By Shivani
Based on the article, Exclusive: First Report on Clare Bronfman at MDC — Under the Protection of a ‘Yenta’, it sounds as though Clare Bronfman is doing her best to adapt to prison, especially if she has found a small circle of buddies. That helps to hold off a lot of the pains of isolation.
If her bilious liver doesn’t kill her, Clare has shown signs that she can and maybe wants to survive, via some “thoughtful” adaptation and self-determination, for once. Like a shark? If only we humans could simply regrow teeth. Invent that, okay?
Heaven knows that Frank Parlato is talented. But I imagined that penguins were as tall as people and could be wrong about Frank, too. Who knows?
It’s interesting, waiting to see if, when and where Clare will be moved to another prison while she is incarcerated. If she stays where she is, that would be unusual. Hint, hint? What could be the possible significance of staying put where she is much longer?
[Ed. Note: Clare Bronfman is currently at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, NY – and awaiting permanent placement. It is possible, however, that she may remain at MDC for some time and it is possible that she may serve her entire sentence there. One of the reasons for this might be because Clare will not likely be assigned to the same prison that Lauren and Nancy Salzman are assigned to. Bronfman has requested placement at Danbury Federal Prison Camp.]
A Danbury placement wouldn’t be so bad, so keeping her “head down” now is a good plan.
She can always buy another Big Bertha. [A woman prisoner to protect her; it is reported she presently has a large Jewish woman serving this role at MDC]
Later on, Clare can go back to being Flabturd’s [Raniere’s] Flying Nun and can try recruiting suitable raw meat torsos for him, like straight out of Compton, some heavy-duty tuff broads. Clare has a dream, right? Whatever the hell it is.
Clare wasn’t smart enough, like Nancy Salzman, the better-organized old salty dawg and pimp mama. That’s right. Pimp mama. Santa has the list. He had the list eighteen years ago. And my, how the list has grown!
Nancy has known enough to pretend to be FURIOUS at Keith Raniere, ever since Nancy jumped up to cop the first plea, right after a certain superseding indictment was read in Federal court against Raniere and his co-conspirators, the five spiritual and sexual slaves and hags. The indictment leading to plea bargains, one after the other, was about sexual crimes against certain young, and certain, legalistically, too young ladies could be brought to light.
Well, holy cow dung! That was too much indictment for Nancy Salzman to manage.
The risk has been too great that someone from the prosecution would ask Nancy Salzman too many embarrassing questions, under oath. How hypnotically and linguistically inconvenient.
For instance, Nancy had a sexual affair with Raniere. Then how was it that her daughters came to be one hundred percent Raniere culties, too? How come Nancy Salzman was screwing a guy and then one of her daughters waited, for how long, 20 years, for a Vanguard avatar baby Baba Louie who never arrived?
Is it any wonder that Huma Abedin attended at least one Nxivm party? (This tidbit is easily available to research if one is inclined.)
[This is based on a story, told by Ben Szemkus, that Huma and other well-known figures were a Nxivm party.]
Clare and the squatting lumpalump, Keithy-Weethie, supported Madam Clinton’s fascinating concepts of democracy, and Clare/Sara B. were demanding political donations of support to her from Nxivm acolytes. Those who were hard strapped for money were individually informed, sotto voce, that Clare would reimburse them. This is a typical gallop of elitist chicanery. “Do as I say, or else.”
[Clare and Sara illegally bundled money for Hillary Clinton by reimbursing Nxivm members who donated to Clinton so they could legally avoid the maximum contribution to Clinton. There is no evidence that Clinton was part of this illegal scheme.]
The donations had to be spread out amongst multiple donors, to meet a donation cap of about $6,300 apiece if I recall, so as not to elicit either unwanted or taxable, attention. These “Nxivm donations” left an interesting trail of cheap-assed, elitist, financial, political breadcrumbs. Huma carries a big fork folded behind the corners of her horsefacey mouth. Oops. That must be my imagination. The bubbles are popping.
Clare is not really that Jewish, regardless of who her father was. He had five Jewish children with his first wife. The subsequent two children with the barmaid [Georgianna Webb] are an entirely different, and an appropriately privatized matter. It happens in a lot of families.
But in jail, Clare and her now more limited moneybags will do, as a non-matrilineal Jew. Om, peace, amen.
She “didn’t ask to be born” from papa’s newer, midlife crisis bag.
Clare is an anathema and even an interloper, to all of the beautiful and loving Jewish mothers, or any mothers, that I have known, over a longish lifetime. Nancy Salzman is even worse, because she gave birth to two children, and she sacrificed them both to Raniere, for her own benefit. Life in a snakepit.
Thank you for the news of poor Clare Bronfman. By the way, Ghislaine has lost over 25 pounds. It must be the new Brooklyn Diet. A fortune waiting to be made, teaching people how to starve for next to nothing. Clare could become the nouvelle Martha SteWART.
Climb the Pole.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
Only my fellow Irish-Scotch brethren consider it customary to get sloshed after a funeral.
Sorry anot all the yv post big guy
Whether Nancy is smart or not, she’s just a poor excuse for a moral human being. She knew exactly who and what Raniere was for years and exploited others for money and ego-based on a fabrication for almost two decades. Clare is just a naive and gullible fool with a lot of money who likely initially had good intentions but was conned and became more like the filth she hung around with. Nancy speaking about ethics is like a blind person speaking about how beautiful the sunset is. She’s at the top as the primary legitimate business front enabler of Raniere and deserves an eye-for-an-eye as a recompense for the suffering she brought into the lives of others for the scam.
Do love your prose and your points, Shivani. Thanks!
I agree that Nancy liked the money she was paid, but she also loved being “Prefect”. Nancy’s ego is just as big as Keith’s. She should be in prison much longer than she will be.
People, if you could have seen Nancy Salzman *furiously* screaming and gesticulating into her headset the afternoon after Lauren testified. This was no benign, smiling, camera-ready, sweet lady victim of dirty Keith’s evil DOS machinations. No,it was the real Nancy: opportunistic, plotting, coldly deceptive, “It’s not a crime unless you get caught,” queenpin watching her empire go down in flames and shame.
I have heard here, on FR, that Nancy was “demoted” in favor of Clare. If she felt betrayed by her Vanguard, she certainly played it, yet was in on it.
If, as FR and K. Keefe says, Nancy admitted to money laundering, there was more to the why Nancy made such an admission than you say. We know it.
For the record, Nancy and her little coterie knew Keith was a fraud.
It will be telling to see who stands up to her.
My impression was that he gave “busy work” to Clare and Mark, for various reasons. That promotion for Clare seemed like they let her sharpen pencils at meetings and write checks. Those two seem like figureheads while the upper most inner circle cooked the books and made the real decisions.
-my outsider observation.
Love that Nancy observation, more of those!
And Keith also knew he was a fraud.
And they also knew that people were hungry for it. Keith, if largely motivated by money, should have strictly limited his interactions, but instead, he adored the adulation and allowed some to discover his true motivation. That was his fatal mistake. He should have remained an inaccessible and remote figure, who used Nancy as his conduit. But he needed the in-person adulation. He wanted to be a rock star.
Anonymous typed, “For the record, Nancy and her little coterie knew Keith was a fraud”
At the beginning of ESP, I believe Nancy wholeheartedly believed in Keith and believed the Keith story.
Anonymous and I are both probably correct. The timeframe of when Nancy knew would be interesting to explore. Kristin Keeffe gave a hint as she talked about Nancy laughing when Kristin said something derogatory about Keith. I told Nancy something very specific within 6 months of ESP’s inception that proved to her that Keith didn’t “know all” and wasn’t exactly what they were selling him as. She must have heard and seen things like this on a weekly and even daily basis that slowly (quickly?) eroded her beliefs about the whole Keith pitch.
Bottom line – Nancy did lots of burying her head. This was easy for her to do because Keith was simultaneously compartmentalizing everything.
[…] Shivani: Nancy Salzman Far Smarter Than Clare Bronfman Frank Report “self isolation when:1h” – Google News […]
Did she have more to say in court? Or was it just that one statement? And same question regarding Allison Mack.
@Shivani I adore your writing!
I agree LBW. Alison, her literary treatment of ‘Flabturd’ and the rest of the nx crew and their tragic story, has been pivotal, powerful and on point.
@NFW
Shivani clearly has a negative opinion of some of the personalities involved and chooses crude language to portray that.
I don’t love crudeness in general, but I appreciated the creative and playful phrasing throughout this post.
As far as I know her training is that of a Psychiatric Nurse, together some weightless NLP certification, which is regarded as apseudoscience and quackery, by recognised mental health practitioners. She’s certainly never got near a Doctorate. Psychiatric Nursing is a recognised profession, but the rest might as well be witchcraft.
I get your points, Paul, but as a working therapist, I can tell you that I see ‘therapists’ all the time that are not certified, not licensed in the appropriate sense of the word and they get away with it by finding loopholes in both the law and the governing bodies codes of ethics. Just because somebody doesn’t have the recommended licenses and certifications it doesn’t mean they can’t actually help somebody. Religious counselors do this quite often.
At the same time, though, that doesn’t change the danger quotient and it’s people like Nancy who purposely skirt the perimeters in order to meet some sort of personal goal. The reality that she was a psychiatric nurse makes her dangerous – add junk science to the mix and she’s twice as dangerous. She saw a fast and easy way to make money – exploit a narcissist’s fantasies – it made her millions of dollars.. Did she actually believe in “Vanguard”, highly likely? She fed his arrogance and pushed his person because it got her what she ultimately wanted, money and power, even if it meant selling out her own children to obtain those things.
Ultimately, she should have been held to just as high a prosecution standard as Keith, she’s just as guilty, perhaps more, as she was the original pimp of the process and its members. BUT because she jumped off the bandwagon as fast as she did to cover her own ass, it’s highly unlikely she’ll get a sentence as long as the Vanguard did. She, like other snake oil salespeople before her, rolled as soon as she was ‘caught’, therefore the court will offer some sort of leniency.
It’s important to remember that just because somebody doesn’t have some sort of major degree or license attached to their name, it doesn’t mean they don’t have the knowledge or will power to to implement what they DO know in order to manipulate and hurt others.
As a Psychiatrist, I have come accross enough unqualified people’s mistakes to make me quite sure that appropriate training and certification matter. Unqualified and uncertified people can be dangerous. I’ve dealt with fallout often enough. All the best to you.
Hi Dr. Paul (again),
I think you’re going to regret mentioning that you’re a psychiatrist because now we are all going to bombard you with questions!
Like me for example…
So, if Nancy Salzman’s main motivation in this cult was money and the status that comes with being #2 (oldest story ever), what could have allowed her to think that it was A-OK 👌🏼 to allow not one but BOTH daughters to have sex with a man with whom she ALSO had had a sexual relationship with?
Not to mention that she was well aware Raniere had multiple partners.
That’s something I simply don’t understand.
Denial?
Kind regards,
CZ
To CZ – It is not true that Nancy gifted her daughters to Keith. People like Shivani say things like this, but it has been shown that Lauren kept her Vanguard relationship secret from Mama. And I think Macy Gray knows as much about Michelle’s Vanguard sexual history as anyone commenting on FR. Cause nobody has ever shared anything to prove they even smooched.
I honestly have no idea why she permitted her daughters to go down that road, or even if she could have stopped them. The whole situation in NXIVM was so complex that I doubt I ever will. All the best.
Thanks, Nutjob.
Apologies for the assumptions.
(Hilar…Macy Gray 😅)
As a psychatrist you trump me in the certifications dept (LCSW/LPC), lol. And I agree with you, the training and certifications matter but good things can and are done sometimes by so-called counselors who don’t have those credentials. None of the people in the NXVM hiearchy even come close to that sort of thing. Salzman was a blatant opportunist who saw a way to use what little knowledge she did have to control others while pocketing cash. In my opinion she deserves as much time as her beloved Vanguard.
Paul,
If you feel unable to meaningfully review Nancy’s state of mind in the context outlined by CZ, I confidently venture to assess her as irreversibly mad!
:-))
Salzman makes Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” look like a genius. LOL
LOL-
Great Pop culture reference. The book is so different than the movie. What do think about the differences between the two?
Quackery. Yeah, many mental health “Drs” may agree. Maybe those jackwagons should do some research, or maybe even do some studying that could benefit their patients without resulting in initials after their stuffy names.
Results don’t lie – but they can be explained away as quackery. But guess what, “Drs”, if quackery can fix in a session or two, what you’ve been charging your “meal tickets” twice a wk for the last 5 years, give me quackery.
Nutjob-
Great analogy. I cannot agree more.
Here your own limerick. You asked for it.
“Nutjob’s Corn-Meal”
Once there was a man name Nut Job
He, Neal, Ann, Bob, and ate corncob
A pallet of butter,
made a cob’s heart flutter
All that Bobbing made Nut’s neck throb
Bonus Limerick:
“Tim’s Unromantic End”
Once there was a man name Tim
Who slept on a bearskin rug on a whim That night he gag till dead
A sack was over his head
Twas bear nuts or bare nuts that kill him
That was miss formatted by the website
Thank you, niceguy. What a glorious limerick about me. Dice Clay would be proud.
I am glad you appreciated it. I wrote a couple of crass ones for my buddies and was asked “Are you a florist?” and
I was told
“Your writing skills reflect the mind of someone with an extra chromosome.” 😉
i.e., Down syndrome.
Do you remember when DICE first came out and was the hottest thing?
Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Richard Prior, Bill Hicks, Dangerfield have held up.
I was listening to Dice Man a while ago and I was like “What the fuck were we all thinking?). I still like Mary Contrary and “the woman who lived in the shoe. She had so many kids her ****** fell out.”
He was 2 Live Crew for white males – just nowhere near as talented.
I’m happy to stand by my assertion that Nancy is a quack. But don’t let me put you off, if you prefer that kind of ‘therapy.’
I’m the kind of person that wants to know why some kid thinks his Tourette’s was cured in one session. If more traditionally qualified and trained professionals had the same curiosity, maybe we could get the best of both worlds.
Tourette’s falls into Neurological territory rather than my own, but Tourette’s is known to sometimes spontaneously go into remission – in some cases for years. There are also other Tic Disorders, most notable Transient Tics, which as the name suggests, come and go. To be diagnosed with Tourette’s, the patient has to have at least 2 motor tics and at least one vocal tic that persist for more than one year. There are psychotherapeutic approaches that have produced excellent results in some people, though I know of none that can guarantee a ‘cure.’ Drug therapy can be *somewhat* helpful, but does not produce consistent results across all patients.
Nut Job,
Maybe he is also on medication?!?!?
Tourette’s is a scientifically proven neurological disorder. It’s not a psychological disorder under any circumstances or situation.
Are Nancy and the wonderful people at the Church of Scientology the only ones to have cured Tourettes?
Confucius says, “When there is a missing piece to a puzzle, it’s usually because it wasn’t included in the box (story).”
The Nxivm 5 have made a number of disingenuous statements.
I’m not saying you’re wrong necessarily; I am saying your wrong until you have some proof. 😉
Like many things in life, it’s pattern recognition. If you know the distinctions to pay attention to, and can interrupt the pattern, you have a chance to help anyone in anything. NXIVM did nothing but steal “tech” from places that understood this.
Nutjob
RE Comment November 30, 11:55 :
Touché
*******
Loved the other comment’s Mazy Gray reference.
😉
Hi Paul,
Nancy Salzman was never a specialized psychiatric nurse, she was a regular RN.
Apparently, she worked for only one year as a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut.
I read a deposition a while ago where she was asked about her education, she stated that she graduated from nursing college.
When the attorney asked if she had any other degrees or subsequent education, she said something to the effect of “Yeah, I studied other things but nothing academic.”
After that year at the hospital, she went on to study Erikson’s hypnosis techniques and NLP (one non-degree course in the 1970s at Columbia and the rest who knows where she “studied”) and then became a “pain management” therapist and a non-licensed therapist.
Below is the link to the depositions
NXIVM el al v. Rick Ross
https://cultnews.com/2019/09/formerly-sealed-deposition-transcripts-of-nxvim-sex-cult-leaders-now-online-for-everyone-to-read/.
The Deposition of Nancy Salzman June 8, 2009
(More links to Raniere and Salzman’s depositions are on the bottom of the site’s page and a fun read !)
Thanks for the information. Very interesting.
People use the term ‘nurse’ too freely. Please define ‘psych nurse’. Are you referring to an LVN (a licensed vocational nurse) or an RN (a registered nurse, who has far more education than an LVN), or are we talking about a CNA (a certified nursing attendant, which calls for VERY little education)
I think she is also more intelligent than Raniere. As his original co-conspirator, she co-created the Vanguard myth. She knew full well that Raniere was not superhuman, but recognised in him a ticket to richness. Everything was about money for her. Even if she is sentenced to a few years in prison, she’s got away lightly. Plus, I’m sure she know where a substantial amount of disappeared money is. Raniere will still be serving his 120 years, whilst she suns herself on a beach somewhere.
Exactly. Very well said, Paul. Nancy will be shown some leniency because she rolled quickly and she’ll be out in a few years to live off her well-stashed ill-gotten gains.
Paul, yes. Nancy was smarter. Did not get too close to the sun.
I imagine Prefect will, due to her health, age, and covid, get off easily, though.
Nancy sure as hell believed Keith out of the gate. I’m sure she started doubting the myths she helped propagate as the years passed. She and Lauren get way too much credit in this comment section for their intelligence and savviness.
Shivani-
Great article as always! I enjoyed the read.
BTW
Shivani I liked your Raniere “don’t cry for
me Argentina”.
Seconded. Great article..
“Clare is an anathema and even an interloper, to all of the beautiful and loving Jewish mothers, or any mothers, that I have known, over a longish lifetime. Nancy Salzman is even worse, because she gave birth to two children, and she sacrificed them both to Raniere, for her own benefit. Life in a snakepit.”
By now over a month into her incarceration Clare has to be feeling pretty stupid.
I think it will take Clare Bare a few years to feel stupid, she’s pretty slow on the uptake. LOL
It will take years for Clare to reprogram her brain. You’re talking about the spoiled little rich girl who literally had to buy her friends because her social skills were so poor she couldn’t make friends without buying them. Keith and Nancy saw a vulnerable rich person and exploited her for all she was worth for as long as they could. Even sitting in prison, it is unlikely Clare understands or believes this. In her mind, this is all some horrible mistake and it WILL be rectified once she gets out. That programming is going to take a long time to re-wire if she doesn’t take advantage of the therapeutic services afforded her by being in prison.
Smarter?
No.
Nancy is savvier at how the system works.
The first one on the bus gets the best seat.
Nancy plagiarized Scientology shit and repackaged it as NXIVM shit.
And because Nancy has a daughter who could testify in detail against Raniere., Nancy got a sweeter deal.
In reality Nancy Salzman is a grifter and will always be a grifter.
If Nancy wants to redeem herself she can reveal how John Tighe’s computer was hacked.
—Nancy wants to redeem herself she can reveal how John Tighe’s computer was hacked.
Shadow I think the computer hack was above her pay grade. Keith’s love of “compartmentalization” would have prohibited her from learning the truth.
In CIA parlance, it’s called “stove piping”.
“…she [Clare Bare] has found a small circle of buddies. That helps to hold off a lot of the pains of isolation.” It more importantly it keeps her from getting the sh!t beat out of her. LOL
“Later on Clare can go back to being Flabturd’s [Raniere’s] Flying Nun and can try recruiting suitable raw meat torsos for him….” Even Clare Bare isn’t stupid enough to believe Raniere will ever see a woman again for the rest of his life unless it’s a female guard, unless she thinks he will be successful in his appeals, so perhaps she is stupid enough after all. LOL
“But I imagined that penguins were as tall as people…” With a little good, ‘ole fashioned global warming, it could happen again: https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/14/asia/human-size-penguin-new-zealand-scli-intl/index.html LOL
The BOP should move Clare Bare around every year or so to spread the protection money around. LOL
“Nancy has known enough to pretend to be FURIOUS at Keith Raniere, ever since Nancy jumped up to cop the first plea, right after a certain superseding indictment was read in Federal court against Raniere and his co-conspirators….” This makes Salzman only slightly smarter than Clare Bare, she would have plead soon after she was arrested in order to qualify to be FAR smarter. LOL
“The risk has been too great that someone from the prosecution would ask Nancy Salzman too many embarrassing questions, under oath.” I think Salzman is smart enough not to answer questions that would self-incriminate herself, which makes her FAR smarter than the would-be 60+ year old ballet dancer. LOL
“For instance, Nancy had a sexual affair with Raniere. Then how was it that her daughters came to be one hundred per cent Raniere culties, too? How come Nancy Salzman was screwing a guy and then one of her daughters waited, for how long, 20 years, for a Vanguard avatar baby Baba Louie who never arrived?” Is this supposed to be support for the idea that Salzman is FAR smarter than Clare Bare? LOL
“Clare and Sara illegally bundled money for Hillary Clinton by reimbursing Nxivm members who donated to Clinton so they could legally avoid the maximum contribution to Clinton. There is no evidence that Clinton was part of this illegal scheme.” I don’t think Clinton gave the money back, either – which does make her part of this illegal scheme. LOL
Very interesting, thanks.
Nancy is trash. She deserves the worst of the lot next to Raniere.
When I now think of Nancy, I hear her sickly voice while on the stage with a microphone addressing Keith on his birthday. It sounded so insincere, like bad acting. Something like “It’s all (dramatic pause with a shake of the head), it’s all for you (pause) Keith” with arm outstretched. Truly bizarre – and I wonder if she knew how ridiculous it all was but went along with the ride. Surely, because she knew all the dirty tricks, she actually didn’t buy into him as a guru but as someone fleecing people. I’m not sure what I think of her given she put her daughter on a silver platter for him. A documentary on her giving more insight would be great.
No need for another documentary [redacted] it’s clear Salzman was in it for the money as well. LOL
For sure she was but I do like a documentary. There’s still so much to find out about her. Wasn’t she part of another scam before meeting Raniere? I am sure I read about some illegal activity. I would like to know about her pre-NXIVM days and her marriage and her kids’ upbringing. I am just so nosy! I can’t help it, it’s fascinating.
If only the populace wasn’t burned out on the 9-hour deflection extravaganza, there would be room for meaningful insight into the inner workings, the vast amount that wasn’t covered. I’d watch 4 hours about Nancy Salzman if it were factual and in-depth.
This story is begging for its own version of Spotlight, with all the law enforcement, journalists, neighbors, and “rats”.
That is one exquisite cup and saucer!
Have you seen Get Out? Nancy reminds me of the stirrer of that tea.
I (worthlessly) speculate that Nancy was in it strictly for the money. For that reason, I believe she would have or did object to DOS, as it clearly threatened the money pipeline. At the time she offered up her daughter, DOS did not exist, and she might have thought it was harmless though promiscuous sexual fun. Not an excuse, but possibly true.