Toward the end of a bizarre interview between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein—in which the registered sex-offender argues, among other idiocies, that children should not learn to write—Bannon interrupts to ask whether universities, institutions devoted to pursuing truth, should have taken Epstein’s dirty money. Epstein, citing former Harvard president Derek Bok, replies that “taking money for good causes is a good thing.”
Epstein’s understanding of money as a good independent of its provenance, one that could cover over his sins, recalls the critique of gold made in Timon of Athens. “This yellow slave,” Shakespeare writes, “will make black white, foul fair, / Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.” Epstein’s success shows how far our society has been corrupted by the power of money.
Bannon’s video, intended to rehabilitate Epstein, was part of a tranche of files released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) at the end of January. The files represent, according to the DOJ, about half its archive of six million documents. Attorney General Pam Bondi has claimed that the department’s mandate under the Epstein Files Transparency Act is complete, though the law’s authors, congressmen Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, disagree. The chaotic dump of dubiously selected and redacted communications leaves potential criminal questions unanswered—including how Epstein evaded federal prosecution in 2007 and who else may have been involved in his sex crimes. But UN experts critical of the DOJ’s process have suggested the possibility of a “global criminal enterprise” whose offenses may amount to “crimes against humanity.”
What does emerge more clearly is how Epstein amassed a network of elites in business, law, politics, journalism, and academia—a group Khanna has called the “Epstein class”—even after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Amid the growing awareness that Epstein had, as The New York Times put it in 2018, “abused underage girls on a near-industrial scale,” some of Epstein’s rich and powerful correspondents simply looked away, while others were eager to help. They treated his crimes as either a joke or a public-relations problem, not a moral one. After a report in the Miami Herald reignited interest in his case, former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers emailed to say “U have returned to the press” before turning to a discussion of Epstein’s skills as a “wingman.” To Epstein’s elite correspondents, his victims—who numbered more than a thousand, were as young as fourteen, and often came from vulnerable backgrounds—simply didn’t matter, certainly not as much as a star-studded dinner, exclusive vacation, or new name to drop.
Epstein found intellectuals and scientists to be particularly susceptible and valuable recruits. For example, he won over the linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky with connections, financial advice, gifts, and the prospect of luxury travel. But with most academics, Epstein’s allure was funding. After serving out the terms of his cushy plea deal in Palm Beach, Epstein embarked on a years-long PR campaign to sanitize his reputation through lavish grants to high-profile institutions and researchers. One of his biggest investments was $6.5 million to set up the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard. Scientists in Epstein’s orbit are shown flattering his intelligence and sharing jokes, often about women.
Epstein’s central talent seems to have been for buying social goods and qualities that aren’t straightforwardly for sale: intelligence, esteem, connections, status, women. He collected high-profile people from different sectors so that he could, in effect, sell them to each other—all in an effort to make himself, as the network’s hub, untouchable.
His network extended into the highest levels of government—both abroad, especially in Israel, and in the United States. Kathryn Ruemmler, chief White House counsel during Obama’s second term, was forced to resign from her $22-millon-a-year job at Goldman Sachs after details of her close friendship with “Uncle Jeffrey,” as she called him, emerged. She helped him with crisis communications; he showered her with gifts and joked about “renew[ing] an old habit” with girls.
Meanwhile, at least six top Trump administration officials appear in the files, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose emails about a 2012 family trip to Epstein’s island contradicted previous denials. The latest revelations also suggest Trump himself may have been even more involved than previously known. Epstein referred to him in a 2011 email as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and mentioned “hours” Trump spent at his house with a victim. Another release shows that Trump called the Palm Beach Police Department after Epstein’s 2006 arrest to report that “everyone” knew about Epstein and that Trump “got the hell out of there” when he found himself with Epstein and a group of teenagers. This contradicts Trump’s repeated claims of ignorance and raises obvious questions about the motivation for his belated call.
Whatever Trump’s level of involvement, he and Epstein had more in common than a pattern of sexual abuse. They shared an obsession with the trappings of wealth and a tendency to treat laws and moral codes as empty symbols that could be dispensed with in the quest for money and power. Their shamelessness and superficiality turned out to be assets in elite circles.
Trump’s current regime recalls Epstein’s disgraced network, albeit with less secrecy. Where Epstein cultivated, Trump extorts. But both found that if they pushed hard enough anything was for sale. Indeed, many of the very same institutions—Ivy League universities, financial giants, high-powered law firms—that proved vulnerable to Epstein’s influence have also caved to Trump’s intimidation. Epstein himself may be gone, but we are only beginning to understand the extent of the social rot his case has exposed.
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