As you have probably seen, the Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that there is not there with the whole saga of Jeff Epstein: no list, no hidden group of the most powerful men in the world having sex with minors, no claims of prostitution, etc. etc. etc. I admit as much Schadenfreude as the next American American Blood seeing Maga is eating living during this last round of conspiracy theory. But is it possible that none of this has ever been true in the first place or that it may have been extremely exaggerated?
Let me be clear on what I mean by “this thing”. There is more than enough evidence that Epstein attacked minor girls and had a system to obtain them. He pleaded guilty to a limited version of this and he clearly obtained a romantic agreement. Miami Herald’s journalist Julie K. Brown was largely responsible for the revision of this previous agreement, detailing how Epstein fled and made Epstein actions and this transaction earlier a mega history in 2018.
She interviewed dozens of victims of Epstein – minors, often fractured or abusive houses, vulnerable to the manipulation which prevented them from going to the authorities – and identified 80. For this, there is a lot of evidence. And as Brown has argued in his Herald series and his subsequent book, Epstein had a whole network of people who obtained these girls for him. For this, there is a lot of evidence, and her girlfriend who has become a processor Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for it.
But this is not the thing that has done Epstein and conspiracy theories linked to its name and its predation of such cultural totems. This is the idea that he also made minor girls available to many richest and most powerful men in the world and not only facilitated these statutory rapes, but recorded them and has kept various types of proofs of these crimes. There seems to be credible evidence on Prince Andrew. An accuser accused Alan Dershowitz, who denied the accusation. Some other specific men have been appointed. But I have always been struck by the way you go beyond this handful of men, the whole story becomes very nebulous – enormous amounts of smoke, but, in terms of reporting, it looks at least for charges and speculation bouncing between different people. You start from a nucleus of bad actors reasonably documented, then supposition and speculation solidify in conventional and ultimately presumed wisdom.
The idea that Epstein bought girls for the richest and most powerful world has not come out of nowhere. Epstein clearly collected rich and powerful men. He met them. He launched parts they attended. Bill Gates met him. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump too. He also imagined himself and wanted to be considered a man of ideas. He gave relatively small sums (compared to his alleged wealth) to sponsor the symposiums and meetings of world -renowned teachers and academics in the best universities. After the fall of Epstein, Harvard made an internal investigation and a subsequent report which revealed that between 1998 and 2008, Epstein gave $ 9.1 million to the university “to support a variety of research activities and teachers”. The generosity of Epstein even managed to make him win a concert of “visiting colleague” in the Harvard psychology department in 2005. Clearly linked to super rich, politically powerful and most respected minds was extremely important for Epstein. But whether it is the ego or a way to find wealth of which it could manage money – or just what was the main motivation – was never entirely clear for me. Of course, it may be partly to shoot them in your sexual predation network. But that may not be evidence.
Now maybe everything has happened. I am not an expert in this whole story. It has never particularly interested me. Everything I have done over the years is, I think, look at the story as a journalist and have an instinct for a journalist around when you see something where there are many accusations, many of them are taken as a fact or at least probably true, and yet, when you are looking for the specific evidence that really melts it, it becomes very vague. I would say that when you look at the most extreme versions of Epstein conspiracy theories, it even checks things that genetically resemble pizzagate. And I mean that in the sense of a conspiracy theory which claims not only to bring the global elite together into a vast ecosystem of the worst type of criminal conduct – sexual abuse of vulnerable minors – but can perhaps fatally cancel this elite if the truth was known.
When you note that this broader version of Epstein’s history does not seem to be based on many evidence or does not ask why more evidence did not disclose (surely one of the alleged that the video bands would have been released?) Do you get the response of the standard conspiracy theory: with the global elite if compromised, not surprising that the evidence is submitted to packaging!
Some of my suspicions of what we could call the broader history of Epstein began with the first questions about its richness. To what extent Epstein was worth Epstein and where he obtained his money was very vague when he moved to the center of the news conversation in 2018. But it was ultimately proved to be as rich as some thought. It was worth around $ 500 million. But a disproportionate part of this wealth came from the management of the money of two men – the Wexner, CEO of the Brands, and Leon Black of Apollo Global Management. Before even becoming the cultural avatar of sex traffic, there were many legends about Epstein, many of which were simply false or largely swollen. A confabulation network surrounded man almost his whole life.
As I hope I did it clearly, I certainly do not intend to die on the hill of “no wider Epstein sex ring”. I really don’t know how many other men could have had sex with Epstein girls. I just say that the evidence of this part of the story seems to be much less than many people seem to think. And it may well be that Bondi, Patel and the rest for once really tell the truth-that there is simply not much there.
