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The case of Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy sex offender with links to President Trump and a vast number of other rich and powerful figures in the U.S. and beyond, has made headlines for years. Everyone knows about it.
But the case presents such a sprawling scandal that it feels hard to wrap your arms around. Who was involved — and what does “involved” mean anyway? These are some of the questions I’m hearing at the school gates and at dinner parties.
So I called up my colleague Matthew Goldstein, who has been covering the story since 2019, when Epstein was indicted and arrested in New York on federal charges of sex trafficking and died by suicide. You can read our conversation below.
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Credit...Jon Elswick/Associated Press
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The case of Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy sex offender with links to President Trump and a vast number of other rich and powerful figures in the U.S. and beyond, has made headlines for years. Everyone knows about it.
But the case presents such a sprawling scandal that it feels hard to wrap your arms around. Who was involved — and what does “involved” mean anyway? These are some of the questions I’m hearing at the school gates and at dinner parties.
So I called up my colleague Matthew Goldstein, who has been covering the story since 2019, when Epstein was indicted and arrested in New York on federal charges of sex trafficking and died by suicide. You can read our conversation below.
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Credit...Jon Elswick/Associated Press
What we know about the Epstein files
So, Matt: Last November, Congress passed a law obliging the Trump administration to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein. What exactly are these Epstein files? Are there more? Where does this end?
The Epstein files, broadly speaking, are everything that prosecutors have accumulated since Epstein first came into their sights in 2005 on allegations of abusing underage girls in Florida. Since November, some three million-odd pages’ worth of documents have been released. The final batch came last week, and we’re still going through it.
These documents come from two criminal investigations between 2006 and 2019. Epstein has been on the sex offender registry since 2008. But it’s not all information related to sex trafficking. There are also his clients’ financial documents in there. There are personal email and text message exchanges and videos and photos.
Was there anything in this latest batch that changed the story for you? New names? New revelations?
So far, it doesn’t fundamentally change our understanding of the story. It does give us more color and a better understanding of people’s attitudes and willingness to hang out with a known sex offender.
A lot of international names have surfaced. How global is the Epstein story?
A majority of the people involved are American. But yes, there are lots of international names mentioned in the files. Everyone knows about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince. Others include Peter Mandelson, the ex-British ambassador to the U.S.; Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister; the Norwegian royals.
And a lot of the young women came from Eastern Europe and Russia.
One thing I’ve been trying to understand is: Why did all these powerful and rich people want to hang out with Epstein?
I think it speaks to how elite society works around the globe. It reveals the way that money, no matter how it’s gained, brings people attention, which brings more money and more attention, and generates this vast network of connections — even for someone like Epstein. So people saw that he gathered powerful people around him and wanted to be part of it, and that way the circle became bigger.
But as you said, he was a publicly known and officially registered sex offender since 2008?
Yes, and in that way it’s also revealing of how some people in elite society viewed women. There was very much a class aspect to this. A lot of the young girls came from broken homes and poor backgrounds. Some of them had been abused in their own families. And they were viewed, basically, as objects, if not to be sexually used, then to just be around, almost like furniture. They were viewed as disposable people.
For many, the Epstein story has become a Trump story. How much of a risk is this story for the president?
In a way, Trump did that to himself. His involvement with Epstein was no secret. It was known when he ran for president the first time in 2016. If it had just been about his closeness to Epstein, it would have been embarrassing, but the story probably would have faded.
Trump made himself the story by promising the MAGA base that it would have full transparency about Epstein, but then sort of doing a fake out. His administration made a big deal about having the Epstein client list, but then put out information that had already been largely in the public domain.
Which made a lot of people think he’s hiding something.
Yes, and that has created political problems for him. In the new batch of files, we found references to Trump that included some unverified claims, as well as documents that were already public.
But from my perspective, I don’t see this story as primarily about Trump. It’s about this world of men in elite society and their treatment of young women.
The latest:
The Justice Department revealed the identities of dozens of sexual assault victims in the latest Epstein files — a series of errors the agency was still working to correct.
Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify in Congress as part of an inquiry into Epstein.
Two days before he killed himself in jail, Epstein signed a document that gave away much of his estate, a total of $100 million, to his girlfriend.
The police in London have begun a criminal investigation into Mandelson, who has been accused of misconduct and passing confidential government information to Epstein.
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