Epstein working undercover as a spy is nothing more than another conspiracy theory
Some myths refine themselves over generations.
Others spring into consciousness in an instant.
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A bit of story or news captures the imagination so thoroughly that the entire culture suddenly projects its hope or terror onto a single hero — or, more often, a villain.
Jeffrey Epstein is one of these myths.
Since his arrest and jailhouse death, the disgraced financier, socialite and pedophile has become America's most famous villain, an archetype who offers virtually all factions something to hate.
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To some, he represents the hidden sexual depravity of elites.
To others, a global conspiracy established through blackmail, espionage and intrigue.
To still others, he is a weapon to be wielded against his onetime friend, President Trump.
The omni-conspiracy
Epstein embodies the omni-conspiracy.
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To some critics, his connections to the world's most powerful people suggest membership in a cabal that runs elite institutions.
And his houses, airplanes and islands — paired with the uncertain provenance of his wealth — all stand as proof that he profited from his corruption.
The game, then, is to assign the blame and establish the meaning of his crimes.
Epstein has captured the public mind, and the question is whether he will be cast as the Marquis de Sade or as Charles Ponzi.
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A number of theories circulate: that Epstein was an intelligence asset who orchestrated sexual blackmail against the super-elite; that Epstein was a Rasputin figure who seduced the rich out of their fortunes; that he had enough kompromat on world leaders that he had to be secretly murdered in his prison cell.
There is enough documentary evidence to raise suspicion, at least: the snapshots of Bill Clinton getting a massage in a private airport hangar; the bizarre contracts and transactions between Epstein and billionaire Les Wexner; the seeming disappearance of the 'tens of thousands of videos' of Epstein 'with children or child porn.'
In each case, Epstein seems to transgress America's most deeply maintained taboos.
He is a pedophile who abused scores of young girls.
He is a criminal who defrauded others of billions.
He is a serpent who twisted his way into high society through manipulation and deceit.
He represents a complete repudiation of the virtues of America's Puritan culture — modesty, honesty, humility — and symbolizes all that is rotten with America's elite in a period of decadence and anxiety.
Beware projections
Thus, the intense public reaction.
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Epstein allows us to project our hatreds and fears onto a single man.
His biography contains sufficient mystery to allow us to fill in the blanks with our pet obsessions.
Some, or all, of the conspiracy theories might be true. But the facts will never be enough.
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On one side, it appears that many powerful people have a vested interest in burying Epstein's secrets; on the other, the public has grown so distrustful of officialdom that no report or accounting will ever be transparent enough.
I've watched the Epstein case percolate through right-wing and left-wing media for years, without forming strong judgments.
My sense is that the most elaborate fantasies — that Epstein was part of a cabal of pedophile cannibals, or that he was running world governments on behalf of the Mossad — are a deflection from a more banal, but perhaps even more disturbing, reality.
Jeffrey Epstein was not a cannibal or foreign subversive but a depraved twist on an all-American archetype: the Jay Gatsby character.
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Like Gatsby, Epstein was an arriviste who sought to dissociate himself from his humble origins, gained his wealth through fraud and artifice, and showered money onto others in the hopes of being accepted into high society.
He amassed astounding wealth and cultivated an elite network.
But the money, the parties, the islands, the brokerage accounts, and the snapshots with the rich were all empty symbols, bribes that temporarily masked the horror of a badly lived life.
When it all came crashing down, no one attended Epstein's funeral — as no one attended Gatsby's.
Stick to the facts
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We should seek to uncover all the facts, but we do not need an omni-conspiracy, or an elaborate espionage plot, to identify the deepest lessons of the Epstein myth.
Our elites are easily seduced by material wealth and, at a minimum, willing to turn a blind eye to a man who surrounds himself with teenaged girls.
Epstein produced nothing of value, built his status only on perceptions and, for anyone who cared to look, bore all of the marks of a predator.
But even America's wealthiest and most powerful could not resist a private plane or a few nights in the Virgin Islands.
Epstein was a monster, but the people who helped him maintain his status were guilty of a very American style of nihilism.
Epstein was just the dead man's switch, who, when his life blew up, sprayed the others in shrapnel.
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CNN
20 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump lands another big win with EU trade deal, but he can't dodge the Epstein saga
Donald Trump European Union Tariffs FacebookTweetLink President Donald Trump claimed another win for his campaign to transform the global economy and American life, but he still can't escape intensifying questions over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. The United States clinched a framework deal with the European Union on Sunday that averted a damaging trade war. Trump believes such moves will revive US manufacturing. But the resulting 15% tariff on EU goods entering the US likely means American consumers will face higher prices in the long term. This is a significant step. So Trump's insistence that it was not simply a bid to distract from the Epstein saga is reasonable. 'Oh, you have got to be kidding with that,' the angry president told a reporter. But his irritation underscored his failure to shrug off weeks of revelations about the case and his own past friendship with the accused sex trafficker, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial. Mystery surrounds the administration's motives after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, met last week with Epstein's imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Her lawyer implied that Maxwell was open to a presidential pardon. Trump's record of using such power for political purposes has critics warning he may be seeking a deal that would politicize justice. The storm back home isn't abating. Two lawmakers, one Democrat and the other Republican, vowed Sunday to force a vote on the House floor on the release of Epstein case files. Such a vote could embarrass the administration and create a major political showdown. This came on a typically frenetic weekend that Trump spent in Scotland and that served as a metaphor for his turbulent influence on America and the globe. He juggled the highest-level diplomacy — talks with the EU's top official, Ursula von der Leyen — with a trip promoting his business empire, in this case his portfolio of exclusive Scottish golf clubs. His visit was greeted with street protests by caustic Scots and featured outbursts of extreme rhetoric — including his social media call for the prosecution of former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump will come face-to-face Monday with pressure to force Israel to do more to mitigate a growing famine in Gaza. He'll see British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at his Turnberry resort in southwest Scotland before traveling with Starmer to Aberdeenshire, where Trump will inaugurate a new course at another club. Starmer last week said of the crisis in Gaza that 'we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.' Much is unknown about the scope of the trade deal with the EU, which will see a 15% tariff imposed on most of the bloc's exports and billions of dollars in purchases of US energy. But it extends a winning streak and a record of implementing campaign promises for a president who is imposing personal power and often idiosyncratic beliefs — for instance in the effectiveness of trade tariffs — on the US and the world. 'This was the big one. This is the biggest of them all,' Trump said Sunday after meeting von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. Von der Leyen followed the accepted wisdom that praising Trump personally can provide political payoffs. 'He is a tough negotiator, but he is also a dealmaker,' she said. Trump has recently announced framework deals on trade with Japan and the Philippines — which both include higher tariffs that represent a fracturing of the 21st-century global free-trade arrangements. Trump believes that this system, which helped make the US a dominant global power, is nevertheless unfair on American workers and industries. And he rejects economists' arguments that raising tariffs increases prices for already-stretched US consumers. Trump is flexing power everywhere. He is gutting the federal government, dominating Congress, and exerting unprecedented pressure on law firms and universities to impose his right-wing ideology, all while seeking to intimidate media outlets. These are wins for his populist 'Make America Great Again' movement and its program to buckle what supporters see as liberal power. But as with Trump's outlier belief in tariffs, the long-term impacts that his actions could have on American society, the economy and democracy are alarming critics. Trump has politicized the legal system; his government funding cuts have hampered vital scientific research on critical subjects such as cancer; and his expanding of presidential power often tests the Constitution. Still, markets may welcome the EU trade deal framework, assuming it is fully implemented — hardly a given considering Trump's volatile history of threats and reversals. An EU-US trade war would have been a far worse outcome. But the agreement confirms suspicions that Trump's goal is not fairer trade but higher tariffs. Although existing tariffs have so far not harmed the economy as much as some experts feared, Americans will pay more for cars, food, luxuries and consumer goods. The inflationary impact on the economy, and Trump's likely appointment next year of a new Federal Reserve chair who will lower interest rates, could mean greater economic threats to come. There's also an important geopolitical aspect to the EU trade deal. The Europeans committed to buying $880 billion of energy from the US. This could make America's NATO allies less vulnerable to pressure from Russia at a time when the Western alliance is opposing Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. 'We still have too much Russian LNG (liquid natural gas) that is coming through the back door again to our European Union, and some Russian gas and oil still in the European Union, which we do not want anymore,' von der Leyen said. Trump's frustration that a key political achievement has been overshadowed by the Epstein saga is unlikely to dissipate in the coming days. The controversy started because of conspiracy theories among Trump's base that claimed the disgraced financier did not take his own life in prison but was murdered, and that he left behind a client list of rich and powerful Americans who'd taken advantage of his alleged sex trafficking. These claims were promoted by Trump and allies including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel. When all three assumed positions of great power (Bondi is attorney general, and Patel is FBI director), their failure to release the files as promised caused a rupture in Trump's MAGA base, which the administration has failed thus far to repair. The political uproar explains why Blanche's meeting with Maxwell last week caused such consternation. Maxwell's lawyer told reporters after her second day of meetings with Blanche in Tallahassee, Florida, that she had answered every question truthfully and honestly. He also noted that the president has the power to pardon those convicted of crimes. 'We hope he exercises that power in a right and just way,' the attorney, David Oscar Markus, said Friday. Blanche has so far not offered a detailed public account of the meetings. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump in his relationship with Epstein, and the president appears to have severed the friendship long before the accused sex trafficker was charged with federal crimes. But the Justice Department's unorthodox approach is raising concerns that it goes beyond a public relations effort to convince MAGA voters the administration is doing something. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term, has an incentive for providing information that could ease her situation — and Trump has the power to do so. Questions over the president's motives became even more important when CNN and other outlets reported last week that Trump's name was mentioned in the Epstein files, along with those of some other prominent Americans. This does not mean that he or anyone else is guilty of wrongdoing. In fact, Bondi might have made the correct decision legally in refusing to release information that could harm the reputation of people not accused of crimes. But beyond a joint Justice Department and FBI statement on the rationale for not releasing the files, the administration has rarely attempted to justify a policy that has put it at odds with its own supporters in the MAGA movement. 'I'm concerned that the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is meeting with (Maxwell) supposedly one-on-one,' Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday. 'Look, I agree … that she should testify. But she's been indicted twice on perjury. This is why we need the files.' Republican leaders hoped the case might simply disappear over the summer recess. But Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor with Khanna of a House bill demanding the release of the files, isn't giving up. 'This is going to hurt Republicans in the midterms. The voters will be apathetic if we don't hold the rich and powerful accountable,' Massie said on NBC. 'I think when we get back, we can get the signatures required to force this to the floor.' The Trump administration has asked the courts to release grand jury testimony pertinent to the Epstein case. But one federal judge refused last week, in a ruling that may have given the DOJ political cover. 'We want them to release the files. However, we can't make them release it because of separation of power,' Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin told Jake Tapper on CNN's 'State of the Union.' That may be the case. But grand jury testimony is believed to be only a fraction of the evidence against Epstein that the government holds — and hasn't made public. And the entire controversy has been worsened by the administration's clumsy approach and unwillingness to confront the anger of the MAGA base. 'I think that part of this problem is that there were some false expectations that are created, and that's a political mistake,' Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison told CNN's Manu Raju.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'Crisis of trust': Epstein furore to hurt Republicans
The uproar over disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is undermining public trust in the Trump administration, as well as Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress in the 2026 mid-term elections, two congressmen say. Republican Representative Thomas Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, who want the House of Representatives to vote on their bipartisan resolution requiring full release of the government's Epstein files, said the lack of transparency is reinforcing public perceptions that the rich and powerful live beyond the reach of the judicial system. "This is going to hurt Republicans in the mid-terms. The voters will be apathetic if we don't hold the rich and powerful accountable," Massie, a hardline conservative from Kentucky, told NBC's Meet the Press program. Republicans hope to add to their current 219-212 House majority - with four seats currently vacant - and 53-47 Senate majority in November 2026, although the US political cycle traditionally punishes the party of the sitting president during midterm elections. The Washington Post reported that Trump was increasingly frustrated with his administration's handling of the furore around Epstein. Even so, the president was hesitant to make personnel changes to avoid creating a "bigger spectacle" as his top officials underestimated the outrage from Trump's own base over the issue, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources. Khanna said Attorney General Pam Bondi triggered "a crisis of trust" by saying there was no list of Epstein clients after previously implying that one existed. The change in position unleashed a tsunami of calls for her resignation from Trump's MAGA base. "This is about trust in government," the California Democrat told Meet the Press. "This is about being a reform agent of transparency." President Donald Trump has been frustrated by continued questions about his administration's handling of investigative files related to Epstein's criminal charges and 2019 death by suicide in prison. Massie and Khanna believe they can win enough support from fellow lawmakers to force a vote on their resolution when Congress returns from its summer recess in September. But they face opposition from Republican leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sent lawmakers home a day early to stymie Democratic efforts to force a vote before the break. Johnson, who also appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, said he favours a non-binding alternative resolution that calls for release of "credible" evidence, but which he said would better protect victims including minors. "The Massie and Khanna discharge petition is reckless in the way that it is drafted and presented," Johnson said. "It does not adequately include those protections." Massie dismissed Johnson's claim as "a straw man" excuse. "Ro and I carefully crafted this legislation so that the victims' names will be redacted," he said. "They're hiding behind that." Trump has tried and failed so far to distract attention from the Epstein controversy six months into his second term. On Saturday, Trump repeated his claims without evidence that 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and other Democrats should be prosecuted over payment for endorsements from celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Last week he accused former president Barack Obama of "treason" over how his administration treated intelligence about Russian interference in US elections nine years ago, drawing a rebuke from an Obama spokesperson. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Melania Trump ‘Very Involved' in Epstein Scandal: Author
Longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff believes that First Lady Melania could be the missing link in President Donald Trump's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Wolff told Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles that Melania was 'very involved' in Epstein's social circle, and noted that this is how she met Trump. 'She's introduced by a model agent, both of whom Trump and Epstein are involved with. She's introduced to Trump that way. Epstein [knew] her well,' Wolff said. Trump and the future first lady reportedly first met in September 1998 through Paolo Zampolli, the founder of ID Models, who helped Melania emigrate to the United States. Zampolli had ties to Epstein and his now-incarcerated partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, Politico reported. In explosive tapes recorded by Wolff, Epstein alleged that Trump liked to 'f---' his friends' wives and first slept with Melania on his 'Lolita Express.' Since March 2025, Zampolli has served as Trump's special representative for global partnerships. The MAGA loyalist has a giant oil painting of Trump in his $17 million Georgetown mansion. 'Where does [Melania] fit into the Epstein story? Where does she fit into this, into this whole culture of models of indeterminate age?' Wolff said. 'So this is another complicated dimension in this.' The Trump administration has faced intense media scrutiny over the Epstein case following a July 6 memo from the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation that found Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019, and that no 'client list' of wealthy co-conspirators exists—the subject of endless conspiracy theories among Trump's MAGA base. The findings have led Trump to lose some die-hard fans as his administration works to divert MAGA's attention with National Security Adviser Tulsi Gabbard's claims that the Obama administration engaged in a 'treasonous conspiracy' to cook up intelligence on Russia to interfere with the 2016 election. Sharing a two-page excerpt from her bestselling book, Melania, last week, the first lady refuted claims that Epstein had a hand in their introduction, writing in her book that she met Trump at New York's Kit Kat Club. Typically, the first lady hides in the shadows, Wolff said. 'She never is by his side,' Wolff told Coles. 'All of those courtroom appearances that she shows up once, I report in my book that one of the aides approached her and she said, 'Nice try,' and then laughed.' Reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung blasted Wolff as a 'fraud.' 'Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud,' he said. 'He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.' New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Thursday. Like and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. And click here for email updates as each new episode drops.
