Most of us think we know the Jeffrey Epstein story: he was a wealthy financier who liked underage girls, who was well connected in business, academic and political circles, who furnished girls to others and thereby became the center of a pedophile ring that encompassed some of the world’s elite, and who may have blackmailed some of those individuals.
But how true is that story? At First Things, Matthew Schmitz argues that it is largely myth:
The girls’ stories were consistent not only in what they described, but in what they did not. Not one of Epstein’s initial accusers described being trafficked to other men. Marie Villafaña, the prosecutor who led the charge against Epstein in Florida, later recalled: “None of . . . the victims that we spoke with ever talked about any other men being involved in abusing them. It was only Jeffrey Epstein.”
***
Epstein’s accusers in Palm Beach apparently had no knowledge of any blackmail ring. Nor has reliable evidence of one emerged in the years since. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s long-time associate, was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021, but she was charged with and convicted of trafficking minors to exactly one person: Jeffrey Epstein. Where did the idea that Epstein ran a blackmail ring come from? Answering this question requires separating Epstein the man from the Epstein myth, which has put a respectable face on once-fringe ideas.
The blackmail story comes largely from Virginia Giuffre, a young woman who was victimized by Epstein but who was not, unfortunately, a reliable witness. See Schmitz’s article for the details.
The most sensational, and far-fetched, aspect of the Epstein narrative is that he had something to do with intelligence–Israeli intelligence, as anti-Zionists quickly assumed. But is there any basis for that claim?
Perhaps the most substantial support for the belief that Epstein ran a blackmail ring comes from a 2019 article in the Daily Beast. The article contains a second- or third-hand claim from an unnamed source, to the effect that Epstein received a light sentence in Florida because he “belonged to intelligence.” According to the unnamed source, Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor in the case, gave this explanation to Trump administration officials while he was being vetted as secretary of labor.
There are several reasons to doubt this report, aside from the thin sourcing. Vicky Ward, the author of the story, has a history of dealing loosely with facts (as her former colleagues at Vanity Fair recently told the New Yorker). And Acosta later denied—on the record and under oath—that he had any knowledge of Epstein’s being involved with intelligence.
There follows a lengthy explanation of why Epstein got a light sentence–the evidence was thin, state prosecutors were willing to strike a deal that included no jail time, and Acosta gets the credit for pursuing the case to the point where Epstein did go to prison, albeit relatively briefly.
I encourage you to read Schmitz’s entire piece. The Epstein story is basically QAnon in reverse. The idea that the world is run by elites who are secretly in league as pedophiles apparently has a great deal of appeal. But I don’t think it is true, in either the QAnon or the Epstein version.
The idea that somewhere there is a “black book” with a list of celebrities to whom Epstein supplied underage girls is, I think, a fantasy. If there were serious evidence of such crimes being committed by the wealthy and powerful, it would have come out long ago, and ambitious prosecutors would have pursued those cases. For years now, Democrats have claimed that Donald Trump was in “Epstein’s book” as a sex criminal. That is obviously false. No one can seriously imagine that if such evidence existed, however slender, it would have been kept secret for all these years–years in which Joe Biden’s Department of Justice had possession of Epstein’s documents.
It doesn’t appear that there is anyone left to prosecute, so the full details of Epstein’s activities may never be known. No release of documents, however complete, will satisfy the conspiracy theorists. And the circumstances of Epstein’s death may remain murky as well. For example, Alan Dershowitz thinks Epstein may have paid prison guards to enable him to commit suicide.
In short, I think President Trump is right in saying that it is time to move on from the Epstein story. I doubt that there are explosive facts that have not come to light, and it may well be that the Epstein narrative that many of us have absorbed is, for the most part, myth.
