Jeffrey Epstein

Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal That Undid Him, and All the Justice That Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein
by James Patterson , John Connolly and Tim Malloy
Published 10 Oct 2016

For the moment, Epstein was free—free to turn his attention, again, to intellectual pursuits. He launched a website, JeffreyEpsteinScience.com, that featured blog posts such as “Conversations with Jeffrey Epstein,” “The Value of Quantum Computation to Jeffrey Epstein,” “Why Evolutionary Biology Intrigues Jeffrey Epstein,” and “An Understanding of Theoretical Physics from Jeffrey Epstein.” The latter post began: “This is where Jeffrey Epstein takes you to the very cutting edge of the frontiers of knowledge to explore and discuss our basic understanding of the subtle, simple, and hidden [qualities] that lie beneath…our universe.”

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So I am completely aware that never—until the lies were put in a legal pleading at the end of December 2014, it was never alleged that I had any sexual contact with Virginia Roberts. I know that it was alleged that I was a witness to Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged abuse, and that was false. I was never a witness to any of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse. And I wrote that to you, something that you have falsely denied. And I stand on the record. The record is clear that I have categorically denied I was ever a witness to any abuse, that I ever saw Jeffrey Epstein abusing anybody. And—and the very idea that I would stand and talk to Jeffrey Epstein while he was receiving oral sex from Virginia Roberts, which she swore to under oath, is so outrageous, so preposterous, that even David Boies [a prominent lawyer associated with the firm representing Virginia Roberts] said he couldn’t believe it was true. 12:24 p.m.

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Epstein’s Palm Beach property, 358 El Brillo Way (© Chris Bott / Splash News / Corbis) One of the photographs captured on video during the Palm Beach Police Department search warrant walk-through of Epstein’s El Brillo Way residence (Palm Beach Police Department) Jeffrey Epstein’s 1969 high school yearbook photo (Lafayette High School, Brooklyn, New York, 1969) Jeffrey Epstein, Coney Island, circa 1969 (Anonymous) Leslie Wexner, photographed at his home in New York City, 1989 (© Lynn Goldsmith) (L to R) Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Tony Randall, who presided over a November 1991 YIVO Institute event at the Plaza Hotel to honor the late Robert Maxwell (Marina Garnier) (L to R) Deborah Blohm, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Gwendolyn Beck attend a reception at Mar-a-Lago, 1995.

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire
by Tim Schwab
Published 13 Nov 2023

International Peace Institute: Tore Gjerstad and Gard Oterholm, “Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein Met with Nobel Committee Chair,” DN Magasinet, October 2, 2020, https://www.dn.no/magasinet/dokumentar/jeffrey-epstein/thorbjorn-jagland/terje-rod-larsen/bill-gates-and-jeffrey-epstein-met-with-nobel-committee-chair/2-1-885834. “assessing the companions”: Gjerstad and Oterholm, “Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein Met with Nobel Committee Chair.” “or campaigned for it”: Gjerstad and Oterholm, “Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein Met with Nobel Committee Chair.” Boris Nikolic: Tore Gjerstad and Gard Oterholm, “Behind the Scenes: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Billionaire Bill Gates Fund UN-Affiliated Think Tank Projects,” DN Magasinet, October 4, 2020, https://www.dn.no/politikk/terje-rod-larsen/bill-gates/jeffrey-epstein/behind-the-scenes-how-jeffrey-epstein-helped-billionaire-bill-gates-fund-un-affiliated-think-tank-projects/2-1-885697.

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“philanthropy as a tool to worm his way”: Vicky Ward, “How Jeffrey Epstein Used Philanthropy to Worm His Way into Powerful Circles,” Town and Country, July 15, 2021, https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a37025814/chasing-ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-vicky-ward-new-podcast/. JPMorgan Chase: Flitter and Stewart, “Bill Gates Met with Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past.” someone whose misdeeds: Brown, “How a Future Trump Cabinet Member Gave a Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime”; Paul Harris, “Prince Andrew’s Link to Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Taints Royalty in US,” Observer, March 13, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/mar/13/prince-andrew-jeffrey-epstein; Conchita Sarnoff and Aitken Lee, “Jeffrey Epstein: How the Hedge Fund Mogul Pedophile Got Off Easy,” Daily Beast, March 25, 2011, https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/03/25/jeffrey-epstein-how-the-billionaire-pedophile-got-off-easy; Landon Thomas Jr., “Financier Starts Sentence in Prostitution Case,” New York Times, July 1, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/business/01epstein.html?

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Boris Nikolic: Tore Gjerstad and Gard Oterholm, “Behind the Scenes: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Billionaire Bill Gates Fund UN-Affiliated Think Tank Projects,” DN Magasinet, October 4, 2020, https://www.dn.no/politikk/terje-rod-larsen/bill-gates/jeffrey-epstein/behind-the-scenes-how-jeffrey-epstein-helped-billionaire-bill-gates-fund-un-affiliated-think-tank-projects/2-1-885697. “Pakistan and Afghanistan”: Gjerstad and Oterholm, “Behind the Scenes.” University of Texas: Vicky Ward, “What Was the Real Relationship Between Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates?,” Rolling Stone (blog), August 3, 2021, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates-connection-1206453/; Flitter and Stewart, “Bill Gates Met with Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past.” Victoria’s Secret: Ward, “What Was the Real Relationship Between Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates?”

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
by Sarah Kendzior
Published 6 Apr 2020

Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Regan Arts, 2016), 125.   5.   Landon Thomas, “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” New York, October 28, 2002, http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/#.   6.   Shane Croucher, “Jeffrey Epstein Autopsy Finds Hyoid Neck Bone Break, Expert Says It Raises Questions About Strangulation: Report,” Newsweek, August 15, 2019, https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-autopsy-neck-hyoid-bone-broken-suicide-homicide-1454457.   7.   Katie Benner and Danielle Ivory, “Jeffrey Epstein Death: 2 Guards Slept Through Checks and Falsified Records,” New York Times, August 13, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-jail-officers.html.   8.   

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Brown and David Smiley, “New Victims Come Forward As Epstein Asks to Be Released from Jail to His Manhattan Mansion,” Miami Herald, July 11, 2019, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article232551882.html. 17.   Paul Lewis and Jon Swaine, “Jeffrey Epstein: Inside the Decade of Scandal Entangling Prince Andrew,” The Guardian, January 10, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/jeffrey-epstein-decade-scandal-prince-andrew. 18.   Stephen Rex Brown, “Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Sues Alan Dershowitz as New Sex Trafficking Victim Reveals Herself,” Boston Herald, April 17, 2019, https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/04/17/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-sues-alan-dershowitz-as-new-sex-trafficking-victim-reveals-herself/. 19.   Bridget Read, “Epstein Lawyer Alan Dershowitz Insists He Has a ‘Perfect, Perfect’ Sex Life,” New York, July 19, 2019, https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/epstein-lawyer-alan-dershowitz-says-he-has-perfect-sex-life.html; John Amato, “Dershowitz: ‘I Kept My Underwear On’ During Massage at Epstein’s Mansion,” Crooks and Liars (blog), July 10, 2019, https://crooksandliars.com/2019/07/alan-dershowitz-i-kept-my-underwear-during. 20.   

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Thomas and Dillon, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy, 174. 39.   “Jeffrey Epstein v. Bradley Edwards et al.,” https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1509483-exhibits-stm-undisputed-facts-part1.html#document/p606 percent20//. 40.   Ben Schreckinger and Daniel Lippmann, “Meet the Woman Who Ties Jeffrey Epstein to Trump and the Clintons,” Politico Magazine, July 21, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/21/jeffrey-epstein-trump-clinton-1424120. 41.   Rosie Perper, “The Mysterious Foreign Passport Found in Jeffrey Epstein’s Mansion Was Used to Enter at Least 4 Countries in the 1980s, Prosecutors Say,” Business Insider, July 18, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-saudi-austria-foreign-passport-1980s-2019-7. 42.   

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 7 Sep 2022

Stewart, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race with His DNA,” New York Times, July 31, 2019, https:// www .nytimes .com /2019 /07 /31 /business /jeffrey -epstein -eugenics .html.   57   Lolita Express : Julia La Roche, “Jeffrey Epstein Attended the ‘Billionaires’ Dinner’ and Now His Presence Has Been Scrubbed,” Yahoo! Finance, July 15, 2019, https:// www .yahoo .com /now /jeffery -epstein -billionaires -dinner -john -brockman -photos -sarah -kellen -173443481 .html.   58   impregnate twenty women at a time : Stewart, Goldstein, and Silver-Greenberg, “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race with His DNA.”   58   freeze his head and penis : Bess Levin, “Jeffrey Epstein Wanted to Have His Penis Frozen and ‘Brought Back to Life in the Future,’ ” Vanity Fair , July 31, 2019, https:// www .vanityfair .com /news /2019 /07 /jeffrey -epstein -transhumanism -cryonics.   58   attributed to : These quotes appear in Bacon’s posthumously published Masculus Partus Temporum , (The Masculine Birth of Time , 1603), which some scholars believe was used or even fabricated by later members of the Royal Society to justify their own misogyny and subjugation of both women and nature.

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CNN Politics, December 3, 2008. https:// www .cnn .com /2008 /POLITICS /12 /03 /sanchez .clinton /index .html. 141   Do just a little reading : Emily Flitter and James B. Stewart, “Bill Gates Met with Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past,” New York Times , October 12, 2019, https:// www .nytimes .com /2019 /10 /12 /business /jeffrey -epstein -bill -gates .html; Tom Sykes, “Prince Andrew Was ‘Given’ ‘Beautiful Young Neurosurgeon’ by Epstein, Says Ex-Housekeeper,” The Daily Beast , November 22, 2019, https:// www .thedailybeast .com /prince -andrew -was -given -beautiful -young -neurosurgeon -by -jeffrey -epstein -says -ex -housekeeper; Kate Briquelet, “Melinda Gates Warned Bill About Jeffrey Epstein,” The Daily Beast , May 7, 2021; Humanity+, “Humanity+ Clarification of Epstein Donation,” accessed August 10, 2021, https:// web .archive .org /web /20210808214020 /https: / /humanityplus .org /humanity -clarification -of -epstein -donation /; “Sustainable Oceans Alliance: Impacting The SGDs,” Clinton Foundation , December 22, 2016, https:// www .clintonfoundation .org /clinton -global -initiative /commitments /sustainable -oceans -alliance -impacting -sgds; Jacob Bernstein, “Whatever Happened to Ghislaine Maxwell’s Plan to Save the Oceans?

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Stewart, “Bill Gates Met with Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past,” New York Times , October 12, 2019, https:// www .nytimes .com /2019 /10 /12 /business /jeffrey -epstein -bill -gates .html; Tom Sykes, “Prince Andrew Was ‘Given’ ‘Beautiful Young Neurosurgeon’ by Epstein, Says Ex-Housekeeper,” The Daily Beast , November 22, 2019, https:// www .thedailybeast .com /prince -andrew -was -given -beautiful -young -neurosurgeon -by -jeffrey -epstein -says -ex -housekeeper; Kate Briquelet, “Melinda Gates Warned Bill About Jeffrey Epstein,” The Daily Beast , May 7, 2021; Humanity+, “Humanity+ Clarification of Epstein Donation,” accessed August 10, 2021, https:// web .archive .org /web /20210808214020 /https: / /humanityplus .org /humanity -clarification -of -epstein -donation /; “Sustainable Oceans Alliance: Impacting The SGDs,” Clinton Foundation , December 22, 2016, https:// www .clintonfoundation .org /clinton -global -initiative /commitments /sustainable -oceans -alliance -impacting -sgds; Jacob Bernstein, “Whatever Happened to Ghislaine Maxwell’s Plan to Save the Oceans?,” The New York Times , August 14, 2019, https:// www .nytimes .com /2019 /08 /14 /style /ghislaine -maxwell -terramar -boats -jeffrey -epstein .html. 141   For this global oligarchy : Amy Julia Harris, Frances Robles, Mike Baker, and William Rashbaum, “How a Ring of Women Allegedly Recruited Girls for Jeffrey Epstein,” New York Times , August 29, 2019, https:// www .nytimes .com /2019 /08 /29 /nyregion /jeffrey -epstein -ghislaine -maxwell .html. 141   Bill Gates has employed this logic : “Bill Gates Buys Big on a Farmland Shopping Spree,” DW , https:// www .dw .com /en /bill -gates -buys -big -on -a -farmland -shopping -spree /a -57134690. 142   “civilizational collapse” : Sissi Cao, “Bill Gates’ Comments On COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Draw Outrage,” Observer , April 27, 2021, https:// observer .com /2021 /04 /bill -gates -oppose -lifting -covid -vaccine -patent -interview /. 142   “despite his cuddly reputation” : Cory Doctorow, “Manufacturing MRNA Vaccines Is Surprisingly Straightforward,” Medium , May 6, 2021, https:// coronavirus .medium .com /manufacturing -mrna -vaccines -is -surprisingly -straightforward -despite -what -bill -gates -thinks -222cffb686ee. 142   Gates argued : Doctorow, “Manufacturing MRNA Vaccines Is Surprisingly Straightforward.” 142   new mRNA vaccines : Kis, Zoltán, Cleo Kontoravdi, Antu K.

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World
by James Ball
Published 19 Jul 2023

Over the years between 2017 and the present day, as QAnon rose and spread, people across the world watched as an elite continued to get vastly richer even as normal families struggled through first a pandemic and then a global economic crisis. People also saw reports of elite crime rings based on sexual violence. Jeffrey Epstein, one of the leaders of such a criminal enterprise, had an air of credibility having been photographed with the Clintons, Trumps, celebrities and politicians around the world.4 In a turn of events regarded as suspicious by many, he was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide before he could stand trial.

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Elaborate claims such as these are largely immune to fact-checking due to the impossibility of proving a negative, and the fact that if someone accepts the possibility of such things being true, that requires mistrusting any mainstream source. This means that debunking would require 100 per cent primary sources, which would likely be a lifetime’s work. There is also the challenging truth that elite rings centred around the worst of crimes, such as child abuse, do exist: Jeffrey Epstein died in jail while awaiting trial for running just such a ring,14 while his consort Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on five counts for serving as his facilitator in a sex trafficking conspiracy.15 In other words, conspiracies do exist and happen every day. If a group of three people plan to defraud a fourth, that’s a conspiracy.

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It is not a ridiculous idea that people in power might engage in rape, sexual assault or harassment, or that perpetrators might use their power and connections to escape the consequences of their actions. Harvey Weinstein stayed at the top of Hollywood for many years despite widespread rumours of sexual abuse dating back for decades, only finally being brought down and eventually convicted of rape and sexual assault as a result of the #MeToo movement.1 Jeffrey Epstein, as mentioned earlier, ran an international sex trafficking network that enabled both him and his wealthy friends to sleep with minors – typically teenage girls – for decades, all the while mixing in the public eye with celebrities and top politicians, including both Bill and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It
by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris
Published 10 Jul 2023

Schofield, “The Fake French Minister in a Silicone Mask Who Stole Millions,” BBC News, June 19, 2019 [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48510027]; see also the Persona: The French Deception podcast. 15. D. Mangan and B. Schwartz, “Jeffrey Epstein ‘Misappropriated Vast Sums of Money from Me,’ Les Wexner Says,” CNBC, August 7, 2019 [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/07/jeffrey-epstein-misappropriated-vast-sums-les-wexner-says.html]; G. Sherman, “The Mogul and the Monster: Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Decades-Long Relationship with His Biggest Client,” Vanity Fair, July–August 2021 [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-decades-long-relationship-with-his-biggest-client]. 16. Blagojevich was convicted of eighteen felonies and sentenced to fourteen years in prison [https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/iln/chicago/2011/pr1207_01.pdf].

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The rethink prompted by that one outside comment saved the winemaker from joining dozens of wealthy victims who lost about $90 million to the “faux Le Drian.”14 Of course, for the ask-a-friend method to work, you have to be open to changing your opinion in response to the advice you get. Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of the L Brands fashion company, admitted in 2019 that the swindler and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had “misappropriated” $46 million from him (a number some observers think is a fraction of the true amount). Before Wexner gave Epstein extensive power over his finances, he was warned by the vice chairman of his own company that Epstein was a con artist, but Wexner chose to trust his gut feelings over the advice of someone with a more objective sense of what was happening.15 WHEN ACCEPTING BEATS CHECKING The last time Chris shopped at a Target store, he was offered an extended warranty on an $8 pair of disposable electric toothbrushes.

Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America
by Garrett Neiman
Published 19 Jun 2023

Victor Xu, “The Full Letter Read by Brock Turner’s Father at His Sentencing Hearing,” The Stanford Daily, June 8, 2016, https://stanforddaily.com/2016/06/08/the-full-letter-read-by-brock-turners-father-at-his-sentencing-hearing/. 13. Dan Mangan Macias Amanda, “Jury Finds Jeffrey Epstein Friend Ghislaine Maxwell Guilty in Sex Crimes Trial,” CNBC, December 29, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/29/ghislaine-maxwell-trial-ends-jeffrey-epstein-sex-crime-case.html. 14. Emma Ockerman, “The Program That Let Jeffrey Epstein Leave Jail Almost Daily Just Got Scrapped by the Sheriff,” Vice, December 18, 2019, https://www.vice.com/en/article/3a8zvb/the-program-that-let-jeffrey-epstein-leave-jail-almost-daily-just-got-scrapped-by-the-sheriff. Chapter 6: The Exception Factory 1.

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While many states have mandatory minimums for violent crimes and Brock’s convictions in California carried a potential fourteen-year prison sentence, Santa Clara County Superior Court judge Aaron Persky—himself a wealthy white man, Stanford graduate, and college athlete—sentenced Turner to six months at county jail and three years of probation. Turner’s toxic entitlement may have been nurtured in part by his father Dan, who told the court that the verdicts were a “a steep price to pay for twenty minutes of action.”12 Jeffrey Epstein was similarly successful at evading accountability for the extreme sexual violence he perpetrated. In 2008, after years of orchestrating a sex ring composed of underage girls, Epstein avoided federal charges and served just thirteen months in jail.13 During his time in jail, Epstein was permitted to leave the jail for twelve hours a day, six days a week, to work at his office in Florida.14 Only wealthy white men can access such extreme leniency.

Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A. I. To Google, Facebook, and the World
by Cade Metz
Published 15 Mar 2021

When Isaacson asked if he would use his SpaceX rockets: Ibid. “If there’s some apocalypse scenario”: Ibid. Musk posted his message to Edge.org: Cook, “Elon Musk: You Have No Idea How Close We Are to Killer Robots.” the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein: William K. Rashbaum, Benjamin Weiser, and Michael Gold, “Jeffrey Epstein Dead in Suicide at Jail, Spurring Inquiries,” New York Times, August 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-suicide.html. He pointed to DeepMind: Cook, “Elon Musk: You Have No Idea How Close We Are to Killer Robots.” He said danger was five to ten years away: Ibid. Shane Legg described this attitude in his thesis: Shane Legg, “Machine Super Intelligence,” 2008, http://www.vetta.org/documents/Machine_Super_Intelligence.pdf.

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A few weeks later, Musk posted his message to Edge.org, a website overseen by an organization that explored new scientific ideas and hosted an annual gathering called the Billionaires’ Dinner that included such luminaries as Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg, and was soon enveloped in controversy after the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, one of its primary financial backers, was arrested for sex trafficking before killing himself in a jail cell. With his message on the Edge Foundation website, Musk was more explicit than he’d been in the past. He pointed to DeepMind as the evidence that the world was racing toward superintelligence.

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
by Kashmir Hill
Published 19 Sep 2023

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the MIT Media Lab: In 2019, it was revealed that the Media Lab had accepted donations from the investor and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The deceased Minsky became part of the scandal after a victim of Epstein testified that she had been directed to have sex with the MIT professor when she was seventeen and Minsky was seventy-three. Joi Ito, “My Apology Regarding Jeffrey Epstein,” MIT, August 15, 2019, https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/my-apology-regarding-jeffrey-epstein/; Russell Brandom, “AI Pioneer Accused of Having Sex with Trafficking Victim on Jeffrey Epstein’s Island,” The Verge, August 9, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “invent the future”: Edward Dolnick, “Inventing the Future,” New York Times, August 23, 1987.

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire
by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson
Published 14 Apr 2020

There is another aspect to this lack of fairness in the current law enforcement system and that is that rich and powerful people usually do not go to prison unless they have really horrible lawyers. It is not to say that they do not ever get convicted, but when they do it happens in a much different way than with other people. When Bill & Hillary Clinton’s friend Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in a plea deal, of which he served 13, the billionaire was able to spend his days out of prison and at his mansion in West Palm Beach as long as he returned to the prison each night to sleep there.122 Who knew something like that was even an option?

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Perhaps Hillary Clinton lost the election because she had a campaign manager in John Podesta that is suspected of being a pedophile, who had a brother that was a banned lobbyist and collector of pedophilic-related art, she had accepted money and at least six trips on the private jet of a convicted pedophile named Jeffrey Epstein, as had Trump, a trip her husband had also made on 26 different occasions, her right-hand-woman was married to a convicted pedophile in Anthony Weiner, and claimed her favorite pizza place in Washington D.C. is Comet Pizza, a well-known pedophile establishment. Maybe there were too many pedophiles in decision-making roles within her circle of influence for America to feel comfortable with that?

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A company making a play for a lucrative contract with the government might secretly arrange for money to find its way to the politician making the decision in their favor. Or, they might also purchase some incriminating video featuring that same politician from a person running a “Brownstone Operation”, like the one that convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was operating from his private jet called “The Lolita Express”, and his island in the U.S. Virgin Islands called Little Saint James, aka “Orgy Island”.193 Not every high-ranking politician is a pedophile, but everyone is controlled to some degree. People simply do not get to the highest levels without being compromised.

Palace Coup: The Billionaire Brawl Over the Bankrupt Caesars Gaming Empire
by Sujeet Indap and Max Frumes
Published 16 Mar 2021

However, even that was not free of controversy. Rowan was caught in a frenzy of litigation with the town of Montauk over permits for his lobster shack, Duryea’s. Despite Apollo’s continuing financial success, the headlines had been less kind for Leon Black. Black in 2018 and 2019 had admitted to having ties with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who had been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and who was later arrested in 2019 on federal charges of sexually abusing girls. Epstein who committed suicide later in 2019 while in custody, had once been a trustee of Black’s family foundation. Epstein had also facilitated Black’s donations to Harvard and MIT.

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“Report Concerning Jeffrey E. Epstein’s Connections to Harvard University,” Harvard internal investigation, May 2020. Indap, Sujeet. “Apollo’s Leon Black seeks to reassure investors over Epstein ties.” Financial Times, August 1, 2019. Goldstein, Matthew and Jessica Silver-Greenberg. “Leon Black Plays Down Ties to Jeffrey Epstein but Is Silent on 2011 Deal.” New York Times, August 1, 2019. Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian Interference with 2016 Elections, references to Leon Black. Tett, Gillian. “Distressed-debt players rule the roost in Trump’s White House.” Financial Times, April 27, 2017. Sen, Anirban and Joshua Franklin.

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“Neiman Marcus: How a creditor’s crusade against private equity power went wrong.” Financial Times, October 4, 2020.Bakewell, Sally and Lisa Lee. “Oaktree Deal Crushed a Leveraged Loan and Exposed Market’s Woes.” Bloomberg News, October 7, 2020. “Goldstein, Matthew, Steve Eder and David Enrich. “The Billionaire Who Stood by Jeffrey Epstein.” New York Times, October 12, 2020” “Vandevelde, Mark. “Leon Black on Epstein links: ‘Any suggestion of blackmail is… untrue’” Financial Times, October 29, 2020. About the Authors Sujeet Indap is the US editor of the Lex Column of the Financial Times and contributes stories across the paper.

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History
by Casey Michel
Published 23 Nov 2021

Scannell and Houlder, “US Tax Havens: The New Switzerland.” 54.  One of those who took full advantage of the loosening of American trust law: Jeffrey Epstein. As the New York Times discovered in 2021, “Epstein’s specialty was suggesting ways for wealthy clients to use sophisticated trusts and other investment vehicles.” For more details on Epstein’s use of trusts, see Matthew Goldstein and Steve Elder, “What Jeffrey Epstein Did to Earn $158 Million from Leon Black,” New York Times, 26 January 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/business/jeffrey-epstein-leon-black-apollo.html. 55.  Mider, “Moguls Rent South Dakota Addresses to Dodge Taxes Forever.” 56.  

Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by Tim Higgins
Published 2 Aug 2021

In 2013, they helped: Miriam Gottfried, “Dell Returns to Public Equity Markets,” Wall Street Journal (Dec. 28, 2018), https://www.wsj.com/​articles/​dell-returns-to-public-equity-markets-11546011748. Stewart reached out: James B. Stewart, “The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People,” New York Times (Aug. 12, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/​2019/​08/​12/​business/​jeffrey-epstein-interview.html. “Epstein, one of the”: Email exchange reviewed by the author. Musk proceeded to self-implode: David Gelles, James B. Stewart, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Kate Kelly, “Elon Musk Details ‘Excruciating’ Personal Toll of Tesla Turmoil,” New York Times (Aug. 16, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/​2018/​08/​16/​business/​elon-musk-interview-tesla.html.

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He concluded that “if and when a final proposal is presented,” the company’s board would consider it and, if approved, shareholders would get a chance to vote. The post only threw Wall Street into greater confusion, sending shares plummeting. Rumors began circulating that Musk might not be able to survive this latest misstep. Influential New York Times business columnist James Stewart heard that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who had pled guilty to a sex crime involving a teenage girl, was compiling a list of candidates for Tesla chairman, at Musk’s behest. It was a wild claim, in the midst of an unbelievable period. Stewart reached out to Epstein about the rumor, then found himself at the financier’s Manhattan home on August 16 for an interview on the condition it would be “on background,” meaning the information could be reported on but couldn’t be attributed directly to Epstein.

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World
by Alan Rusbridger
Published 26 Nov 2020

For the reader or viewer, what this ends up providing ought to be much more enlightening than the words of any pundit or politician: a sense of real life, the reasons people make the choices they do, and the things that ultimately decide what kind of world we live in. W WOLFF, MICHAEL In July of 2019, after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest, the journalist Vicky Ward wrote an article for the Daily Beast alleging that Michael Wolff had written a profile on Epstein for New York Magazine which never ran because of concerns over the fact-checking. In Ward’s words, the profile ‘was meant to “rehabilitate” Epstein’s image and would tell of all the billionaires who still, secretly, hung out with Epstein’.

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I was not allowed to call them for comment.’ The lawyers for New York Magazine were wary about making the claims without proof or comment and, according to Yablon, Wolff’s editors weren’t even aware of his arrangement with Epstein. New York Magazine killed the story. In Yablon’s words, this was ‘more of a Michael Wolff story than a Jeffrey Epstein story’. The curious anecdote, which certainly bucks traditional ideas of fact-checking and source verification, tracks with consistent criticism of Michael Wolff (b. 1953) – both his tendency to align himself too closely with powerful figures that he’s ostensibly covering, and his unorthodox relationship with ‘the truth’.

The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale
by Simon Clark and Will Louch
Published 14 Jul 2021

Mustafa was in America visiting colleges with his son. The Egyptian was arrested at the Four Seasons Hotel and led away from his family. He was taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the jail that held the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and would soon hold the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mustafa wanted to die when he realized where he was going. In London, Arif made his first visit to Westminster Magistrates’ Court from jail and offered £250,000 for bail. He wanted to live at home in South Kensington while he waited for an extradition trial in which a judge would decide whether to send him to the United States.

…

Arif was severely depressed and had coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, gastritis, sinus tachycardia, sleep apnea, hives, and inflamed nerves, Hugo said. He was still traumatized from his time in Wandsworth Prison, and Fayeeza’s close supervision was keeping her husband alive. A former jail warden from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where Mustafa had been held and Jeffrey Epstein had died, was called as a witness. Maureen Baird said the jail was dangerously overcrowded, understaffed, and infested with rats, mold, and criminal gangs. It was a gulag, she said. “The facility is so disgusting it’s like a prison in a third-world country,” Ms. Baird said. Suicidal inmates were placed in small single cells with concrete beds surrounded by windows so guards could see them.

Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms and the Corruption of Justice
by David Enrich
Published 5 Oct 2022

Paul Weiss was pulling in more than $100 million a year in legal fees from Apollo. Even for a law firm of Paul Weiss’s size, that was a lot of money. Keeping this mighty client happy was crucial. When reporters were chasing tips that Apollo’s cofounder, Leon Black, had paid more than $150 million to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Karp threw them off the scent. (The tips turned out to be true, leading Black to step down as Apollo’s CEO in 2021.) And when two reporters approached Paul Weiss for a book they were writing that was likely to cast Apollo in an unflattering light, the law firm went nuclear. The book was about the casino company Caesars Entertainment.

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• kept tabs on Carreyrou’s reporting: Barry Meier, Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies, 2021, 92–93. • more than $100 million a year: Casey Sullivan, “Inside Paul Weiss’ Relationship With Apollo Global Management,” Insider, 6/30/2021. • turned out to be true: Matthew Goldstein and Katherine Rosman, “Apollo C.E.O. to Step Down After Firm Finds More Payments to Jeffrey Epstein,” New York Times, 1/25/2021. • He warned that Paul Weiss: William D. Cohan, “ ‘The Truth Turns Out to Be Ugly,’ ” Vanity Fair, 4/27/2021. • eight cease-and-desist letters: Liz Day, Emily Steel, Rachel Abrams, and Samantha Stark, “Britney Spears Felt Trapped. Her Business Manager Benefited,” New York Times, 12/19/2021

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
by David Enrich
Published 18 Feb 2020

Over the years, McFadden had received a number of internal awards from the bank for her strong performance. But by 2015, she had begun making waves, standing up for what she thought was morally and ethically right. First, she protested that the private bank had created dozens of accounts for and was lending money to Jeffrey Epstein, a politically connected financier who had repeatedly been accused of sexually abusing girls and young women. (Epstein for many years had run his companies out of Henry Villard’s old Madison Avenue mansion.) A few years after being convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, Epstein had been cut off from his previous bank, JPMorgan, at which point he decamped to Deutsche, as willing as ever to ignore clients’ ugly backgrounds.

…

Trump describing Vrablic as CEO: Susanne Craig, “Trump Boasts of Rapport with Wall St., but It’s Not Mutual,” New York Times, May 24, 2016; transcript of Susanne Craig interview with Donald Trump. “These are guys that shift paper around”: James B. Stewart, “A Tax Loophole for the Rich That Just Won’t Die,” New York Times, November 9, 2017. Epstein at Deutsche: David Enrich and Jo Becker, “Jeffrey Epstein Moved Money Overseas in Transactions His Bank Flagged to U.S.,” New York Times, July 23, 2019. Tammy McFadden: David Enrich, “Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts,” New York Times, May 19, 2019. 33. Do Not Utter the Word “Trump” Interviews with Deutsche executives, board members, and consultants.

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
by Ronan Farrow
Published 14 Oct 2019

In early 2016, an anonymous woman—“Katie Johnson” in an initial legal document, “Jane Doe” in a subsequent one—filed a lawsuit against Trump. The plaintiff claimed that, in 1994, when she was thirteen years old and newly arrived in New York City to pursue modeling work, she’d been offered money to attend parties hosted by Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire investor, and attended by Trump. Hair-curling allegations of sexual violence followed: the lawsuit contended that the plaintiff and other minors were forced to perform sex acts on Trump and Epstein, culminating in a “savage sexual attack” by Trump; that Trump had threatened the plaintiff and her family with physical harm should she ever speak; and that both Trump and Epstein were told that the girls involved were underage.

…

Epstein, Case 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS, United States District Court Central District of California, complaint filed on April 26, 2016 and Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, Case 1:16-cv-04642, United States District Court Southern District of New York, complaint filed on June 20, 2016. 8 close friends with Donald Trump: Landon Thomas Jr., “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” New York, October 28, 2002. 9 widespread allegations that Epstein sexually abused minors: Julie K. Brown, “How a Future Trump Cabinet Member Gave a Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime,” Miami Herald, November 28, 2018. 10 plaintiff’s intermediary in the press: Jon Swaine, “Rape Lawsuits Against Donald Trump Linked to Former TV Producer,” Guardian, July 7, 2016. 11 emerged as doubtful as most journalists: Emily Shugerman, “I Talked to the Woman Accusing Donald Trump of Rape,” Revelist, July 13, 2016. 12 AMI ran several stories shooting down the claims in the lawsuit: “Trump Sued by Teen ‘Sex Slave’ for Alleged ‘Rape’—Donald Blasts ‘Disgusting’ Suit,” RadarOnline.com, April 28, 2016; and “Case Dismissed!

Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable
by Joanna Schwartz
Published 14 Feb 2023

State and local laws, local government politics, defense attorneys’ maneuvering, and plaintiffs’ interests combine to ensure that police officers rarely pay a penny toward financial awards plaintiffs receive. Clay Tiffany died in 2015. One year later, Nick Tartaglione was arrested for murdering four people and burying them in his backyard as part of a drug deal gone wrong. Tartaglione showed up in newspapers again as Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate; he reportedly cut Epstein down when he first tried to hang himself in the federal jail in New York City. Tartaglione is awaiting trial on charges that could send him to death row. As it turned out, Tiffany was right about Tartaglione being a crooked cop. He was also right to want to know where the money came from.

…

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Nick Tartaglione was arrested: Jonathan Bandler, “Still No Trial Date for Tartaglione Five Years After Orange County Quadruple Homicide,” Journal News, April 9, 2021. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT cut Epstein down: Jonathan Bandler, “Prosecutors: Missing Video of Jeffrey Epstein’s Suicide Found; Why Tartaglione’s Lawyer Wants It,” Journal News, Dec. 19, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT CHAPTER 11. LOCAL GOVERNMENT BUDGETS “Sunday Morning Coming Down”: Cady Drell et al., “40 Saddest Country Songs of All Time,” Rolling Stone, Sept. 17, 2019, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/40-saddest-country-songs-of-all-time-158907/johnny-cash-sunday-morning-coming-down-42023/.

The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times
by Lionel Barber
Published 5 Nov 2020

But I’m sworn to secrecy so it’s small talk only with my tablemates Joan Juliet Buck and Vicky Ward, two Vanity Fair contributors from Tina’s days as editor (in retrospect her finest hour). Vicky hints she would like to write a column for the FT about New York high society, including a businessman called Jeffrey Epstein.fn4 Never heard of him. Right now all I care about is making the evening flight to London and my imminent appointment as editor. THURSDAY, 3 NOVEMBER It’s been 48 hours since I went undercover at the Howard Hotel near Aldwych waiting for confirmation of the terms of Andrew Gowers’s departure.

…

He worked for Lehman Brothers up until its collapse in 2008 and for BP during the Deepwater Horizon disaster before joining Trafigura, the commodities trader. 3 Robert Thomson began as a copy boy on the Melbourne Herald and rose swiftly at the FT from foreign correspondent in Beijing to editor of FT Weekend and US managing editor. He left in 2002 to edit The Times of London, and later ascended in the Murdoch empire to be editor of the Wall Street Journal and CEO of News Corporation. 4 Jeffrey Epstein, New York financier, philanthropist and sex offender. 5 Return to the gold standard: a return to linking domestic currency supply to bullion holdings, last practised in 1971, was not what I had in mind. The metaphor turned into a watchword for quality during my editorship. 6 New Labour: the centre-left, pro-market moniker which helped Tony Blair and Gordon Brown return the Labour party to power in 1997 after 18 years in the wilderness.

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America
by Alec MacGillis
Published 16 Mar 2021

The company zeroed in on three towns beyond the long reach of the Columbus city line along the northern, wealthier arc of the I-270 beltway: Hilliard (“Real People, Real Possibilities”), Dublin (“Where Yesterday Meets Tomorrow”), and New Albany (“America’s Best Suburb”), the last of which the billionaire Les Wexner had created out of the soybean fields with the help of his mysterious consigliere, the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. Amazon laid down its terms, exactly as it was doing with the warehouses it was seeking to build in Ohio and elsewhere. It demanded large incentives: a fifteen-year exemption from property taxes, which, for a standard data center, would be worth about $5.4 million. “Vadata strives to operate its facilities as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” the company stated in justifying its demands to New Albany.

…

when Amazon chose Ohio: Mark Williams, “Amazon’s Central Ohio Data Centers Now Open,” The Columbus Dispatch, October 18, 2016. “I love that they don’t come”: Orban, Ahead in the Cloud, 7. created out of the soybean fields: Emily Steel, Steve Eder, Sapna Maheshwari, and Matthew Goldstein, “How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria’s Secret for Wealth and Women,” The New York Times, July 25, 2019. Amazon laid down its terms: All subsequent correspondence between the three towns and Amazon obtained by public information requests to the towns by the author in April 2019. sales tax exemption … worth $77 million: Mya Frazier, “Amazon Isn’t Paying Its Electric Bills.

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
by Ray Kurzweil
Published 25 Jun 2024

We Must Strive for Hyperhumanism,” Crossroads to the Future, April 26, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20230322182945/https://www.crossroads-to-the-future.com/articles/artificial-intelligence-transhumanism-is-narcissistic-we-must-strive-for-hyperhumanism; Wesley J. Smith, “Jeffrey Epstein, a Narcissistic Transhumanist,” National Review, August 1, 2019, https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jeffrey-epstein-a-narcissistic-transhumanist; Sarah Spiekermann, “Why Transhumanism Will Be a Blight on Humanity and Why It Must Be Opposed,” The Privacy Surgeon, July 6, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20180212062523/http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/why-transhumanism-will-be-a-blight-on-humanity-and-why-it-must-be-opposed.

Buffett
by Roger Lowenstein
Published 24 Jul 2013

Simmons, like some of the others, made a pilgrimage to Omaha, a trip that invariably included a steak dinner, a leisurely tour of Buffett’s childhood haunts, and an earful of his wisdom. Buffett didn’t say much during the Post’s board meetings. But occasionally a comment would spark him. At one meeting, Jeffrey Epstein, a young M.B.A. who was scouting for new fields of investment, gave an overview of what consumers were spending in each part of the media and entertainment industry. His figure for home entertainment was $5 billion. Buffett’s bushy eyebrows went up about three feet. “That $5 billion is a pretty interesting number,” he noted.

…

Tom Murphy [interview and 1988 management conference]. 7. Dan Burke; Tom Murphy. Dialogue is largely from Buffett, in Goldenson, Beating the Odds, 464–65, supplemented by Auletta, Three Blind Mice, 41–42. 8. Goldenson, Beating the Odds, 465. 9. Ibid. 10. Dan Burke; Tom Murphy. 11. Reconstruction from Dan Burke, Jeffrey Epstein, Ev Erlick, Michael Mallardi, Tom Murphy, Frederick Pierce, and Bruce Wasserstein. 12. Anthony Bianco, “Why Warren Buffett Is Breaking His Own Rules,” Business Week, April 15, 1985. 13. John Greenwald, “High Times for T. Boone Pickens,” Time, March 14, 1985. 14. John C. Coffee, Jr., Louis Lowenstein, and Susan Rose-Ackerman, eds., Knights, Raiders, and Targets: The Impact of the Hostile Takeover (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 22–23. 15.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
Published 14 Jun 2021

In September 2020, a Daily Kos/Civiqs poll reported that over half of the Republicans surveyed believed either partially or mostly in QAnon’s theories . . . at least the theories they were aware of. Because tumble further down the QAnon rabbit hole, and you’ll find Satanic Panic–esque, flagrantly fascist beliefs that not every subscriber even knows about (at least not at first): theories about Jeffrey Epstein co-conspiring with Tom Hanks to molest hordes of minors, Hillary Clinton drinking the blood of children in order to prolong her life, the Rothschilds running a centuries-old ring of Satan worshippers, and beyond. But QAnon quickly grew to encapsulate much more than stereotypical far-right extremists.

Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-Racist Comedian
by Frankie Boyle
Published 23 Oct 2013

I can’t help thinking there’s a twenty-year-old rugby player coming to in a field somewhere, his chest stitched like a 1950s football, barely able to get to his knees with his new nonagenarian heart. I’m being unfair – the royals do pretend to do their bit for the community. Prince Andrew abseiled down the Shard for charity. He didn’t raise as much money as everyone had hoped, as he made it down alive. He had to quit as Trade Envoy due to his links with a convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A member of the royal family shouldn’t be making us look stupid overseas. That’s clearly the job of the SAS, the MOD and Jordan. The Sun referred to Epstein as the ‘Paedophile Billionaire’, which reminds me of the old children’s rhyme: ‘The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand friends.

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back
by Jacob Ward
Published 25 Jan 2022

In other words, stories by Winston were not being advertised against, making them less directly valuable to the Times. This sort of inadvertent algorithmic blacklisting was happening to Pulitzer finalists and was making coverage of some of the most important stories of the moment a literal money-loser for news outlets. Just think of what these algorithms might make of the Jeffrey Epstein trial, of death in Gaza, of morgues overflowing with coronavirus victims. Nandini Jammi, who runs a brand-safety consultancy for advertisers, explained the problem to me this way: “Instead of actually looking for criminal content, these brand-safety technology vendors have identified keywords such as ‘crime,’ or ‘violence,’ or ‘terrorist.’

Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies
by Barry Meier
Published 17 May 2021

During his career as a journalist, Glenn Simpson had never won a Pulitzer Prize or even been a finalist for one. But that January, he was celebrating another kind of achievement—he had just planted a negative piece about Donald Trump in the news media. The article, published on the website of Vice News, dealt with Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a money manager and sexual predator who had admitted as part of a plea deal struck in 2007 that he had hired a young teenage girl to give him sexual massages. The plea deal was back in the news because dozens of other female victims of Epstein were seeking to reopen the case. And with Trump running for the Republican nomination, journalists were interested in his relationship with Epstein.

Work! Consume! Die!
by Frankie Boyle
Published 12 Oct 2011

He refused to quit, despite his links with a convicted paedophile. A member of the royal family shouldn’t be making us look stupid overseas. That’s clearly the job of the SAS, the MOD and Jordan. I find the reports about this billionaire paedophile highly upsetting. To think I got palmed off with lousy fruit pastilles. The Sun referred to Jeffrey Epstein as the ‘Paedophile Billionaire’. Is that like a new version of that Channel 4 show, ‘The Secret Millionaire’? Every episode ends with a guy saying, ‘I have to reveal I’m not really a binman. I’m a billionaire and I’d like to offer you this cheque – in exchange for your kids.’ It reminds me of the old children’s rhyme.

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis
by Scott Patterson
Published 5 Jun 2023

his literary agent and the organizer of the proceedings, John Brockman, had written: Here’s some specifics re: the agenda: FRIDAY NIGHT 6pm Cocktails—Mezzanine Level 7pm Dinner—Mezzanine Level—Studio 5 SATURDAY MORNING 7:30 Breakfast Mezzanine Level—Studio 4 8:30 Depart by bus to Space X (about 20–30 minutes) To accommodate Craig Venter who can only arrive at Space X in the afternoon, if possible, I will move Elon Musk’s talk and tour of the facility to 4pm, instead of during the lunch break. 7:30 Dinner—Spago 176 N Canon Dr Beverly Hills, CA 90210 With the blockbuster success of The Black Swan, Taleb had gained entry into one of the most elite intellectual salons in America, Brockman’s Edge Foundation, an informal collection of (mostly male) scientists and thinkers that included Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Danny Kahneman, and Murray Gell-Mann (discoverer of the quark) as well as tycoons such as Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and future disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The idea behind the salon was simple: put a bunch of smart people together in a room, have them talk, and see what comes out on the other end. Sprinkle on some billionaire cash and maybe something big could actually germinate. It was a “forum for big, intriguing and/or disturbing ideas advanced by intellectuals who have a track record of major achievements in their fields,” the Guardian wrote.

The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War
by Jeff Sharlet
Published 21 Mar 2023

(Wrong.) QAnon consumed her. She was a researcher, a rabbit-holer, a clicker of links, known in her circle for knowing things, facts and numbers beyond her friends’ measure. She wanted to save the 800,000 children she incorrectly believed disappeared every year. She thought Disney was working with Jeffrey Epstein. Race haunted her so much she pretended it wasn’t there. She scoffed at the notion that Trump’s use of the word lynching evoked anything but a rope that knows no color. When pundits complained about the word, she vowed to say “lynching” herself every day. “FACTS!!!!!!!” she all-capped. “White liberals continue to support a party that tells them that they should regret being white.”

The Case for Israel
by Alan Dershowitz
Published 31 Jul 2003

In writing this book, I have benefited greatly from the research assistance of Owen Alterman, Mara Zusman, Eric Citron, Holly Beth Billington, Natalie Hershlag, and Ayelet Weiss. My assistant, Jane Wagner; my agent, Helen Rees; my editor, Hana Lane; and my temporary assistant, Robin Yeo, have provided invaluable assistance. For perceptive comments on the manuscript, I thank my friends Bernard Beck, Jeffrey Epstein, Steve Kosslyn, Alan Rothfeld, and Michael and Jackie Halbreich. My wife, Carolyn, and my daughter, Ella, inspired me, debated with me, and encouraged me. My sons, Elon and Jamin, my nephew Adam, my nieces Rana and Hannah, my brother Nathan, and my sister-in-law Marilyn all made useful suggestions, which I much appreciate.

Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM
by Sarah Berman
Published 19 Apr 2021

Cafritz became a starry-eyed servant for Raniere: she cooked his food, washed his clothes, and drove him to wherever he needed to be. She became known as a “defuser of bombs”—able to soften any conflict and salvage the most damaged relationships. She went on to facilitate many of Raniere’s relationships with young women and girls, as Ghislaine Maxwell is alleged to have done for Jeffrey Epstein. While Gina and Raniere liked to riff on religious and philosophical ideas, Unterreiner got an actuary certification and was seen as the business mind of the group. As long as Heidi knew them, Unterreiner and Raniere planned to launch a business around Raniere’s genius. Friends who knew Raniere at the time say he was always looking for a way to make a lot of money with minimal effort.

Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain's Most Notorious Media Baron
by John Preston
Published 9 Feb 2021

I have to believe that something good will come out of this mess. It’s sad for my mother. It’s sad to have lost my dad. It’s sad for my brothers. But I would say we’ll be back. Watch this space.’ Just as she predicted, the world had not heard the last of Ghislaine Maxwell. Following her father’s death, she began dating the millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein. In 2008, after their affair had ended, Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution and sentenced to eighteen months in prison – he served just thirteen. In July 2019, he was rearrested, this time for the sex trafficking of minors. A month later he was found hanging in his prison cell at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by Zeke Faux
Published 11 Sep 2023

But once the crew helped me on board and led me to the lowest deck, the scene was a bit disappointing. I was expecting a party, but I only found about two dozen people quietly sipping drinks around a bar. None of the guests seemed to know one another. A crypto venture capital fund manager—wearing a mock souvenir T-shirt from convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private island—joked about a scam that another yacht guest was running. A crypto public relations man offered what he called “Colombian marching powder” to a young woman. A small group of people dancing told me they were philosophy students who’d come to the Bahamas to intern for FTX’s Bankman-Fried.

Siege: Trump Under Fire
by Michael Wolff
Published 3 Jun 2019

In the high irony department, Jared Kushner, when he was in law school, and before he met Ivanka, identified, in a paper he wrote, possible claims of fraud against the Trump Organization in a particular real estate deal he was studying—a subject now of quite some amusement among his acquaintances at the time. Practically speaking, Trump hid in plain sight, as the prosecutors appeared to be finding. In November 2004, for instance, Jeffrey Epstein, the financier later caught in a scandal involving underage prostitutes, agreed to purchase from bankruptcy a house in Palm Beach, Florida, for $36 million, a property that had been on the market for two years. Epstein and Trump had been close friends—playboys in arms, as it were—for more than a decade, with Trump often seeking Epstein’s help with his chaotic financial affairs.

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
by Michael Wolff
Published 5 Jan 2018

One of Trump’s early ideas was to recruit his friend Tom Barrack—part of his kitchen cabinet of real estate tycoons including Steven Roth and Richard Lefrak—and make him chief of staff. Barrack, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, is a starstruck real estate investor of legendary acumen who owns Michael Jackson’s former oddball paradise, Neverland Ranch. With Jeffrey Epstein—the New York financier who would become a tabloid regular after a guilty plea to one count of soliciting prostitution that sent him to jail in 2008 in Palm Beach for thirteen months—Trump and Barrack were a 1980s and ’90s set of nightlife Musketeers. The founder and CEO of the private equity firm Colony Capital, Barrack became a billionaire making investments in distress debt investments in real estate around the world, including helping to bail out his friend Donald Trump.

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power
by Jacob Helberg
Published 11 Oct 2021

For seven days, across three screens, Shteyngart imbibed a steady diet of pro-Putin propaganda, washed down by Four Seasons Wagyu beef. He watched news anchors gleefully play up the ostensible decay of the Western world—a major traffic accident in New Hampshire, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew caught up in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal—while hailing the successes of Russian separatists in Crimea. By Day 3, Shteyngart was hearing the voices of Russian TV anchors while he took a swim. Day 4 brought nightmares. On Day 5, his psychiatrist came for a visit. The following morning, Shteyngart decided to start drinking after breakfast.

Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers
by Katherine Clarke
Published 13 Jun 2023

Diamond had better fortune when his friend Barbara Creaturo, a senior editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, persuaded him to be featured in the magazine as Bachelor of the Month, and she included his address in the article. In the picture that accompanied the piece, Diamond reclined in his office, his shirt unbuttoned to almost his navel. (Another man who would later receive this dubious honor in the pages of Cosmopolitan in the 1980s was Jeffrey Epstein.) “I got over five thousand letters,” Diamond recalled. “I got letters from girls in mental institutions, jail, everything.” “I’d like to say how delicious you appear to be,” one potential suitor wrote to him. “Relax—slam the door—draw the drapes—distill a quart of scotch—and turn out the lights!”

Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal
by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz
Published 20 Jul 2020

Zangrillo had hired one of the most well-respected trial lawyers in Boston. Weinberg had done solely defense since graduating from Harvard Law almost fifty years earlier. Known as fiercely intelligent, he tackled tough white-collar and criminal cases, from political corruption to murder. He’d represented Jeffrey Epstein until the disgraced financier took his own life a few weeks before this hearing. “He made a donation to the school,” Weinberg argued. “That’s not a crime.” Weinberg had already successfully roughed up USC by publicly releasing the collection of internal USC admissions records—including the embarrassing “VIP” list—obtained in discovery.

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno
by Nancy Jo Sales
Published 17 May 2021

And who could blame them for their sensitivity, when this word had been used like a bludgeon in interminable media rants about these kids today—the oldest of whom are hardly kids anymore, this generation born between 1981 and 1996. I had no illusions that their predecessors were any better. It wasn’t a millennial man who had paid me less, or hit me, or worse; those were all baby boomer men. Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, or Donald Trump himself—were they millennials? So I knew from baby boomer men. In my thirties, I had even married one for the second time—or sort of married him, which I can explain: We met at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery at a meeting of activists organizing the protest against the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
by Naomi Klein
Published 11 Sep 2023

And there is another, related kind of capitalist conspiracy that needs to be surfaced, this one simply flowing from the fact that when a tiny stratum of the population is permitted to grow wealthier than Victorian-era monarchs, as these Shadow Lands have allowed them to, some of the people who breathe that rarified air are going to get the idea that they are above the law. Which is simply to say: I think a great many secrets about powerful men died when Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, and I’m not sure we will ever know their full extent. Do you? Power and wealth conspire to protect themselves. It happens in public, and it happens in private. It happens under the spotlight, and it happens in the shadows. So, in attempting to understand the ludicrous theories swirling in the Mirror World, we should be very careful not to be so reactive that we end up saying that sadism and depravity do not happen, that only a loony conspiracy theorist would believe something so out-there.

England: Seven Myths That Changed a Country – and How to Set Them Straight
by Tom Baldwin and Marc Stears
Published 24 Apr 2024

It was there that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, an African American actor who once starred in the legal drama Suits, launched their own mini-culture war by recording an interview with Oprah Winfrey and writing a book to accuse the royal family of institutional racism.69 At the same time in New York, Prince Andrew was hotly denying claims from an alleged victim of sex trafficking, Virginia Giuffre. She said the Duke had sexually assaulted her, first in London, then at a Manhattan mansion and on a private Caribbean island owned by the disgraced American financier Jeffrey Epstein. After much embarrassment, the Queen is said to have subsidised an out-of-court settlement in which Andrew admitted no liability but paid Giuffre millions of dollars shortly before the case was due to go to jury trial.70 A few days later, back in England, it emerged that the Prince’s Foundation, a charity set up by Charles, the then heir to the throne, was under police investigation for allegedly offering honours in return for donations from a Saudi Arabian businessman.

If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
by Jill Lepore
Published 14 Sep 2020

In Silicon Valley, nearly all of the leaders of companies selling snake oil were men, the great-grandsons of the scientists of Simulmatics, but they believed themselves to be orphans, parentless, fatherless, sui generis self-made geniuses.11 They made no room in their world for women, or family, or knowledge other than the calculations of computers. Places like MIT’s corporate-funded Media Lab cultivated a “hacker ethic,” which meant, in many quarters, no ethics at all. In 2016, the director of the Media Lab accepted $1.7 million from convicted felon Jeffrey Epstein, after he’d registered as a sex offender and pleaded guilty to procuring an underage girl for sex (Epstein helped the lab pull in another $7.5 million from other donors), and announced a “Disobedience Award” to celebrate “responsible, ethical disobedience,” making of heedless audacity a fetish.12 MIT’s Media Lab served as a convenient scapegoat, a distraction from a broader ethical aimlessness not only in Silicon Valley but on college campuses.

The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul
by Isabel Kershner
Published 16 May 2023

Walder’s children’s books were still prominently displayed in bookstores there, despite calls by two respected rabbis to have them taken off the shelves. But Israel Cohen, the Haredi radio commentator, said that Meshi-Zahav and Walder were high-profile enough to be compared, in Haredi terms, with Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein. Fundamental change may come slowly, he said, but he believed that eventually it would come. The veil had been lifted on sexual abuse in the Haredi sector, so Avigayil focused on new campaigns, including expanding the provision of state Haredi education by the government, alongside the secular and national-religious state school systems.

Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023

Then he paused for a long time, overcome by emotion. “There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days—days when I didn’t go outside,” he said. “This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids.” The Times had been told that Musk had worked with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who would later be convicted of child sex-trafficking charges. Musk denied it. Indeed, he had no connections with Epstein, other than the fact that Epstein’s enabler Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Musk didn’t know, had once photo-bombed him by standing behind him at the Met Gala. Gelles asked whether things were improving.