Let’s climb the rotten tree before we get to this particular apple.
There is a comforting myth we tell ourselves about justice and consequence. It is the narrative of the pariah, the ostracised villain, cast out from the company of decent society to face his judgment alone. The case of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile and sex trafficker, shatters this myth into a million irredeemable pieces. The true horror of Epstein is not confined to the depravity of his crimes, monstrous as they were. The deeper, more systemic evil is revealed in the 23,000 pages of emails that show, with chilling clarity, that long after his conviction for sexual offences, businessmen, academics, journalists, politicians, and royals actively sought his ear.
This is not a story of a shadowy cabal. It is far more mundane, and for that reason, far more terrifying. It is the story of a system of power so rotten, so insulated by its own privilege, that it operates in plain sight, utterly indifferent to morality, conviction, or the suffering of the vulnerable. It reveals a world where the ultimate currency is not money, but influence, access, and a shared disdain for the norms that govern the rest of humanity. In this world, a convicted child sex offender was not a pariah; he was a player, a consigliere, a fixer, and a friend.
Let us begin by stating the foundational, unforgivable truth: Jeffrey Epstein was a paedophile. He was not a “financier with connections,” nor a “controversial figure.” He was a predator who used his wealth as a weapon to procure, abuse, and destroy the lives of young girls. His 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from a minor was not a footnote in his biography; it was the defining characteristic of his moral character. Yet, the emails spanning 2009 to 2019 reveal a staggering reality: this conviction was not a social death sentence; it was, at worst, a minor inconvenience, a piece of bad PR to be managed within the gilded circles he inhabited.
The cast of characters who continued to engage with him reads like a roll call of the Western elite. We see Lawrence Krauss, a renowned physicist, turning to Epstein for advice on how to handle sexual harassment allegations. Epstein’s response—asking if Krauss had sex with the person before advising silence—is the counsel of a master manipulator, schooling an academic in the dark arts of evasion. We see Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard University, sharing his cynical “insights” on elite morality and asking Epstein, “How is life among the lucrative and louche?” The phrase itself is a testament to the normalisation of deviance; “louche” is a term for the slightly disreputable, the bohemian, not for a convicted child sex offender. Summers’ casual banter bestows upon Epstein an aura of rakish charm, effectively airbrushing his crimes into a personality quirk.
From the left, we find Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House Counsel to Barack Obama, exchanging gossip with him, calling Trump “so gross,” and expressing vile contempt for the overweight citizens of New Jersey. Her emails show Epstein detailing a whirlwind of meetings with ambassadors, tech giants, and academics, concluding with an open invitation: “you are a welcome guest at any.” This is not the correspondence of someone on the fringes; this is the diary of a man at the very centre of the web.
The right is equally, if not more, complicit. Steve Bannon, the architect of Trump’s populist ascendancy, was not merely an acquaintance; he was a strategic partner. Their emails show Epstein actively engineering a far-right resurgence in Europe, advising Bannon that it was “doable but time consuming,” and offering to orchestrate one-on-one meetings with European leaders. This is not passive association; this is active collaboration. When Bannon asks, “How do I do that???” he is treating a paedophile as a respected geopolitical strategist. This alliance reaches its most grotesque expression in Epstein’s support for Tommy Robinson, the British far-right agitator. Epstein’s celebratory emails upon Robinson’s release from jail, punctuated with “jokes” about Kristallnacht and Auschwitz, reveal a nexus of depravity where the sexual exploitation of children and the fuelling of anti-Semitic hatred are part of the same nihilistic project. That Epstein was Jewish only underscores the absolute moral vacuum at his core—a man for whom even the genocide of his own people was mere fodder for a punchline.
The emails also systematically dismantle the carefully constructed lies of the British establishment. Prince Andrew’s claim to have severed ties with Epstein in 2010 is exposed as a bald-faced lie by a 2011 email in which the Prince complains, “I can’t take any more of this my end.” Furthermore, Epstein’s confirmation that Virginia Giuffre was on his plane and “had her photo taken with Andrew” directly contradicts the Prince’s pathetic public speculation that the photograph was faked. This is not just a personal failing; it is the embodiment of an institution believing itself so far above the law that it need not even craft a credible lie.
Perhaps most damning of all is the role of the media and intellectuals in this sordid affair. Michael Wolff, a journalist, acts as an informal adviser, coaching Epstein on how to leverage his relationship with Trump for “valuable PR and political currency.” On the eve of the 2016 election, Wolff even suggests Epstein could “come forward… and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him.” This is not journalism; it is conspiracy, treating a paedophile as a political weapon to be wielded in a media war.
Now we get to the point where I am in shock. In 2015, Noam Chomsky, the celebrated left-wing intellectual, is found corresponding with Epstein, discussing currency collapses and behavioural science, and being offered the use of his properties. I personally have no doubt that Chomsky was not in any way corresponding on matters of sex or criminality, but to be corresponding at all with a renowned sex offender is, in my opinion, extremely poor judgement. I am not surprised by many of the names identified in the email releases, but Noam Chomsky was certainly one I never expected or considered.
The artist Andres Serrano discusses his disgust with the “grab them by the pussy” outrage. Boris Nikolic, a biotech venture capitalist, emails from Davos about flirting with a 22-year-old and, in a line that chills the blood, jokes to Epstein that “anything good is rented ;)”. The winking emoticon shared with a known sex trafficker speaks volumes about the normalised culture of misogyny and objectification.
What emerges from this mountain of evidence is a picture not of a secret conspiracy, but of a profound and systemic moral collapse. As the article notes, “the casual disdain of the elite circles he moved in spoke volumes.” Their silence was complicity, but their active engagement was endorsement. The “bantering, frivolous tone” of these exchanges gave Epstein the one thing he needed to continue his predation: social licence. He was given no incentive to change his ways because his ways were not a barrier to entry. Far from being ostracised, he was normalised.
This normalisation allowed him to operate as a global fixer, a shadow diplomat whose counsel was sought by the powerful. His attempt to insert himself as an intermediary between the Kremlin and the Trump administration—suggesting to a Norwegian diplomat that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could “get insight on talking to me” about Trump—is the action of a man who believes, with good reason, that the rules do not apply to him. He claimed to have previously schooled Russia’s UN ambassador on Trump’s psychology: “It is not complex. He must be seen to get something – it’s that simple.” This is not the rambling of an outsider; it is the confident analysis of an insider who understands the transactional heart of power.
The great tragedy, as Democrat Jamie Raskin noted, is that “People will want to know to what extent all of these different actors understood what was going on.” But this search for a smoking gun misses the point. The crime was not just the abuse that happened in Epstein’s homes and on his island; the crime was also the ecosystem that enabled it. Every email seeking his advice on a scandal, every request for an introduction to a world leader, every piece of political strategy shared, and every joke about New Jersey rest stops served to replenish Epstein’s currency. It told him and the world that his wealth and connections were a get-out-of-jail-free card, capable of erasing the stain of his conviction and the screams of his victims.
The secrets of Epstein’s inbox reveal the ultimate privilege of the elite: the privilege of indifference. Indifference to the law, to morality, and to the suffering of those they deem beneath them. In their world, a paedophile could be a valued contact because the only true sin was being powerless. Epstein’s network was not a monolith of evil but a spectrum of complicity—from the active collaboration of Bannon to the cynical journalism of Wolff, from the desperate evasion of Prince Andrew to the casual, enabling banter of Summers and Ruemmler.
They created a world where a paedophile could joke about the Holocaust and be taken seriously as a political strategist, where he could be convicted of child molestation and still be considered a welcome guest in any room. This is the currency of the damned. It is a currency that bought Epstein not just impunity but continued influence, and it was a currency his powerful friends were all too willing to trade in. To condemn Epstein is necessary, but it is not sufficient. We must condemn with equal fury the system that anointed him, the elite that embraced him, and the culture of impunity that allowed a monster to believe, until his dying day, that he was one of them.
