In 2016, the American journalist Ben Swann took a great risk in reporting about the ”Italian Food Dish” that can’t be mentioned. Despite doubts about the consequences, he went through and did it. Today, the whole story has a different ”taste” to it after the release of the Epstein files.
Transcription and editing by NewsVoice | Source: Ben Swann on X
Ben Swann:
I put this thing together, and I wasn’t really sure. My wife at the time, and I were sitting there, and we were actually in total disagreement about whether or not this thing should be released.
And she was like, ”Don’t do it. It- this is too risky. This is, like, this is dark stuff, and you don’t need to, to, to be the one to do it.” And I was like, ”I really think I’m supposed to. I’m not sure what to do.”
And so what we did was we had these two pastors who were our mentors and incredible friends, and so I said, ”I, I tell you what, let’s do, let’s take it to them, and let’s ask them to pray about it and what we should do.”
And whatever they say, if they say, ’Do it or don’t do it,’ I’ll agree to abide by it, and she agreed, ”Okay, we’ll abide by it.” And we took it to them, and they looked at it, and they said, ”We’ll pray about it,” and they came back a week later, and they said, ”We both feel like, how can you not do it?”
Right? It’s, it’s… You can not say anything.
And then afterwards, you know, when everything got shut down, and, and I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but so the, the story went up on a Thursday night.
Right? The next morning, uh, I think we had 3 million views. It went crazy.
So the idea that the public wa- wasn’t ready for it, I actually don’t think that’s true. I think they were ready.
We got a call the next morning. By the time I got to the news station, CBS Network had called and said, ”What are you guys doing down there?” Because they had gotten calls from the Podestas saying, ”How could you guys let this be on TV?” And so we had calls from lawyers. We had, I mean, we were, like, bombarded the next day. ”This thing’s gotta go down.”
I remember being called in and being told, ”Why did you put this on the air? How could you do it?” I’m like, ”Well, actually, it was approved.”
”Well, it’s gotta be approved by an editor.” I’m like, ”Actually, it was approved by the news director. The senior-most person in the building had read through the entire thing and agreed with it.”
Ben Swann comments on the Pi**ag*te story in 2016: ”We got a call the next morning. By the time I got into the station, CBS Network had called and said, ”What are you guys doing down there?” Because they had gotten calls from the Podestas saying, ”How could you guys let this be… pic.twitter.com/iqAikBc8Gs
— T. Sassersson, Editor@NewsVoice (@newsvoicemag) February 10, 2026
”Yeah, absolutely. Why wouldn’t we do this story, right?” And so it was just, it was such a mess, but I remember at the time, and about a year later, that pastor friend of mine called me, and he said, ”You know, I, I think about you a lot,” ’cause so much negative stuff had happened as a result of it.
And he said, ”I just, I, I want you to know, one of these days, man, you’re gonna be vindicated in this.”
”People are gonna see that this was true.”
Honestly, it didn’t matter, right? Because I knew it was true.
