back more than 60 years.
No, not memories of McGuire going back that long, since he’s only 46 years old, and I’ve only lived in Healdsburg for the past 5 years and only first met him a few years ago; not memories of him of being elected at 19 years of age to Healdsburg’s Board of Education, nor of becoming Healdsburg’s youngest Mayor; not memories of McGuire being elected to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, nor of his election to the State Senate. Dozens of Democrats in the audience of the Luther Burbank Center did have those memories, but I was not one of them.
A large number in the friendly crowd of six hundred had grown up with McGuire, gone to high school with him, taught or studied with him at Sonoma State University, and worked on any number of his past campaigns for public office. That friendliness gave the gathering more of the feeling of a Bar Mitzvah, wishing a loved one well, then of a political pep rally. Everyone was sharing in the joy of Mike McGuire’s success.
I’ve been around, met and worked with lots of politicians, public officials and public figures during my lifetime, starting with the real Robert F. Kennedy in 1964, when he was running for U.S. Senator from New York State, one year after his brother was assassinated.
I was 15 years old then, and spent two-days painting a huge “Hello, Bobby” banner on a bedsheet, which I brought to a rally RFK held in Sunset City Shopping Center in North Babylon, L.I., New York, the town in which I grew up. My jumbo banner got me to meet Bobby Kennedy, and, I like to think, helped persuade a few Long Island Republicans to vote for him. Kennedy’s energy and passion for humanitarian issues was palpable.
I worked on the campaigns of three powerful New York State women: Congresswoman Louise Slaughter’s first campaign for public office (Monroe County Legislature) in 1973; Mary Ann Krupsak’s campaign for Lt. Governor of NY in 1974, and Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman’s campaign for US Senate for New York State in 1980. Each candidate had her own charisma and ability to connect with voters personally and on a wide range of local, state or national issus.
In the 1980’s I worked in public service with Mario Cuomo, an individual of great integrity, and one of the most gifted public officials and public speakers of our time. For me, as an Italian-American battling a lifetime of negative stereotypes, Cuomo was a transformational leader: so much so, that I wrote a book about my eight years of working with him when he was New York State’s Governor (Tightrope: Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo and My Brother, Heliotrope, Books, New York, NY., 2017).
I stood a few feet away from Mike McGuire at his “One Big Night” rally in Santa Rosa, and was transported back to a night 19 years ago, almost to the exact date, when I stood a few feet away from Barack Obama launching his Presidential campaign inside a big New York hotel, and knew that I was part of history being made.
This collection of experiences are what make observing Mike McGuire, a leader of the California State Senate, and candidate for Congress in California’s brand new 1st Congressional District, a real joy and revelation.
More than Bobby Kennedy, more than Mario Cuomo, more than Barack Obama, McGuire is the most naturally gifted and genuine politician I have ever encountered. I know that’s saying a great deal since RFK, Cuomo and Obama are often used as the standard for “charismatic candidates” among political practitioners and consultants.
Mike McGuire’s “charisma”, and I hesitate calling it that, is something far different. He connects with people on an entirely different and much more personal level. Mike McGuire is us, and he is our sons, daughters and grandsons. While RFK, Cuomo and Obama inspired us on emotional, spiritual and intellectual levels, McGuire is unafraid to unabashedly love us, and we love him back for his openness and vulnerability.
Sure, working with Cuomo was an instruction in integrity and humanity each day; witnessing and backing the rise of Barack Obama in the early days was exhilarating and restored our hope in each other.
But, Mike McGuire is all of us. He is reachable, and he reaches each of us. There is nothing aloof about him. He is right there; all the time, right there. And he is one of us.
I first I encountered McGuire in person at a dinner for the Common Ground Society, a non-profit serving children with a wide-range of special needs in the North Bay area of San Francisco. The organization’s Founder Larkin O’Leary asked McGuire, then the highest ranking member of the California State Senate, to not only attend the event but to act as the “Auctioneer” for the organization’s biggest fundraiser.
Few politicians I’ve ever known, occupying such powerful public offices would have put themselves in that position, ripe with room for embarrassment. McGuire, a skilled auctioneer with legitimate rural roots, embraced it, and was off and running, raising a record amount of money and the spirits of everyone within earshot. McGuire’s unabashed enthusiasm for the cause and for what he was doing made everyone in the room feel good about being part of something far bigger than ourselves.
But that’s not his only gift. Two years ago Mike McGuire spoke before our Congregation Shomrei Torah in Santa Rosa and talked about a wide-range of topics, each of which he knew thoroughly. Insurance rates (particularly home insurance) in California were skyrocketing and he listened to each of us, and described every action he was taking in Sacramento to mitigate the damage to our families and come up with solutions. Many of us urged him to run for State Insurance Commissioner, since it was clear he knew all facets of the crisis better than anyone, and we were delighted when McGuire emerged as the logical choice to become our new Representative in Congress. Mike McGuire was us, and no one understood our concerns and our lives better.
This week, when the US Supreme Court upheld California’s redistricting plan, Trump declared that “holding onto” the First CD in California was among his “top priorities,” and he was going to pour resources into the district to win it. Let him come. Let him unleash Elon Musk’s millions of dollars, or Peter Thiel’s millions of weirdo musings. Let Trump come into our district himself, and try to spread his flatulent favoritism to the billionaire class and his congenital, corrosive corruption.
We’re ready for them, and we’ve got a true “natural” public servant in Mike McGuire who we’ll fight for and who will work around the clock and around this vast new district, for working families from Santa Rosa to the Nevada border.
Mike McGuire is all of us; and, this “natural”has the kind of experience and commitment and reciprocal love and humanity that no amount of money can buy.
When we played imaginary games like “hide the stiletto,”
Or, jumped on each others backs in “Johnnie Rides-the-Pony,”
I knew guys like Greg Bovino. Such a phoney.
“Buck, Buck, How many people can we fuck up?”
The saddest, most sadistic, shortest among us,
Would make the most noise, to get a laugh from the other boys,
Shielding themselves from getting sussed. . .
Yep, I know Greg Bovino.
A runt of a kid in a North Carolina hill country high school, who tried out for the wrestling team to look tough, but instead came off the fool.
Beaten down by his alcoholic father, tiny Greg Bovino was 11 years old when his father killed a 26-year old woman, crushing her with his truck. No bother.
“I was dead drunk,” Michael Bovino told the Charlotte Observer (NC), in 1981, and his 18-month prison sentence was reduced to 4 when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of “death by motor vehicle,” nothing more.
“I’ve got a dead woman on my hands,” Michael Bovino said to anyone who would listen at the time. His son Greg, did’t want to hear it, for fear of becoming just like his father, which he did, despite his frantic attempts to bury his old man and that sorry past, the “dead woman on his hands,” reared her head, haunting him as best she could, in the person of Renee Nicole Good. And, little Greg, running in circles as fast from his father’s fate as he could, perversely accused that Good human of using her vehicle as a weapon, just like his father used his truck 45 years earlier, to commit “death by motor vehicle.” Some lessons never leave the mind of an 11-year old boy.
Too bad Greg Bovino didn’t learn a lesson from his father’s depraved indifference to human life, which ended up getting Michael Bovino imprisoned and then divorced from his hill country wife, when little Gregory Kent Bovino was only 14.
I know Greg Bovino.
I’ve seen him all my life, growing up in Italian enclaves of tiny little men with shriveled souls acting tough to strut and preen for the self-esteem they knew they lacked and feverishly hiding their heritage, of which they were ashamed.
His ancestors, like mine, were immigrants from Italy, and unlike mine, took 15 years to file their papers for citizenship, forced to do so after the virulent anti-Italian, anti-immigrant law of 1924, written by the KKK, the Stephen Miller of today.
Bovino’s blood line came from Calabria, Sicily, where Italians were not considered “white enough,” because their sun-drenched dark skin made them suspect on sight—like Mexicans, Puerto Ricans or Blacks—day or night, by the MAGA Supremacist Vampires of that time, and of today, all White.
But, I’m not the only one who can spot the screaming, self-hate that lurks under that faux SS Officer’s coat, taller than Bovino, which he wears as his talisman of inhumanity and sadism, which he’s vowed to once again, make great.
The Director of Academic Programs at the Calandra Italian/American Institute at the City University of NY, Joseph Sciorra, told the Chicago Sun Times, back in December, when tiny Greg Bovino, hiding in his oversized trench coat, was terrorizing Chicago’s immigrant families that it was astonishing that “a person whose grandfather was an immigrant was engaging in such abhorrent and violent treatment of contemporary migrants.”
Yes, I know Greg Bovino, and know that his self-hatred translated into beating migrants, kidnapping kids from the driveways of their homes, and having a “dead woman on his hands” —-just like his father—as well as a few dead men.
Like an addict getting high on his hits, each assault Bovino ordered was meant for his drunken father, who defied his wife’s admonition to “stay off the sauce,” guzzling down a few six-packs of beer, and murdering by vehicle, a young woman, and killing, as well, the early dreams of little Gregory Bovino’s life when he was 11 years old, forcing the underdeveloped child’s mind to fashion new fantasies of himself. And, so he did.
So, that very same year, 1981, little Greg escaped by discovering the Jack Nicholson movie, The Border, which was all about corrupt Border Patrol Agents who made money from a human-trafficking ring operating out of El Paso—a place where Bovino would later serve as a Border Patrol Agent, as if, in his narcissistic, immature mind, his life became a movie script. That movie influenced his life’s choice of an occupation; it’s too bad Bovino didn’t beef-up on his learning about his Italian immigrant ancestors and how they were brutalized for being different, not being “White enough”, and not speaking the language. But, his murderous, drunken and divorced father was dead to him, and the Italian immigrant part of his family history—his father’s story— had to be erased.
Instead, if Bovino had the slightest interest in the human story of immigrants, he might have learned of the historically important 11 Italian immigrants—all from Sicily, where his ancestors originated—with names like Joseph Macheca, Antonio Marchesi, James Caruso, Rocco Geraci, Frank Romero, and Charles Traina—tortured by White Supremacists for being different. Michele (later Michael Bovino), his great grandfather, was another Sicilian immigrant who came to American for a better life, in 1909, only 18 years after the massacre of 11 innocent Immigrants in New Orleans. It would be another 18 years, in 1927, when Bovino’s great-grandfather became a naturalized US citizen, the same year Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were executed for a crime they did not commit. The history of brutality against Italian immigrants in the America was intertwined with the history of immigrants in the Bovino family, but nothing stuck with little Greg.
Later in his career as he rose in the ranks of Border Patrol, Bovino had a professional duty to learn New Orleans’ history of anti-immigrant violence when he was made Chief of the Border Patrol Sector of New Orleans. Instead, Bovino decided not to educate himself, but to elevate his alter-ego, by posing in military drag all over social media. For the tiny man with the fey little voice, it was another chance to pose with guns, and tough guys, and appear bigger than his 64 angry inches. The only history of immigration Bovino knew, was being made up daily by the sadist Stephen Miller and guided by the Jim Crow laws of 30 states, just as Nazi lawyers used those laws—and the racially discriminatory US Immigration Act of 1924—when they drafted their Nuremberg Laws against Jews.
Bovino simply didn’t care, or he might have learned that these 11 innocent hardworking Italian immigrants, who spoke no English, and were unjustly accused of killing a New Orleans police captain—a murder planned and executed by the White Citizens Council running the City in 1891.
Had Bovino not been shopping for Nazi paraphernalia online, he might have learned that these 11 innocent Italian immigrants were jailed for their own safety after their full jury trial—by an all White jury—exonerated them. Despite their official “protection”, these 11 innocent Italian immigrants were pulled from the New Orleans prison by a mob of some 20,000 armed White Supremacists—like the ones who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021—who beat, kicked, tortured and hanged them, and then shot the 11 innocent Italian immigrantsrepeatedly, in one of this country’s most deranged, inhumane and lawless campaigns of anti-immigrant violence, until the recent actions of Bovino, Miller, Noem, Honan, Trump and ICE in the second Trump Administration.
But, I know Greg Bovino, and have seen the kind of self-hate that drives him.
Little Greg would allow nothing to interfere with his personal vendetta against his Sicilian father’s blood, or his own rock-bottom low personal esteem, growing up in a town called, prophetically, Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Bovino’s swagger, self aggrandizement and seething self-importance, were all costume jewelry, designed to hide who he was.
I grew up with lots of Greg Bovinos, pygmy-like, morally-stunted people who picked on anyone’s differences to try to make others smaller than they were. But that never worked, no matter how many times they tried or lied. Diminishing others just never made them grow.
Bovino tried lying his way past Chicago area Federal Judge Sarah Ellis, who caught him, finding that the Federal Official lied to her in her courtroom when he claimed to have been “hit in the head by a rock” by an immigrant, to justify his use of excessive force. Bovino still had Blowing Rock on his brain, not rocks hitting his head.
If that was Bovino’s 11-year old’s interpretation of becoming a better Border Patrol agent inspired by the movie The Border 45 years earlier, it amounted to nothing more than the never-ending Bovino Border Bloviation of lies, fabrications and make believe. So many words, so little meaning; a perfect Trump Administration team player.
After a life-time of lying to himself, it was child’s play for Bovino to lie as he breathed about the excessive violence he and his BP team used in Kern County, California in their “Operation Return to Sender,” in early 2025, which amounted to his audition for a prime time appearance in the Trump Horror Show of Human Rights Violations.
Again, Bovino was called out on his lawless, tough-guy tactics by California AG Rob Bonta, along with 17 other State’s Attorney Generals, in a legal filing on December 31, 2025:
“The unscrupulous tactics used by Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino and his team of agents during raids in Kern County, Los Angeles and across the nation threaten basic civil liberties afforded to all who call this country home.”
So what if he lied and got caught? Bovino LOVED the attention, as all of the Greg Bovinos I’ve ever known do. Deep down they know they’ll always be small and the slightest whiff of attention puffs them up. In Greg Bovino’s case he craved it, since he knew that without such self-image inflation, he would always be struggling to see above the steering wheel of the truck his father drove when he killed an innocent woman, back in 1981—an indelible dress rehearsal for the killing of Renee Good on his command.
Just this past week, Bovino mocked the Jewish faith of the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota, Daniel N Rosen, an Orthodox Jew. As the New York Times reported in its’ January 31 story entitled “Bovino Is Acused of Mocking Prosecutor’s Judaism:
“According to several people with knowledge of the telephone conversation which took place on January 12, Mr. Bovino made derisive remarks about the faith of the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota, Daniel N. Rosen….Mr. Bovino used the term “Chosen People,” in a mocking way….. He also asked sarcastically whether Mr. Rosen understood that Orthodox Jewish Criminals don’t take weekends off…”
The Times went on to report that in an interview last month with an on-line news outlet, Jewish Insider, US Attorney Rosen explained what the motivation was for him to seek his current role, so he could combat:
“the rapid escalation of violent anti-Semitism in the United States. Jewish history tells us that Jews fare poorly in societies that turn polarized, and where that polarization evolves into factional hatreds in the non-Jewish societies in which we live.”
Silent throughout Bovino’s and ICE’s terrorizing of immigrants around the country, is Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. Doesn’t the ADL know anti-Semitism when it sees it? Will they finally go after Greg Bovino, the way they went after Ivy League schools for allegedly allowing anti-Semitism on campus?
Who is more dangerous to Jews, a heavily armed, extreme right-wing government official with enormous fire-power at his command, or a lone college student with a protest sign? Why do Greg Bovino, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Heritage Foundation all escape ADL’s examination? Why aren’t smashed car windows—Bovino’s preferred method of grabbing people from their cars in violation of their basic constitutional rights—seen as the 2026 version of the rolling Kristallnachts that they are, aimed at terrorizing and intimidating innocent people?
Judges, Attorney-Generals, and even former co-workers are beginning to hold Bovino and his gang of ICE bullies accountable.
Bovino’s former co-worker, Jenn Budd, a Border Patrol Senior Agent for the San Diego area on the California/Mexico border Region, told the Chicago Sun Times this December, that :
“Bovino was the Liberace of the Border Patrol, with all of his flamboyant behavior and the camera crews that followed him.”
In her book Against the Wall: My Journey from Border Patrol Agent to Immigrant Rights Activist, (Heliotrope Books, NY, NY, June, 2022), Budd writes:
“The Border Patrol is like a cult, and we say we bleed green and we always protect each other. The majority of agents are people I characterize with very low self-esteem…They follow a pattern and practice of making false accusations against the people you just beat up.”
Jenn Budd knows Greg Bovino; she worked with him, and she’s not afraid to call him out on his illegal, unconstitutional, bullying, attention-seeking behavior, and to call out ICE and the Border Patrol for creating an above-the-law para-military force, and an “institutional culture of sexism, racism and corruption”.
Just the perfect place for the tiny little Greg Bovinos of the world to hang out and hide behind gun barrels bigger than many of their physical organs.
