Jeff Short

The Shield premiered OTD in 2002 Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins share a heartfelt, tearful goodbye after creating one of the greatest TV shows ever. Next year I’ll be celebrating 25 years of The Shield. Share your favourite Vic Mackey/Strike Team moment and I’ll include it

The moment Tom Grossi hit $1 million for Undue Medical Debt Let's freaking fracking go

In 2010, a billionaire from Iowa bought his girlfriend a gift. A 240-foot yacht. Five decks. A helipad. And something most people wouldn't notice: a compartment beneath the waterline. Big enough for a submarine. They named it Plan B. His name was Ted Waitt. He'd built Gateway computers into a billion-dollar company. He was wealthy, recently divorced, and interested in ocean conservation. Her name was Ghislaine Maxwell. And over the next two years, something strange happened. Waitt donated ten million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding in August 2010. Within months, she was speaking at the United Nations. At TED conferences. At events where world leaders gathered. She'd launched a nonprofit called TerraMar. Its mission: protecting international waters—the sixty-four percent of the ocean that belongs to no country. No coast guard patrols there. No customs. No jurisdiction. And for private submarines? No required logs. --- Between 2012 and 2017, TerraMar gave out zero dollars in ocean conservation grants. The organization spent less than nine hundred dollars total. But on tax returns, TerraMar claimed it owed Ghislaine Maxwell over half a million dollars. Meanwhile, Maxwell was getting certified. Submarine pilot. Helicopter pilot. Deep-sea vehicle operator. Emergency medical technician. She posted photos of herself diving. "Cleaning ocean trash," she said. But why would a socialite spend years learning to pilot submarines? --- In 2019, drone operators flew over a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The island belonged to Jeffrey Epstein. The footage showed something most people had missed: a structure on the coastline. Hidden. Leading underground. Engineers who analyzed it said it looked like an entrance to a docking facility. For boats. Or submarines. People could arrive underwater. In international waters, where no country watches. No manifests. No customs forms. No record. And then walk through that entrance as if they'd never been there at all. --- On July 6, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey. Six days later—July 12, 2019—TerraMar announced it was closing. Immediately. No explanation. Website went dark. Phone disconnected. Why would an ocean charity need to shut down the moment Epstein was arrested? Maxwell disappeared. For a year, the FBI couldn't find her. In July 2020, they located her hiding in New Hampshire. She was convicted in December 2021. But in July 2025, something unusual happened. Maxwell was moved from a harsh federal facility in Florida to a minimum-security prison in Texas. The kind with outdoor recreation. No bars. Regular clothing. Inmates call it "Club Fed." Why is someone convicted of what she did getting transferred to the most comfortable federal prison in the system? Congressional investigators asked. The Justice Department declined to comment. And here's what no one can find: The logs for Plan B's submarine. Private submarines don't require the same documentation as aircraft. If someone used that submarine to move between international waters and that island, there'd be no record. The FBI won't say if they ever looked. Ted Waitt sold the yacht in 2014. He's never spoken publicly about Maxwell. He declined all interview requests after her arrest. So the questions remain: How many people used that submarine? How many walked through that underground entrance and then went back to their normal lives? And why—after everything Maxwell was convicted of—is she now in the most comfortable prison in America? There's something in the newly released FBI files. Something about that nine-hour meeting in July 2025. Something about what Maxwell knows. And something about why powerful people might want to keep her comfortable. (Full investigation—including the blackmail attempt, what happened to the billionaire, and why her father died on a yacht named after her—continues in first comment.)

Every JSN route, 2025 reg season