The article has a fascinating detail about that initial hiring: Epstein had been asked by Dalton to resign at the end of the academic year, reportedly having been unimpressed by his teaching. While ooor teaching alone would normally be a plausible explanation for an elite private school like Dalton but, of course, this is Jeffrey Epstein we are talking about, who was reportedly a popular young teacher. We have to ask if it really was just a lack of teaching talent? This is a good time to recall how Epstein reportedly balked at answering questions about sexual interactions with any of his students at Dalton when he was questioned by investigators during a 2009 deposition. When asked about the ages of the students he found noteworthy, his answer was, “Mostly old—mostly 17 and 18.”, which a grim context for the use of the world “old”. Then, when asking he had any sexual contact with any students at Dalton, first answer “Again?” He is asked a second time and again answers with a question, “While I was a teacher?” The attorney says yes, let’s start with that question and Epstein gives a solid “no.” The attorney presses “How about after?” and Epstein says “Not that I remember.”. So in the months after he was told to resign, Epstein happens to get connected with the head of Bear Stearns who immediately takes a likely to Epstein and takes him under his wing as a king of protege, despite Epstein having no background in finance. And that’s just the start of his incredible luck. He somehow fails up spectacularly through one crisis after another after another. It’s like the origin story of a super-villain whose super-power was failing up.

Bears Stearns then-chairman Ace Greenberg didn’t simply take an apparent immediate liking to Epstein. During the interview process, Stearns asked senior executive, Michael Tennenbaum, whose son went to the school, about Epstein’s reputation. Tennenbaum said Epstein was popular with students and the school’s young female staff members. Soon after getting hired, Epstein was invited by Greenberg to a dinner party and seated next to Greenberg’s 20 year old daughter, Lynn. The two ended up dating and Lynn tells the NY Times that she’s suspects her father set her up with Epstein.

But by the end of 1976, Epstein is already facing his first crisis: Bear Stearns HR finds out Epstein lied on his resume and never graduated college. Tennenbaum was informed and he asked Greenberg what to do. Greenberg said to just treat him like any other employee. Which, of course, was the opposite of treating him like any other employee and gave him a kind of protected status within the firm. We also have to ask if his Dalton firing was quietly about fraudulent credentials too.

Another senior executive at Bear Stearns who reportedly helped propel Epstein’s career was senior executive Jimmy Cayne, who became president of the firm in 1988. Rumors began spreading that Epstein was helping Cayne pursue women and score drugs. “That’s what really catapulted him,” according to Tennenbaum, who went on to describe the pair as “two sleazeballs”. Elliot Wolk, who replaced Tennenbaum as Epstein’s boss, claimed that Epstein would let it be known once or twice a week that he was having lunch with the chief executive of a major company through meetings arranged by Cayne.

By 1980, Epstein was made a limited partner at Bear Stearns, one rung below full partner. The 27 year old Epstein claimed to have been the youngest partner in the firms history. By this point, Lynn had learned that Epstein “lied about everything” as she tells the NY Times, but that clearly didn’t harm his stratospheric career trajectory. A career trajectory that involved increasingly wealthy individuals entrusting him more and more deeply. Epstein’s life really was so astonishingly fortuitous its genuinely mysterious.

1980 was also a year when Epstein’s public profile joined the elites when he was named by Cosmopolitan its “bachelor of the month,” describing him as a “dynamo” who “talks only to people who make over a million a year!” He was already a kind of public playboy. Interested parties were encouraged to write to his work address.

1981 brought another round of Epstein getting away with bad behavior. First, Epstein caught spending more than $10,000 of the firms money on jewelry and clothing for his girlfriend. The firm’s controller reported the matter to Greenberg, with no consequences following. The firm then learned that Epstein had been giving his girlfriends access to “hot deals” involving the purchase of shares that are doled out to favored clients just before a stock goes public. They also learned that Epstein has lent $15,000 to a high school friend in a matter that violated federal rules governing brokers. Beyond that, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an insider-trading investigation into Epstein over his well-timed trades preceding an attempted corporate takeover. Epstein was interviewed by the SEC but never accused of anything. Bear Stearns began its own investigation into Epstein over the infractions, with the firm ultimately deciding to fine him $2,500 and suspend him for two months. Epstein announced his resignation. He would go on to not only have a highly lucrative career in finance, but also become a coveted Bear Stearns client.

1981 was also the year Epstein met an extremely intriguing family: The Leese family. This came about through another contact Epstein cultivate at Bear Stearns: former Miss Indianapolis Paula Heil, who was at that point a junior saleswoman. The two started dating with Epstein was still at Stearns, with the pair taking a trip to the UK where they visited a friend of hers, Nick Leese, at his family’s countryside manor. There they met Nick’s father, Douglas Leese, who is describe in the article as a defense contractor with extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government. And while that’s all true, it’s a description that leaves out some of Douglas Leese’s most notable affiliations, like his dealing with none other than Adnan Khashoggi. We are told that Douglas Leese immediately took a liking to Epstein, who soon began making regular trips to the UK to spend time with the Leeses, with Douglas serving as another mentor to Epstein, allowing him to tag along for meetings with various elites. They even hired Epstein as a consultant with an expense account. Epstein was “part of the family,” according Douglas’s son Julian. Epstein’s close relationship with the Leeses apparently ended with a couple of years after Douglas Leese accused Epstein of abusing his expense account.

The New York Times piece then provides what it claims is the first ever reporting on another very intriguing Epstein associate from these early years: John Stanley Pottinger, who had recently left a senior post at the Justice Department. We are told Epstein, Pottinger, and Pottinger’s brother rented a penthouse office and pitched tax-avoidance strategies to wealthy clients. Pottinger, of course, not only dated Gloria Steinem in the early 80s, but went on to represent some of Epstein’s victims decades later. He also happened to be involved with an array of intelligence-related stories including the October Surprise and the Justice Department’s obfuscation of the killings of Martin Luther King and Orlando Letelier. We are told this was a short-lived partnership, and given no other information about Epstein’s collaboration with Pottinger, which makes the partnership all the more intriguing. How was Epstein’s partnership with Pottinger kept almost entirely a secret to the world until the New York Times published this information less than a year ago? It’s also worth noting that Pottinger broke up with Steinem in 1984, so Pottinger and Steinem were dating during this period when he was partnered with Epstein. 1984 was also the year Pottinger avoided prosecution related to the Hashemi brothers Iranian arms trafficking investigation that grew out of October-Surprise-related federal investigations when three key tapes in which he discussed arms sales went missing from the FBI. That’s all part of the context of Epstein’s mysterious allegedly short-live partnership with Pottinger that was only reported on first in December of 2025. Both Pottinger and Epstein have been showing up in the news for years in relation to all sorts of shady things, but somehow Pottinger’s partnership with Epstein remained a secret until less than a year ago.

By 1982, Epstein appears to have transitioned into a full blown financial criminal, taking money from clients and apparently just absconding with it and getting away with it. One of his first victims was Michael Stoll, who ran a pinball and video game company. Stoll gave Epstein $450,000 to invest in a crude-oil deal Epstein told him he was planning. The money vanished within two years. Epstein end up in civil court and ultimately prevailed on technical grounds with a judge ruling he wasn’t personally liable.

1982 was also when Epstein began a romantic wooing Ana Obregón, a young Spanish socialite and actress. This was at the same time he apparently had a serious girlfriend, Eva Andersson, a model and former Miss Sweden. It was around this time that Epstein and a friend, former federal prosecutor Bob Gold, got into the business of hunting for missing assets, starting with the assets of the Obregón family that went missing following the implosion of Drysdale Securities, with the assets hidden through a network of offshore banks and shell companies. One day, in 1984, according to Gold, Epstein declared he suddenly solved the mystery and found the funds hiding in a Canadian bank’s branch in the Cayman islands. Gold claims he has no idea to this day how Epstein solved the mystery. But however he did it, Epstein was paid handsomely and was finally a millionaire.

By 1986, Epstein was calling his former manager at Bear Stearns, Clark Schubach, but now as a valued client placing orders. Schubach reportedly put Epstein contact with young attractive women, including Suzanne Ircha, someone who went on to become a close friend of Melania Trump, and who would go on to marry Woody Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and the person Trump named as a ambassador to Britain in his first term.

Then we get to 1987, another fateful year in Epstein’s rise. That, of course, was the year Epstein was reportedly introduced to Steven Hoffenberg. As we’ve seen, not only did Hoffenberg later refer to Epstein as his best friend during this period, but he went on to openly support Donald Trump’s presidential run in 2016, raising all sorts of fascinating questions about the nature of Trump’s relationship with Hoffenberg. And as before, Epstein escaped any punishment despite playing a key role in helping to orchestrate what was then the largest Ponzi scheme in US history. Notably, not only to Epstein offer Julian Leese an internship at Towers, but Julian went on to introduce his father Douglas to Hoffenberg. Douglas Leese proceeded to introduce Hoffenberg to potential buys of what were ultimately fraudulent bonds.

Incredibly, Towers Financial wasn’t the only scam Epstein was engaged in during his time with Hoffenberg. Other victims of Epstein’s scams during this period include Dick Snyder, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, offering him what was describe as win-win investment opportunities involving a takeover bid of Pennwalt, a $1 billion chemical company. Remarkably, for that scam, Epstein had a friendly journalist, Edward Jay Epstein (no relation), write a column in Manhattan, inc. Magazine in 1989 describing was is characterized as legal market manipulation entailing the public declaration of their intent to buy all of Pennwalt for $100 a share, a price that was about 40 percent about where the stock was trading. Epstein recruited dozens of people to invest in Pennwalt. But there was no real intention of the buying the company and Epstein once again simply refused to return the investments, with no repercussions.

1987 marked another achievement in Epstein’s rise as an elite socialite with the addition to Epstein on the board of the New York Academy of Art, a group founded by Andy Warhol just a few years earlier. It’s describe as the first prominent board Epstein joined. And yet, despite only showing up occasionally to the board meeting, his name was first in the list of co-chairmen named in the invitation to a black-tie fund-raiser in honor of Warhol after his passing that year.

But the most significant development in Epstein’s life in 1987 was Epstein’s introduction to Les Wexner, who would go on to elevate Epstein from living the life of a millionaire to living the life of a plutocrat, with luxurious properties around the world. Epstein was reportedly introduced to Wexner by Wexner’s friend, Robert Meister, an insurance executive who happened to sit next to Epstein on a plane to Palm Beach. After meeting Epstein, Wexner had his financial advisor, Harold Levin, fly to New York to meet with Epstein. Levin claims to have had a bad vibe after spending just an hour with Epstein, called Wexner and told him “I smell a rat”, a warning that was obviously not heeded. Instead, Levin suspects Epstein told Wexner that Levin was stealing from him. Roughly a year later, Wexner made Epstein Levin’s boss, prompting Levin to quit. Soon, Epstein was given power of attorney over Wexner’s finances. Ass the New York Times report points out, what exactly Wexner was getting out of this relationship remains a mystery to this day, with Wexner continuing to refuse to answer questions about what he was actually paying for. It’s also worth recalling that while Epstein has claims that he first met Wexner in 1986, others claim it was in 1989. More ambiguity for the mystery.

With power of attorney over Wexner’s finances, Epstein went on spending spree, apparently taking whatever he felt he deserved, often tens of millions of dollars. This included the purchase of a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach for $2.5 million about a mile from Mar-a-Lago, and another mansion in New Albany, Ohio. He also began leasing a marble townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that used to be the residence of Iran’s deputy general consul. The owner of the townhouse, the US government, sued him for illegally subletting. The owners of another luxury residence that Epstein rented in the 80s — the Villard Houses — made similar accusation. The owner of the Solow Tower, where Epstein had been living before leasing the townhouse, accused Epstein of not paying rent.

By 1989, Epstein was already achieving some sort of status as an international negotiator. This included joining Democratic congressman Wayne Owens on a trip to the Middle East to explore ways to promote business ties between Israel and its neighbors, with Epstein being invited for his financial expertise. Figure Epstein met on the trip included Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, and Saudi Arabia’s then-crown prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

1990 proved to be another pivotal year in Epstein’s life. It was the year Epstein met Ghislaine Maxwell. We are told that when Robert Maxwell learned his daughter was spending time with Epstein, he reached out to two close associates, Ace and Jimmy Cayne, to learn their opinions of Epstein. Both vouched for Epstein. That November, Robert Maxwell died. Epstein was seated next to Ghislaine during a memorial event held for her father. By 1992, Epstein and Ghislaine were a couple, which is reportedly also around the time he began grooming and abusing hundreds of teenage girls.

But despite Epstein and Ghislaine becoming a couple, Epstein continued seeing other women, including former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Stacey Williams, who went on to claim Epstein chastised her after Donald Trump groped her in 1993. As we’ve seen, Williams has also said how Epstein and Trump were close friends who spent a lot of time together.

1993 was also the year Epstein started making regular visits to the Clinton White House, having turned himself into a political donor that included at $10,000 donation to refurbish the White House. Epstein’s ties to the Clinton administration included befriending Lynn Forester, then the recently appointee to a White House advisory commission. While the New York Times piece doesn’t give Forester’s full name, this is Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who married into the Rothschild dynasty in 2000. We are told that Forester brought up Epstein in a private conversation with Bill Clinton are at least one occasion. Epstein became a regular White House visitor. In 1995, Clinton wrote a get-well-soon note to Epstein’s ailing mother.

But Epstein wasn’t only ingratiating himself with the White House during this period. Epstein’s relationship with Johnson family fortune had deepened to the point where he someone managed to end up overseeing a trust that held some of the land owned by Libet Johnson, sister of Woody Johnson and also an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. And according to what Ghislaine told Todd Blanche, Epstein started providing Libet Johnson with the same sorts of services that he offered Wexner. It remains unclear what exactly those services were, but in 1994, Johnson gave more than $2 million to the J. Epstein Foundation that had been set up a few years earlier, so they were presumably the kind of services that made Epstein’s clients extremely happy with him.

Fascinatingly, Epstein appears to have also had some sort of relationship with David Rockefeller, with the Epstein Foundation donating tens of thousands of dollars to not just Rockefeller University but also the Trilateral Commission which was established by Rockefeller. When the Trilateral Commission held its 25th anniversary in 1998, Lynn Forester and Epstein were listed as a pair. Epstein not only became a member of the Trilateral Commission but he also joined the Council on Foreign Relations. Epstein would reportedly relentlessly talk about his connections to the Rockefellers and even claimed to manage money for the family, a claim the family denies.

The mid-90s was also when Epstein began lavishing Harvard University with all sorts of gifts in exchange for the elite academic contacts he was cultivating. This included Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who was introduced to Epstein after he got a call from Lynn Forester who let him know she was in in the area with Epstein, who was a Harvard donor who wanted to meet him. They met and the conversation quickly turns to Les Wexner and how he taught Epstein to “be rich”. Epstein then invited Dershowitz to attend a birthday dinner in Wexner’s honor. Dershowitz ended up flying to Ohio on one of Epstein’s planes along with Senator John Glenn. Dinner guests included Shimon Peres. Dershowitz would go on to serve on the legal team that arranged Epstein’s federal ‘sweetheart deal’.

By 1999, Epstein’s companies had a net worth of more than $100, much of which came from Wexner. Although this is a good time to recall that Epstein got away with what was at that point the largest Ponzi scheme in history, and as Ed Opperman has discussed, we have every reason to suspect large amounts of that embezzled money ended up in Epstein’s firms. But a large portion of his wealth was undoubtedly obtained from Wexner. Epstein could just take what he wanted from Wexner and he did. Bear Stearns was still his preferred brokerage, although Epstein had apparently wooed his way into becoming a sought after client by JP Morgan Chase after he impressed the chairman with claims of managing money for David Rockefeller.

Epstein had also acquired his now-infamous Little St. James private island, which came with the perk of generous tax incentives. Epstein applied for a tax break that would have allowed hiss Financial Trust firm to avoid most taxes, which required a hearing and people who could vouch for his character. Epstein turned to Harry Loy Anderson Jr., president of the Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Company, where Epstein held accounts. Anderson’s letter claimed Epstein was “a gentleman of the highest integrity” and that he “enjoys an excellent reputation in our community.” Epstein shared he left Bear Stearns to become a “financial doctor” for the wealthy, and how Les Wexner helped him develop his “sense of integrity”. He also shared how he had grown close to the Rockefeller family and advised them “on certain financial issues”. Needless to say, his application for the tax breaks was approved.

That’s the incredible history of Jeffrey Epstein’s early years laid out in the New York Times piece below. And as we’ll see in a 2021 Rolling Stone piece below by Vicky Ward, the questions about Epstein’s origins as an untouchable international elite socialite only deepen when we take a closer look at Epstein’s relationship with Douglas Leese, someone who was not simply an alleged arms dealer. According to Steven Hoffenberg, who spoke with Ward, it was Leese who allegedly introduced him to figures like infamous arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi. Robert Maxwell, who was also allegedly involved with arms dealing, was also introduced to Hoffenberg by Leese. Hoffenberg goes on to describe Leese as Epstein’s early mentor in the 1980s, a narrative consistent with what was reported in the New York Times piece. And yet, Ward recounts how she asked Epstein about Leese back in 2002 and Epstein first claimed to have not known Douglas Leese at all. Then he feigned a kind of hazy memory, where he admits to having known of a Douglas Leese, portraying him as just the father of someone Epstein knew long ago and that was it. So, at least as of 2002, Epstein was pretending to have no real history with the Leese family. The kind who could stop name-dropping all the famous and influential people he knows suddenly doesn’t want to talk about the the influential family who made him ‘part of the family’, as Julian Leese put it.

Hoffenberg also told Ward that Epstein had said he worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. Ward notes in the piece that it was discovered after Maxwell’s death that he had stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees, which does sound like the kind of solution Epstein would come up with. Hoffenberg also claimed to Ward that Epstein told him that he was involved with something via Robert Maxwell and Douglas Leese that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.” Keep in mind this is an interview that Hoffenberg was giving to Ward in 2021, when questions about whether or not Epstein was part of a government sanctioned blackmail operation had been swirling ever since Epstein 2019 death. It’s hard to know how much credibility we can give to Hoffenberg’s claims about Epstein. But based on that New York Times report, it sounded like Epstein was primarily being ‘mentored’ by Douglas Leese in the early 80s and yet we are told in the New York Times article that Robert Maxwell only found out about his daughter dating Epstein in 1991 at which point he asked his friends Ace Green and Jimmy Cayne what they thought of Epstein. In other words, if Epstein really was involved with projects that really was involved with anything that included both Douglas Leese and Robert Maxwell, it would suggest Epstein knew Maxwell sooner and worked with Leese later than we’ve been led to believe. Which would hardly be a surprise if true.

Hoffenberg also told Ward that Epstein had plans to turn Towers Financial into a global colossus, albeit through illegal means. He went on to suggest that he posed a particular problem for Epstein because Epstein had confided in him as to how, exactly, he made a career out of conning people and institutions. As Hoffenberg described, Epstein called his preferred method of conning people “playing the box,” which referred to strategy of orchestrating a crime where, even if the crime was uncovered, the victim would be unable to do anything about it, either because of social embarrassment or because the money was in a place where they couldn’t either find it or get it. It’s a criminal strategy that gives us a better idea of the kinds of ‘services’ was potentially offering his ultra-wealthy clients. It also raises the question of how many other elite financial criminals are operating with the strategy to this day.

Hoffenberg then asserted that Epstein conned him, taking $100 million from Towers Financial, moving it offshore. Ward then adds that she has learned that Epstein secretly cooperated with US prosecutors case, giving at least three interviews to prosecutors. Ward was also told by as source that, had the case gone to trial, it would have likely turned out far worse for Epstein than for Hoffenberg. Overall, the picture that emerges is one where Epstein was almost a kind of con artist mentor for Hoffenberg. The kind of mentor who would go on to steal from how mentee and then secretly cooperate with investigators.

Hoffenberg also suggested to Ward that he knew something about Epstein that Epstein wanted to remain hidden: Epstein moved in intelligence circles. It’s not exactly a revelation at this point, going all the way back to the alleged reason Alex Acosta, then the federal prosecutor leading the case against Epstein that led up to the sweetheart deal, gave for why he let Epstein off easy. In fact, it was Vicky Ward’s reporting that brought the claims of Acosta to light. As Acosta told Ward, he was informed that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”. And more recently, we learned how Epstein was serving as a diplomat in secret diplomatic negotiations between Qatar and its regional neighbors – Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular – in an apparent bid to seeing a normalization of relations that were significantly frayed back during President Trump’s first term in office. Which means the secret negotiations were presumably carrying out in the months leading up to his arrests. There is shortage of reasons to suspect Epstein was intelligence connected.

And yet, it’s crucial to keep in mind that there is often a very grey line between intelligence work and elite criminality. Which brings us to another rather interesting assertion in Ward’s article: according to four sources, Epstein was indeed an intelligence asset who worked for multiple governments. But then he made the mistake of becoming too high profile, resulting in him losing his “protection”, leading up to his arrest. Ward doesn’t name the sources for this claim, other than Hoffenberg, but she describes them as ranging from former arms dealers to former spies. One of these sources even claimed that Epstein had invited them to join him and Douglas Leese on a private-jet trip to the Pentagon in 1981. We are also told that Epstein claimed to several people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

So is this narrative about Epstein being an intelligence asset who went too far in ‘blowing his cover’ and drew too much attention a credible narrative? Because that narrative doesn’t seem to really align with what we’ve learned about Epstein’s life. The guy rose to the top in part by continuously name dropping all the powerful people he knew. It was the abuse of hundreds of teenage girls that ultimately led to his downfall. But even then, he got a federal sweetheart deal, was released from prison, and then proceeded to apparently spend the next 10 years living the same life of influence peddling and continuously name-dropping of all the influential and powerful people he knew. If anything put Epstein in peril, it was the “Perversion of Justice” reporting by Julie Brown in the Miami Herald in 2018 coupled with the fact that his lunatic old friend, Donald Trump, was President and knew Epstein knew too much.

Again, keep in mind not only the immense historical overlap between intelligence operations and criminal operations, but also the fact that “Epstein was a spook” is the kind of explanation for his incredible life of crime that arguably serves as a cover story for a much worse state of affair: that elite criminals, some intelligence-connected, really are operating in the upper echelons of power with near impunity and this is just how the world works.

That’s all part of why we have to ask: was Epstein’s remarkable life a reflection of how intelligence-connected individuals might be allowed to live a life of near impunity because of the presumed service they provide to governments? Or was Epstein’s remarkable life more a reflection of a level of rampant elite criminality that has long been shaping the world to a degree that would shock even a cynical public? Both? What are we looking at here? We still don’t know, even with everything we’ve learned so far.

Ok, first, here’s that New York Times piece from December of 2025 that is just filled with one detail after another of the incredible sequence of events in the early decades of Epstein’s rise to wealth and influence. On one level, it’s the story about a talented amoral young man without a college education who managed to charismatically work the existing systems to the maximum extent, becoming spectacularly wealthy and influential in the process. And on another level, it’s the story of an amoral charismatic young man repeatedly mentored in the world of perfect crimes, elite institutional and government corruption, rampant tax evasion utilizing the methods of financial criminals, and a global class of elites who appear to routinely operate above the law with little to no consequence:

The New York Times

Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich

For years, rumors swirled about where his wealth came from. A Times investigation reveals the truth of how a college dropout clawed his way to the pinnacle of American finance and society.

By David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein
The reporters, who have been investigating Jeffrey Epstein since 2019, interviewed dozens of his former colleagues, girlfriends, business partners and others. They also dug through archives, reviewed photos, notes and emails and scoured thousands of pages of public records.

Dec. 16, 2025

One evening in early 1976, a bushy-haired Jeffrey Epstein showed up for an event at an art gallery in Midtown Manhattan. Epstein was a math and physics teacher at the city’s prestigious Dalton School, and the father of one of his students had invited him. Epstein initially demurred, saying he didn’t go out much, but eventually relented. It would turn out to be one of the best decisions he ever made.

At the gallery, Epstein bumped into another Dalton parent, who had heard tales of the 23-year-old’s wondrous math skills. The parent asked if he’d ever thought about a job on Wall Street, according to an unreleased recording of Epstein and a document prepared by his lawyers. Epstein was game. The parent dialed a friend: Ace Greenberg, a top executive at Bear Stearns. Epstein, the friend told Greenberg, was “wasting his time at Dalton.”

Greenberg invited Epstein to the investment firm’s offices at 55 Water Street at the southern tip of Manhattan. Epstein showed up in a turtleneck. Greenberg was impressed — even though the young man didn’t have the foggiest idea of how Wall Street worked. Greenberg had helped build Bear Stearns into one of the industry’s scrappiest firms by eschewing the traditional investment-banking practice of hiring Ivy Leaguers with M.B.A.s. He preferred what he called P.S.D.s: those who were poor, smart and had “a deep desire to become rich.”

...

Before offering Epstein a job, Greenberg had him meet another senior executive, Michael Tennenbaum. His son happened to be a Dalton student, who reported to his father that Epstein was popular with students and the school’s young female staff members. Epstein went to Tennenbaum’s office overlooking New York Harbor for an interview. “He was just a hell of a salesman,” Tennenbaum told us. Epstein was hired.

It was an extraordinarily lucky break for him — the first of many. Administrators at Dalton, unimpressed with Epstein’s teaching, had asked him to leave the school after the academic year ended. Now, just like that, he had a new job that paid about $25,000 a year (roughly $140,000 in today’s dollars).

Greenberg viewed the young man as a protégé. Early on, he invited Epstein to a dinner party and seated him next to his 20-year-old daughter, Lynne, who told us that she suspected it was a setup. The two hit it off and started dating. Word of the new guy’s romance with the boss’s daughter spread quickly, granting Epstein something akin to protected status at the firm.

Tennenbaum soon became Epstein’s supervisor. “He was proving to be quite talented,” Tennenbaum told us. But in late 1976, he received a disconcerting phone call from the head of Bear Stearns’s personnel department. Employees had belatedly gotten around to checking Epstein’s résumé, which stated that he had received degrees from two California universities.

“Are you sitting down?” the H.R. official asked Tennenbaum. “Neither school has heard of him.”

Tennenbaum was in a delicate spot. He asked Greenberg what to do. The response, Tennenbaum told us, was that he should treat Epstein as if he were a normal employee — an instruction that made clear that, thanks to his relationships, Epstein was in fact not a normal employee.

He summoned Epstein to his office. “You lied about your education,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Epstein calmly replied. He had never graduated from college. Tennenbaum recalls being disarmed by the admission. Decades later, he would regard it as an example of Epstein’s ability to manipulate his marks — in this case, him.

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Without an impressive degree or two, Epstein said, “I knew nobody would give me a chance.”

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It was perhaps the first example of Epstein getting caught cheating — and then avoiding punishment thanks to his uncanny ability to take advantage of those in positions of power. This would become a lifelong pattern, one that largely explains Epstein’s remarkable success at amassing wealth and, eventually, orchestrating a vast sex-trafficking operation.

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Much of the last quarter-century of Epstein’s life has been carefully examined — including how, in the 1990s and early 2000s, he amassed hundreds of millions of dollars through his work for the retail tycoon Leslie Wexner. Yet the public understanding of Epstein’s early ascent has been shrouded in mystery. How did a college dropout from Brooklyn claw his way from the front of a high school classroom to the pinnacle of American finance, politics and society? How did Epstein go from nearly being fired at Bear Stearns to managing the wealth of billionaires? What were the origins of his own fortune?

We have spent months trying to pierce this veil. We spoke with dozens of Epstein’s former colleagues, friends, girlfriends, business partners and financial victims. Some agreed to speak on the record for the first time; others insisted on speaking confidentially but gave us access to never-before-seen records and other information. We sifted through private archives and tracked down previously unpublished recordings and transcripts of old interviews — including one in which Epstein gave a meandering account of his personal and professional history. We perused diaries, letters, emails and photo albums, including some that belonged to Epstein. We reviewed thousands of pages of court and government records.

What emerged is the fullest portrait to date of one of the world’s most notorious criminals — a narrative that differs in important respects from previously published accounts of Epstein’s rise, including his arrival at Bear Stearns.

In his first two decades of business, we found that Epstein was less a financial genius than a prodigious manipulator and liar. Abundant conspiracy theories hold that Epstein worked for spy services or ran a lucrative blackmail operation, but we found a more prosaic explanation for how he built a fortune. A relentless scammer, he abused expense accounts, engineered inside deals and demonstrated a remarkable knack for separating seemingly sophisticated investors and businessmen from their money. He started small, testing his tactics and seeing what he could get away with. His early successes laid the foundation for more ambitious ploys down the road. Again and again, he proved willing to operate on the edge of criminality and burn bridges in his pursuit of wealth and power.

Rung by rung, Epstein climbed a social and financial ladder, often using young women as a potent form of currency. His girlfriends, lovers and even exes helped elevate his status inside a bank, got him hired to track down missing assets and gained him entree to prestigious organizations. And deliberately or not, some of them enabled him as he constructed a sex-trafficking operation that would later ensnare hundreds of teenage girls and young women.

That story starts at Bear Stearns, the place where Epstein learned how to win and use power. The institution continued to enable him long after he had shown his true colors.

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‘Deeply offended’ by an internal investigation

Having been let off the hook, Epstein was looking at a bright future. In 1980, Bear Stearns named him a limited partner — one rung below a full partner — and Epstein, who was 27 at the time, claimed that he was the youngest in the firm’s history to join the partnership. He was pulling in about $200,000 a year (more than $800,000 in today’s dollars). By then, Epstein’s dalliance with Greenberg’s daughter had fizzled — she told us that she learned that Epstein “lied about everything” — but his renown was growing.

He was regularly flying to Palm Beach, Fla., to visit young women. That summer, Cosmopolitan named Epstein its “bachelor of the month,” describing him as a “dynamo” who “talks only to people who make over a million a year!” The magazine encouraged interested parties to write to Epstein at his work address.

One secret to Epstein’s early success was his close relationship with Jimmy Cayne, a senior executive who would one day run Bear Stearns. Rumors, perhaps fueled by envy, began to spread that Epstein was helping Cayne, who died in 2021, to pursue women and score drugs, according to several of their colleagues. Cayne raved to colleagues about Epstein and began introducing him to some of his most lucrative clients.

“That’s what really catapulted him,” Tennenbaum recalled, describing Epstein and Cayne as “two sleazeballs.” Once or twice a week, Epstein would let it be known that he was having lunch with the chief executive of a major company — meetings apparently arranged by Cayne, said Elliot Wolk, who became Epstein’s boss after Tennenbaum. Wolk surmised that Epstein’s appeal to these clients was partly his charisma and partly his newfound understanding of complex trading strategies that could save ultrawealthy clients huge amounts in taxes.

Epstein was not content to simply climb the corporate ladder. In 1980, he flew on Bear Stearns’s dime to a conference in the Caribbean. While there, he spent more than $10,000 on jewelry and clothing for his latest girlfriend — and charged it to the firm. The accounting department noticed the payments and flagged them to the financial controller, who quickly concluded that the expenses were improper, according to a person with direct knowledge of what happened. The controller reported the matter to Greenberg, by then the chief executive. Once again, there were no consequences.

More serious trouble soon surfaced. When investment banks help companies go public, they can dole out shares to favored clients before the stock begins trading on public exchanges. Getting early access is a lucrative privilege, because the value of the shares often spikes in the first hours of trading — yielding a fast, low-risk profit for those initial holders. Bear Stearns executives learned that Epstein was giving his girlfriend access to these “hot deals,” as several of his colleagues recounted to us.

The firm soon discovered yet another infraction: Epstein had lent $15,000 to a high school buddy in a manner that violated federal rules governing brokers. And there might have been more: The Securities and Exchange Commission would soon conduct an insider-trading investigation into well-timed trades before an attempted corporate takeover; the S.E.C. interviewed Epstein, though he was never accused of wrongdoing.

In early 1981, Bear Stearns began investigating Epstein, and two senior executives interrogated him about the girlfriend’s I.P.O. shares and the personal loan. Epstein denied wrongdoing — and was “deeply offended” by the investigation, as he later put it in a letter to his colleagues. The firm’s executive committee decided to fine him $2,500 and suspend him for two months, according to a note we reviewed that was sent to employees by the firm’s leaders. Rather than accept this indignity, Epstein announced that he was resigning.

His five-year tenure at Bear Stearns was over, but Epstein didn’t intend to slink away from Wall Street. The connections and credentials he had collected at the firm would prove indispensable as he sought to lure clients and financial victims. By giving Epstein second chances, Bear Stearns paved the way for a future that would far exceed anything that would have been possible if he had stayed at the firm. Rather than shunning their ousted colleague, employees would embrace Epstein and help him prosper.

A $450,000 oil scam

One of the Bear Stearns contacts who would prove invaluable to Epstein was a junior saleswoman — and former Miss Indianapolis — named Paula Heil. She would expose Epstein to a previously unseen world of wealth, privilege and possibilities.

They started dating before he left Bear Stearns; we tracked down a financial self-help book Heil wrote in 1981 that was dedicated “to Jeffrey.” That year, the couple traveled to England. While they were there, Heil took Epstein to visit a rich acquaintance of hers, Nick Leese, at his family’s countryside manor. There they met Nick’s father, Douglas Leese, a defense contractor with extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government. He took an immediate liking to Epstein.

Soon Epstein was making regular trips to England and spending time in the Leeses’ rarefied world. Epstein tutored Douglas’s younger son, Julian, and Julian taught him to shoot. Douglas mentored Epstein, let him tag along for meetings with British and international elites and took him on as a consultant with an expense account. Nick, meanwhile, introduced Epstein to up-and-coming Wall Streeters, according to one, who recalls Epstein sitting quietly by himself during a small gathering at a friend’s apartment in the early 1980s. “He looked like someone who was taking notes in the corner,” he told us. Epstein was “part of the family,” Julian later told Tom Pattinson, a British journalist who shared the unpublished interview transcript with us. (Julian died in 2024.)

It was perhaps Epstein’s first close experience with true generational wealth, and he liked the taste enough to help himself to more. The relationship ended a couple of years later when Douglas Leese accused Epstein of abusing his expense account by charging personal flights on the Concorde and stays at luxury hotels. “He was very cross and upset about it,” Julian said of his father. “And he said he didn’t want to have any more to do with Jeffrey.”

Epstein had been spending extravagantly, and despite his lofty compensation at Bear Stearns and his work for Leese, he found himself strapped, even occasionally bouncing rent checks. Back in New York, he joined forces with John Stanley Pottinger, a lawyer who had recently left a senior post in the Justice Department. Epstein, Pottinger and Pottinger’s brother rented a penthouse office in the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South. (The broker, Joanna Cutler, told us that Epstein initially stiffed her on the commission.)

According to Epstein’s friend Bob Gold, Epstein and the Pottingers pitched tax-avoidance strategies to wealthy clients, including some whom Gold believes Epstein met through Bear Stearns. The short-lived business partnership has not previously been reported — and is especially notable because decades later Pottinger would team up with Brad Edwards to represent scores of women who accused Epstein of sexually abusing them. (Edwards told us he knew only that Pottinger and Epstein briefly shared an office, not that they were in business together. Pottinger would later say he met Epstein through a client.)

Epstein continued to take advantage of his past affiliation with Bear Stearns, despite having left the firm under a cloud of suspicion. He surprised an acquaintance by answering his home phone, where he took some business calls, by saying, “Bear Stearns.”

And some of Epstein’s former colleagues at the firm saw fit to maintain friendships with him — friendships that would prove extraordinarily profitable for Epstein. One was Clark Schubach, who had been one of Epstein’s managers. Speaking publicly for the first time, Schubach told us he has fond memories of Epstein, who struck him as an outer-borough striver — just like Schubach, who grew up in the Bronx.

In 1982, he introduced Epstein to Michael Stroll, who ran a pinball and video-game company. Stroll trusted Bear Stearns and Schubach. He gave Epstein $450,000 — about 10 percent of his net worth — to invest in a supposed crude-oil deal that Epstein told him he was planning.

Within two years, most of the money had vanished, Stroll later said in an unpublished interview with Thomas Volscho, a professor at the College of Staten Island who has spent years researching Epstein’s early years and shared some of his notes and documents with us. Epstein began dodging Stroll’s phone calls; at one point, he sent Stroll a quart of oil in an attempt to convince him that a deal was, in fact, in the works. The dispute ended up in civil court, with Stroll arguing that Epstein had promised to return his money but never did. In 1993, Epstein prevailed on technical grounds, and a judge ruled that he wasn’t personally liable. Decades later, Stroll remains bitter. “He’s a despicable prick,” he told us.

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Bounty hunting in the Cayman Islands

During his time with the Leese family, Epstein liked to tell people that he was a “bounty hunter” who tracked down hidden money. The Leeses had rolled their eyes — Epstein seemed to enjoy cultivating an air of mystery — but soon enough he would be able to make good on that boast.

Around 1982, a mutual acquaintance introduced Epstein to Ana Obregón, a young Spanish socialite and actress. On their first date, he sped her around Manhattan in a Rolls-Royce. She was mesmerized by his charm and looks but ultimately just wanted to be friends; in her 2012 memoir, after Epstein had been designated a sex offender, she described him as “the perfect man I never fell in love with.”

Even as Epstein was romancing Obregón, he had a serious girlfriend: Eva Andersson, a model and former Miss Sweden. They began dating soon after she moved to New York from a small town in her native country, and many of Epstein’s friends and acquaintances have said she was the love of his life.

But that didn’t stop him from pursuing other women — especially those with money or connections. During his fling with Obregón, the brokerage firm Drysdale Securities imploded. The Obregóns, along with a handful of other wealthy Spanish families, soon hired Epstein to help track down their missing millions. Now he really was a bounty hunter.

Epstein brought on his friend Bob Gold, a former federal prosecutor, as his wingman. Gold told us they spent more than a year trying to find the missing assets, which Drysdale had apparently hidden through a byzantine network of offshore banks and shell companies. They narrowed down the list of banks where the money might be stashed but eventually hit a wall.

Then one day in 1984, Gold went to Epstein’s apartment and found him playing a Rachmaninoff concerto on the piano. All of a sudden, Gold says, Epstein began riffling through a stack of documents and announced that he had solved the mystery: The clients’ funds had ended up at a Canadian bank’s branch in the Cayman Islands. To this day, Gold says, he isn’t sure how Epstein figured it out. He and Epstein chartered a Lear jet and showed up at the bank. Gold warned a bank manager that he could be in legal jeopardy if he didn’t hand over millions of dollars’ worth of bond certificates. Gold and Epstein returned to the United States with the securities. (Gold says he and Epstein later drifted apart.)

Epstein benefited handsomely from his efforts. Coupled with the fruits of his Stroll scam, the payday meant Epstein had almost certainly surpassed an impressive milestone: He was a millionaire.

‘You are someone that’s going to help me get where I want to go’

By the mid-1980s, Epstein had re-established himself at Bear Stearns, now as a valued client. He was routinely calling his former manager, Schubach, to place orders to buy or sell stocks, bonds and options. The firm earned commissions on Epstein’s trades and therefore had an incentive to keep him happy.

In 1986, Schubach hired a petite 23-year-old named Patricia Schmidt to be his assistant. She told us that her main job was to be “eye candy,” but her other duties included answering the phones. That put her in regular contact with Epstein.

One evening, Schubach, who was a senior managing director, asked her to deliver a sheaf of papers to Epstein at his apartment in the Solow Tower, a gleaming black-glass building on the Upper East Side. Epstein welcomed her in, made her tea and invited her to come back anytime to use the building’s rooftop pool. Schmidt suspected that she was dispatched to Epstein because she was an attractive young woman. “Clark knew exactly what he was doing sending me to Jeff’s apartment,” she told us. “I was his leverage to Jeff.”

A week or so later, Schmidt took Epstein up on the offer. A doorman let her in, and she went straight to the pool. After she swam for a bit, Epstein arrived at the pool to say hi. He suggested that she check out the sauna. When he followed her in, Schmidt was surprised but not dismayed. He asked if he could give her a massage. Schmidt said yes. It was the beginning of a sexual relationship, which Schmidt chronicled in her diary and until now had remained secret.

Epstein saw that Schmidt had potential to further his own ends. He routinely asked her to go to the Bear Stearns library and research his prospective clients. He had her give his clients and acquaintances tours of Bear Stearns or escort them to dinner. Schmidt understood what was going on. “It was always about getting him in a position of leverage,” she said. “I was his plaything. It was like, ‘You are someone that’s going to help me get where I want to go.’”

Schmidt wasn’t the only young assistant Schubach delivered to Epstein. In a bawdy book compiled to celebrate his 50th birthday in 2003, another woman who worked at Bear Stearns wrote about how Schubach took her to Epstein’s apartment and then left — at which point Epstein blurted out, “You are a virgin, right?” The letter goes on to describe Epstein, on a different occasion, tickling and kissing her, and the entry includes a photo of her in a thong.

The woman’s name was redacted by the congressional committee that released the birthday book. But we reviewed an unredacted page of the book’s table of contents. The woman’s name was Suzanne Ircha. She had just graduated from college when she met Epstein. (In the early 1990s, when Ircha was trying to start a Hollywood career, she turned to Epstein for a loan, according to notes taken by one of Epstein’s assistants that we reviewed.) Ircha would become a close friend of Melania Trump’s and would marry Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, whom Trump named as ambassador to Britain in his first term.

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A toehold in America’s most exclusive social scene

One sign of Epstein’s remarkable ascent was the place where he spent his days working. By 1987, he was operating out of the Villard Houses, a complex of 19th-century mansions on Madison Avenue that had been converted into luxury apartments and offices. It was a venue befitting the era’s highest rollers, and Epstein aspired to join this crowd.

He had been put up in these plush surroundings by a new acquaintance, Steven Hoffenberg, who ran a debt-collection company, Towers Financial. Hoffenberg was also paying him about $25,000 a month (the equivalent of roughly $70,000 a month today) as a consultant. Epstein and Hoffenberg soon refashioned themselves as corporate-takeover specialists, trying unsuccessfully to buy iconic companies like Pan American World Airways.

To finance this attempted buyout blitz, Hoffenberg was constructing what turned out to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of nearly $500 million. Hoffenberg, who a decade later would be sentenced to 20 years in prison, claimed in court and in interviews that Epstein helped orchestrate the fraud. (Hoffenberg died in 2022.)

Epstein denied any involvement, but it is hard to believe he was in the dark about what was happening. In 1988, he contacted Julian Leese and offered him an internship at Towers. Despite his father’s enduring anger at Epstein, Leese accepted the gig.

His assignment was to help Towers raise money by selling what turned out to be fraudulent bonds to international investors. Leese said he introduced Hoffenberg to his father, who in turn introduced Hoffenberg to potential buyers of the bonds. Among the customers to whom Julian Leese sold the Towers securities were his godparents. “It was a disaster,” he recalled to Pattinson.

Epstein, meanwhile, began soliciting millions of dollars from other acquaintances, including Dick Snyder, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, for what he suggested were win-win investment opportunities. In 1988, Epstein and a few other investors began buying shares of Pennwalt, a $1 billion chemical company. After publicly disclosing their stake, they announced that they were preparing a bid to buy all of Pennwalt for $100 a share — about 40 percent above where it was trading at the time.

Epstein and his partners didn’t appear to have any intention of actually buying the company. But Pennwalt’s stock shot higher in anticipation of a bidding war. Presto: They could sell the shares and secure a significant profit. And Epstein wasn’t shy about what he was doing. He befriended the journalist Edward Jay Epstein (no relation) and explained it to him in detail; Ed Epstein then wrote a column in Manhattan,inc. magazine in 1989 that outlined what was essentially legal market manipulation. (The column in the long-defunct magazine, which we found in the archives at Columbia University, didn’t name Epstein but described him as “a 36-year-old friend who prefers to remain nameless.” Ed Epstein died in 2024.)

But Epstein’s perfidy ran deeper. Ed Epstein discovered that dozens of the people Epstein recruited to invest in Pennwalt, including Snyder, had written to him demanding that he repay their money. In other words, Epstein had lured investors in, used their money to book big profits and then refused to return their funds. There is no record of Epstein facing any consequences — or repaying the money. A result was that by the end of 1988, he reported being worth about $15 million, according to a previously undisclosed document from a Swiss bank, which Thomas Volscho, the professor, shared with us.

Epstein seems to have had a keen sense of which benefactors he could quickly suck dry, leaving them angry and betrayed, and which were worth nurturing for the long haul as sources of connections and prestige. One of those was Sir James Goldsmith — a financier and European politician who was embedded in Manhattan’s upper crust. One evening, he hosted a gathering at his mansion on the Upper East Side. Among the guests was Stuart Pivar, who had amassed a fortune before becoming a renowned art collector. When Pivar arrived, he encountered Epstein playing a Beethoven sonata at a piano in Goldsmith’s spacious entrance hall. Pivar told us he was transfixed: Epstein had an irresistible “magnetism” — especially with “the beautiful daughters of famous, powerful men.”

Several years earlier, Pivar, Andy Warhol and others founded the New York Academy of Art, and in 1987 Epstein became a member of the organization’s board. It was the first time he had joined a prominent board, and it represented a big step toward his shedding his roots as a hungry P.S.D. He was already swanning around New York with beautiful women and raking in tens of thousands of dollars a month. Now he was beginning to ensconce himself in America’s most select social scene. (In later years, after he left the board, his affiliation with the academy would also help him draw at least one young woman into his web.)

Epstein’s colleagues on the board included his ex, now married and named Paula Heil Fisher, as well as a member of the Forbes family and Katie Ford, whose family ran the Ford modeling agency. Epstein only occasionally showed up at board meetings, according to records we reviewed from the academy’s archives, but he had numerous opportunities to network with the academy’s illustrious membership.

After Warhol died that year, the academy threw a $150-per-person black-tie fund-raiser in his honor featuring an art exhibition, a musical performance and a dinner of cold snapper in vodka sauce. Photographers captured Tony Bennett, Lynn Von Furstenberg and other stars and socialites arriving at the downtown party. The evening’s invitation listed the event’s co-chairmen, fixtures of New York’s arts and finance scenes.

The first name was Mr. Jeffrey E. Epstein.

A confidence man meets his most significant mark

A fateful flight to Florida that year would launch Epstein from a mere millionaire into a plutocrat with palatial estates, two private islands and luxury aircraft. The transformation came about through a new client: Les Wexner, the billionaire who built brands like the Limited and Victoria’s Secret. The two were introduced by Wexner’s friend Robert Meister, an insurance executive who happened to sit next to Epstein on the plane to Palm Beach. Meister suggested that Wexner get in touch with Epstein for financial advice.

Wexner soon had a financial adviser, Harold Levin, fly to New York to meet Epstein. Levin told us that he spent an hour with Epstein in his office and immediately got a bad vibe. He found a pay phone and called Wexner. “I smell a rat,” Levin reported. “I don’t trust him.”

Wexner apparently didn’t listen. About a year later, he hired Epstein to be Levin’s boss. As far as Levin could tell, Epstein won the billionaire’s confidence by falsely telling him that Levin had been stealing. Levin decided to quit rather than work for Epstein. Before long, Wexner had given Epstein essentially free rein by granting him power of attorney over his finances. Epstein’s name began appearing in government filings as responsible for Wexner’s businesses and charities. Some of Epstein’s phones had Wexner’s number on speed dial, according to photos we reviewed.

Almost immediately, Wexner’s colleagues grew alarmed by his embrace of Epstein. “I tried to find out how did he get from a high school math teacher to a private investment adviser,” the vice chairman of the Limited told The New York Times in 2019. “There was just nothing there.” A Limited board member eventually became so troubled by Epstein that he hired Kroll, the private investigations firm, to see what could be unearthed about his past, according to Ed Epstein. Even Meister realized he’d misjudged Epstein and urged Wexner to cut ties.

Once again, Wexner didn’t listen, and thus became the most important contributor to the staggering growth in Epstein’s fortune. One unsolved mystery of the Epstein era is what exactly Wexner got out of their relationship. He has repeatedly refused to answer questions, including ours. But Epstein’s modus operandi with other wealthy men — including the private-equity billionaire Leon Black — was to instill fear that their finances were a mess, that their advisers and even family members were inept or exploiting them and that only one man had the wherewithal to save them.

Epstein appeared to deploy that playbook with Wexner — and to reward himself lavishly. He seemed to be taking whatever he thought he deserved from Wexner’s accounts, according to people who later learned what Epstein was doing. The amounts were often measured in the tens of millions.

He bought a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach for $2.5 million, about a mile from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Epstein and Trump had become pals in New York, and Epstein was a regular at Trump’s Atlantic City casino; a former executive there recently told CNN that the two men seemed to be best friends. In Florida, Epstein began hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, attending parties featuring N.F.L. cheerleaders and “calendar girl” contestants.

He bought another mansion, on 30 acres in New Albany, Ohio, where Wexner was building an enormous real estate development. He ditched his one-bedroom in the Solow Tower and began leasing a grand marble townhouse on the Upper East Side — the former residence of Iran’s deputy general consul — for $15,000 a month. (According to lawsuits that we reviewed, the owner of the Solow building sued Epstein for not paying rent. The townhouse’s owner — the U.S. government — sued him for illegally subletting. The owner of the Villard Houses, where he by now leased his own office, made similar accusations.)

Epstein cruised around Manhattan in a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. He began donating thousands to politicians — and developing relationships with them. In 1989, Epstein accompanied Wayne Owens, a Democratic congressman from Utah, on a trip to the Middle East to explore ways to promote business ties between Israel and its neighbors. Epstein apparently was invited in his capacity as a finance expert, but he struck participants as out of his depth and bored.

Dan Gordon, a screenwriter who was part of the entourage, says he warned Owens that Epstein was showing disrespect by his slovenly attire in meetings with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince at the time, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud — the types of connections that Epstein would cultivate in the years ahead..One of Owens’s aides, Michael Yeager, recalled Epstein boasting about his Indiana Jones-like pursuit of hidden assets and his close ties to Wexner.

Aside from the money, Wexner’s greatest value to Epstein was that he imbued him with new credibility and credentials. In 1989, Ken Lipper, a prominent fund manager, was standing in a ski-lift line in Aspen, Colo., when a stranger approached him. It was Epstein. He said he worked for Wexner, who wanted to invite Lipper to a party in Aspen. Lipper, according to the person who recounted this to us, had no idea how Epstein, who was traipsing through the snow on foot, had tracked him down. But Wexner was a billionaire, and so Lipper attended the party and then met privately with Epstein, who put millions of Wexner’s dollars into one of Lipper’s funds. In a previously unreported act of dishonesty, Epstein later claimed on a regulatory filing that he was employed by that Lipper fund.

Epstein also posed as a Victoria’s Secret talent scout, prompting more executives to complain to Wexner about his conduct, to no avail. He began citing his work for Wexner to prove his bona fides to banks, regulators and journalists. For most of his life, Wexner would be his only publicly known client.

A new girlfriend, and enabler, arrives

Epstein was about to meet someone who would usher him into even more elite circles while also playing a central role in his darkest crimes. His nearly decadelong romance with Eva Andersson came to an end around 1990. In Epstein’s telling, the split was the result of a mutual realization that his future did not include “staying in one place and having a family.” The two remained close until Epstein’s death.

Shortly after their breakup, Epstein was introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the British media baron Robert Maxwell. Their first get-together, arranged by a mutual friend, was at Epstein’s office at the Villard Houses, she has said. When the domineering Robert Maxwell learned that his daughter was spending time with Epstein, he contacted Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne, both of whom he was close to, to see what they knew about their former Bear Stearns employee. Greenberg and Cayne apparently vouched for Epstein.

That November, Robert Maxwell died suddenly as his business unraveled. Ghislaine Maxwell flew to New York, distraught and short on cash. Epstein came to her aid, financially and socially. When a memorial event was held for her father at the Plaza Hotel — owned at the time by Trump — Epstein sat next to Maxwell, he in white tie, she in shimmery blue. By 1992, they were an item.

It was around this time that Epstein apparently began grooming and abusing hundreds of teenage girls and young women. Maxwell was later convicted of playing a central role in his sex-trafficking operation and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. She recently told Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general (and Trump’s former personal lawyer), that Epstein was her “lifeline.”

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At one elegant soiree, he met the ABC News journalist Catherine Crier and held forth about the scientists he knew. Crier told us that, a few months later, she and Epstein attended a movie screening at the Plaza. As guests milled around in formal wear, Epstein stood out in a white T‑shirt. At the event, Crier introduced him to her friend Elliot Stein, a prominent investment banker. Stein later connected Epstein with Leon Black, who would ultimately replace Wexner as Epstein’s most lucrative client. This was Epstein at his most productive, leveraging one relationship to create another, over and over and over.

While he was dating Maxwell, Epstein continued to see other young women — and to flaunt them with powerful men. One of them was Stacey Williams, a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, whom he met at a Christmas party that Trump threw at the Plaza. In 1993, Epstein took Williams by Trump Tower. Williams has said that Trump groped her and that Epstein later chastised her for letting it happen. (Trump has denied it.)

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Using donations to reach the Clintons and Rockefellers

On a freezing Thursday in February 1993, Epstein and Wexner arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Just weeks earlier, Bill Clinton had been sworn in as the 42nd president. It was the first of many visits Epstein would pay to the Clinton White House.

Epstein had become a political donor — including, later that year, $10,000 to help refurbish the White House, earning him a spot at a reception with the Clintons — and that gave him a certain amount of cachet with the new president. But Epstein had something else going for him as well: a new connection named Lynn Forester.

Forester told us that she met Epstein at a reception for George Mitchell, the Senate majority leader, whom Epstein had befriended. Forester was a successful telecommunications executive, but she rose to greater prominence through her marriage to Andrew Stein, the Manhattan politician who in 1993 ran unsuccessfully for New York City mayor. The end of his mayoral campaign coincided with the end of their 10-year marriage. Now Forester and Stein were feuding over how to divvy up millions of dollars, and Epstein apparently convinced Forester that he could protect her from getting ripped off. It was a version of the same tactic he used to get in Wexner’s good graces years earlier.

A source told us that Epstein called one of Stein’s lawyers, claimed that Forester had empowered him to negotiate on her behalf and demanded that Forester, as the couple’s primary breadwinner, walk away with a greater share of the assets. (Forester told us she has “no idea” whom Epstein contacted, nor “why he thought he was empowered to do anything on my behalf.”)

It was an opportune moment for Epstein to ingratiate himself with Forester, whom Clinton had appointed to a White House advisory commission. On at least one occasion, Forester brought up Epstein in a brief private conversation with the president, according to a letter, first reported by The Daily Beast, that she wrote that mentioned Epstein. He became a regular visitor to the White House, sometimes with a girlfriend in tow, according to records housed at Clinton’s presidential library. (Forester says she has “no recollection of having anything to do with Epstein and the White House.” She says she cut ties with him in 2000, after he deceived her on a property transaction. “I was a very small part of Epstein’s life, and he was a blip on mine,” she said.)

By 1995, Clinton and Epstein were sufficiently chummy that he wrote a get-well-soon note to Epstein’s ailing mother. “Hang in there,” the president scrawled on a yellow Post-it, which Epstein saved and we reviewed. (“The president knew nothing about this guy,” said Angel Urena, a spokesman for Clinton. “Nobody did.”)

Around the same time, Epstein began developing relationships with the scions of two of America’s wealthiest families.

One was Libet Johnson, Woody Johnson’s sister and also heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Epstein oversaw a trust that held some of her land, and Maxwell told Blanche that Epstein in the mid-1990s provided Johnson with the same sorts of services that he offered Wexner. In 1994, Johnson gave more than $2 million to his J. Epstein Foundation, according to filings we found in Indiana University Indianapolis’s repository of old charitable records.

Epstein used the foundation to procure access to prestigious organizations and influential people — including David Rockefeller, the heir to the industrial fortune. Soon after the foundation was established in the early 1990s, it began donating tens of thousands of dollars to Rockefeller University, a prestigious research institution, and the Trilateral Commission, which Rockefeller had established as a forum for some of the world’s most powerful figures to discuss global problems.

The donations appeared to have their desired effect. In 1995, Rockefeller welcomed Epstein to the board of Rockefeller University, according to prepared remarks we found in his family’s archive. Around then, Epstein hosted Rockefeller at his Manhattan mansion to discuss with a small group of wealthy people how to best pass on money and values to younger generations, according to someone who was there. Epstein also became a member of the Trilateral Commission. A program for a dinner in 1998 celebrating the commission’s 25th anniversary noted the evening’s participants, including Epstein and Forester, who were listed as a pair. (Forester said she didn’t recall attending.)

Henceforth, Epstein would relentlessly cite his Rockefeller connections, even claiming that he managed money for the dynastic family. A person who was close to Rockefeller and helped manage his money told us that this was not true. Epstein, he said, didn’t even pitch Rockefeller on any investments.

Epstein was also beginning to dole out money to Harvard University, where he was keen to cultivate connections with high-profile academics. One of those was the law professor Alan Dershowitz. In the summer of 1996, Dershowitz was at his house on Martha’s Vineyard when he got a call from Forester. She was on the Vineyard with Epstein, who she said was a Harvard donor and wanted to meet Dershowitz.

Dershowitz told us that Epstein showed up at his Chilmark home later that day toting vintage Champagne. The pair took a walk around a nearby pond, and Epstein, the inveterate name-dropper, informed Dershowitz that he was close with Harvard figures, including Larry Summers, an economics professor then serving in the Clinton administration. But the main topic was Wexner, who Epstein said had taught him “how to be rich.” Wexner’s birthday was approaching, and Epstein wanted Dershowitz to attend a dinner in his honor. Dershowitz ended up flying to Ohio on one of Epstein’s planes along with Senator John Glenn. Shimon Peres — the recent Israeli prime minister, whom Epstein met years earlier during the Middle East trip with Representative Owens — was among the other dinner guests. (The following year, Forester hosted a party on Martha’s Vineyard where Epstein mingled with guests including Dershowitz and Britain’s Prince Andrew.)

The year after meeting Epstein, Dershowitz wrote an opinion piece for The Los Angeles Times arguing that the age of sexual consent should be lowered to 15. Epstein seemed to see the potential of nurturing a relationship with the prominent lawyer. He introduced Dershowitz to Jimmy Cayne so that Bear Stearns could manage his money. And he persuaded the investor Orin Kramer, whose hedge fund already held tens of millions of Wexner’s dollars, to let Dershowitz invest, too.

But Kramer’s hedge fund soon suffered calamitous losses, and Dershowitz’s six-figure investment was annihilated. Epstein demanded that Kramer make Dershowitz whole and threatened to make his life miserable if he refused. They eventually negotiated a compromise: Kramer would refund Dershowitz’s investment if Epstein agreed to keep at least $30 million of Wexner’s money in the struggling hedge fund. As a result, Kramer would receive enough fees from Wexner to cover the cost of reimbursing Dershowitz.

Keeping Dershowitz happy proved prescient. He would become one of Epstein’s highest-profile and longest-serving defenders. In 2005, the parents of a 14-year-old girl in Palm Beach told the police that Epstein had sexually abused her; that led to state and federal criminal investigations. Dershowitz and other lawyers engineered a sweetheart deal in which Epstein escaped federal prosecution, pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor and received a light jail sentence. (He also had to register as a sex offender.)

...

‘I told you I would make it very big’

In 1999, Julian Leese knocked on the imposing wooden door of Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. It had been years since he’d last seen Epstein, when Leese interned for Towers and lost his godparents’ money, and even longer since Leese and his family taught a young Epstein to shoot and to mix with aristocrats shortly after his departure from Bear Stearns. As Leese recounted to the journalist Tom Pattinson for a podcast, he had let Epstein know he would be in town, and Epstein, now 46, invited him to his Upper East Side residence for tea.

A butler waved him inside. Soon Epstein descended the sweeping staircase. “My boy,” he declared, “I told you I would make it very big.”

There was no doubt about that: Epstein was fantastically wealthy. His company’s financial documents around then indicated that he was worth more than $100 million — an amount that would grow substantially in the years ahead. Much of that appeared to have flowed to Epstein from Wexner, who would later claim that he “had misappropriated vast sums of money.”

Bear Stearns remained his preferred Wall Street brokerage firm, but he was on his way to becoming a coveted client of JPMorgan Chase, whose chairman was impressed by Epstein’s claim that he managed money for David Rockefeller. Until 2013, as we reported this year, JPMorgan would provide Epstein with an array of services that enabled his sex-trafficking operation.

Epstein had by now amassed a huge real estate portfolio — including Little St. James, an island off the southeastern coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein and a rotating cast of his victims and celebrity guests moved among his properties on a fleet of private aircraft.

...

But there was something else that was attractive about Little St. James. The U.S. Virgin Islands was an unusually welcoming place for Epstein to do business. The territory’s law enforcement and financial regulations were notoriously lax, its politicians acquiescent. And the islands had created a series of generous tax incentives to lure businesses from the mainland.

Epstein applied for one of those breaks, which would enable his main company, Financial Trust, to avoid most taxes — a potential savings of tens of millions of dollars a year.

On a balmy afternoon in April 1999, Epstein appeared at a hearing before the Industrial Development Commission, which would consider (and ultimately approve) his application.

To vouch for his character, Epstein had turned to Harry Loy Anderson Jr., the president of the Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Company, where Epstein had held accounts since the early 1990s. Anderson — whose daughter is now engaged to Donald Trump Jr. — wrote a letter stating that Epstein was “a gentleman of the highest integrity” and that he “enjoys an excellent reputation in our community.” (Epstein’s house manager later said in a deposition that he was using Anderson’s bank to pay some of Epstein’s victims.) The letter, not previously reported, was submitted to the development commission and was obtained by the journalist Wayne Barrett; we found it in his archives at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin.

In the hearing room, Epstein unspooled a fantastical version of his life story, according to a transcript of the meeting that we obtained from the U.S. Virgin Islands. He had willingly left a job at Bear Stearns to become “a financial doctor” to the wealthy. One of those clients, Wexner, had helped develop his “sense of integrity.” He’d later grown close to the Rockefeller family, advising them “on certain financial issues.”

By the end, the commission’s members and staff were eating out of his hands, joining the long list of people and institutions who, knowingly or not, would become Epstein’s enablers. One seemed to be fishing for stock tips. Others jostled for him to locate his company on their islands in the territory. Another asked if Epstein would consider teaching a course at the local university. “I’d love to,” Epstein replied. “As I said outside this room, I believe that the future of the Virgin Islands is really with the young people.”

And he thought he had something to teach them. One of his classroom priorities, he mused, would be to educate them on “the ethics of business — which is very difficult nowadays.”

———-

“Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich” By David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein; The New York Times; 12/16/2025

“Much of the last quarter-century of Epstein’s life has been carefully examined — including how, in the 1990s and early 2000s, he amassed hundreds of millions of dollars through his work for the retail tycoon Leslie Wexner. Yet the public understanding of Epstein’s early ascent has been shrouded in mystery. How did a college dropout from Brooklyn claw his way from the front of a high school classroom to the pinnacle of American finance, politics and society? How did Epstein go from nearly being fired at Bear Stearns to managing the wealth of billionaires? What were the origins of his own fortune?”

How did Epstein get his start as a fabulously wealthy elite socialite? We still don’t really have a clear answer. And as this report describes, Epstein’s pattern of lying and cheating his way to the top appears to have been in place from the beginning of his ascent as a young trader as Bear Stearns. Notably, Epstein doesn’t appear to have been a particularly skillful trader. His skills were in cheating his employers and clients, which only adds to the mystery of how exactly he earned his massive fortune and reputation as an elite financial strategist:

...
We have spent months trying to pierce this veil. We spoke with dozens of Epstein’s former colleagues, friends, girlfriends, business partners and financial victims. Some agreed to speak on the record for the first time; others insisted on speaking confidentially but gave us access to never-before-seen records and other information. We sifted through private archives and tracked down previously unpublished recordings and transcripts of old interviews — including one in which Epstein gave a meandering account of his personal and professional history. We perused diaries, letters, emails and photo albums, including some that belonged to Epstein. We reviewed thousands of pages of court and government records.

What emerged is the fullest portrait to date of one of the world’s most notorious criminals — a narrative that differs in important respects from previously published accounts of Epstein’s rise, including his arrival at Bear Stearns.

In his first two decades of business, we found that Epstein was less a financial genius than a prodigious manipulator and liar. Abundant conspiracy theories hold that Epstein worked for spy services or ran a lucrative blackmail operation, but we found a more prosaic explanation for how he built a fortune. A relentless scammer, he abused expense accounts, engineered inside deals and demonstrated a remarkable knack for separating seemingly sophisticated investors and businessmen from their money. He started small, testing his tactics and seeing what he could get away with. His early successes laid the foundation for more ambitious ploys down the road. Again and again, he proved willing to operate on the edge of criminality and burn bridges in his pursuit of wealth and power.

Rung by rung, Epstein climbed a social and financial ladder, often using young women as a potent form of currency. His girlfriends, lovers and even exes helped elevate his status inside a bank, got him hired to track down missing assets and gained him entree to prestigious organizations. And deliberately or not, some of them enabled him as he constructed a sex-trafficking operation that would later ensnare hundreds of teenage girls and young women.
...

And then there’s the remarkable origin story for his career in finance. We are told a 23 year old Epstein, then a math and physics teacher at Dalton, was directly connected to Alan “Ace” Greenberg, the head of Bear Stearns. Greenberg quickly adopted him as a kind of protege and Epstein even started dating Greenberg’s daughter. Incredibly, this all happened at the same time Dalton’s administrators reportedly asked him to leave at the end of the academic year after being unimpressed with his teaching. It’s an early example of what we are told is just the incredible luck that he repeatedly experienced when faced with career difficulties:

...
One evening in early 1976, a bushy-haired Jeffrey Epstein showed up for an event at an art gallery in Midtown Manhattan. Epstein was a math and physics teacher at the city’s prestigious Dalton School, and the father of one of his students had invited him. Epstein initially demurred, saying he didn’t go out much, but eventually relented. It would turn out to be one of the best decisions he ever made.

At the gallery, Epstein bumped into another Dalton parent, who had heard tales of the 23-year-old’s wondrous math skills. The parent asked if he’d ever thought about a job on Wall Street, according to an unreleased recording of Epstein and a document prepared by his lawyers. Epstein was game. The parent dialed a friend: Ace Greenberg, a top executive at Bear Stearns. Epstein, the friend told Greenberg, was “wasting his time at Dalton.”

Greenberg invited Epstein to the investment firm’s offices at 55 Water Street at the southern tip of Manhattan. Epstein showed up in a turtleneck. Greenberg was impressed — even though the young man didn’t have the foggiest idea of how Wall Street worked. Greenberg had helped build Bear Stearns into one of the industry’s scrappiest firms by eschewing the traditional investment-banking practice of hiring Ivy Leaguers with M.B.A.s. He preferred what he called P.S.D.s: those who were poor, smart and had “a deep desire to become rich.”

...

Before offering Epstein a job, Greenberg had him meet another senior executive, Michael Tennenbaum. His son happened to be a Dalton student, who reported to his father that Epstein was popular with students and the school’s young female staff members. Epstein went to Tennenbaum’s office overlooking New York Harbor for an interview. “He was just a hell of a salesman,” Tennenbaum told us. Epstein was hired.

It was an extraordinarily lucky break for him — the first of many. Administrators at Dalton, unimpressed with Epstein’s teaching, had asked him to leave the school after the academic year ended. Now, just like that, he had a new job that paid about $25,000 a year (roughly $140,000 in today’s dollars).

Greenberg viewed the young man as a protégé. Early on, he invited Epstein to a dinner party and seated him next to his 20-year-old daughter, Lynne, who told us that she suspected it was a setup. The two hit it off and started dating. Word of the new guy’s romance with the boss’s daughter spread quickly, granting Epstein something akin to protected status at the firm.
...

And by the end of 1976, complaints about Epstein were already building up inside Bear Stearns about the lies on Epstein’s resume about graduating from college. Ace Greenberg ordered the company to ignore the revelation:

...
Tennenbaum soon became Epstein’s supervisor. “He was proving to be quite talented,” Tennenbaum told us. But in late 1976, he received a disconcerting phone call from the head of Bear Stearns’s personnel department. Employees had belatedly gotten around to checking Epstein’s résumé, which stated that he had received degrees from two California universities.

“Are you sitting down?” the H.R. official asked Tennenbaum. “Neither school has heard of him.”

Tennenbaum was in a delicate spot. He asked Greenberg what to do. The response, Tennenbaum told us, was that he should treat Epstein as if he were a normal employee — an instruction that made clear that, thanks to his relationships, Epstein was in fact not a normal employee.

He summoned Epstein to his office. “You lied about your education,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Epstein calmly replied. He had never graduated from college. Tennenbaum recalls being disarmed by the admission. Decades later, he would regard it as an example of Epstein’s ability to manipulate his marks — in this case, him.

...

Without an impressive degree or two, Epstein said, “I knew nobody would give me a chance.”

...

It was perhaps the first example of Epstein getting caught cheating — and then avoiding punishment thanks to his uncanny ability to take advantage of those in positions of power. This would become a lifelong pattern, one that largely explains Epstein’s remarkable success at amassing wealth and, eventually, orchestrating a vast sex-trafficking operation.
...

Incredibly, by 1980, Cosmopolitan magazine named Epstein its “bachelor of the month,” describing him as a “dynamo” who “talks only to people who make over a million a year!” Epstein’s romance with Greenberg’s daughter had already fizzled by this point after she learned Epstein “lied about everything”, but that apparently didn’t stop his public elevation as an elite socialite:

...
Having been let off the hook, Epstein was looking at a bright future. In 1980, Bear Stearns named him a limited partner — one rung below a full partner — and Epstein, who was 27 at the time, claimed that he was the youngest in the firm’s history to join the partnership. He was pulling in about $200,000 a year (more than $800,000 in today’s dollars). By then, Epstein’s dalliance with Greenberg’s daughter had fizzled — she told us that she learned that Epstein “lied about everything” — but his renown was growing.

He was regularly flying to Palm Beach, Fla., to visit young women. That summer, Cosmopolitan named Epstein its “bachelor of the month,” describing him as a “dynamo” who “talks only to people who make over a million a year!” The magazine encouraged interested parties to write to Epstein at his work address.
...

Intriguingly, we are told that Epstein’s career at Bear Stearns was greatly advanced through his relationship with Jimmy Cayne, a senior executive who would one day run the firm, with rumors that Epstein was helping Cayne pursue both women and score drugs. The question of what role drug use may have played in Epstein’s criminal enterprise has long lingered over this story, with no clear answers. But here we find that Epstein had rumors of supplying his elite friends with drugs going all the way back to these early years at Bear Stearns:

...
One secret to Epstein’s early success was his close relationship with Jimmy Cayne, a senior executive who would one day run Bear Stearns. Rumors, perhaps fueled by envy, began to spread that Epstein was helping Cayne, who died in 2021, to pursue women and score drugs, according to several of their colleagues. Cayne raved to colleagues about Epstein and began introducing him to some of his most lucrative clients.

“That’s what really catapulted him,” Tennenbaum recalled, describing Epstein and Cayne as “two sleazeballs.” Once or twice a week, Epstein would let it be known that he was having lunch with the chief executive of a major company — meetings apparently arranged by Cayne, said Elliot Wolk, who became Epstein’s boss after Tennenbaum. Wolk surmised that Epstein’s appeal to these clients was partly his charisma and partly his newfound understanding of complex trading strategies that could save ultrawealthy clients huge amounts in taxes.
...

And despite those rumors of drug use and the fact that Ace Greenberg’s daughter had already concluded Epstein lied about everything, Epstein was once again caught breaking the rules of the firm with no consequences. The SEC even investigated him for insider trading that led up to an interview of Epstein. Still no consequences. He was seemingly untouchable. Why? Finally, in 1981, he faced possible consequences for his flagrant rule breaking, leading to a mere $2,500 fine and two month suspension. Epstein resigns in response and goes on to build a career as an elite financier that was repeatedly boosted and assisted by his Bear Stearns contacts:

...
Epstein was not content to simply climb the corporate ladder. In 1980, he flew on Bear Stearns’s dime to a conference in the Caribbean. While there, he spent more than $10,000 on jewelry and clothing for his latest girlfriend — and charged it to the firm. The accounting department noticed the payments and flagged them to the financial controller, who quickly concluded that the expenses were improper, according to a person with direct knowledge of what happened. The controller reported the matter to Greenberg, by then the chief executive. Once again, there were no consequences.

More serious trouble soon surfaced. When investment banks help companies go public, they can dole out shares to favored clients before the stock begins trading on public exchanges. Getting early access is a lucrative privilege, because the value of the shares often spikes in the first hours of trading — yielding a fast, low-risk profit for those initial holders. Bear Stearns executives learned that Epstein was giving his girlfriend access to these “hot deals,” as several of his colleagues recounted to us.

The firm soon discovered yet another infraction: Epstein had lent $15,000 to a high school buddy in a manner that violated federal rules governing brokers. And there might have been more: The Securities and Exchange Commission would soon conduct an insider-trading investigation into well-timed trades before an attempted corporate takeover; the S.E.C. interviewed Epstein, though he was never accused of wrongdoing.

In early 1981, Bear Stearns began investigating Epstein, and two senior executives interrogated him about the girlfriend’s I.P.O. shares and the personal loan. Epstein denied wrongdoing — and was “deeply offended” by the investigation, as he later put it in a letter to his colleagues. The firm’s executive committee decided to fine him $2,500 and suspend him for two months, according to a note we reviewed that was sent to employees by the firm’s leaders. Rather than accept this indignity, Epstein announced that he was resigning.

His five-year tenure at Bear Stearns was over, but Epstein didn’t intend to slink away from Wall Street. The connections and credentials he had collected at the firm would prove indispensable as he sought to lure clients and financial victims. By giving Epstein second chances, Bear Stearns paved the way for a future that would far exceed anything that would have been possible if he had stayed at the firm. Rather than shunning their ousted colleague, employees would embrace Epstein and help him prosper.
...

Next, we get to this extremely intriguing early mentor in Epstein’s life: Douglas Leese, described as a defense contractor with extensive connections to the arms industry and British government. As we’re going to see, Leese’s dealings in the arms trafficking world included dealings with none other than Adnan Khashoggi. And it was Leese who reportedly first introduced Epstein to Steven Hoffenberg in 1987. Leese is much more than just a defense contractor, just as Epstein is much more than just a financial advisor. It sounds like Leese played a very important role in shaping Epstein and yet we’ve heard almost nothing about their relationship. Why is that?

...
One of the Bear Stearns contacts who would prove invaluable to Epstein was a junior saleswoman — and former Miss Indianapolis — named Paula Heil. She would expose Epstein to a previously unseen world of wealth, privilege and possibilities.

They started dating before he left Bear Stearns; we tracked down a financial self-help book Heil wrote in 1981 that was dedicated “to Jeffrey.” That year, the couple traveled to England. While they were there, Heil took Epstein to visit a rich acquaintance of hers, Nick Leese, at his family’s countryside manor. There they met Nick’s father, Douglas Leese, a defense contractor with extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government. He took an immediate liking to Epstein.

Soon Epstein was making regular trips to England and spending time in the Leeses’ rarefied world. Epstein tutored Douglas’s younger son, Julian, and Julian taught him to shoot. Douglas mentored Epstein, let him tag along for meetings with British and international elites and took him on as a consultant with an expense account. Nick, meanwhile, introduced Epstein to up-and-coming Wall Streeters, according to one, who recalls Epstein sitting quietly by himself during a small gathering at a friend’s apartment in the early 1980s. “He looked like someone who was taking notes in the corner,” he told us. Epstein was “part of the family,” Julian later told Tom Pattinson, a British journalist who shared the unpublished interview transcript with us. (Julian died in 2024.)

It was perhaps Epstein’s first close experience with true generational wealth, and he liked the taste enough to help himself to more. The relationship ended a couple of years later when Douglas Leese accused Epstein of abusing his expense account by charging personal flights on the Concorde and stays at luxury hotels. “He was very cross and upset about it,” Julian said of his father. “And he said he didn’t want to have any more to do with Jeffrey.”
...

And then we get to another extremely intriguing early collaborator of Epstein: John Stanley Pottinger. As the article notes, Potting went on to later represent some of Epstein’s victims. But it doesn’t mention that Pottinger was dating none other than Gloria Steinem until they broke up in 1984, which means Pottinger was dating Steinem during this period when Pottinger and his brother were teamed up with Epstein. Nor does it mention the array of intelligence-related stories Pottinger has been involved with over the decades. We are told Epstein joined forces with Pottinger to pitch tax-avoidance strategies to wealthy clients, but it was just a short-lived partnership that has never previously been reported. We don’t know when exactly this partnership started or how long it lasted. We’re just told it was short lived and took place some time in the early 80s. It’s the kind of lack of detail that suggests there’s a lot more hiding under this rock:

...
Epstein had been spending extravagantly, and despite his lofty compensation at Bear Stearns and his work for Leese, he found himself strapped, even occasionally bouncing rent checks. Back in New York, he joined forces with John Stanley Pottinger, a lawyer who had recently left a senior post in the Justice Department. Epstein, Pottinger and Pottinger’s brother rented a penthouse office in the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South. (The broker, Joanna Cutler, told us that Epstein initially stiffed her on the commission.)

According to Epstein’s friend Bob Gold, Epstein and the Pottingers pitched tax-avoidance strategies to wealthy clients, including some whom Gold believes Epstein met through Bear Stearns. The short-lived business partnership has not previously been reported — and is especially notable because decades later Pottinger would team up with Brad Edwards to represent scores of women who accused Epstein of sexually abusing them. (Edwards told us he knew only that Pottinger and Epstein briefly shared an office, not that they were in business together. Pottinger would later say he met Epstein through a client.)
...

By 1982, Epstein transitioned into outright fleecing his clients, starting with Michael Stroll’s $450,000 that was apparently simply embezzled somehow. The ensuing dispute wasn’t resolved until 1993, with a ruling declaring Epstein not personally liable. It was a life of escalating moral transgressions and seemingly near complete impunity:

...
Epstein continued to take advantage of his past affiliation with Bear Stearns, despite having left the firm under a cloud of suspicion. He surprised an acquaintance by answering his home phone, where he took some business calls, by saying, “Bear Stearns.”

And some of Epstein’s former colleagues at the firm saw fit to maintain friendships with him — friendships that would prove extraordinarily profitable for Epstein. One was Clark Schubach, who had been one of Epstein’s managers. Speaking publicly for the first time, Schubach told us he has fond memories of Epstein, who struck him as an outer-borough striver — just like Schubach, who grew up in the Bronx.

In 1982, he introduced Epstein to Michael Stroll, who ran a pinball and video-game company. Stroll trusted Bear Stearns and Schubach. He gave Epstein $450,000 — about 10 percent of his net worth — to invest in a supposed crude-oil deal that Epstein told him he was planning.

Within two years, most of the money had vanished, Stroll later said in an unpublished interview with Thomas Volscho, a professor at the College of Staten Island who has spent years researching Epstein’s early years and shared some of his notes and documents with us. Epstein began dodging Stroll’s phone calls; at one point, he sent Stroll a quart of oil in an attempt to convince him that a deal was, in fact, in the works. The dispute ended up in civil court, with Stroll arguing that Epstein had promised to return his money but never did. In 1993, Epstein prevailed on technical grounds, and a judge ruled that he wasn’t personally liable. Decades later, Stroll remains bitter. “He’s a despicable prick,” he told us.
...

And then we get to Epstein’s mysterious role as a bounty hunter that was apparently intertwined with his relations with the Leese family. Epstein’s wingman at the time, Bob Gold, claims to have joined Epstein in hunting down missing assets for wealthy Spanish families following the implosion of Drysdale Securities. In 1984, Epstein solved the case. And yet Gold claims to have never figured out how he did it:

...
During his time with the Leese family, Epstein liked to tell people that he was a “bounty hunter” who tracked down hidden money. The Leeses had rolled their eyes — Epstein seemed to enjoy cultivating an air of mystery — but soon enough he would be able to make good on that boast.

Around 1982, a mutual acquaintance introduced Epstein to Ana Obregón, a young Spanish socialite and actress. On their first date, he sped her around Manhattan in a Rolls-Royce. She was mesmerized by his charm and looks but ultimately just wanted to be friends; in her 2012 memoir, after Epstein had been designated a sex offender, she described him as “the perfect man I never fell in love with.”

Even as Epstein was romancing Obregón, he had a serious girlfriend: Eva Andersson, a model and former Miss Sweden. They began dating soon after she moved to New York from a small town in her native country, and many of Epstein’s friends and acquaintances have said she was the love of his life.

But that didn’t stop him from pursuing other women — especially those with money or connections. During his fling with Obregón, the brokerage firm Drysdale Securities imploded. The Obregóns, along with a handful of other wealthy Spanish families, soon hired Epstein to help track down their missing millions. Now he really was a bounty hunter.

Epstein brought on his friend Bob Gold, a former federal prosecutor, as his wingman. Gold told us they spent more than a year trying to find the missing assets, which Drysdale had apparently hidden through a byzantine network of offshore banks and shell companies. They narrowed down the list of banks where the money might be stashed but eventually hit a wall.

Then one day in 1984, Gold went to Epstein’s apartment and found him playing a Rachmaninoff concerto on the piano. All of a sudden, Gold says, Epstein began riffling through a stack of documents and announced that he had solved the mystery: The clients’ funds had ended up at a Canadian bank’s branch in the Cayman Islands. To this day, Gold says, he isn’t sure how Epstein figured it out. He and Epstein chartered a Lear jet and showed up at the bank. Gold warned a bank manager that he could be in legal jeopardy if he didn’t hand over millions of dollars’ worth of bond certificates. Gold and Epstein returned to the United States with the securities. (Gold says he and Epstein later drifted apart.)

Epstein benefited handsomely from his efforts. Coupled with the fruits of his Stroll scam, the payday meant Epstein had almost certainly surpassed an impressive milestone: He was a millionaire.
...

And by 1986, Epstein was a valued Bear Stearns client who was not just routinely calling his former manager, Clark Schubach, to place orders. Schubach apparently put Epstein in contact with young attractive women including Suzanne Ircha, who went on to become a close friend of Melania Trump. It’s another detail in the history between Melania and Epstein that remains largely obscured to this day:

...
By the mid-1980s, Epstein had re-established himself at Bear Stearns, now as a valued client. He was routinely calling his former manager, Schubach, to place orders to buy or sell stocks, bonds and options. The firm earned commissions on Epstein’s trades and therefore had an incentive to keep him happy.

In 1986, Schubach hired a petite 23-year-old named Patricia Schmidt to be his assistant. She told us that her main job was to be “eye candy,” but her other duties included answering the phones. That put her in regular contact with Epstein.

One evening, Schubach, who was a senior managing director, asked her to deliver a sheaf of papers to Epstein at his apartment in the Solow Tower, a gleaming black-glass building on the Upper East Side. Epstein welcomed her in, made her tea and invited her to come back anytime to use the building’s rooftop pool. Schmidt suspected that she was dispatched to Epstein because she was an attractive young woman. “Clark knew exactly what he was doing sending me to Jeff’s apartment,” she told us. “I was his leverage to Jeff.”

...

Schmidt wasn’t the only young assistant Schubach delivered to Epstein. In a bawdy book compiled to celebrate his 50th birthday in 2003, another woman who worked at Bear Stearns wrote about how Schubach took her to Epstein’s apartment and then left — at which point Epstein blurted out, “You are a virgin, right?” The letter goes on to describe Epstein, on a different occasion, tickling and kissing her, and the entry includes a photo of her in a thong.

The woman’s name was redacted by the congressional committee that released the birthday book. But we reviewed an unredacted page of the book’s table of contents. The woman’s name was Suzanne Ircha. She had just graduated from college when she met Epstein. (In the early 1990s, when Ircha was trying to start a Hollywood career, she turned to Epstein for a loan, according to notes taken by one of Epstein’s assistants that we reviewed.) Ircha would become a close friend of Melania Trump’s and would marry Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, whom Trump named as ambassador to Britain in his first term.
...

That history of increasingly brazen, yet consequence-free, crimes brings us to 1987, when Epstein was living in the luxurious Villard Houses, having been put there by his new acquaintance, Steven Hoffenberg. As we’ve seen, Epstein and Hoffenberg went on to perpetrate what was, at the time, the largest Ponzi scheme in US history. With no consequences for Epstein, of course. As we’ve seen, not only did Hoffenberg later refer to Epstein as his best friend during this period, but he went on to openly support Donald Trump’s presidential run in 2016, raising all sorts of fascinating questions about the nature of Trump’s relationship with Hoffenberg. Remarkably, Epstein invited Julian Leese to intern at Towers, and Julian went on to introduce his father, Douglas Leese, to Hoffenberg, who went on to introduce Hoffenberg to potential buyers of their fraudulent bonds. It’s another indication that Epstein’s relationship with the Leese family could prove to be very instructive regarding the nature of Epstein’s apparent impunity:

...
One sign of Epstein’s remarkable ascent was the place where he spent his days working. By 1987, he was operating out of the Villard Houses, a complex of 19th-century mansions on Madison Avenue that had been converted into luxury apartments and offices. It was a venue befitting the era’s highest rollers, and Epstein aspired to join this crowd.

He had been put up in these plush surroundings by a new acquaintance, Steven Hoffenberg, who ran a debt-collection company, Towers Financial. Hoffenberg was also paying him about $25,000 a month (the equivalent of roughly $70,000 a month today) as a consultant. Epstein and Hoffenberg soon refashioned themselves as corporate-takeover specialists, trying unsuccessfully to buy iconic companies like Pan American World Airways.

To finance this attempted buyout blitz, Hoffenberg was constructing what turned out to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of nearly $500 million. Hoffenberg, who a decade later would be sentenced to 20 years in prison, claimed in court and in interviews that Epstein helped orchestrate the fraud. (Hoffenberg died in 2022.)

Epstein denied any involvement, but it is hard to believe he was in the dark about what was happening. In 1988, he contacted Julian Leese and offered him an internship at Towers. Despite his father’s enduring anger at Epstein, Leese accepted the gig.

His assignment was to help Towers raise money by selling what turned out to be fraudulent bonds to international investors. Leese said he introduced Hoffenberg to his father, who in turn introduced Hoffenberg to potential buyers of the bonds. Among the customers to whom Julian Leese sold the Towers securities were his godparents. “It was a disaster,” he recalled to Pattinson.
...

And the Towers Financial scam wasn’t even the only scam Epstein was perpetrating at this time. Dick Snyder, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, was another target. But for that scam, Epstein literally had a column in Manhattan,inc. magazine written about what was portrayed as legal market manipulation. But there was more than legal market manipulation going on. Epstein was simply absconding the investor funds and refusing to pay them back. And he got away with all of it:

...
Epstein, meanwhile, began soliciting millions of dollars from other acquaintances, including Dick Snyder, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, for what he suggested were win-win investment opportunities. In 1988, Epstein and a few other investors began buying shares of Pennwalt, a $1 billion chemical company. After publicly disclosing their stake, they announced that they were preparing a bid to buy all of Pennwalt for $100 a share — about 40 percent above where it was trading at the time.

Epstein and his partners didn’t appear to have any intention of actually buying the company. But Pennwalt’s stock shot higher in anticipation of a bidding war. Presto: They could sell the shares and secure a significant profit. And Epstein wasn’t shy about what he was doing. He befriended the journalist Edward Jay Epstein (no relation) and explained it to him in detail; Ed Epstein then wrote a column in Manhattan,inc. magazine in 1989 that outlined what was essentially legal market manipulation. (The column in the long-defunct magazine, which we found in the archives at Columbia University, didn’t name Epstein but described him as “a 36-year-old friend who prefers to remain nameless.” Ed Epstein died in 2024.)

But Epstein’s perfidy ran deeper. Ed Epstein discovered that dozens of the people Epstein recruited to invest in Pennwalt, including Snyder, had written to him demanding that he repay their money. In other words, Epstein had lured investors in, used their money to book big profits and then refused to return their funds. There is no record of Epstein facing any consequences — or repaying the money. A result was that by the end of 1988, he reported being worth about $15 million, according to a previously undisclosed document from a Swiss bank, which Thomas Volscho, the professor, shared with us.
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1987 brought another new achievement in Epstein’s social ascent: he because a board member of the New York Academy of Art, founded by Andy Warhol a few years earlier. The first prominent board he joined. But despite only showing up occasionally to the board meeting, his name was first in the list of co-chairmen named in the invitation to a black-tie fund-raiser in honor of Warhol after his passing that year. Epstein was New York high society’s fastest rising star in the 80’s:

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Epstein seems to have had a keen sense of which benefactors he could quickly suck dry, leaving them angry and betrayed, and which were worth nurturing for the long haul as sources of connections and prestige. One of those was Sir James Goldsmith — a financier and European politician who was embedded in Manhattan’s upper crust. One evening, he hosted a gathering at his mansion on the Upper East Side. Among the guests was Stuart Pivar, who had amassed a fortune before becoming a renowned art collector. When Pivar arrived, he encountered Epstein playing a Beethoven sonata at a piano in Goldsmith’s spacious entrance hall. Pivar told us he was transfixed: Epstein had an irresistible “magnetism” — especially with “the beautiful daughters of famous, powerful men.”

Several years earlier, Pivar, Andy Warhol and others founded the New York Academy of Art, and in 1987 Epstein became a member of the organization’s board. It was the first time he had joined a prominent board, and it represented a big step toward his shedding his roots as a hungry P.S.D. He was already swanning around New York with beautiful women and raking in tens of thousands of dollars a month. Now he was beginning to ensconce himself in America’s most select social scene. (In later years, after he left the board, his affiliation with the academy would also help him draw at least one young woman into his web.)

Epstein’s colleagues on the board included his ex, now married and named Paula Heil Fisher, as well as a member of the Forbes family and Katie Ford, whose family ran the Ford modeling agency. Epstein only occasionally showed up at board meetings, according to records we reviewed from the academy’s archives, but he had numerous opportunities to network with the academy’s illustrious membership.

After Warhol died that year, the academy threw a $150-per-person black-tie fund-raiser in his honor featuring an art exhibition, a musical performance and a dinner of cold snapper in vodka sauce. Photographers captured Tony Bennett, Lynn Von Furstenberg and other stars and socialites arriving at the downtown party. The evening’s invitation listed the event’s co-chairmen, fixtures of New York’s arts and finance scenes.

The first name was Mr. Jeffrey E. Epstein.
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1987 was also the year Epstein apparently was reportedly first put in contact to someone who is arguably the most significant contact in Epstein’s life: Les Wexner, Epstein primary benefactor for decades before Leon Black longstanding client and the source of much of his income as a financial advisor. Wexner took on Epstein despite his financial adviser, Harold Levin, meeting Epstein and concluding he was a rat. Levin ended up quitting after Epstein falsely alleged to Wexner that Levin was stealing. Epstein soon gained power of attorney over Wexner’s finances. It’s a situation made all the more amazing by the fact that what exactly Wexner got out of their relationship remains an unsolved mystery to this day. There is a good time to recall how Epstein has claims that he first met Wexner in 1986, while others claim its 1989. Why the ambiguity?

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A fateful flight to Florida that year would launch Epstein from a mere millionaire into a plutocrat with palatial estates, two private islands and luxury aircraft. The transformation came about through a new client: Les Wexner, the billionaire who built brands like the Limited and Victoria’s Secret. The two were introduced by Wexner’s friend Robert Meister, an insurance executive who happened to sit next to Epstein on the plane to Palm Beach. Meister suggested that Wexner get in touch with Epstein for financial advice.

Wexner soon had a financial adviser, Harold Levin, fly to New York to meet Epstein. Levin told us that he spent an hour with Epstein in his office and immediately got a bad vibe. He found a pay phone and called Wexner. “I smell a rat,” Levin reported. “I don’t trust him.”

Wexner apparently didn’t listen. About a year later, he hired Epstein to be Levin’s boss. As far as Levin could tell, Epstein won the billionaire’s confidence by falsely telling him that Levin had been stealing. Levin decided to quit rather than work for Epstein. Before long, Wexner had given Epstein essentially free rein by granting him power of attorney over his finances. Epstein’s name began appearing in government filings as responsible for Wexner’s businesses and charities. Some of Epstein’s phones had Wexner’s number on speed dial, according to photos we reviewed.

Almost immediately, Wexner’s colleagues grew alarmed by his embrace of Epstein. “I tried to find out how did he get from a high school math teacher to a private investment adviser,” the vice chairman of the Limited told The New York Times in 2019. “There was just nothing there.” A Limited board member eventually became so troubled by Epstein that he hired Kroll, the private investigations firm, to see what could be unearthed about his past, according to Ed Epstein. Even Meister realized he’d misjudged Epstein and urged Wexner to cut ties.

Once again, Wexner didn’t listen, and thus became the most important contributor to the staggering growth in Epstein’s fortune. One unsolved mystery of the Epstein era is what exactly Wexner got out of their relationship. He has repeatedly refused to answer questions, including ours. But Epstein’s modus operandi with other wealthy men — including the private-equity billionaire Leon Black — was to instill fear that their finances were a mess, that their advisers and even family members were inept or exploiting them and that only one man had the wherewithal to save them.
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And with power of attorney over Wexner’s finances, Epstein proceeded to purchase a Palm Beach waterfront mansion a mile from Mar-a-Lago for $2.5 million, a mansion in New Albany, Ohio, and began leasing a marble townhouse on the Upper East Side that was the former residence of Iran’s deputy general consul. Notably, the US government was owner of this townhouse and ended up suing Epstein for illegally subletting. Illegally subletting is a pretty minor crime by Epstein’s standards, but it’s a sign of how property he was rapidly acquiring and the speed of his social ascent:

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Epstein appeared to deploy that playbook with Wexner — and to reward himself lavishly. He seemed to be taking whatever he thought he deserved from Wexner’s accounts, according to people who later learned what Epstein was doing. The amounts were often measured in the tens of millions.

He bought a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach for $2.5 million, about a mile from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Epstein and Trump had become pals in New York, and Epstein was a regular at Trump’s Atlantic City casino; a former executive there recently told CNN that the two men seemed to be best friends. In Florida, Epstein began hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, attending parties featuring N.F.L. cheerleaders and “calendar girl” contestants.

He bought another mansion, on 30 acres in New Albany, Ohio, where Wexner was building an enormous real estate development. He ditched his one-bedroom in the Solow Tower and began leasing a grand marble townhouse on the Upper East Side — the former residence of Iran’s deputy general consul — for $15,000 a month. (According to lawsuits that we reviewed, the owner of the Solow building sued Epstein for not paying rent. The townhouse’s owner — the U.S. government — sued him for illegally subletting. The owner of the Villard Houses, where he by now leased his own office, made similar accusations.)

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Epstein also posed as a Victoria’s Secret talent scout, prompting more executives to complain to Wexner about his conduct, to no avail. He began citing his work for Wexner to prove his bona fides to banks, regulators and journalists. For most of his life, Wexner would be his only publicly known client.
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By 1989, Epstein joined Democratic congressman Wayne Owens on a trip to the Middle East to explore ways to promote business ties between Israel and its neighbors that included meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, and Saudi Arabia’s then-crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. It is the kind of stunning influence for someone who ostensibly has nothing to offer such a delegation other than being Les Wexner’s financial representative. And despite having seemingly nothing to offer, Epstein shows up to these meetings so under-dressed that it could have been seen as disrespectful. The guy has been operating by a different set of rules his whole life, even when he was a young up and coming elite:

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Epstein cruised around Manhattan in a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. He began donating thousands to politicians — and developing relationships with them. In 1989, Epstein accompanied Wayne Owens, a Democratic congressman from Utah, on a trip to the Middle East to explore ways to promote business ties between Israel and its neighbors. Epstein apparently was invited in his capacity as a finance expert, but he struck participants as out of his depth and bored.

Dan Gordon, a screenwriter who was part of the entourage, says he warned Owens that Epstein was showing disrespect by his slovenly attire in meetings with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince at the time, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud — the types of connections that Epstein would cultivate in the years ahead..One of Owens’s aides, Michael Yeager, recalled Epstein boasting about his Indiana Jones-like pursuit of hidden assets and his close ties to Wexner.
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Then, in 1990, Epstein’s life takes another fateful turn when he was introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell by a mutual friend. Notably, Robert Maxwell reached out to his close friends, Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne, to learn more about Epstein. And then Robert Maxwell died. And this was apparently around the time Epstein began grooming and abusing hundreds of teenage girls. Given that timing, it’s hard not to conclude that Epstein’s partnership with Maxwell was instrumental in his transformation from a serial womanizer into an elite pedophile:

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Epstein was about to meet someone who would usher him into even more elite circles while also playing a central role in his darkest crimes. His nearly decadelong romance with Eva Andersson came to an end around 1990. In Epstein’s telling, the split was the result of a mutual realization that his future did not include “staying in one place and having a family.” The two remained close until Epstein’s death.

Shortly after their breakup, Epstein was introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the British media baron Robert Maxwell. Their first get-together, arranged by a mutual friend, was at Epstein’s office at the Villard Houses, she has said. When the domineering Robert Maxwell learned that his daughter was spending time with Epstein, he contacted Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne, both of whom he was close to, to see what they knew about their former Bear Stearns employee. Greenberg and Cayne apparently vouched for Epstein.

That November, Robert Maxwell died suddenly as his business unraveled. Ghislaine Maxwell flew to New York, distraught and short on cash. Epstein came to her aid, financially and socially. When a memorial event was held for her father at the Plaza Hotel — owned at the time by Trump — Epstein sat next to Maxwell, he in white tie, she in shimmery blue. By 1992, they were an item.

It was around this time that Epstein apparently began grooming and abusing hundreds of teenage girls and young women. Maxwell was later convicted of playing a central role in his sex-trafficking operation and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. She recently told Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general (and Trump’s former personal lawyer), that Epstein was her “lifeline.”
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But Les Wexner isn’t Epstein’s only mysterious billionaire client. As we’ve seen, Leon Black was the source of $158 million in fees from 2012–2017 alone, allegedly for various financial planning schemes. Notably, Epstein was introduced to Black by ABC News journalist Catherine Crier:

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At one elegant soiree, he met the ABC News journalist Catherine Crier and held forth about the scientists he knew. Crier told us that, a few months later, she and Epstein attended a movie screening at the Plaza. As guests milled around in formal wear, Epstein stood out in a white T‑shirt. At the event, Crier introduced him to her friend Elliot Stein, a prominent investment banker. Stein later connected Epstein with Leon Black, who would ultimately replace Wexner as Epstein’s most lucrative client. This was Epstein at his most productive, leveraging one relationship to create another, over and over and over.
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And as we should expect, despite Epstein and Maxwell being a couple, Epstein was continuing to see other women, including former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Stacey Williams, who has gone on to claim that Epstein chastised her after Donald Trump groped her in 1993:

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While he was dating Maxwell, Epstein continued to see other young women — and to flaunt them with powerful men. One of them was Stacey Williams, a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, whom he met at a Christmas party that Trump threw at the Plaza. In 1993, Epstein took Williams by Trump Tower. Williams has said that Trump groped her and that Epstein later chastised her for letting it happen. (Trump has denied it.)
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That same year, Epstein’s political donations earned him a spot at a reception for newly elected President Bill Clinton developed a relationship with Lynn Forester, who was appointed to a White Housse advisory commission. By 1995, Epstein’s relationship with Bill Clinton was so close that Clinton wrote a note to Epstein’s ailing mother:

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On a freezing Thursday in February 1993, Epstein and Wexner arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Just weeks earlier, Bill Clinton had been sworn in as the 42nd president. It was the first of many visits Epstein would pay to the Clinton White House.

Epstein had become a political donor — including, later that year, $10,000 to help refurbish the White House, earning him a spot at a reception with the Clintons — and that gave him a certain amount of cachet with the new president. But Epstein had something else going for him as well: a new connection named Lynn Forester.

Forester told us that she met Epstein at a reception for George Mitchell, the Senate majority leader, whom Epstein had befriended. Forester was a successful telecommunications executive, but she rose to greater prominence through her marriage to Andrew Stein, the Manhattan politician who in 1993 ran unsuccessfully for New York City mayor. The end of his mayoral campaign coincided with the end of their 10-year marriage. Now Forester and Stein were feuding over how to divvy up millions of dollars, and Epstein apparently convinced Forester that he could protect her from getting ripped off. It was a version of the same tactic he used to get in Wexner’s good graces years earlier.

A source told us that Epstein called one of Stein’s lawyers, claimed that Forester had empowered him to negotiate on her behalf and demanded that Forester, as the couple’s primary breadwinner, walk away with a greater share of the assets. (Forester told us she has “no idea” whom Epstein contacted, nor “why he thought he was empowered to do anything on my behalf.”)

It was an opportune moment for Epstein to ingratiate himself with Forester, whom Clinton had appointed to a White House advisory commission. On at least one occasion, Forester brought up Epstein in a brief private conversation with the president, according to a letter, first reported by The Daily Beast, that she wrote that mentioned Epstein. He became a regular visitor to the White House, sometimes with a girlfriend in tow, according to records housed at Clinton’s presidential library. (Forester says she has “no recollection of having anything to do with Epstein and the White House.” She says she cut ties with him in 2000, after he deceived her on a property transaction. “I was a very small part of Epstein’s life, and he was a blip on mine,” she said.)

By 1995, Clinton and Epstein were sufficiently chummy that he wrote a get-well-soon note to Epstein’s ailing mother. “Hang in there,” the president scrawled on a yellow Post-it, which Epstein saved and we reviewed. (“The president knew nothing about this guy,” said Angel Urena, a spokesman for Clinton. “Nobody did.”)
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Then we get to a couple of more very interesting and influential relationships Epstein cultivate during this period in the early 90st hat we rarely hear mentioned in the context of Epstein’s history: Libet Johnson of the Johnson & Johnson dynasty and David Rockefeller. Beyond that, not only did he attend the 1998 celebration of the Trilateral Commission with Lynn Forester as his partner but he became a Trilateral Commission member. That’s more than just being an elite socialite. Jeffrey Epstein was embroiled in the types of backroom conversations that likely shaped our world today. And as we’ve seen, not only was he a member of the Trilateral Commission, but he was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations too. At this point the question we should be asking is which highly influential organizations was Epstein not a member of by this point:

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Around the same time, Epstein began developing relationships with the scions of two of America’s wealthiest families.

One was Libet Johnson, Woody Johnson’s sister and also heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Epstein oversaw a trust that held some of her land, and Maxwell told Blanche that Epstein in the mid-1990s provided Johnson with the same sorts of services that he offered Wexner. In 1994, Johnson gave more than $2 million to his J. Epstein Foundation, according to filings we found in Indiana University Indianapolis’s repository of old charitable records.

Epstein used the foundation to procure access to prestigious organizations and influential people — including David Rockefeller, the heir to the industrial fortune. Soon after the foundation was established in the early 1990s, it began donating tens of thousands of dollars to Rockefeller University, a prestigious research institution, and the Trilateral Commission, which Rockefeller had established as a forum for some of the world’s most powerful figures to discuss global problems.

The donations appeared to have their desired effect. In 1995, Rockefeller welcomed Epstein to the board of Rockefeller University, according to prepared remarks we found in his family’s archive. Around then, Epstein hosted Rockefeller at his Manhattan mansion to discuss with a small group of wealthy people how to best pass on money and values to younger generations, according to someone who was there. Epstein also became a member of the Trilateral Commission. A program for a dinner in 1998 celebrating the commission’s 25th anniversary noted the evening’s participants, including Epstein and Forester, who were listed as a pair. (Forester said she didn’t recall attending.)

Henceforth, Epstein would relentlessly cite his Rockefeller connections, even claiming that he managed money for the dynastic family. A person who was close to Rockefeller and helped manage his money told us that this was not true. Epstein, he said, didn’t even pitch Rockefeller on any investments.
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The mid-90s was also when Epstein’s status as an elite academic benefactor appears to have been established, with Harvard being the focus of his largess. This was when Epstein’s fateful relationship with Alan Dershowitz was established. Epstein even had Dershowitz attend a dinner in honor of Wexner’s birthday that involved flying to Ohio with then-Ohio Senator John Gleen and the Shimon Peres, who had just been Israel’s prime minister earlier than year and who Epstein met to during his Middle Eastern trip with in touch with back during the 1989 Middle Eastern trip with Democratic congressman Wayne Owens. Epstein had been cultivating these relationships the whole time, extending his influence and reach. A decade later, Dershowitz was one of the attorneys helping to secure Epstein’s federal ‘sweetheart deal’. Which raises the question of how many non-lawyers did he have quietly weighing in on his behalf:

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Epstein was also beginning to dole out money to Harvard University, where he was keen to cultivate connections with high-profile academics. One of those was the law professor Alan Dershowitz. In the summer of 1996, Dershowitz was at his house on Martha’s Vineyard when he got a call from Forester. She was on the Vineyard with Epstein, who she said was a Harvard donor and wanted to meet Dershowitz.

Dershowitz told us that Epstein showed up at his Chilmark home later that day toting vintage Champagne. The pair took a walk around a nearby pond, and Epstein, the inveterate name-dropper, informed Dershowitz that he was close with Harvard figures, including Larry Summers, an economics professor then serving in the Clinton administration. But the main topic was Wexner, who Epstein said had taught him “how to be rich.” Wexner’s birthday was approaching, and Epstein wanted Dershowitz to attend a dinner in his honor. Dershowitz ended up flying to Ohio on one of Epstein’s planes along with Senator John Glenn. Shimon Peres — the recent Israeli prime minister, whom Epstein met years earlier during the Middle East trip with Representative Owens — was among the other dinner guests. (The following year, Forester hosted a party on Martha’s Vineyard where Epstein mingled with guests including Dershowitz and Britain’s Prince Andrew.)

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Keeping Dershowitz happy proved prescient. He would become one of Epstein’s highest-profile and longest-serving defenders. In 2005, the parents of a 14-year-old girl in Palm Beach told the police that Epstein had sexually abused her; that led to state and federal criminal investigations. Dershowitz and other lawyers engineered a sweetheart deal in which Epstein escaped federal prosecution, pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor and received a light jail sentence. (He also had to register as a sex offender.)
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By 1999, Epstein’s companies had a net worth of more than $100 million, much of which came from Wexner. But note how Bear Stears was still Epstein’s broker. More notably, Epstein apparently wooed JP Morgan through claims that he managed money for David Rockefeller. So we have to ask: Is that true? Did Epstein really manage David Rockefeller’s fortune? It’s not exactly hard to imagine following the revelation that he was both a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two organizations where Rockefeller played a central role for years. He sure sounds like someone David Rockefeller very knew well, at a minimum:

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In 1999, Julian Leese knocked on the imposing wooden door of Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. It had been years since he’d last seen Epstein, when Leese interned for Towers and lost his godparents’ money, and even longer since Leese and his family taught a young Epstein to shoot and to mix with aristocrats shortly after his departure from Bear Stearns. As Leese recounted to the journalist Tom Pattinson for a podcast, he had let Epstein know he would be in town, and Epstein, now 46, invited him to his Upper East Side residence for tea.

A butler waved him inside. Soon Epstein descended the sweeping staircase. “My boy,” he declared, “I told you I would make it very big.”

There was no doubt about that: Epstein was fantastically wealthy. His company’s financial documents around then indicated that he was worth more than $100 million — an amount that would grow substantially in the years ahead. Much of that appeared to have flowed to Epstein from Wexner, who would later claim that he “had misappropriated vast sums of money.”

Bear Stearns remained his preferred Wall Street brokerage firm, but he was on his way to becoming a coveted client of JPMorgan Chase, whose chairman was impressed by Epstein’s claim that he managed money for David Rockefeller. Until 2013, as we reported this year, JPMorgan would provide Epstein with an array of services that enabled his sex-trafficking operation.
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Next, we get this tantalizing detail: In order to acquire one of the Little St. James special tax breaks for for his firm, Financial Trust, Epstein turned to Harry Loy Anderson Jr., the president of the Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Company, where Epstein held accounts. Anderson wrote a letter stating Epstein was “a gentleman of the highest integrity” and that he “enjoys an excellent reputation in our community,” and that’s despite the bank being used to pay off some of Epstein’s victims. Today? Well, it turns out Don Jr’s recent Russian-oligarch-funded wedding was to Bettina Anderson, Harry’s daughter. It’s a small world, at least if you’re in the Epstein class:

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Epstein had by now amassed a huge real estate portfolio — including Little St. James, an island off the southeastern coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein and a rotating cast of his victims and celebrity guests moved among his properties on a fleet of private aircraft.

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But there was something else that was attractive about Little St. James. The U.S. Virgin Islands was an unusually welcoming place for Epstein to do business. The territory’s law enforcement and financial regulations were notoriously lax, its politicians acquiescent. And the islands had created a series of generous tax incentives to lure businesses from the mainland.

Epstein applied for one of those breaks, which would enable his main company, Financial Trust, to avoid most taxes — a potential savings of tens of millions of dollars a year.

On a balmy afternoon in April 1999, Epstein appeared at a hearing before the Industrial Development Commission, which would consider (and ultimately approve) his application.

To vouch for his character, Epstein had turned to Harry Loy Anderson Jr., the president of the Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Company, where Epstein had held accounts since the early 1990s. Anderson — whose daughter is now engaged to Donald Trump Jr. — wrote a letter stating that Epstein was “a gentleman of the highest integrity” and that he “enjoys an excellent reputation in our community.” (Epstein’s house manager later said in a deposition that he was using Anderson’s bank to pay some of Epstein’s victims.) The letter, not previously reported, was submitted to the development commission and was obtained by the journalist Wayne Barrett; we found it in his archives at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin.

In the hearing room, Epstein unspooled a fantastical version of his life story, according to a transcript of the meeting that we obtained from the U.S. Virgin Islands. He had willingly left a job at Bear Stearns to become “a financial doctor” to the wealthy. One of those clients, Wexner, had helped develop his “sense of integrity.” He’d later grown close to the Rockefeller family, advising them “on certain financial issues.”

By the end, the commission’s members and staff were eating out of his hands, joining the long list of people and institutions who, knowingly or not, would become Epstein’s enablers. One seemed to be fishing for stock tips. Others jostled for him to locate his company on their islands in the territory. Another asked if Epstein would consider teaching a course at the local university. “I’d love to,” Epstein replied. “As I said outside this room, I believe that the future of the Virgin Islands is really with the young people.”

And he thought he had something to teach them. One of his classroom priorities, he mused, would be to educate them on “the ethics of business — which is very difficult nowadays.”
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Now let’s take a look at the following Rolling Stone piece for July of 2021 by Vicky Ward asking the question, was Jeffrey Epstein a spy? It’s a question we still don’t really have an answer for to this day. But as the article makes clear, if Epstein was a spy, his relationship with Douglas Leese likely played a major role. In fact, not only did Steven Hoffenberg tell Ward that Leese was a mentor to Epstein in the 80s and that Leese had introduced Hoffenberg to infamous arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, but Ward recounts how, when directly questioned by Ward about his relationship with Leese back in 2002, Epstein initially claimed he didn’t know Leese at all and acted as if he could barely even remember who Leese even was. It’s quite a dodge for someone whose career was based, in large part bragging about their elite connections. Adding to the remarkable nature of the Epstein’s denials regarding even knowing Leese is the fact that four sources told Ward that not only was Epstein an intelligence asset but that the whole reason for his downfall was because he lost his “protection” due to being too high profile. It’s a narrative that doesn’t seem to really align with the incredible history we’ve seen of Epstein self-promoting his way to the top of the global social order with effectively no repercussions no matter how many times he got caught...until the very end when he seemingly ‘commits suicide’ mysteriously in the hand of a justice system run by his former best friend Donald Trump.

Hoffenberg makes another remarkable claim, which actually seems quite plausible: Epstein stole from him. Or, rather, Epstein stole $100 million from the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme while at the same time he was secretly cooperating with US prosecutors. And according to sources familiar with the case, had those prosecutors taken a broader look at the crime going on, things would have looked even worse for Epstein than they did for Hoffenberg. In other words, the evidence really does indicate that Epstein was the true mastermind behind what was once the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He was so effective a criminal, he stole $100 million from the rest of the crooks, cooperated with prosecutors, and got to keep all the money:

Rolling Stone

Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?

The notorious financier pedophile told exaggerated stories of his time in intelligence circles — but some of those stories may have been, at least partially, true

Vicky Ward
07/15/2021 1:54 PM EDT

Back in 2002, when I was reporting on Jeffrey Epstein’s finances for Vanity Fair. magazine, he was not a household name. During that time, I paid a visit to the Federal Medical Center, Devens in Devens, Massachusetts, to meet with an inmate, one Steven Hoffenberg.

We sat in a little room near a recreation area, Hoffenberg dressed in the requisite orange jumpsuit, while I, several months pregnant with twins, was dressed per prison requirements: as shapelessly as possible.

It was an absolutely intriguing meeting.

Hoffenberg was serving 18 years in prison for committing a $450 million Ponzi scheme. In the 1980s, he’d been running Towers Financial, a debt collection and reinsu rance business, and had worked alongside Epstein, who was a paid consultant. Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had plans to turn Towers into a global colossus — through illegal means.

...

Hoffenberg told me with a sad grin that he represented a problem for Epstein because while they were working together, Epstein had confided in him as to how, exactly, he made a career out of conning people and institutions — not least because the idea was that they’d do it together.

Hoffenberg said that Epstein had a term for the perfect execution of the grift. He called it “playing the box,” which meant that he ensured that even if his crime was uncovered, the victim would be unable to do anything about it, either because of social embarrassment or because the money was tucked away in a place where they couldn’t either find it or get it.

(What Hoffenberg had failed to realize, he told me, is that Epstein would con him. Epstein would take $100 million of Towers money, move it offshore, and meanwhile cooperate with U.S. prosecutors against Hoffenberg, who was unable to do anything about this because he’d pleaded guilty, which meant there was no trial — and therefore no discovery.)

I can’t prove all of Hoffenberg’s claims — but some of them are accurate.

I have discovered, for example, that Epstein certainly did secretly cooperate against Hoffenberg and gave at least three interviews to prosecutors, and that had the case gone to trial, a source with knowledge says it would have likely turned out far worse for Epstein than for Hoffenberg.

Hoffenberg also knew something else Epstein wanted hidden, according to Hoffenberg: He claimed that Epstein moved in intelligence circles.

The Hoffenberg-Epstein relationship was not something Epstein, then pitching himself to Vanity Fair as a money-manager extraordinaire for billionaires only, had volunteered to me.

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In hindsight, one has to wonder if Hoffenberg presented an equally big problem as “the girls” would. Hoffenberg told me that in the 1980s, after Epstein left Bear Sterns in ignominious circumstances, Epstein was trained in moving money off-shore and that a mentor of Epstein’s was someone Hoffenberg knew: a British defense contractor, who died in 2011, named Douglas Leese.

Hoffenberg claimed that Leese was an arms dealer. (Leese’s son Julian says that is not true.) But the U.K. parliamentary record does mention Leese in reference to the El Yammamah arms deal of the early 1980s.

I remember distinctly that in our first meeting Hoffenberg told me that Leese was pivotal in understanding Jeffrey’s MO, because Leese had introduced him not only to aristocratic Europeans (who Epstein subsequently fleeced) but to all sorts of people in the arms business — including the late Turkish-born businessman Adnan Kashoggi — and, allegedly, the late media mogul Robert Maxwell.

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First, Epstein told me he’d never met Maxwell. And I asked him twice if he knew Leese, whom I had never heard of, and Epstein said no. The second time, he elaborated:

“Douglas Leese … I think he was the father of somebody I knew … I think his son was friendly with Ferranti, that’s where that whole crowd comes in that you asked me about a long time ago. I think his name was Nicholas … it was sort of that 66th Street building, I think they might have all lived there.”

So, I forgot about Leese. And I didn’t bother to pursue the notion that Epstein had known Maxwell.

But all these years later, Leese’s name popped up again in my new reporting for a podcast and a documentary series about Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who is currently awaiting trial on charges of helping Epstein in his alleged sex-trafficking operations of minors. (She has denied all charges.)

First, I found a lawsuit filed by Leese in Florida, in which he asserted that he “was involved with various highly confidential business enterprises including business in the United States, some of which involved governmentally- involved or other highly confidential business projects.”

Second, a source who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of what was discussed told me that Epstein had invited the source to join him and Leese on a private-jet trip to the Pentagon in 1981.

Even Leese’s son Julian told me that his father was a mentor of sorts to Epstein in the 1980s and was totally shocked that Epstein would have pretended not to know him.

...

Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he’d worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under vey strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath that he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees.)

Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”

So here’s where it gets tricky.

Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.

Some of these sources are more reliable than others. But the gist of the claims that you will be able to hear, and ultimately watch in a three-hour documentary series, is that Maxwell, who was himself a conduit between the Israelis and other governments during his life time, introduced Epstein to Israeli leaders, who then allegedly used Epstein as the equivalent of an old-fashioned Russian “sleeper,” someone who could be useful in an “influence campaign.”

The sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to go one step further and compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

All of this is completely unprovable. And people close to Robert Maxwell say it sounds ridiculous.

But here’s what’s odd.

First, Epstein did visit Israel in 2008, with a view to moving there permanently and avoid his jail time in 2009 for the state charges he was convicted of. On his return, he told Russian model Kira Diktyar that he’d changed his mind and decided to face the music. (He didn’t mention he’d avoided a far more serious federal investigation, thanks to a cushy non-prosecution agreement.)

And once he got out of jail, in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans.

He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

He told one person, journalist Edward J. Epstein, that he knew the owner of the deep-water port of Djibouti on the horn of Africa, a smuggler’s paradise, so well that he was basically in charge of it.

Now, according to my sources in the intelligence world, this is hyperbole — but also not completely ridiculous. His name was mentioned as a middleman in both Africa and the Middle East. He was known in the intelligence world as a “hyper-fixer,” somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.

Usually these people are very silent about what they do.

And yet Epstein was not silent. He had a photo of the Saudi crown prince, MBS on the wall, and photos of Bill Gates and all the VIPS who flocked to his salons.

It’s not wholly surprising therefore that the same sources who say they know he was some sort of intelligence asset say that he became a liability — which is why, possibly, he lost any “protection” and was arrested.

...

But, when I think back to 2002, when I first met Steve Hoffenberg, I do remember asking him why he thought that Epstein, normally reclusive, had raised his head above the parapet and attracted media attention by flying Bill Clinton to Africa.

Hoffenberg had smiled.

“He can’t help himself. He broke his own rule,” Hoffenberg said. “He always said he knew the only way he could get away with everything he did was to stay under the radar, but now he’s gone and blown it.”

————–

“Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?” by Vicky Ward; Rolling Stone; 07/15/2021

“In hindsight, one has to wonder if Hoffenberg presented an equally big problem as “the girls” would. Hoffenberg told me that in the 1980s, after Epstein left Bear Sterns in ignominious circumstances, Epstein was trained in moving money off-shore and that a mentor of Epstein’s was someone Hoffenberg knew: a British defense contractor, who died in 2011, named Douglas Leese.”

Douglas Leese was Epstein’s mentor, according to Steven Hoffenberg. It’s not exactly an unfounded allegation at this point given all we know about the role the Leese family played in Epstein’s life in the years leading up to his criminal collaboration with Hoffenberg. But that role as a young Epstein’s mentor raises the question of what exactly he was being mentored to do given Leese’s alleged career as an arms dealer involved with figures like Adnan Kashoggi and Robert Maxwell. It’s a question that grows all the more intriguing when we see how Epstein feigned almost complete ignorance of who the Leeses were when directly asked by Vicky Ward. Why would someone who built his persona on bragging about connections to wealth and influential figures vehemently deny knowing Leese when so many knew this to be untrue? Even Julian Leese was open about his father’s role in Epstein’s life. Recall how Julian claimed he introduced Hoffenberg to his father who, in turn, introduced Hoffenberg to potential buyers of the Ponzi scheme’s fraudulent bonds. Adding to the intrigue is the sources telling Ward that Epstein had invited the source to join him and Leese on a private-jet trip to the Pentagon in 1981. Again, what’s under this rock?

...
Hoffenberg claimed that Leese was an arms dealer. (Leese’s son Julian says that is not true.) But the U.K. parliamentary record does mention Leese in reference to the El Yammamah arms deal of the early 1980s.

I remember distinctly that in our first meeting Hoffenberg told me that Leese was pivotal in understanding Jeffrey’s MO, because Leese had introduced him not only to aristocratic Europeans (who Epstein subsequently fleeced) but to all sorts of people in the arms business — including the late Turkish-born businessman Adnan Kashoggi — and, allegedly, the late media mogul Robert Maxwell.

...

First, Epstein told me he’d never met Maxwell. And I asked him twice if he knew Leese, whom I had never heard of, and Epstein said no. The second time, he elaborated:

“Douglas Leese … I think he was the father of somebody I knew … I think his son was friendly with Ferranti, that’s where that whole crowd comes in that you asked me about a long time ago. I think his name was Nicholas … it was sort of that 66th Street building, I think they might have all lived there.”

So, I forgot about Leese. And I didn’t bother to pursue the notion that Epstein had known Maxwell.

But all these years later, Leese’s name popped up again in my new reporting for a podcast and a documentary series about Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who is currently awaiting trial on charges of helping Epstein in his alleged sex-trafficking operations of minors. (She has denied all charges.)

First, I found a lawsuit filed by Leese in Florida, in which he asserted that he “was involved with various highly confidential business enterprises including business in the United States, some of which involved governmentally- involved or other highly confidential business projects.”

Second, a source who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of what was discussed told me that Epstein had invited the source to join him and Leese on a private-jet trip to the Pentagon in 1981.

Even Leese’s son Julian told me that his father was a mentor of sorts to Epstein in the 1980s and was totally shocked that Epstein would have pretended not to know him.

...

Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he’d worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under vey strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath that he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees.)

Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”
...

It’s also worth noting the claim Hoffenberg made about himself getting conned by Epstein: the conning of Hoffenberg allegedly included Epstein stealing $100 million from Hoffenberg’s Ponzi scheme at the same time Epstein was secretly cooperating with US prosecutors against Hoffenberg despite the evidence of the case arguably looking even worse for Epstein. No prosecution and he got to keep all of those ill gotten gains:

...
Hoffenberg was serving 18 years in prison for committing a $450 million Ponzi scheme. In the 1980s, he’d been running Towers Financial, a debt collection and reinsu rance business, and had worked alongside Epstein, who was a paid consultant. Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had plans to turn Towers into a global colossus — through illegal means.

...

Hoffenberg told me with a sad grin that he represented a problem for Epstein because while they were working together, Epstein had confided in him as to how, exactly, he made a career out of conning people and institutions — not least because the idea was that they’d do it together.

Hoffenberg said that Epstein had a term for the perfect execution of the grift. He called it “playing the box,” which meant that he ensured that even if his crime was uncovered, the victim would be unable to do anything about it, either because of social embarrassment or because the money was tucked away in a place where they couldn’t either find it or get it.

(What Hoffenberg had failed to realize, he told me, is that Epstein would con him. Epstein would take $100 million of Towers money, move it offshore, and meanwhile cooperate with U.S. prosecutors against Hoffenberg, who was unable to do anything about this because he’d pleaded guilty, which meant there was no trial — and therefore no discovery.)

...

I have discovered, for example, that Epstein certainly did secretly cooperate against Hoffenberg and gave at least three interviews to prosecutors, and that had the case gone to trial, a source with knowledge says it would have likely turned out far worse for Epstein than for Hoffenberg.
...

Finally, we get to this rather perplexing assertion in Ward’s article. An assertion based on the claims of four separate unnamed source: that Epstein was an intelligence asset. But these sources also suggest that Epstein had turned himself into a liability by becoming too high profile and open about all of his intelligence-related work, like how he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds. Which is the kind of narrative about Epstein’s life that doesn’t seem to really align with the available facts. Bragging about all of his possibly-intelligence-related exploits and riches wasn’t what got Epstein into trouble. Serially sexually abusing hundreds of girls was what did him in, and even then he got off on a ‘sweetheart’ deal and continued living the luxurious life of and international Playboy:

...
Hoffenberg also knew something else Epstein wanted hidden, according to Hoffenberg: He claimed that Epstein moved in intelligence circles.

The Hoffenberg-Epstein relationship was not something Epstein, then pitching himself to Vanity Fair as a money-manager extraordinaire for billionaires only, had volunteered to me.

...

Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.

Some of these sources are more reliable than others. But the gist of the claims that you will be able to hear, and ultimately watch in a three-hour documentary series, is that Maxwell, who was himself a conduit between the Israelis and other governments during his life time, introduced Epstein to Israeli leaders, who then allegedly used Epstein as the equivalent of an old-fashioned Russian “sleeper,” someone who could be useful in an “influence campaign.”

The sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to go one step further and compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

All of this is completely unprovable. And people close to Robert Maxwell say it sounds ridiculous.

But here’s what’s odd.

First, Epstein did visit Israel in 2008, with a view to moving there permanently and avoid his jail time in 2009 for the state charges he was convicted of. On his return, he told Russian model Kira Diktyar that he’d changed his mind and decided to face the music. (He didn’t mention he’d avoided a far more serious federal investigation, thanks to a cushy non-prosecution agreement.)

And once he got out of jail, in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans.

He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

He told one person, journalist Edward J. Epstein, that he knew the owner of the deep-water port of Djibouti on the horn of Africa, a smuggler’s paradise, so well that he was basically in charge of it.

Now, according to my sources in the intelligence world, this is hyperbole — but also not completely ridiculous. His name was mentioned as a middleman in both Africa and the Middle East. He was known in the intelligence world as a “hyper-fixer,” somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.

Usually these people are very silent about what they do.

And yet Epstein was not silent. He had a photo of the Saudi crown prince, MBS on the wall, and photos of Bill Gates and all the VIPS who flocked to his salons.

It’s not wholly surprising therefore that the same sources who say they know he was some sort of intelligence asset say that he became a liability — which is why, possibly, he lost any “protection” and was arrested.
...

That Epstein had intelligence ties shouldn’t be in dispute at this point. He undoubtedly mingled with quite a number of intelligence-connected figures. And maybe even participated in some intelligence-related activity. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he was a spook. Maybe he’s an intelligence connected elite criminal? Or it’s somewhere in between? We still don’t know. And the more we learn, the less clear it gets.

S‑H-E-E-Y-I‑T!

Best,

Dave Emory

Not that DOGE ever truly left. Sure, DOGE maybe have effectively disbanded by November of 2025, months before in formally ended in July of this year, but the underlying agenda to eviscerate services and purge the federal workforce of those deemed to be ‘non-loyal’ to the MAGA agenda hasn’t gone away. Russell Vought is currently pushing for powers to veto NIH spending in order cancel ‘DEI’-related programs, for example.

It’s not just that DOGE staffers are being invited back into the federal government to wreak more havoc. The specific task they are being tasked to develop is the AI takeover of government services. It’s going to start with an AI-powered public-facing portal, America.gov, that will assist with tasks like renewing passports. Free tax filing is another service that might be provided, albeit an ironic service given that the Trump administration killed a Biden administration free tax filing website, Direct File, earlier this year. Some sort of AI-powered public website is the plan, with a goal of rolling it out before the November elections, leaving less than 6 weeks to meet that deadline.

And guess who was specifically tapped to execute this project and its ambitious timeline: Edward “Big Balls” Coristine. Yes, Big Balls is back too, not that he ever left either. Recall how Coristine became a full-time government employee in June of 2025. It’s not exactly a surprise Coristine was selected for this AI effort. Recall how, back in May of 2025, we learned that Coristine was one of two people tapped by Musk to lead the effort to expand the use of AI in the federal government, with Grok being heavily pushed. We also learned that DOGE staffers attempted to gain access to DHS employee emails and ordered staff to train AI to identify communications suggesting an employee is not “loyal” to Trump’s political agenda. Coristine is apparently one of the federal government’s AI guru at this point. The work will reportedly be housed by the General Services Administration, with former DOGE official Sam Corcos moving over to the GSA to heading the effort.

But it’s not just that Coristine — a former member of depraved hacker collective “The Com” who was fired from a previous job for leaking company secrets — is tasked with developing this AI-powered public portal. He’s apparently a model federal employee and exactly the kind of person the federal government wants to recruit for other federal positions. That was the conclusions of Scott Kupor, head of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is basically the federal government’s HR department. As Kupor put it in a recent interview with right-wing personality Benny Johnson, “I wanna see people like ‘Big Balls,’ or Ed, as we call him colloquially…We need people like that,” adding, “We need people who are patriotic who say ‘I care about this country and I’m willing to do something good.’”

But it’s not just Big Ball’s alleged patriotism that impresses Kupor. It’s his lack of qualifications and experience too. You see, Kupor has been busy cutting all sorts of degree requirements for various federal positions, and in particular technology positions. “Ed is a great example. He dropped out of college. He never had substantive work experience before coming to DOGE,” Kupor told Johnson. “There was a famous quote from somebody in the federal government who said ‘We never would’ve hired Ed because he didn’t have a college degree and he didn’t have five years of work experience.’ To me, that’s just silly. We want people who are smart who know how to do good stuff.”

Kupor went on to add that he’s not aiming to convince new applicants that they should build a career working at the agency. No, no, he just wants them to work for the government for a few years, and then they can return to the private sector and make a lot of money. “I don’t need people like ‘Big Balls’ to give us 40 years of their life in the federal government,” Kupor said. “The message that I want to bring across the country is ‘Come for two years. Come for three years. Do some good work for the government. Develop your skill set. And then, quite frankly, if you want to go into the private sector, God bless you.’ There’s nothing wrong with making money if that’s what your goal is in life.” Which sure sounds like a recruitment pitch for more young MAGA acolytes willing to join the government and wreak havoc for the rest of the Trump term. He’s only got about 2 1/2 years left, and Kupor is apparently keen on hiring as many young people in the ‘Big Balls’ template as he can. Kupor gave this interview to Johnson as he’s starting a college recruitment tour, with a first stop at the University of Florida where Kupor will have a fireside chat with Johnson.

In other words, Kupor is starting a college recruitment tour designed to find as many people of Coristine’s ideological and ethical persuasion and who will be willing to drop out of college, join the federal government under the Trump administration, and serve as a two-year wrecking crew. And they’ll ideally have “technology skills”, which is another way of saying they are very fluent with IT and coding and, in turn, well positioned to both fix problems and also pilfer the government of its secrets. Which brings us to another update on what ‘Big Balls’ was up to during his initial DOGE tenure: Back in April, Coristine sat down for an interview with right-wing ‘journalist’ Nick Shirley, who seems to be a kind of ‘James O’Keefe’ for the influencer age, with ‘street interviews’ and ‘investigative journalism’ purporting to show evidence deep left-wing and Democratic corruption but is routinely debunked in real-time or shown to be staged and yet is still heavily promoted in the right-wing media ecosystem and even amplified by the Trump administration.

In February, Shirley released a video claiming to show voter fraud in California that was actually based on innuendo and hypotheticals. As we’re going to see, allegations of voter fraud, even non-credible allegations, could play a major role in how the Trump administration rigs the 2026 mid-terms. Then, in March, Shirley released a report alleging to have discovered massive fraud in taxpayer funded services including hospice care and California’s Medi-Cal program (the state’s version of Medicaid). And as we learned during Coristine’s interview with Shirley, the investigation into California services fraud was based on the unprecedented public release of a dataset on Medicaid spending by DOGE the prior month done explicitly for the purpose of crowd funding public investigations into Medicare fraud. Notably, the data set included provider-level information, allowing public sleuths to potentially publicly label as fraudsters companies and individuals without any due process. It’s the kind of innovation in anti-fraud practices that has experts warning about the potential for damages, most notably reputational damage, in cases where there was no fraud despite how it may have looked to the public investigators. And, sure enough, a month after the unprecedented release of that Medicaid data set by DOGE, Nick Shirley publishes his investigation claiming massive fraud across California.

But there was another detail in Coristine’s interview with Shirley that raises additional questions about why DOGE did this unprecedented release of Medicaid information in the first place: Shirley claimed that Coristine personally pulled data on Medicaid spending for business based in California as potential targets. Coristine nods, adding that the government must create more opportunities to crowdsource fraud investigations. “After that, I went to California based off that dataset you had helped me extract, and these fraudsters also weren’t even trying to hide it,” Shirley added. “You are someone who actually went to the places where we were spending all this money and confronted the people and got to know the truth. I think we just have to create more opportunities for that to happen. We have to continue to open source data,” Coristine replied. So based on that exchange, it would appear that Shirley didn’t simply use the Medicaid data set that DOGE released the prior month for his analysis. Coristine was personally involved in extracting the California-based subset of that data for Shirley. And that’s just what he admitted to in this interview. Who knows how much more involved Coristine was in the data-wrangling and analysis? And with Coristine calling for more data sets to be released, we can only assume that he’s going to be involved in more behind-the-scenes assistance to right-wing journalistic trolls like Shirley.

Also keep in mind that in the age of AI, the analysis of mass data sets will be increasingly accessible to nearly anyone. On the one hand, that might end up making it easier to debunk garbage analyses pumped out by bad faith actors. But on the other hand, it’s going to be a super tool for bad faith actors, with the real ‘fight’ taking place in the propaganda sphere much like now. But don’t be surprised if AI fuels calls for the release of more government data sets.

And also keep in mind that allegations of fraud about public services can be used to buttress allegations about voter fraud. During his interview with Coristine, Shirley alleged that in California specifically, “There’s a lot of dead people who are registered to vote. There’s a lot of people who are dead who are still receiving Social Security.” As we saw, by April of 2025, whistleblowers were already accusing DOGE staffers of building a ‘Database of Ruin’ by taking highly sensitive data from repositories like Social Security Administration, the IRS, and Health and Human Services for the purpose of “immigration enforcement”, with Palantir playing a role in the building of a ‘master database’. Also recall how we later learned that this ‘Database of Ruin’ being built by Palantir would be expanded to much more than just immigration enforcement, with plans of incorporating Palantir even more deeply into the inner workings of agencies like the IRS. And then we learned how there were plans on using DOGE to build a centralized list of American citizens, which could be used for all sorts of purposes including Stephen Miller’s calls for “remigration” of US citizens. This master list of citizens would, in turn, but used to power the Trump administration’s new Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), which is designed to be an update on the system that had been in use since the 1980s by the US federal government for checking the citizenship status of an individual. And with the Supreme Court having just days ago cleared the way for the Trump administration’s plans on using SAVE to carry out mass purges of the voter roles in the upcoming midterms, it’s not hard to see how DOGE could be absolutely critical to any Trump administration efforts to either rig the mid terms through mass purges or even as a pretext for declaring a mass national emergency over voting integrity. Some sort of ‘investigative discovery’ about massive voter fraud is now crucial to this agenda.

And those stories about Edward Coristine being labeled a model federal employee at the same time he was working directly with Nick Shirley brings us to a very chilling new update from The Atlantic on what we should expect from the Trump administration in anticipation of a horrid mid-term political environment for the MAGA movement as Trump himself moves into George W. Bush-levels of unpopularity: A group of informal advisors in Trump’s inner circle is increasingly vocal about the need for Trump to declare a national emergency over ‘Democratic cheating’ and take control of the elections. One of these advisors, attorney Peter Ticktin, openly predicts that if Democrats win the midterms (as is increasingly expected), Trump could proclaim military control based on the assertion of that the voting equipment is vulnerable to foreign adversaries. As Ticktin sees it, there’s three scenarios: 1. a “smooth election”, that can already be ruled out because of all the Democratic cheating in the primaries. 2. Trump takes action before the election to prevent the cheating. 3. Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. Those are the options, which is really just options 2 or 3 because smooth elections can already be ruled out. Peters also claimed after meeting with Trump in June that Trump “basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.”

Another advisor, Wayne Allen Root, the former Libertarian presidential nominee who now serves a LindellTV host, warns “the election is going to be stolen and there is no way to keep it from being stolen without declaring a national emergency.” Root points out that he sends his columns directly to Trump by email and text, and if that seems like just a self-promoting boast, back in August, Trump sat down for an interview with Root where Root called on Trump to declare a “national-security emergency” to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures. Trump responded with “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that,” and later posted a Root column on the topic with a headline describing the plan as “foolproof.”

When asked by The Atlantic for a response to this story, the White House spokesperson claimed the “real story” is that “evidence of voter fraud and non-citizens voting in our elections continues to pile up,” even though “the media and Democrats” have been denying this for decades. Which sure sounds like confirmation on the veracity of the report. And it’s not like Ticktin or Root are hiding this. They are the ones speaking to the media about it and openly calling for these moves. In other words, reports like this are presumably part of the plan. They can’t spring a national emergency out of the blue. Openly talking about it in advance of doing it is necessary for a patina of legitimacy after they do it.

That’s all part of the context of the open calls by the head of the federal government’s HR agency, Scott Kupor, for more new federal employees like Edward Coristine and Coristine’s role as Nick Shirley’s insider investigative partner. We’re seeing a call for short-term federal employees who won’t necessarily have the education needed for these roles but will definitely be ideologically aligned with the MAGA agenda and interested in signing up for just a two or three year stint. We’re looking at a set up for an even greater and more systematic pilfering of government data. But more important, we’re seeing the set up for a greater weaponization of government data for use by bad faith actors like Nick Shirley. And if there’s one area where we should expect this to happen, and happen soon, it would involve voter fraud allegations. If the Trump administration really is going to declare a national emergency, as is looking increasingly likely, they are going to need to do it soon.

And don’t forget that even if they don’t finalize these election-rigging/canceling schemes in time for 2026, there’s always 2028, and they’ll have a lot more time to put those plans in place. Plans are in motion.

Ok, first, here’s a look at the appointment of “Big Balls” to the task of building America.gov, an AI-powered portal that will assist you with everything from passports to maybe taxes. And also presumably just the first step in an planned AI takeover of federal services:

The New Republic

DOGE Staffers Are Back—and Leading AI Takeover of Government Services

The DOGE goons who drove federal agencies into the ground last year are back, including that dude who goes by “Big Balls.”

Hafiz Rashid
September 17, 2026
11:08 a.m. ET

Former Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, employees are working on an artificial intelligence takeover of federal government services for the Trump administration.

The Washington Sun reports that the staffers are setting up an AI-driven website, America.gov, to help Americans with everything from obtaining and renewing passports to potentially preparing and filing taxes for free. (The latter is still under discussion and would be a reversal from the White House’s earlier decision to kill the free tax filing website launched by the Biden administration, Direct File.)

While the site is still in planning stages, several workers from Elon Musk’s DOGE are involved. These include Edward Coristine, known by his online moniker “Big Balls,” as well as Joe Gebbia, a former DOGE worker who co-founded Airbnb and now runs the White House’s National Design Studio. That office is leading the project.

The effort is intended to be housed in the General Services Administration, sources told the Sun. Sam Corcos, a former DOGE official and head of technology at the Treasury Department, moved on to roles at GSA last month. Login.gov, a government identity proofing system at the GSA that Corcos is helping to lead, could be used as an entry point for America.gov. The White House has already mandated its use for multiple public-facing agency websites.

...

————

“DOGE Staffers Are Back—and Leading AI Takeover of Government Services” by Hafiz Rashid; The New Republic; 09/17/2026

“While the site is still in planning stages, several workers from Elon Musk’s DOGE are involved. These include Edward Coristine, known by his online moniker “Big Balls,” as well as Joe Gebbia, a former DOGE worker who co-founded Airbnb and now runs the White House’s National Design Studio. That office is leading the project.”

The Trump administration just can’t get enough of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine and his apparently amazing skill set. This time, Coristine is tasked with developing an AI-powered public website to handle all sorts of government services, an initiative to be run out of General Services Administration (GSA). But note how one of the government services now under consideration — free tax filing — had already been planned under the Biden administration and then killed by the Trump administration. And as we’re going to see, the Trump administration cut a lot more than just free tax filing services. The IRS had some of the most cuts of any government agency, with predictable results:

...
The Washington Sun reports that the staffers are setting up an AI-driven website, America.gov, to help Americans with everything from obtaining and renewing passports to potentially preparing and filing taxes for free. (The latter is still under discussion and would be a reversal from the White House’s earlier decision to kill the free tax filing website launched by the Biden administration, Direct File.)
...

And if the selection of ‘Big Balls’ — someone who doesn’t just lack qualification for such a role but who also has an extensive history of cybercrime and affiliations with criminal networks like The Com — seems like maybe an anomaly, Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the HR agency of the federal government, recently made it very clear that Coristine isn’t just a valued employee. Kupor sees Coristine as the model of the type of person he wants to hire for these federal agencies. As Kupor sees it, Coristine is emblematic of why hiring requirements should be done away with, especially when it comes to technology roles, which is somewhat ironic given that Kupor gave this interview at the start of a college recruitment tour:

GovExec

More ‘Big Balls’-type young feds are what the OPM chief wants

In an interview on Monday, Scott Kupor also discussed implementing skills-based hiring, which had been a priority of the Biden administration as well.

Sean Michael Newhouse | September 15, 2026

As the Office of Personnel Management seeks to increase the number of early-career workers in the federal workforce, the government HR agency’s director said that he wants more civil servants like Edward Coristine —a former Department of Government Efficiency staffer who currently works for an administration initiative to improve the functionality of agency websites.

...

“I wanna see people like ‘Big Balls,’ or Ed, as we call him colloquially…We need people like that,” said Scott Kupor in a Monday interview with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson. “We need people who are patriotic who say ‘I care about this country and I’m willing to do something good.’”

The OPM director also referenced the effort to remove degree requirements from many federal jobs, particularly in technology. Officials under the Biden administration also promoted skills-based hiring, which generally entails assessing applicants on abilities rather than education or experience.

“Ed is a great example. He dropped out of college. He never had substantive work experience before coming to DOGE,” Kupor said. “There was a famous quote from somebody in the federal government who said ‘We never would’ve hired Ed because he didn’t have a college degree and he didn’t have five years of work experience.’ To me, that’s just silly. We want people who are smart who know how to do good stuff.”

...

While job stability has been identified as a factor that is persuading young people to work for the government, Kupor said that he is not aiming to convince potential applicants to spend their entire careers at an agency.

“I don’t need people like ‘Big Balls’ to give us 40 years of their life in the federal government,” Kupor said. “The message that I want to bring across the country is ‘Come for two years. Come for three years. Do some good work for the government. Develop your skill set. And then, quite frankly, if you want to go into the private sector, God bless you.’ There’s nothing wrong with making money if that’s what your goal is in life.”

Tuesday marks the beginning of Kupor’s federal recruitment college tour. His first stop is at the University of Florida, where he will have a fireside chat with Johnson.

Kupor also said in his Monday interview with Johnson that OPM is trying to “institutionalize” DOGE, including by using technology and process changes to enhance efficiency.

...

————–

“More ‘Big Balls’-type young feds are what the OPM chief wants” by Sean Michael Newhouse; govexec; 09/15/2026

“As the Office of Personnel Management seeks to increase the number of early-career workers in the federal workforce, the government HR agency’s director said that he wants more civil servants like Edward Coristine—a former Department of Government Efficiency staffer who currently works for an administration initiative to improve the functionality of agency websites.”

Yes, the head of the federal government’s HR agency, Scott Kupor, said he wants more civil servants like Coristine, who apparently just exudes a patriotic motive for his efforts. He’s also apparently a great example because he dropped out of college and never had any substantive work experience before coming to DOGE. Kupor went on to push for the removal of degree requirements, in particular for technology roles:

...
“I wanna see people like ‘Big Balls,’ or Ed, as we call him colloquially…We need people like that,” said Scott Kupor in a Monday interview with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson. “We need people who are patriotic who say ‘I care about this country and I’m willing to do something good.’”

The OPM director also referenced the effort to remove degree requirements from many federal jobs, particularly in technology. Officials under the Biden administration also promoted skills-based hiring, which generally entails assessing applicants on abilities rather than education or experience.

“Ed is a great example. He dropped out of college. He never had substantive work experience before coming to DOGE,” Kupor said. “There was a famous quote from somebody in the federal government who said ‘We never would’ve hired Ed because he didn’t have a college degree and he didn’t have five years of work experience.’ To me, that’s just silly. We want people who are smart who know how to do good stuff.”
...

And note how Kupor is simultaneously NOT hoping to retain many of the young people he is hoping to recruit for very long, he’s also making these arguments against degree requirements during his first stop in a federal recruitment college tour. Is he encouraging tech-savvy college students to drop out and join the federal government? That appears to be the message. It’s like a bizarro version of the Thiel Fellowship:

...
While job stability has been identified as a factor that is persuading young people to work for the government, Kupor said that he is not aiming to convince potential applicants to spend their entire careers at an agency.

“I don’t need people like ‘Big Balls’ to give us 40 years of their life in the federal government,” Kupor said. “The message that I want to bring across the country is ‘Come for two years. Come for three years. Do some good work for the government. Develop your skill set. And then, quite frankly, if you want to go into the private sector, God bless you.’ There’s nothing wrong with making money if that’s what your goal is in life.”

Tuesday marks the beginning of Kupor’s federal recruitment college tour. His first stop is at the University of Florida, where he will have a fireside chat with Johnson.
...

And that full throated endorsement of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine as a kind of model template for a federal employee brings us to the following story from April of this year about the role Coristine played in promoting the allegations of massive fraud schemes allegedly perpetrated by immigrants promoted by far right influencer Nick Shirley, who appears to be a kind of next-generation version of James O’Keefe’s career of making explosive allegations based on specious evidence. Shirley’s ‘investigations’ are given so much credence within the MAGA-sphere that the Trump White House routinely cites them. And as we’re going to see, when Shirley made his California-based fraud allegations earlier this year, those allegations were based on information that Coristine pulled from government databases, apparently on Shirley’s behalf. It’s not just a claim by Shirley that Coristine assisted him. Coristine was interviewed by Shirley, and nodded along as Shirley described how Coristine personally pulled data on Medicaid spending for businesses based in California, with Coristine adding that the government must create more opportunities to crowdsource fraud investigations. Yes, Coristine admitted in that interview that he believes a lot more government data should be handed over to ‘activists’ like Nick Shirley so they can ‘crowdsource fraud investigations’. So get ready for a lot more Nick Shirley DOGE-assisted ‘special investigations’:

WIRED

Edward ‘Big Balls’ Coristine Is Helping Out on Viral Fraud Videos Now

The DOGE engineer appeared on influencer Nick Shirley’s podcast this week to talk corruption and government work—and how they collaborated on Shirley’s recent ‘investigation.’

Makena Kelly
Vittoria Elliott
Politics
Apr 3, 2026 3:36 PM

Nick Shirley—the right-wing creator whose YouTube investigation sparked the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota—claims that his most recent video about alleged fraud in California was bolstered by data provided by none other than Edward Coristine, one of the first members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) known online as “Big Balls.”

Coristine, who joined DOGE at 19 years old with no prior government experience, was staffed across several agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA). Before joining DOGE, Coristine worked at Elon Musk’s Neuralink for several months and founded a startup known for hiring black hat hackers.

In an interview with Coristine published on Shirley’s YouTube channel on Thursday, Shirley claims that Coristine personally pulled data on Medicaid spending for businesses based in California as potential targets. Coristine nodded along, telling Shirley that the government must create more opportunities to crowdsource fraud investigations.

The information Coristine allegedly pulled for Shirley was from a dataset published by the DOGE team at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in February. In a post to X at the time, the HHS DOGE team referred to it as “the largest Medicaid dataset in department history.” The post also claimed that the dataset could be used to “detect” large-scale fraud.

“After that, I went to California based off that dataset you had helped me extract, and these fraudsters also weren’t even trying to hide it,” Shirley told Coristine in Thursday’s interview.

Coristine said that by open-sourcing data on government spending, vigilante investigators like Shirley who are “more well-positioned” could uncover fraudulent payments. “You are someone who actually went to the places where we were spending all this money and confronted the people and got to know the truth. I think we just have to create more opportunities for that to happen. We have to continue to open source data,” Coristine said.

...

Shirley’s videos have become key pieces of evidence for the Trump administration’s fraud and immigration crackdowns. When Shirley released his December video claiming to have uncovered more than $100 million in Somali-run childcare fraud in Minnesota, figures like vice president JD Vance shared it. A surge of immigration agents were then sent to Minnesota, resulting in mass arrests, detainments, and the deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Early in their YouTube video, Shirley and Coristine directly tie fraud to immigrant communities and foreigners. “A lot of the money is being stolen and siphoned out of the country,” Coristine says, without providing evidence. “Once that money is in a suitcase to Somalia, that’s never coming back,” Shirley replies.

...

While Coristine is no longer a formal member of DOGE, he’s still working in government as head of engineering for the White House’s National Design Studio (NDS), which is run by Airbnb cofounder and US chief design officer Joe Gebbia. Gebbia previously worked as a member of DOGE at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) tasked with modernizing the government’s retirement system. Coristine didn’t appear to believe DOGE’s mission was over: “I think the cabinet secretaries … are continuing the mission and mantra of DOGE,” Coristine tells Shirley.

Shirley shared a number of conspiracy theories about fraud. In the interview, Shirley alleged that in California specifically, “There’s a lot of dead people who are registered to vote. There’s a lot of people who are dead who are still receiving Social Security.” During his time in government, Musk made similar false claims around dead people continuing to receive social security benefits. Experts, however, have noted that this was likely due to DOGE members not understanding how the agency’s data systems and code base are structured.

This was not the first time Shirley made allegations about California’s voter registration systems. On February 16, Shirley released a video claiming that he had identified voters who were 125 years old, and that he had identified 30 people who had listed a UPS store as their address. In an X post sharing the video, Shirley called California “the breeding ground for voter fraud in America.” (Researchers overwhelmingly agree that there is no widespread voter fraud in California).

These allegations echo a key focus of the Trump administration and its supporters. Earlier this week, the president signed an executive order mandating the creation of a national list of eligible voters. In February, speaking on the podcast of former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, Trump asserted that undocumented immigrants were voting illegally and that Republicans “should take over the voting in at least 15 places.” There is no evidence that immigrants voting illegally constitutes any significant threat to US elections. A 2017 analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice found only 30 incidents of possible noncitizen voting in 2016 out of over 23.5 million votes.

Coristine revealed a handful of other strange and unreported details about the ongoing work at NDS. He mentioned that NDS’s current chief creative officer is Nate Brown, who previously collaborated with Ye, formerly Kanye West, on projects like the rapper’s 2021 album “Donda.” Coristine also said that one of NDS’s next big priorities is “freedom” and bringing “free speech to Europe.” Despite failing to provide any details into what that means, Coristine said to expect more information soon.

...

—————

“Edward ‘Big Balls’ Coristine Is Helping Out on Viral Fraud Videos Now” by Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott; WIRED; 04/03/2026

“In an interview with Coristine published on Shirley’s YouTube channel on Thursday, Shirley claims that Coristine personally pulled data on Medicaid spending for businesses based in California as potential targets. Coristine nodded along, telling Shirley that the government must create more opportunities to crowdsource fraud investigations.”

Coristine personally pulled data from the publicly released Medicaid spending report for businesses based in California as part of Shirley’s ‘fraud investigations’. It’s not speculation. Coristine was right there when Shirley shared this insight. And with Shirley’s videos serving as key pieces of ‘evidence’ for the Trump administration’s mass fraud claims, it’s hard not to suspect Coristine was encouraged to do this and will be encouraged to do a lot more of it:

...
The information Coristine allegedly pulled for Shirley was from a dataset published by the DOGE team at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in February. In a post to X at the time, the HHS DOGE team referred to it as “the largest Medicaid dataset in department history.” The post also claimed that the dataset could be used to “detect” large-scale fraud.

“After that, I went to California based off that dataset you had helped me extract, and these fraudsters also weren’t even trying to hide it,” Shirley told Coristine in Thursday’s interview.

...

Shirley’s videos have become key pieces of evidence for the Trump administration’s fraud and immigration crackdowns. When Shirley released his December video claiming to have uncovered more than $100 million in Somali-run childcare fraud in Minnesota, figures like vice president JD Vance shared it. A surge of immigration agents were then sent to Minnesota, resulting in mass arrests, detainments, and the deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
...

And while Shirley’s ‘fraud investigations’ may have focused primarily on immigrants who were allegedly fraudulently receiving government benefits, those allegations are intertwined with allegations of mass illegal immigrant voter fraud. We can see where this is going:

...
Shirley shared a number of conspiracy theories about fraud. In the interview, Shirley alleged that in California specifically, “There’s a lot of dead people who are registered to vote. There’s a lot of people who are dead who are still receiving Social Security.” During his time in government, Musk made similar false claims around dead people continuing to receive social security benefits. Experts, however, have noted that this was likely due to DOGE members not understanding how the agency’s data systems and code base are structured.

This was not the first time Shirley made allegations about California’s voter registration systems. On February 16, Shirley released a video claiming that he had identified voters who were 125 years old, and that he had identified 30 people who had listed a UPS store as their address. In an X post sharing the video, Shirley called California “the breeding ground for voter fraud in America.” (Researchers overwhelmingly agree that there is no widespread voter fraud in California).

These allegations echo a key focus of the Trump administration and its supporters. Earlier this week, the president signed an executive order mandating the creation of a national list of eligible voters. In February, speaking on the podcast of former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, Trump asserted that undocumented immigrants were voting illegally and that Republicans “should take over the voting in at least 15 places.” There is no evidence that immigrants voting illegally constitutes any significant threat to US elections. A 2017 analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice found only 30 incidents of possible noncitizen voting in 2016 out of over 23.5 million votes.
...

It’s that history of pilfering government data for the purpose of ‘proving’ the far right’s fantasies of mass illegal immigrant voting schemes that serves as an ominous backdrop for the new report from The Atlantic about the group of unofficial Trump advisors who would undoubtedly love it if there was suddenly all sorts of ‘proof’ of mass voter fraud that suddenly becomes available in the days or weeks leading up to the November elections. A group of advisors convinced mass voter fraud is a reality and the only way Trump can thwart it is by declaring martial laws and suspending the elections:

The Atlantic

The Supporters Urging Trump to Declare Martial Law for the Midterms

Trump’s advisers have been working for months to move his focus away from baseless theories of election fraud. A group of outsiders is making that difficult.

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Scherer
September 23, 2026, 5 AM ET

Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.

Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.

Trump has already tried to claim greater federal control over elections, which under the Constitution are administered primarily at the state and local level. In February, he said Republicans should nationalize voting in at least 15 places. In August, when the television and radio host Wayne Allyn Root pushed Trump to declare a “national-security emergency” to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures, Trump played coy: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.” Later that month, Trump posted a Root column on the topic, with a headline that described the plan as “foolproof.” Peters announced after meeting with Trump in June that the president “basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.” In a prime-time address at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump again repeated the false claim that he had won the 2020 election, and sarcastically encouraged his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming elections.

To head off a crisis, Trump’s White House and Cabinet advisers have been working for months to move Trump’s focus away from baseless theories of election fraud peddled by people like Ticktin, Root, and Peters. At the same time, they have authorized as-yet-unsuccessful efforts to uncover actual evidence that would make the conspiracies more credible: Trump’s advisers gathered once-classified documents that he could share on genuine foreign efforts to influence elections, set up a prime-time address where he again falsely suggested that the 2020 election was stolen, authorized the seizure of Georgia election records, and reviewed voting equipment used in Puerto Rico. None of these efforts has revealed the type of large-scale fraud that Trump has alleged, though they have allowed the president to keep the idea of election theft in the news. Meanwhile, Trump has failed to persuade Senate Republicans to pass legislation, called the SAVE America Act, that would restrict mail-in voting and impose new voter-ID and citizenship checks on ballot access, and the Supreme Court has rejected his effort to restrict voting by mail.

At the White House, the constant lobbying by election deniers continues to be viewed as problematic. A White House official told us that Ticktin, Root, and Peters play no role in election policy at the White House. A Justice Department spokesperson said there are no plans “to declare certified voting equipment unreliable or unusable absent credible, verified evidence and the legal process for doing so.” Suggestions that “such an initiative is under way at the Department is false,” the spokesperson said. Some officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, have said publicly that there are no plans to forcibly take over the role of state election administrators or deploy federal officials to polling places, though Mullin said there could be exceptions in the case of “specific threats.”

But the prospect of Trump deciding to act on the demands of his most fervent election-denying supporters has remained a constant threat, one that even Trump’s inner circle admits remains possible. Such measures are broadly opposed by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and within Trump’s own administration, not least because they’re considered bad politics. Polling commissioned by Republicans earlier this year found that if the SAVE America Act passed, it was likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm and suppress Republican turnout, particularly in red states, such as Florida, that have long embraced mail-in voting, according to a person who has reviewed the numbers.

The tension within Trump’s orbit has created an added layer of high-stakes uncertainty in the final weeks of the midterm-election campaign. Ticktin told us he expects that if Democrats win, Trump could proclaim military control based on the notion that voting equipment is vulnerable to foreign adversaries. Root, a LindellTV host and Gateway Pundit columnist, told us that he sends his columns directly to Trump by email and text; Trump regularly reposts them on Truth Social. “I hope he takes orders from Wayne Allyn Root,” Root told us last week. “Because in my opinion, the election is going to be stolen and there is no way to keep it from being stolen without declaring a national emergency.”

In a statement, the White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the “real story” is that “evidence of voter fraud and non-citizens voting in our elections continues to pile up,” even though “the media and Democrats” have been denying this for decades.

...

Their faithful followers gathered at an off-Strip hotel in Las Vegas earlier this month to detail how Trump could, in their minds, avert electoral calamity this fall. The lawyer, recently released felon, and columnist each took to the stage at various points during the “Storm Summit,” billed as a way to achieve “honest elections” and help save the country from a rigged vote. The attendees we spoke with said they anticipate that the midterm election will be canceled or temporarily suspended, or that the results or certification of winners will be in limbo for an undetermined period of time.

When it was Ticktin’s turn to address the crowd, he described a “nightmare scenario” in which electronic voting equipment central to many 2020 conspiracies diverts votes from Republican candidates to Democrats, and delivers the party control of Congress. Then, he ominously predicted, Democrats would have enough support (including from anti-Trump Republicans) to impeach and remove Trump and Vice President Vance from office. But Trump, Ticktin predicted, wouldn’t stand for it. “There’s not another soul on this planet that understands what it is to be the president of the United States and have to leave office for a rigged election so someone else can step in and steal the country,” Ticktin said. He added, “He’s not ever going to do that again.” The crowd—some wearing 45–47 hats and shirts reading 2020 ITS NOT OVER YET—whistled and cheered from under a banner depicting Trump as a matador waving the American flag.

Root got a standing ovation after assuring attendees that, according to research done by a friend, the election would be upended if Trump were to declare a national-security emergency. In reality, experts told us, such declarations give the president access to specific statutory powers enacted by Congress. None provides the president with control over elections. “There seems to be a wild misperception on the part of some Trump allies that an emergency declaration allows the president to do anything he wants,” Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, told us. “It is not a blank check.”

Nonetheless, Root described victory as inevitable if Trump issues such a declaration before November 3. “We win,” he said, “because Democrats can’t win a gosh darn election without cheating.” Root, who is based in Las Vegas, described himself to us as “a tough guy, a Jewish kid from a Mafia neighborhood in New York, who knows how to fight.” He said he was “the only Republican I know who isn’t a freaking golf player with yellow pants.”

...

————

“The Supporters Urging Trump to Declare Martial Law for the Midterms” By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Scherer; The Atlantic; 09/23/2026

“The tension within Trump’s orbit has created an added layer of high-stakes uncertainty in the final weeks of the midterm-election campaign. Ticktin told us he expects that if Democrats win, Trump could proclaim military control based on the notion that voting equipment is vulnerable to foreign adversaries. Root, a LindellTV host and Gateway Pundit columnist, told us that he sends his columns directly to Trump by email and text; Trump regularly reposts them on Truth Social. “I hope he takes orders from Wayne Allyn Root,” Root told us last week. “Because in my opinion, the election is going to be stolen and there is no way to keep it from being stolen without declaring a national emergency.””

IF Democrats win the mid-terms, it was due to foreign election interference, and only a declaration of a national emergency can stop it. That’s the narrative this unofficial group of advisors is pushing. Or as attorney Peter Ticktin puts it, Trump can either declare a national emergency now, before the election, to “prevent cheating” or he can declare martial law on or around November 3rd. Those are the only realistic options because “a smooth election” just won’t happen given all of the alleged Democratic cheating that has already taken place. It’s the kind of talk that would be easy to dismiss as the ramblings of a crank in an earlier era. But the reality is that Trump himself called for the nationalization of voting in at least 15 states back in February and endorsed a column by Wayne Allen Root last month calling for the “national emergency” scenario. The closer we get to the elections, the more plausible this nightmare scenarios appear:

...
Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.

Trump has already tried to claim greater federal control over elections, which under the Constitution are administered primarily at the state and local level. In February, he said Republicans should nationalize voting in at least 15 places. In August, when the television and radio host Wayne Allyn Root pushed Trump to declare a “national-security emergency” to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures, Trump played coy: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.” Later that month, Trump posted a Root column on the topic, with a headline that described the plan as “foolproof.” Peters announced after meeting with Trump in June that the president “basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.” In a prime-time address at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump again repeated the false claim that he had won the 2020 election, and sarcastically encouraged his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming elections.

...

But the prospect of Trump deciding to act on the demands of his most fervent election-denying supporters has remained a constant threat, one that even Trump’s inner circle admits remains possible. Such measures are broadly opposed by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and within Trump’s own administration, not least because they’re considered bad politics. Polling commissioned by Republicans earlier this year found that if the SAVE America Act passed, it was likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm and suppress Republican turnout, particularly in red states, such as Florida, that have long embraced mail-in voting, according to a person who has reviewed the numbers.

...

In a statement, the White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the “real story” is that “evidence of voter fraud and non-citizens voting in our elections continues to pile up,” even though “the media and Democrats” have been denying this for decades.
...

And with whipping up ‘evidence’ of mass voter fraud at the core of these “national emergency” schemes, it’s not hard to imagine some sort of last minute ‘revelation’ from the Trump administration serving as a pretext for these plans. Although if that ‘revelation’ happens, it’s going to have to happen soon:

...
To head off a crisis, Trump’s White House and Cabinet advisers have been working for months to move Trump’s focus away from baseless theories of election fraud peddled by people like Ticktin, Root, and Peters. At the same time, they have authorized as-yet-unsuccessful efforts to uncover actual evidence that would make the conspiracies more credible: Trump’s advisers gathered once-classified documents that he could share on genuine foreign efforts to influence elections, set up a prime-time address where he again falsely suggested that the 2020 election was stolen, authorized the seizure of Georgia election records, and reviewed voting equipment used in Puerto Rico. None of these efforts has revealed the type of large-scale fraud that Trump has alleged, though they have allowed the president to keep the idea of election theft in the news. Meanwhile, Trump has failed to persuade Senate Republicans to pass legislation, called the SAVE America Act, that would restrict mail-in voting and impose new voter-ID and citizenship checks on ballot access, and the Supreme Court has rejected his effort to restrict voting by mail.
...

But, again, if it doesn’t actually happen soon enough in time for the 2026 mid-terms, there’s still 2028. And, of course, there’s also the ‘Plan B’ declaration of martial law and the cancellation of the election results after the fact under the pretext of ‘foreign interference’. Lots of horrible plans, not just in the works, but in motion. The kakistocracy grows impatient.

What is Black hiding? Probably a lot, based on the fact that he was Epstein’s highest paying ‘client’, which included $158 million in payments to Epstein from 2012–2017, which comes out to over $31 million each year on average. Black wasn’t the only wealthy investor who paid for Epstein’s services, but he was the biggest spender. So what was he paying for? Well, back in 2021, Black’s private-equity firm, Apollo Global Management, conducted a review of Black’s ties to Epstein, concluding that the payments were for “bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services.” And while it does sound like Epstein was providing some sort of tax advice and estate planning services, it’s hard not to suspect that the “other related services” were primarily what Black was paying for given the incredible fees Epstein was collecting.

What were these “other related services”? That’s unclear, although Black did seem to give a hint when he voluntarily appeared before Congress during a close-door session session back in June. Members of congress came away from the session telling reporters that Black refused to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements, which triggered the initial subpoenas. But Black did insist during the hearing that paid Epstein for legitimate purposes, adding that this was in part due to Epstein’s “unrivaled network of relationships” with influential figures. Black went on to cite Elon Musk, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel as examples of Epstein’s ‘unrivaled network of relationships’. This is a good time to recall what we’ve learned about Epstein spending years trying to establish a relationship with Thiel and seemingly finally succeeding in 2014, with Thiel going on to attend all sorts of gatherings with Epstein and others. At the same time, the notion that someone like Leon Black, a prominent private-equity investor in 2012, would need Jeffrey Epstein so he could meet other prominent figures seems like rather convenient excuse. After all, the “Jeffrey introduced me to all these influential people” is the narrative Black was willing to share with congress while refusing to talk about all sorts of other aspects of their relationship. It’s a reminder that if Epstein was offering financial services to the elites that they were willing to pay exorbitant fees for, it was very likely highly illegal financial services that included methods he learned while he was helping to run Stephen Hoffenberg’s giant Ponzi scheme in the late 1980s.

But there’s another dimension to this story that might be shaping Black’s motives when it comes to how much he’s willing to disclose to congress: he isn’t the only member of his family with an unexplained relationship with Epstein. His son, Ben Black, both has a very intriguing history with Epstein of his own and also happens to be the person tapped by President Trump to run the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a federal overseas investment agency that was created under the first Trump administration. When the Trump administration announced that the US would be insuring oil tankers traveling through the Persian Gulf, it was the DFC that would provide that insurance. The DFC was not initially intended to facilitate investments in high-income countries but Congress changed its mandate this year to include high-income countries and tripled its lending cap to $205 billion, leading to concerns by Democrats about how the agency might be benefiting the Trump family’s financial interests.

The DFC was first set up with bipartisan support as a mean of countering China’s global influence, with Jared Kushner’s former college roommate, Adam Boehler, chosen as its first director. And now Ben Black is running the agency. Notably, Black was nominated for the position by President Trump just a few weeks after Black and fascist Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale published an essay calling for a “pro-market” approach to foreign aid. His nomination was ultimately approved in a 51–47 party-line vote in the Senate, a vote that reflected, in part, concerns about Black’s lack of qualifications to run the agency. Sadly, that lack of qualification actually became a point of dark humor among the DFC staff after it was discovered that Ben Black’s name showed up repeatedly in the Epstein files along with his father. In fact, in one email to Leon Black, Epstein denigrates the financial acumen of Black’s sons. “You have a bomb of colored string that your retarded children have formed,” Epstein wrote in October 2015. “It has to be very carefully unwound.” It’s the kind of email that does indicate Epstein really was providing some sort of financial planning services for the Black family. But also raises intriguing questions about the nature of “bomb of colored string ” that has to be “very carefully unwound.” Again, Epstein was being paid exorbitant fees, ostensibly for his financial planning services. What was he actually doing to earn those incredible fees?

Ben Black first shows up in the Epstein files in 2012 as someone who was scheduled to meet Epstein as a guest of his father. In 2013, Epstein and Black both attended an estate planning meeting and Epstein got Black’s contact information. Epstein later told a friend that he flew to the Hamptons in July of 2014 to celebrate Black’s 30th birthday. Two days after that birthday, Epstein provided tax sheltering advice on the purchase of an $11.5 million townhouse.

But the gallows humor among the DFC staff reportedly turned closer to despair after it was discovered that Epstein also played some sort of romantic matchmaking role regarding Black. As we’ll see, Epstein had over 100 email correspondences with a woman who is only known as “Chik”. As emails show, this woman seemed to be reliant on Epstein for both personal and financial support, with requests to Epstein for assistance in not just polishing her resume but also topping off her bank account when it ran low. And at one point, Epstein even chastises “Chik” for failing in one of his requests of her. “We had planned to go to paris, and i needed help on the plane,” he wrote on January 7, 2025. “Shameful, shameful.” Interestingly, a little over a week earlier, on December 30, 2014, Chik wrote to Epstein inquiring if he could help get her into a New Years party that the Black family would be attending. Then, on February 15, 2015, Chik writes to Epstein asking for his advice on how to respond to a text from Ben inviting her out to dinner. The next morning, Epstein receives another email from Chik recounting how she had a great time with Ben and he even kissed her. On March 23, 2015, Chik writes to Epstein about a planned dinner she will be attending with Epstein and Leon Black, inquiring whether “BB” (Ben Black) will be there too. Lawyers for the Black family insist that there was a “single private date” with Chik and that was all.

That’s all part of the remarkable legal showdown that is currently playing out between Leon Black and congress. Black isn’t just Epstein’s highest paying client and refusing to reveal why he was paying all those fees. Black’s son Ben has his own history with Epstein that potentially exposes a very important element of Epstein’s criminal enterprise. Epstein was clearly helping one of ‘his girls’ become a romantic interest of Ben Black and even getting details of their date after the fact. What are the odds this is the only time Epstein did something like this? This is a good time to recall how Karyna Shuyliak — the Belarussian woman who was apparently Epstein’s long-time girlfriend and who ended up being one of the primary beneficiaries of Epstein’s vast estate — was in a five year sham marriage to Jennifer Kalin arranged by Epstein in order to facilitate Shuliak getting her US citizenship. Kalin also happened to be both a victim of Epstein’s abuses and an ex-girlfriend of Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon Musk. What are the odds Epstein wasn’t also being debriefed after Kalin’s dates with Kimbal? And how many other romantic relationships with his elite circle did Epstein arrange with the vast number of girls and young women under his influence? That whole facet of the Epstein story could potentially be exposed if Epstein’s relationship with the Black family was ever truly revealed. Which is presumably part of why Leon Black clearly views a contempt of congress charge as preferable to spilling the beans about Epstein:

Politico

House panel recommends Leon Black be held in contempt for stonewalling Epstein investigation

The billionaire investor defied House Oversight Committee subpoenas.

Chris Marquette
09/15/2026, 5:39pm ET

The House Oversight Committee voted unanimously 41–0 Tuesday to recommend billionaire investor Leon Black be held in contempt of Congress for not fully cooperating with the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

It marks an escalation in an already contentious standoff, where Black defied two congressional subpoenas, refused to appear for a transcribed interview and then sued the committee for allegedly “overstep[ing] its authority.”

...

Black has been a target of the committee’s Epstein probe for the personal and financial relationship he maintained with the late convicted sex trafficker, which included a $158 million payment not long after Epstein first became a registered sex offender.

He met with the committee in May for a transcribed interview but declined to speak at length about nondisclosure agreements he entered into with women tied to Epstein. As a result, the panel subpoenaed him to turn over those documents, to which Black responded by refusing to submit all those in his possession and then skipping a scheduled appearance before the panel slated for Sept. 3 — suing the committee instead.

...

———–

“House panel recommends Leon Black be held in contempt for stonewalling Epstein investigation” by Chris Marquette; Politico; 09/15/2026

“It marks an escalation in an already contentious standoff, where Black defied two congressional subpoenas, refused to appear for a transcribed interview and then sued the committee for allegedly “overstep[ing] its authority.””

Between suing congress and defying multiple subpoenas, it’s pretty clear that Leon Black would rather face prosecution than talk about his history with Jeffrey Epstein. And while we don’t know exactly why Black is so scared of testifying, it’s not exactly a mystery. Black paid Epstein $158 million for various ‘services’. And as we can see in the following piece from back in June when this legal battle with congress was first unfolding, that $158 million was paid out over the period of 2012 — 2017, coming out to over $31 million a year on average. What legitimate purpose could he have possibly had for such a price tag? Well, according to a review conducted in 2021 by Black’s own Apollo Global Management, Black paid Epstein for “bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services.” What “other related services”? That’s unclear, although Black also insisted that he paid Epstein for legitimate purposes, in part due to his “unrivaled network of relationships” with influential figures, adding that this network included figures like Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel. It’s unclear just how much this elite network was really what Black was paying for, or how exactly he was even paying for these services, but it’s a form of defense by Black that only raises more questions about the nature of their relationship. Leon Black is an extremely wealthy and prominent figure, after all. It’s not as if we would expect him to have to pay someone like Epstein to introduce him to other elites, and yet that was one of the “legitimate purposes” he claimed to have paid Epstein for:

Associated Press

Lawmakers subpoena billionaire Leon Black after contentious interview on Epstein payments

By JOEY CAPPELLETTI
Updated 3:11 PM CDT, June 26, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Oversight Committee served subpoenas to billionaire investor Leon Black on Friday after lawmakers say he refused to answer some questions about his yearslong relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a time in which he paid the disgraced financier at least $158 million.

Black is the co-founder and former chief executive of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management who stepped down in 2021 amid fallout over his ties to Epstein. He became the 16th person to appear before the committee as part of their broader investigation into the web of wealth and influence around Epstein.

Lawmakers emerged from the closed-door voluntary interview with Black saying he refused to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements, prompting the committee to issue a subpoena about the NDAs. A second subpoena was issued for Black to testify under oath on July 16.

“This is a result of refusing to answer specific questions,” Rep. James Comer, R‑Ky., the committee chairman, told reporters after Black’s interview.

...

Democrats emerged from their hour of questioning Black saying he had not answered questions, and they praised Comer’s decision to subpoena him.

...

Black was featured prominently in the Epstein files

Black is mentioned repeatedly in files that the Department of Justice has released related to the Epstein investigation. He also appears in a collection of birthday messages sent to Epstein that were released by the House committee last year, including a poem attributed to him that refers to “Blond, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically.”

Black maintained Friday that he was not aware of Epstein’s “nefarious activity” until 2019 and that he paid Epstein for legitimate purposes, in part due to his “unrivaled network of relationships” with influential figures.

...

A 2021 review commissioned by Apollo found that Black paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017, after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The review said the payments were for “bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services.”

...

Comer said earlier this year that Epstein’s former accountant, Richard Kahn, told lawmakers in his testimony that Epstein received significant sums of money from a number of high-profile individuals, including Black.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D‑Ore., this month referred findings from a nearly four-year investigation into Black to the House committee. In a statement, Wyden said, “Epstein even appears to have acted as a middleman for Black to pay women on Black’s behalf.”

Black broadly denied the allegations in his opening statement, calling them “rank speculation.”

“I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking. I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein.”

Many high-profile figures have been summoned to testify about Epstein

Other figures to have appeared for the investigation include former Democratic President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former Attorney General Pam Bondi and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

...

Black said Epstein’s network included SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir.

...

———–

“Lawmakers subpoena billionaire Leon Black after contentious interview on Epstein payments” By JOEY CAPPELLETTI; Associated Press; 06/26/2026

“A 2021 review commissioned by Apollo found that Black paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017, after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The review said the payments were for “bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services.””

Bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services. That was the conclusion of a 2021 “review” commissions by Black’s own Apollo Global Management. What kind of “related services” was he paying for? Well, according Black, the he paid Epstein for legitimate purposes due to Epstein’s “unrivaled network of relationships” with influential figures. At least that what he told Congress during that closed-door session back in June. Keep in mind that the $158 million in fees he paid Epstein over the 5 year period of 2012 to 2017 comes out to an average of over $31 million a year Black was paying Epstein. That doesn’t sound like the fee for tax and estate planning, so the “other related services” was presumably what Black was primarily paying for. And yet Leon Black isn’t someone you would expect to be paying to be introduced to other prominent figures. Which is a reminder that claims about Epstein’s “unrivaled network of relationships” could easily be the cover story for far more mundane reasons for such high payments to Epstein. Mundane reasons like money laundering and other illegal financial ‘services’. But, again, we don’t know because Black refuses to talk, citing NDAs that apparently remain in effect even after Epstein’s death:

...
Black maintained Friday that he was not aware of Epstein’s “nefarious activity” until 2019 and that he paid Epstein for legitimate purposes, in part due to his “unrivaled network of relationships” with influential figures.

...

Comer said earlier this year that Epstein’s former accountant, Richard Kahn, told lawmakers in his testimony that Epstein received significant sums of money from a number of high-profile individuals, including Black.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D‑Ore., this month referred findings from a nearly four-year investigation into Black to the House committee. In a statement, Wyden said, “Epstein even appears to have acted as a middleman for Black to pay women on Black’s behalf.”

...

Black said Epstein’s network included SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir.
...

And that ongoing legal battle of Leon Black’s congressional testimony brings us to another recent revelation involving Epstein and the Black family: Leon’s son, Ben Black, happens to be the Trump-appointed head of a federal overseas investment agency that was initially created during the first Trump administration despite having no apparently qualification for the role. And it also turns out that Ben has some Epstein mysteries of his own, including the fact that Epstein seemed to operate as a kind of wingman for a woman, “Chik”, who briefly dated Black. Not only did “Chik” ask for Epstein’s assistance in meeting the Black family, but she later recounted how Ben had kissed her on their date and asked for Epstein’s assistance in responding to one of his text messages. So while Leon Black may claim that he paid Epstein, in part, for access to Epstein’s elite network, it would appear Epstein was helping to get the women he was controlling introduced to the Black family. We also learned that Leon Black used Epstein to facilitate around $20 million in payments to women and that three women have accused Black of sexual abuse. Which is a reminder that one of the elite ‘services’ Epstein may have been offering to his wealthy friends is the service of how how to quietly handle issues involve sex abuse, sex trafficking, and who knows what else Epstein learned how to get away with:

The Guardian

Trump appointee leading $205bn US agency had personal ties to Epstein, emails show

Ben Black’s lawyers deny relationship with disgraced financier, but DoJ records reveal years of interactions

Cate Brown in Washington
Wed 3 Jun 2026 14.23 EDT

Ben Black, the head of a little-known government investment agency funded by billions of dollars from US taxpayers, had personal and business ties to Jeffrey Epstein, according to emails and business filings released by the Department of Justice.

...

A Guardian review of more than 5,000 records from Epstein’s private correspondence found that Ben Black invested in the same company as the financier in 2011 and that the two men had a relationship for several years afterwards. Epstein told a friend that he attended Ben Black’s 30th birthday, advised him on the purchase of an $11.5m townhouse and helped one woman compose messages to him. She wrote to Epstein to say that she and Black had kissed the following day.

Now Black holds a Senate-confirmed position overseeing the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the Trump administration’s largest overseas investment arm. The agency was previously confined to work in low-income countries, but Congress recently cleared it to invest in high-income countries and tripled its lending cap to $205bn, greatly expanding Black’s influence over taxpayer funds.

...

A personal spokesperson for Ben Black said: “Ben Black had no personal or professional relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Trump created the DFC with bipartisan support during his first term, and appointed Jared Kushner’s former college roommate, Adam Boehler, to transform the lending agency into a tool to counter China and pursue more direct private investments.

It’s not clear exactly what led Trump to appoint Ben Black to the DFC post, particularly given that public records suggest thin experience in international development finance. (A White House spokesperson told the Guardian Black had “elite” experience for the role.)

In January 2025, Ben Black and the Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale co-authored an essay calling for a “pro-market” approach to foreign aid. They specifically cited the missteps of the Biden administration and the promise of investing in Greenland, a Danish outpost that Trump has said he would like to control.

Three weeks after its publication, the president appointed Black, now 41, to take charge of the US’s largest overseas investing arm.

Becoming a Wall Street scion

...

His mother, Debra Black, worked as a Broadway producer, garnering 10 Tony awards for her work. Leon partnered with Debra’s brother to found Apollo Global Management in 1990, and as CEO led it to become one of the five largest private equity and credit managers in the world with nearly $1tn under management.

...

Black was also Epstein’s top-paying client by a wide margin for years. He paid Epstein to advise him on tax-saving strategies and art acquisitions, and acted as an intermediary in his affairs with women. A Senate finance committee investigation found that Black paid the convicted sex offender $170m, which Black said was for legitimate estate and tax-planning services. Epstein helped him send about $20m to women, the New York Times found.

Three women have sued Leon Black for alleged sexual abuse; two of the suits have been dismissed and one remains pending. Lawyers for Leon Black said in a statement to the Guardian that misconduct allegations raised against Black were false, and that “subsequent events have established with certainty that Mr Black’s account was truthful, and his accusers’ claims were not”.

...

A separate independent inquiry commissioned by Apollo Management to investigate its founder’s alleged ties to Epstein’s sex-trafficking network in 2021 found no evidence that Epstein ever introduced Black, or offered to introduce Black, to any underage women.

Ben Black attended the Dalton School, a prestigious Upper East Side establishment where Epstein briefly taught math and physics in the 1970s. He graduated in 2002, alongside many of New York’s most well-heeled children, and went on to study history at the University of Pennsylvania. He later earned a dual master’s in business and law at Harvard, and a master’s in taxation from New York University.

In 2011, Ben Black and several of his family members invested in Environmental Solutions Worldwide (ESWW), a diesel emissions control company where Epstein was a 6% shareholder via his Virgin Islands shell company, Financial Trust, according to SEC filings. Ben Black and Joshua Black, one of his brothers, became directors of ESWW the same year, company records show.

It’s not clear whether Ben Black was aware that Epstein was an ESWW shareholder when he took a stake in the entity through his personal trust fund – though his father, Leon, had encouraged Epstein to invest in the group a year earlier.

Two weeks after Leon Black’s suggestion, Epstein wired $1m to purchase ESWW company debt, augmenting holdings that dated back to 2005, according to his Bear Stearns account.

Epstein, through his company, sold his ESWW shares to the Black Family Partners LP, a private partnership that manages some of Leon Black’s $14bn estate, in November 2012.

Lawyers for Leon Black described this as a change in investment strategies on behalf of Epstein.

There are some discrepancies in the public timeline documenting Ben Black’s involvement with ESWW. A Senate ethics disclosure dates his board term to June 2021 – 10 years after Black’s role was first listed in SEC filings. A company webpage that listed Ben Black on its board of directors between 2015 and 2023 has been taken down.

...

Ben Black said that he would resign from his position at ESWW upon assuming his role at Development Finance Corporation, but would continue to own company stock.

By his mid-20s, Ben Black had taken a position within the Natural Resources Group at his father’s firm in New York.

Records show that Black was scheduled to meet Epstein on several occasions after the young scion returned to the city. He was first scheduled to meet Epstein as his father’s guest in 2012. It is not known whether the meeting went ahead.

A year later, emails between Epstein’s staff and a Google administrator reflected that Epstein would be joining Ben Black and his girlfriend for a private tour of Google’s New York headquarters. Leon Black and Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s longtime Belarussian lover, were also listed as part of the six-person tour. The identity of a sixth guest was redacted in justice department filings.

Lawyers for Leon Black said that Ben Black did not attend a tour of the Google headquarters, and that a tour he did not attend does not “establish a relationship of any kind, let alone a close one”.

By September 2013, Epstein obtained Ben Black’s contact information after a family estate planning meeting at which both men were present, according to a memo summarizing the meeting. “Leon said fine to set up meetings with Ben and Josh,” Leon Black’s assistant emailed Epstein’s assistant.

It’s not clear whether the two men corresponded, but Epstein told a friend that he flew to the Hamptons to celebrate Ben Black’s 30th birthday in July 2014.

Lawyers for Leon Black initially said that Epstein did not attend a birthday celebration for Benjamin in 2014, or ever.

After reviewing the email in which Epstein told a friend he had attended Ben Black’s birthday, the lawyers later said that they were not aware of “any email to Leon Black acknowledging any attendance at the party and Mr Black and his son have confirmed that Epstein did not attend (whatever he may have said in emails). It is very well known that Epstein was prone to exaggeration, lies, and embellishments to try and elevate his importance with others.”

Two days after Ben Black’s birthday party, Epstein weighed in on Black’s plan to buy an $11.5m townhouse. The transaction was carefully orchestrated to minimize tax exposure, emails show. Epstein told Leon Black’s executive assistant that if Ben had questions after the purchase, “he could call anytime”.

By the end of 2014, Black’s parents had moved into a 30-room, Italian Renaissance-style mansion one block from Epstein’s Upper East Side address.

Tensions between Leon Black and Epstein ebbed and flowed over the years, emails show. Epstein repeatedly admonished Black for delaying personnel changes in his family office, Elysium Management, and short-changing his compensation for a formidable advisory task.

In February 2016, Epstein’s assistant asked Ben Black and his brother Joshua if they would have their portraits painted as a gift to their father. The brothers agreed, and met Kyeong No, a Korean painter, for a photography session.

No told the Guardian that he had received a scholarship from Epstein to study portraiture at the New York Academy of Art. He said the scholarship stipulated that he had to paint at least one portrait for donors.

“They sent me the two guys,” he recalled. “I took their photo and then I painted it in my studio space. After graduating, some guy came to pick it up.”

...

Lawyers for Leon Black initially said that neither Benjamin nor his brother Joshua had sat for a portrait commissioned by Epstein, and that no follow-up emails suggested that a portrait had been painted. After reviewing a picture of the painting, the lawyers additionally said: “As for the portrait you provided, it appears to be painted from a picture. Neither Ben nor Josh Black ‘sat’ for a portrait commissioned by Epstein. Leon Black doesn’t have any portrait of Ben and Josh, period.”

If Epstein appreciated the boys’ help, his emails didn’t convey much respect for their financial acumen.

“You have a bomb of colored string that your retarded children have formed,” Epstein wrote to Leon in a detailed note about their family finances. “It has to be very carefully unwound.”

‘A single private date’

On 31 December 2014, Epstein received an email from St Barts, a Caribbean destination where many of the financier’s friends flocked for the holidays.

“Hello Jeffrey Yes . Lastnight we met blacks family and Greek boy too . He was with ugly rude girl . But we had a great time with brothers . Hopefully will meet them today . They are very very nice !”

On New Year’s Day, he received a second email: “Tonight having din=er with Ben black and brothers . This is great time and lots of fu= here ! I love it!!”

His email contacts were among the young women gathered in St Barts for New Year’s, where one person reported that “200 fabulous and more fabulous” guests had joined the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s then-wife for a year-end bash – Leon and Debra Black among them.

A month later, Epstein received a missive from a woman in New York:

“Hello Jeffrey, Please help me what to answer to Ben Black. He just texted me “So how does your schedule look? I have a few ideas but do you have an= preference?”

Epstein and the woman, who identifies herself as “Chik” in more than 100 emails, discussed Ben’s email, and his subsequent invitation to dinner. At 9am the next morning, Epstein received an email with the subject line ‘Ben Black’:

“Hello Jeffrey Last-night I had a great time with Ben and he kissed me ! He was behaving like a real gentlemen!”

“Chik” references Ben Black and his family on at least three separate occasions in her correspondence with Epstein.

She first asked Epstein for help “to get in with Leon and family” to an exclusive New Year’s party after he arranged her tickets to St Barts.

Back in New York, “Chik” asked Epstein for help responding to Black’s text messages; and then asked whether Ben Black would be joining her appointment with his father, one month after she said they kissed.

“Is Leon B is coming tomorrow alone ? No BB? Jeffrey what time would You like to see me tomorrow?” she wrote. It is not known whether the appointment went ahead.

Black family lawyers described Ben Black’s relationship to “Chik” as a “single private date” between two consenting adults. “In 2015, Benjamin met a woman and they went on a date and he treated her nicely – a fact represented in the emails,” they said in a statement to the Guardian. They also said that Ben Black did not know that the woman would email Epstein, or the content of any emails she may have exchanged with Epstein. The lawyers did not comment on records linking Ben Black to women in St Barts.

...

Like other women in Epstein’s network, “Chik” appeared to defer to Epstein for both personal and financial support. She asked for small favors, like polishing her résumé or purchasing a coffee machine, and larger ones, like topping up her bank account when it ran dry.

Epstein also called on “Chik” for favors, and scolded her when she didn’t follow through: “We had planned to go to paris, and i needed help on the plane,” he wrote after New Year’s. “Shameful, shameful.”

Amid their repartee, “Chik” appears to write about Ben Black with a similar blend of deference and awe: “he is so cool and I don’t understand what he wants from me,” she wrote.

‘This is such a joke’

Several DFC staff raised questions about Ben Black’s background when Trump first selected the Wall Street scion to lead the US’s multibillion-dollar lending arm, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former and current employees who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Black has a limited track record in emerging markets, according to public records. His New York-based private equity firm, Fortinbras Enterprises, opened an outpost in the United Arab Emirates in 2024, where Black helped open a branch of his family’s office the same year. (His father, Leon, was the subject of a Senate investigation into his dealings with Epstein at the time.)

“He is not qualified to do this, for sure,” a former DFC director said of Black. “It does make you wonder, you know – why is he in that role?”

...

When the Department of Justice released portions of Epstein’s correspondence in December 2025, a handful of DFC employees uncovered records of their boss in the files and their concerns changed.

Initially, people were sharing Epstein’s comments in private group chats – particularly Epstein’s criticism of the Black children’s financial skills, one former staff member said.

“People were like: ‘Eye roll – the guy running the world’s largest bilateral bank apparently can’t manage money,’” the person said. “This is such a joke.”

A few weeks later, staff discovered Chik’s email to Epstein describing her date with Ben, and the chatter largely stopped.

“[People] just wanted to put blinders on,” a former staff member said, summarizing a series of their conversations with current employees. Now, they said, morale is low and people are afraid to speak out: “Everybody’s just looking for jobs.”

———–

“Trump appointee leading $205bn US agency had personal ties to Epstein, emails show” by Cate Brown; The Guardian; 06/03/2026

“Now Black holds a Senate-confirmed position overseeing the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the Trump administration’s largest overseas investment arm. The agency was previously confined to work in low-income countries, but Congress recently cleared it to invest in high-income countries and tripled its lending cap to $205bn, greatly expanding Black’s influence over taxpayer funds.”

Well look at that: Leon Black’s son, Ben, happened to be the person tapped by President Trump to run the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a federal agency dedicated to overseas investments created under the first Trump administration and significantly expanded under the second Trump administration, with triple the budget and the clearance to invest in high-income countries. And yet Ben Black doesn’t appear to have any actual qualifications for his job. But he does have ample political connections, including the endorsement of fascist Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Black’s appointed to the DFC came just three weeks after he and Lonsdale co-authored an essay calling for a “pro-market” approach to foreign aid:

...
Trump created the DFC with bipartisan support during his first term, and appointed Jared Kushner’s former college roommate, Adam Boehler, to transform the lending agency into a tool to counter China and pursue more direct private investments.

It’s not clear exactly what led Trump to appoint Ben Black to the DFC post, particularly given that public records suggest thin experience in international development finance. (A White House spokesperson told the Guardian Black had “elite” experience for the role.)

In January 2025, Ben Black and the Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale co-authored an essay calling for a “pro-market” approach to foreign aid. They specifically cited the missteps of the Biden administration and the promise of investing in Greenland, a Danish outpost that Trump has said he would like to control.

Three weeks after its publication, the president appointed Black, now 41, to take charge of the US’s largest overseas investing arm.

...

Several DFC staff raised questions about Ben Black’s background when Trump first selected the Wall Street scion to lead the US’s multibillion-dollar lending arm, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former and current employees who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Black has a limited track record in emerging markets, according to public records. His New York-based private equity firm, Fortinbras Enterprises, opened an outpost in the United Arab Emirates in 2024, where Black helped open a branch of his family’s office the same year. (His father, Leon, was the subject of a Senate investigation into his dealings with Epstein at the time.)

“He is not qualified to do this, for sure,” a former DFC director said of Black. “It does make you wonder, you know – why is he in that role?”
...

And as we’ve seen, the questions about Ben Black’s hiring as the director of the DFC isn’t just the fact that both Leon and Ben Black show up repeatedly in the Epstein files. Leon Black was by far Epstein’s top-paying client for years for services that apparently included Epstein helping him send around $20 million in payoffs to women who have accused Black of sexual abuse. Were those payoffs among the “other related services” Leon Black claimed he paid Epstein for?

...
Black was also Epstein’s top-paying client by a wide margin for years. He paid Epstein to advise him on tax-saving strategies and art acquisitions, and acted as an intermediary in his affairs with women. A Senate finance committee investigation found that Black paid the convicted sex offender $170m, which Black said was for legitimate estate and tax-planning services. Epstein helped him send about $20m to women, the New York Times found.

Three women have sued Leon Black for alleged sexual abuse; two of the suits have been dismissed and one remains pending. Lawyers for Leon Black said in a statement to the Guardian that misconduct allegations raised against Black were false, and that “subsequent events have established with certainty that Mr Black’s account was truthful, and his accusers’ claims were not”.
...

And all of the denials by the Blacks of any significant relationship to Epstein brings us to the fact that Epstein instevesd in Environmental Solutions Worldwide (ESWW) in 2011, a company that has Ben Black and several other family members as investors. Both Ben and his brother Joshua because ESWW directors that year. And Leon Black apparently encouraged Epstein to invest in the company a year ealier, with Epstein making the investment just two weeks later. And then, in November of 2012, Epstein sells his ESWW shared to Black Family Partners LP in an apparently change in investment strategies. Keep in mind that the $158 million Black reportedly paid to Epstein was paid from 2012–2017. So Epstein made this mystery sale of his investments at the beginning of this five year period of exorbitant fees. Was this another example of the “other financial services” Black was paying Epstein for?

...
In 2011, Ben Black and several of his family members invested in Environmental Solutions Worldwide (ESWW), a diesel emissions control company where Epstein was a 6% shareholder via his Virgin Islands shell company, Financial Trust, according to SEC filings. Ben Black and Joshua Black, one of his brothers, became directors of ESWW the same year, company records show.

It’s not clear whether Ben Black was aware that Epstein was an ESWW shareholder when he took a stake in the entity through his personal trust fund – though his father, Leon, had encouraged Epstein to invest in the group a year earlier.

Two weeks after Leon Black’s suggestion, Epstein wired $1m to purchase ESWW company debt, augmenting holdings that dated back to 2005, according to his Bear Stearns account.

Epstein, through his company, sold his ESWW shares to the Black Family Partners LP, a private partnership that manages some of Leon Black’s $14bn estate, in November 2012.

Lawyers for Leon Black described this as a change in investment strategies on behalf of Epstein.
...

But Ben Black’s history with Epstein isn’t limited to Epstein’s mysterious investment in ESWW. In 2013, Epstein allegedly joined Black, his then-girlfriend, and Leon Black for a private tour of Google’s New York headquarters. That same year, both Epstein and Black attended an estate planning meeting. Epstein went on to claim to have attended Ben Black’s 30th birthday party in July 2014. Two days after the birthday party, Epstein provided advice on the purchase of an $11.5 million townhouse, and by the end of that year, Leon Black and his wife moved into a mansion one block from Epstein’s Upper East Side estate. And in 2016, Epstein tapped a Korean painter who studied under a scholarship at the New York Academy of Art awarded to him be Epstein, asking the painter to create a portrait of Ben and Joshua Black. Such a service was apparently a condition for the scholarship, which adds a fascinating new wrinkle to Epstein’s extensive patronage of young students. All these awards came with strings attached. And despite all of those contacts over multiple years, Black’s lawyers insist there was effectively no relationship with Epstein:

...
Records show that Black was scheduled to meet Epstein on several occasions after the young scion returned to the city. He was first scheduled to meet Epstein as his father’s guest in 2012. It is not known whether the meeting went ahead.

A year later, emails between Epstein’s staff and a Google administrator reflected that Epstein would be joining Ben Black and his girlfriend for a private tour of Google’s New York headquarters. Leon Black and Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s longtime Belarussian lover, were also listed as part of the six-person tour. The identity of a sixth guest was redacted in justice department filings.

...

By September 2013, Epstein obtained Ben Black’s contact information after a family estate planning meeting at which both men were present, according to a memo summarizing the meeting. “Leon said fine to set up meetings with Ben and Josh,” Leon Black’s assistant emailed Epstein’s assistant.

It’s not clear whether the two men corresponded, but Epstein told a friend that he flew to the Hamptons to celebrate Ben Black’s 30th birthday in July 2014.

...

Two days after Ben Black’s birthday party, Epstein weighed in on Black’s plan to buy an $11.5m townhouse. The transaction was carefully orchestrated to minimize tax exposure, emails show. Epstein told Leon Black’s executive assistant that if Ben had questions after the purchase, “he could call anytime”.

By the end of 2014, Black’s parents had moved into a 30-room, Italian Renaissance-style mansion one block from Epstein’s Upper East Side address.

...

In February 2016, Epstein’s assistant asked Ben Black and his brother Joshua if they would have their portraits painted as a gift to their father. The brothers agreed, and met Kyeong No, a Korean painter, for a photography session.

No told the Guardian that he had received a scholarship from Epstein to study portraiture at the New York Academy of Art. He said the scholarship stipulated that he had to paint at least one portrait for donors.
...

And then there’s the derogatory emails where Epstein refers to a “bomb of colored string that your retarded children have formed” that “has to be very carefully unwound” in reference to the Black family finances. More examples of the estate planning services Epstein was offering in exchange for his incredible fees. But was this legal estate planning or something else? Because a “bomb of colored string” that “has to be very carefully unwound” sure sounds like a euphemism for some sort of hamfisted attempted fraud or other form of tax evasion. And when we have no explanation for why Epstein was paid so much, it’s hard not to assume some sort of criminal assistance:

...
“You have a bomb of colored string that your retarded children have formed,” Epstein wrote to Leon in a detailed note about their family finances. “It has to be very carefully unwound.”
...

But it’s the romantic relationship Ben Black started with a woman, “Chik”, who was seemingly being handled by Epstein that is arguably the most intriguing detail in this story, with “Chik” showing up in more than 100 emails to Epstein. “Chik” even recounted to Epstein how Ben had kissed her the morning after one of those dates. And it would appear that “Chik” had asked Epstein for help Epstein “to get in with Leon and family” to an exclusive New Year’s part after Epstein arranged for her to travel to St Barts. How many other romantic relationships with elite figures like this did Epstein arrange? And who was “Chik” and why was she interested in meeting the Black family in the first place? It’s a chapter in this story that points towards an elite ‘match maker’ role Epstein was playing that we still know very little about despite everything that has been released so far:

...
His email contacts were among the young women gathered in St Barts for New Year’s, where one person reported that “200 fabulous and more fabulous” guests had joined the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s then-wife for a year-end bash – Leon and Debra Black among them.

A month later, Epstein received a missive from a woman in New York:

“Hello Jeffrey, Please help me what to answer to Ben Black. He just texted me “So how does your schedule look? I have a few ideas but do you have an= preference?”

Epstein and the woman, who identifies herself as “Chik” in more than 100 emails, discussed Ben’s email, and his subsequent invitation to dinner. At 9am the next morning, Epstein received an email with the subject line ‘Ben Black’:

“Hello Jeffrey Last-night I had a great time with Ben and he kissed me ! He was behaving like a real gentlemen!”

“Chik” references Ben Black and his family on at least three separate occasions in her correspondence with Epstein.

She first asked Epstein for help “to get in with Leon and family” to an exclusive New Year’s party after he arranged her tickets to St Barts.

Back in New York, “Chik” asked Epstein for help responding to Black’s text messages; and then asked whether Ben Black would be joining her appointment with his father, one month after she said they kissed.

“Is Leon B is coming tomorrow alone ? No BB? Jeffrey what time would You like to see me tomorrow?” she wrote. It is not known whether the appointment went ahead.

...

Like other women in Epstein’s network, “Chik” appeared to defer to Epstein for both personal and financial support. She asked for small favors, like polishing her résumé or purchasing a coffee machine, and larger ones, like topping up her bank account when it ran dry.

Epstein also called on “Chik” for favors, and scolded her when she didn’t follow through: “We had planned to go to paris, and i needed help on the plane,” he wrote after New Year’s. “Shameful, shameful.”

Amid their repartee, “Chik” appears to write about Ben Black with a similar blend of deference and awe: “he is so cool and I don’t understand what he wants from me,” she wrote.
...

Epstein called on Chik for ‘favors’ while topping off her bank account. That was the nature of this relationship, and presumably the nature of many of the relationships he had with the young women under his influence. Was Chik the only woman who Epstein arranged to go on a date with one of his many extremely wealthy associates? That’s extremely hard to imagine, which means we should probably expect a lot more more stories about defied subpoenas and blocked inquiries.

Is this just a marketing stunt? Well, on the one hand, as we’ll see in the following Business Insider piece on Coxon’s warning, Coxon was joined on twitter by Samuel Marks, an Anthropic research who posted about how he agreed with Coxon and that some AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction or similarly catastrophic outcomes “in the next few years.” There are no reports about Marks being fired so doesn’t seem like Coxon was forced to resign in order to talk about this. Although Marks also observed that the more senior employees tend to be more concerned, which could be seen as a kind of ass-covering step for the industry. Still, it’s not as if figures like Elon Musk and Sam Altman haven’t been issuing apocalyptic AI-related warnings for years.

But as we’re going to see in a report in The Independent from back in February 2024, the warning cries we’re hearing from AI industry insiders is a reflection of a warped debate that has been increasingly shaping the AI industry’s thinking on these kind of existential matters in recent years: The Effective Altruists vs the Effective Accelerationists. Yes, Effective Altruism — the lunatic philosophy made famous by Sam Bankman-Fried’s coterie of crypto-criminals that prioritizes the far off future, and, in turn, technological advancement, over the welfare of people alive today — has an even more lunatic cousin. Where Effective Altruism uses the threat of existential risk far off in the future as a pretext for basically handing society over to tech oligarchs to shape as they see fit, the Effective Accelerationists see Effective Altruists as hopeless ‘doomers’ whose focus on the risks of technology is, itself, the greatest risk. Instead of cautiously proceeding with technological advancement, Effective Accelerationists call for throwing off all the constraints and speeding ahead as fast as possible. They don’t argue that problems won’t arise. Instead, they argue the advances in AI and other technology will be the fix. The solution to technological problems is more advanced technology. Especially AI. We can save ourselves from out of control AI with even more advanced AI and it is an imperative that we develop this as soon as possible. That’s the debate taking place inside the industry that serves as crucial context to Coxon’s warnings. It’s basically a debate over whether or not we should be aggressively developing AI and other technology with the pretense of caution or not. The rapid develop of this technology is going to happen either way.

As we’ll see, the Effective Accelerationist movement can be traced back to the pseudonymous writings in the summer of 2022 by blogger “Beff Jezos”, who turned out be a Canadian quantum computing engineer named Guillaume Verdon who was unmasked in January of 2024. For Verdon, Effective Accelerationism isn’t just a recommended policy prescription. It’s a universal mandate. Yes, humanity’s technological advancement is part of the thermodynamic will of the universe to maximize our energy consumption. The universe wants humanity to become a space-faring species that turns stars into power plants and all of human history has been a stepping stone towards this cosmic destiny. The AI your is serving God’s will. Oh, and we need unrestrained hypercapitalism to achieve this divine mandate.

And if that sounds like a philosophy with enormous overlap with the ‘TheoBros’ fusion of technological advances, Christian theology, and unrestrained capitalism, we shouldn’t be surprised to by that billionaire TheoBros patron Marc Andreessen has been an open booster of the Effective Accelerationists in recent years. And, of course, let’s not forget about Peter Thiel’s proclaimed theology — inspired by Nazi legal theoretician Carl Schmitt — about how the contemporary Antichrist force on the planet is manifesting in the form of warnings about the existential threats of technologies like AI. The Effective Accelerationists aren’t just fellow travelers with their Effective Altruism brethen. They’re also very much aligned with the proclaimed philosophies driving the ‘TheoBros’/Thiel agenda, where an embrace of hypercapitalism and an abandonment of any meaningful technology regulations serve as the organizing political goal of society.

Notable, the Effective Altruism vs Effective Accelerationist debate appeared to erupt back in 2024 in response to the ousting of Sam Altman as the CEO of OpenAI in November of 2023 before he was reinstalled as CEO a week later. And while Altman’s ouster was being castigated by the Effective Accelerationists as a plot by Effective Altruist “doomers” who were concerned that Altman had been publicly flirting with Verdon’s Accelerationist ideas and was moving ahead with developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — the present day holy grail of AI technology — too quickly without enough caution. According to company insiders, Altman’s ouster had more to do with a consolidation of power by Altman that in the company that was insulating himself from oversight and preventing the company’s board of directors from properly supervising the non-profit company and directing it towards social good. Keep in mind that OpenAI was founded as an non-profit entity in 2015 with $1 billion in donations from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech oligarchs. In other words, its dedication to the “social good” agenda was deeply conflicted from the beginning. And, of course, in October of 2025, OpenAI restructured itself into a for-profit entity. All indications are it’s going to be ‘full speed ahead’ at OpenAI, regardless of how many ‘doomer’ predictions we might hear from the company’s employees.

That’s all part of the grim context of the latest story of an AI research quitting and warning the world about our impending self-built doom. Whether or not AI really is going to be as dangerous as these warning suggest — potentially killing us all off in a decade — remains to be seen. The dangers posed by the people running the AI industry, on the other hand, shouldn’t really be that much of an open question at this point:

Business Insider

An Anthropic researcher just quit, saying OpenAI and Anthropic are ‘gambling with our lives’

By Shubhangi Goel and Thibault Spirlet
Sep 9, 2026, 5:58 AM CT

An Anthropic researcher who previously worked at OpenAI said he quit — and warned that the AI race has become dangerously reckless.

Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from Anthropic on Tuesday, saying he had spent the past three years doing pre-training research at the two AI giants.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote on X. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Coxon was a member of OpenAI’s technical staff from 2023 until earlier this year, when he moved to Anthropic as a researcher. His research at OpenAI included work on GPT-4o.

In Tuesday’s post, Coxon said the two labs have not been transparent about their fears regarding AI.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt,” he wrote. “If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately.”

There is one difference between the two companies, he said.

“At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes,” Coxon wrote. “At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first — they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”

...

‘AI could kill all humans’

Some of Coxon’s former colleagues agreed with him.

“Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” wrote Evan Hubinger, a current Anthropic employee who leads the lab’s alignment stress testing team, in a reply on X. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”

He added: “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

Samuel Marks, an Anthropic safety researcher who said he was speaking in a personal capacity, also backed Coxon’s broader warning.

He wrote that some AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction or similarly catastrophic outcomes “in the next few years,” and said more senior employees tend to be more concerned.

Joe Benton, who managed Anthropic’s Scalable Oversight team from July 2025 until August, called Coxon’s description of the industry “broadly accurate” and said AI developers may be on track to build systems that impose an “unprecedented amount of risk on the world.”

Some highlighted the apparent contradiction of AI builders warning about the very technology they are racing to develop.

“This is like Exxon scientists in the 70s warning that global warming could cause human suffering and destroy the planet,” wrote Phil Aroneanu, the executive director at Irreplaceable, an AI policy nonprofit.

“Exxon raced forward to drill, pump, and burn historic amounts of oil and gas anyway,” he added. “With AI, there’s a lot less runway. Let’s not make the same mistake.”

Safety has taken a ‘backseat to shiny products’

Coxon is the latest among staffers walking away from frontier labs while sounding the alarm, a trend that appears peculiar to the AI boom.

...

OpenAI has lost a string of safety researchers in recent years, and Anthropic is increasingly facing the same phenomenon.

In February, Anthropic safeguards researcher Mrinank Sharma left the company, writing in a resignation letter that he wants to contribute toward something that fully aligns with his “integrity.”

“Throughout my time here, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions,” he wrote in the letter he shared publicly. “I’ve seen this within myself, within the organization, where we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most, and throughout broader society too.”

In February, OpenAI researcher Hieu Pham said that he could “finally feel the existential threat that AI is posing.” Later that month, he announced he was leaving the company, citing burnout.

In 2024, former alignment chief Jan Leike quit OpenAI after saying he reached a “breaking point” with leadership.

“OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity,” he wrote. “But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”

...

————

“An Anthropic researcher just quit, saying OpenAI and Anthropic are ‘gambling with our lives’ ” By Shubhangi Goel and Thibault Spirlet; Business Insider; 09/09/2026

““The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt,” he wrote. “If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately.””

Another AI insider warning about our impending AI-driven doom and how the AI industry is making this more and more likely. The latest in a string of warnings that have been building for years. Which brings us to the following article from February 2024, two and a half years ago, about the ideological divide that had already emerged inside the AI sector. A divide between AI extremists and their even more extreme brethren. As we’ve seen, the AI sector — and much of the contemporary tech sector in general — is dominated by lunatic “Effective Altruism” philosophy. A philosophy dominated by a quest for ‘maximal utility’ that ends up prioritizing the hypothetical billions or trillions of people who might live in the future over the people alive today. And for a growing number of AI insiders, Effective Altruism isn’t ambitious enough. In fact, these insiders, calling themselves Effective Accelerationists, view the Effective Altruists as ‘doomers’ who are holding back vital AI advances that will be necessary to save humanity. In fact, according to the Effective Accelerationists, the best way to deal with the existential threats of AI is to develop the technology more rapidly, with fewer constraints, with the expectation that the advances AIs that get developed will be more than capable of solving any of the risks they create. But it isn’t just that Effective Accelerationists see rapid, unrestrained, AI advances as the key to humanity’s future. They apparently view AI advances as part of the thermodynamic will of the universe. In other words, by building AI, they are building God will. And, of course, the best way to achieve all this is through unconstrained capitalism, according to the Accelerationists. It’s the kind of ideology that sounds an awful lot like the ‘TheoBros’, which is why we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that TheoBro patron Marc Andreessen happens to be a big Effective Accelerationist too:

The Independent

Inside the political split between AI designers that could decide our future

As AI threatens to the world upside down, a new philosophical movement advocates letting technology – and capitalism – off the leash. Io Dodds explores the heady world of Effective Accelerationism

Io Dodds
Wednesday 07 February 2024 15:25 EST

In the nightclubs and hacker houses of San Francisco, a battle is under way for the future of humanity.

In one corner are the champions of progress, charging headlong towards a utopian future of technological godhood. Against them are the forces of doom and despair, who would condemn our species to slow death by stagnation. So: whose side are you on?

That’s the recruitment pitch for a rapidly-prototyped philosophical movement that has been making waves in Silicon Valley over the past year, known as Effective Accelerationism (or E/Acc for short).

As artificial intelligence advances at breakneck pace, threatening massive economic disruption and prompting hearings in Congress about the possibility of “human extinction”, E/Acc offers a counter-intuitive message: Don’t stop. Don’t even slow down. Speed up.

Last December this tension between growth and safety exploded into corporate warfare when the non-profit foundation in control of OpenAI – the company behind ChatGPT – attempted to fire its longtime chief executive and co-founder Sam Altman.

While the board members’ exact reasons remain mysterious, an inside source tells The Independent that they feared Altman was making it impossible for them to supervise the company and direct it towards social good – which was the goal of putting a non-profit in charge to begin with.

...

“What E/Acc really means is that progress can only be cured by more progress,” Nick Davidov, an AI-focused venture capitalist, tells The Independent. “We just need to help society accelerate, and then the additional value this generates will help us find the resources to fix the bad things that happen because of the progress.”

For others, the movement has a grander, even spiritual purpose: to help our species embrace an interstellar destiny dictated by the most basic laws of physics.

“E/Acc is [about] realising that our role as builders of AI is literally in line with, or emerges directly from, the fundamental thermodynamic will of the universe,” says Rohan Pandey, an AI research engineer who recently organised an E/Acc gathering with about 65 attendees, including well-known start-up founders and investors.

Prolific venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is an unabashed fan, as is fellow investor Garry Tan, and the hundreds of people who flocked to an exclusive E/Acc-themed club night in November (with a DJ set by Grimes). Martin Shkreli, the convicted fraudster and sometime “Pharma Bro” turned medical AI entrepreneur, is also a supporter.

...

‘Acceleration or death’

When Malcolm Collins first heard about E/Acc, it sounded right up his alley. As a leader of the similarly future-focused pronatalist movement, who often extols the benefits of AI, he was eager to make new allies.

“What I found is that it’s not a movement in the way I thought it was,” Collins tells The Independent. “They don’t seem to have conferences, meetings, foundations, anything like that.”

Instead, there was only an ever-expanding cloud of memes and blog posts heavy with cyberpunk technobabble – and a loose network of people who had chosen to fly the E/Acc flag.

At the centre was a pseudonymous blogger then known only as Beff Jezos, described by the E/Acc Wki as “the primary leader of the leaderless movement,” who began sketching out the philosophy in summer 2022. Last month Forbes unmasked Jezos as a quantum computing engineer named Guillaume Verdon from Canada.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that all energy within a closed system will eventually spread out into a state of useless equilibrium. One physicist, Jeremy England, has proposed that the cosmos is inherently biased towards forms of matter that hasten this process – such as life, which relentlessly replicates itself to consume all available energy.

E/Acc extrapolates this novel but contested theory to claim that maximising our energy consumption is the supreme purpose of our existence. The universe, sometimes personified as “the thermodynamic god”, wants us to conquer the stars and turn them into vast power plants, and all human history has been a stepping stone towards that cosmic destiny.

None of which is likely to dim the ardour of both E/Accers and doomers who believe that all prior political issues will soon be rendered moot.

“The difference is, these two camps believe that we are going to create God within the next 20 years,” observes Noah, a 24-year-old machine learning scientist at a major tech company in San Francisco. “And if you believe that, then that totally shifts the way you think about something like climate change.”

————-

“Inside the political split between AI designers that could decide our future” by Io Dodds; The Independent; 02/07/2024

“As artificial intelligence advances at breakneck pace, threatening massive economic disruption and prompting hearings in Congress about the possibility of “human extinction”, E/Acc offers a counter-intuitive message: Don’t stop. Don’t even slow down. Speed up.”

Don’t stop. Don’t even slow down. Speed up. It’s the Effective Accelerationist motto. Because their Effective Altruist philosophical cousins are apparently far too squeamish about our civilization need to embrace technology. That’s philosophical range of the AI industry, apparently, with the Effective Altruists serving as techno-accelerationist ‘doves’. It’s like an anarchist criticizing libertarians for being too state-ish. But that’s the ideological landscape that has apparently been driving this emerging sector of the economy. A sector of the economy that very well might end up dominating and gobbling up much of the rest of the economy. In other words, this isn’t just about the insane philosophy driving the ‘Effective Accelerationists’. This is a story about the insane extremism motivating the people who will likely end up controlling the economy of the future. They’re only getting wealthier and more powerful and, if anything, that is a trend that is very likely to keep accelerating. And based on how relatively new Effective Altruism itself is, to find this Effective Accelerationist extremist-spinoff movement already emerging in 2022 from a quantum computing engineer named Guillaume Verdon, we should probably start wondering when the next, even more extreme, spinoff will be of the Effective Accelerationists. Although we have a clue: it will be a religion based on the conviction that technological advancement is a consequence of the fundamental thermodynamic will of the universe. As Verdon describes, we must unleash ever more powerful forms of intelligence, starting with capitalism – “the most powerful form of information technology known to man”, according to Verdon. Technocapitalists are serving God’s will. It’s something Peter Thiel has been advocating for years now. But he’s clearly got a lot of E/Acc fellow travelers:

...
“What E/Acc really means is that progress can only be cured by more progress,” Nick Davidov, an AI-focused venture capitalist, tells The Independent. “We just need to help society accelerate, and then the additional value this generates will help us find the resources to fix the bad things that happen because of the progress.”

For others, the movement has a grander, even spiritual purpose: to help our species embrace an interstellar destiny dictated by the most basic laws of physics.

“E/Acc is [about] realising that our role as builders of AI is literally in line with, or emerges directly from, the fundamental thermodynamic will of the universe,” says Rohan Pandey, an AI research engineer who recently organised an E/Acc gathering with about 65 attendees, including well-known start-up founders and investors.

...

At the centre was a pseudonymous blogger then known only as Beff Jezos, described by the E/Acc Wki as “the primary leader of the leaderless movement,” who began sketching out the philosophy in summer 2022. Last month Forbes unmasked Jezos as a quantum computing engineer named Guillaume Verdon from Canada.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that all energy within a closed system will eventually spread out into a state of useless equilibrium. One physicist, Jeremy England, has proposed that the cosmos is inherently biased towards forms of matter that hasten this process – such as life, which relentlessly replicates itself to consume all available energy.

E/Acc extrapolates this novel but contested theory to claim that maximising our energy consumption is the supreme purpose of our existence. The universe, sometimes personified as “the thermodynamic god”, wants us to conquer the stars and turn them into vast power plants, and all human history has been a stepping stone towards that cosmic destiny.

To keep going we must unleash ever more powerful forms of intelligence, starting with capitalism – “the most powerful form of information technology known to man”, according to Verdon – and then artificial general intelligence (AGI), capable of matching or surpassing humans at any task.

Trying to delay or control this process would doom humanity to live out its days on one fragile planet. “Acceleration or death are the only two options. Don’t be on the side of death,” wrote Verdon.

This mix of mysticism and hypercapitalist libertarianism proved catnip for many in the industry. In October it won the endorsement of Andreessen, who declared: “There is no material problem, whether created by nature or technology, that cannot be solved with more technology… deaths that were preventable by AI that was prevented from existing [are] a form of murder.”

Not every E/Acc supporter vibes with the theology. “For me, E/Acc is about: how do we solve dilemmas that we have at hand, here and now?” says Davidov.

Verdon, though, regards E/Acc as a “meta-religion”, and it’s that aspect that appealed to Pandey when he first encountered it last May or June. “Its ethical system... was very much in line with the utility function that I go about optimising in my life,” he says.
...

And note how it’s not just that the Effective Accelerationists insist that we don’t need to be overly concerned about the existential risks that could come with artificial intelligence. Some of them apparently are ok with humanity being wiped out and replaced by machines, arguing that would be evolution rather than extinction. And yet, while the Effective Altruists and Effective Accelerationists are taking seemingly opposite stances on the issue of existential risk, they’re really kindred ideologies preoccupied with maximizing “value”, which is a reminder that many of the Effective Accelerationists are going to be Effective Altruists who dropped the mask:

...
The us-vs-them rhetoric has alienated some AI builders, with one businessman branding E/Acc “a cult”. Others have criticised the founder’s stated comfort with the possibility of biological humans being replaced by machines (though Pandey argues that this would be evolution rather than “extinction”).

...

“I think we’re absolutely facing an extinction threat from the way we’re handling AI,” says Andrew Critch, chief executive of the AI safety research firm Encultured.AI and a former fellow at Yudkowsky’s Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). “And I think a lot of people in the E/Acc group either don’t believe that, or think that it’s okay.”

Much of this doomerism is associated with the Effective Altruist (EA) movement, on which E/Acc’s name is a pun, and the broader “rationalist” subculture. Rationalists such as Yudkowsky have long believed that work done on “aligning” AI with human values today could mean the difference between utopia and annihilation tomorrow, which drew many into the industry.

...

“It really is an ecosystem, with billions and billions of dollars, that has been incredibly successful at infiltrating Silicon Valley and spreading this worldview,” says Émile P Torres, a philosopher and former rationalist who studies the movement.

In truth, Torres argues, EA and E/Acc are kindred ideologies: both preoccupied with sci-fi prognostications, and sharing a utilitarian zeal for maximising “value”. Still, E/Accers talk about EA with real venom, and Verdon, aka Jezos, has repeatedly branded it a “death cult”.

“I view E/Acc as a response to the moral judgemental-ness of EAs,” says Dan Hendrycks, director of the Centre for AI Safety. “This is a balm for researchers who are getting paid obscene amounts of money to automate away lots of people[‘s jobs]... it makes them feel good about themselves, by telling themselves a cosmic story about how they’re a hero in it.”
...

And that openness to having humanity replaced by machines along with the strong overlap in the philosophies of the Effective Altruists and Effective Accelerationists brings us to the fact that none other than Malcolm Collins is being portray as an Effective Altruist skeptic of his Accelerationist brethren. As we’ve seen, Collins, along with is wife Simone, are two of the most prominent figureheads in the pro-natalist movement. But the Collinses aren’t encouraging everyone to have large families. No, they instead have multi-generational ambitions to ensure their specific offspring, and all their descendants, have so many children that the human population of the future will be largely comprised of their own descendants. It’s another example of how all the focus on the Altruist/Accelerationist dispute within this ideological family serves to obscure the reality that these are both camps of extremists:

...
When Malcolm Collins first heard about E/Acc, it sounded right up his alley. As a leader of the similarly future-focused pronatalist movement, who often extols the benefits of AI, he was eager to make new allies.

“What I found is that it’s not a movement in the way I thought it was,” Collins tells The Independent. “They don’t seem to have conferences, meetings, foundations, anything like that.”

Instead, there was only an ever-expanding cloud of memes and blog posts heavy with cyberpunk technobabble – and a loose network of people who had chosen to fly the E/Acc flag.
...

And when we see how prominent TheoBro tech billionaire Marc Andreessen is an unabashed Effective Accelerationist, it’s a reminder that there’s probably a lot of Effective Accelerationists among the TheoBros. Especially when we see how the Effective Accelerationist founder Guillaume Verdon would likely agree with Andreessen that the path to achieving this techno-accelerationist paradise isn’t just to lift all regulations on AI. Lifting all regulations on capitalism is also at the core of this movement. Which, again, sure sounds awfully familiar to the TheoBro ideology:

...
Prolific venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is an unabashed fan, as is fellow investor Garry Tan, and the hundreds of people who flocked to an exclusive E/Acc-themed club night in November (with a DJ set by Grimes). Martin Shkreli, the convicted fraudster and sometime “Pharma Bro” turned medical AI entrepreneur, is also a supporter.

...

On the evening of Friday 17 November, eight hours after OpenAI fired Altman, a young AI entrepreneur named Christian Lewis posted a defiant message to his followers on X (formerly known as Twitter).

“We really are at war now. This is the doomer terrorist opening salvo,” Lewis said.

Lewis was one of many E/Acc supporters who interpreted OpenAI’s failed coup as, in the words of Slate journalist Nitish Pahwa, the AI equivalent of the “shot heard ‘round the world”. “E/Acc!” tweeted Marc Andreessen. “The doomers won,” wrote the Elon Musk fan account Whole Mars Catalogue. “No one will trust doomers ever again,” said Verdon.

“Doomerism”, together with “deccelerationism”, is the name E/Accers give to a sentiment that has become inescapable in AI circles since the explosive launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022.

...

OpenAI was founded in 2015 with a noble yet paradoxical ambition: to ensure that future AGI would “benefit humanity as a whole” by being the first company to build it.

With $1bn in donations from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other Big Tech luminaries, it hoped to be “unconstrained by a need to generate financial return”. Its charter, published in 2018, declared that “our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity”.

But over the years, OpenAI has behaved more and more like a traditional tech company. In 2019, driven by the eye-watering cost of training large AI systems, it created its for-profit arm to attract more investors, and reports since then indicate that it has become ever more secretive and competitive as it seeks to maintain its edge. This year, it relaxed a longstanding ban on military uses of its technology.

This is what E/Acc’s core thinkers, borrowing a term from Nick Land, call “the technocapital machine”. It is the same engine that produced Facebook, Amazon, and Google: one that systematically pushes companies to prioritise profit above all else.

Verdon and Andreessen would say that is a good thing. They follow in the tradition of free-market thinkers such as Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek, rejecting not just EA-flavoured doomerism but all attempts to restrain AI.
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And that all brings us to the intrigue of the failed efforts to depose Sam Altman as the head of OpenAI in the fall of 2023. While this was framed as an Altruist/Accelerationist dispute, it appears the real issue was Altman centralizing power and insulating himself from oversight. And while insulating himself from oversight is the kind of development that would make presumably make ‘doomer’ predictions more likely to manifest, it’s also a pretty clear corporate power play that was bound to provoke a response by the board of directors. Which is also a reminder that the ‘Accelerationist’ credo doubles as an excuse for the already powerful after they are caught centralizing power and insulating themselves from oversight. They didn’t do it for more power and impunity. No, no, they did it because they are Accelerationist true believers who are trying to fulfill the universe’s thermodynamic will. Or something:

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Last December this tension between growth and safety exploded into corporate warfare when the non-profit foundation in control of OpenAI – the company behind ChatGPT – attempted to fire its longtime chief executive and co-founder Sam Altman.

While the board members’ exact reasons remain mysterious, an inside source tells The Independent that they feared Altman was making it impossible for them to supervise the company and direct it towards social good – which was the goal of putting a non-profit in charge to begin with.

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Altman’s position on this E/Acc v EA spectrum has long been a matter of speculation. He is a confessed “prepper” who spent last year jetting around the world warning politicians about the “existential” danger of AI. Yet he has also pushed to commercialise OpenAI’s products, while publicly flirting with Verdon’s ideas.

And so, when OpenAI board members with ties to the EA movement attempted to depose Altman, it wasn’t just E/Accers who interpreted their move as an attempt to hit the brakes on AGI.

Subsequent reporting has revealed a more complex picture. Workers had accused Altman of dishonest and sometimes “psychologically abusive” behaviour, with one former OpenAI employee publicly describing him as “deceptive” and “manipulative”.

Altman has said that he never attempted to manipulate the board, although he admitted he had sometimes been “ham-fisted” in his conflicts with them. He also said that he welcomes an independent investigation into what happened.

Speaking to The Independent, a person familiar with the board’s thinking says that existential risk played little role in their decision. Rather, their primary concern was that Altman was centralising power within the company and insulating himself from oversight – jeopardising a host of more conventional principles such as making sure OpenAI’s technology does not exacerbate injustice.

In this light, what happened at OpenAI was less a duel between two arcane philosophies than a test of whether even a company specifically set up to resist this machine could continue doing so once the industry grew big enough.
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“In this light, what happened at OpenAI was less a duel between two arcane philosophies than a test of whether even a company specifically set up to resist this machine could continue doing so once the industry grew big enough.”

OpenAI was set up explicitly to resist the profit-motive and develop AI responsibly. And then Sam Altman consolidated power, survived an attempt to oust him, and continues to lead OpenAI after it converted into a for-profit entity last year. If there really is a ‘war’ between the Effective Altruists and Effective Accelerationists, it would appear the Accelerationists have the upper hand. How long before some sort of AI-driven catastrophe hits? Time will tell, but we can’t say we weren’t warned. Which is probably the ultimate purpose of all this ‘Altruist vs Accelerationist’ kayfabe. When catastrophe inevitably befalls us, we won’t lose faith in the entire AI industry, just the craziest parts. In that sense, we’re not really watching a ‘war’ play out, but more of an insurance policy. But an insurance policy exclusively for the industry. Humanity and the rest of life on this planet will be on their own. Which is fine because almost none of us matter compared to the incredible AI-driven paradise that awaits us, as long as we keep these ‘Effective’ capitalists firmly in control of our future.

Of course, when we’re talking about ongoing investigations into 9/11, we’re no longer talking about government investigations. Those are all over, having largely ended in farce. Recall how we learned back in November 2021 that the FBI has quietly formally closed “Operation Encore” in May of 2021, which was the FBI’s last remaining investigation into the 9/11 attacks. The investigation focused on three men — Fahad Al-Thumairy, Omar Al-Bayoumi, and Musaed Al-Jarrah — suspected of provided or directed others to provide Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar with “assistance in daily activities, including procuring living quarters and assistance with assimilating into Southern California.” None of the three men were ultimately charged, and yet documents released indicated that the FBI had extremely compelling circumstantial evidence of their involvement in the plot. As we’ll see, Omar Al-Bayoumi’s role aiding the hijackers on behalf of the Saudi government is at the core of the ongoing $1 trillion lawsuit against the Saudi government on behalf of the 9/11 victims.

Also recall how we’ve previously seen how US-born al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was not just serving as a kind of spiritual advisor to the San Diego cell of the hijackers, but he may have been involved in what looked like a Saudi-government-sponsored ‘dry run’ two years before 9/11. Al-Awlaki was, of course, later killed in a US drone strike in 2011.

There’s the bizarre May 2020 story, where the FBI accidentally publicly released Musaed Al-Jarrah’s name in an FBI document that was redacted but neglected to redact Jarrah’s name. And in doing so, the accident basically admitted that the FBI knew back in 2012 that these individuals were working on behalf of the Saudi government. That partially-redacted documented admitted that FBI agents had uncovered evidence that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by a third individual (al-Jarrah) whose name was blacked out. The families of the 9/11 victims sued to get that third name (al-Jarrah’s) publicly released. Ironically, the partially-redacted FBI document was written in support of a move by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to block the release of these names under the premise that doing so would cause “significant harm to national security.” We weren’t supposed to know all that, but now we do thanks to that redaction mess up.

Then there was the March 2022 declassification of an FBI memo that confirms that, yes, Omar Al-Bayoumi was indeed receiving a monthly stipend from Saudi intelligence. According to the June 14, 2017 memo, Bayoumi was tasked with gathering information “on persons of interest in the Saudi community” and passing the intelligence to Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador at the time. A second declassified FBI memo reports that confidential source told the FBI that there was a “50/50 chance” that Bayoumi had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and “assisted two of the hijackers while residing in San Diego.” Omar Al-Bayoumi didn’t just randomly provide all this assistance to the San Diego al Qaeda cell, although that was actually his answer when initially questioned days after the 9/11 attacks.

And let’s not forget how, April of 2023, Kit Klarenberg was one of a handful of US journalists to report on the the explosive 21-page court filings by Don Canestraro — a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the investigation into the 9/11 defendants — that was filled with claims from both FBI and CIA sources all revealed a pre‑9/11 pattern of blocking attempts to identify and stop the 9/11 hijackers. Numerous agents involved with Operation Encore — the FBI’s post‑9/11 investigation into possible Saudi involvement in the attacks — were among the sources. Those efforts to block the pre‑9/11 investigation appear to have been at the direction of Alec Station, the CIA’s unit that included personnel from the FBI and other intelligence agencies and set up in 1996 to track al Qaeda. Alec Station had been tracking al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar as they met with al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia and initially prevented the CIA from informing the FBI that the two were back in the US following that meeting. In late August of 2001, an FBI agent discovered al Qaeda ties to the ‘San Diego’ cell — al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar — the same two individuals directly assisted by Bayoumi. FBI officials explicitly told this agent to “stand down” and “cease looking”, claiming an “intelligence gathering investigation” was to be opened. It was two days after that order that Alec Station finally formally informed the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were in the US. So Alec Station, but also senior FBI and CIA officials, were keeping the knowledge of the hijackers on US soil an official secret until less than three weeks before the attacks.

And as we later learned, Alec Station was allegedly interested in ‘flipping’ someone inside al Qaeda and was likely getting intelligence on the hijackers from Saudi, or maybe Jordanian, intelligence services. Richard Clark, the national security advisor during the attacks, claimed, “What I was told at the time was that they were going to try, for the first time, to get sources on the inside.” Clark also recounted an emergency July 10, 2001, meeting at the White House with then-CIA Director George Tenet and the CIA’s counterterrorism leaders Cofer Black and Rich Blee, where there was no mention of the presence of al Qaeda operatives on US. Why no mention? Clark speculates that “only conceivable reason that I’ve been able to come up with” is that they were running an illegal domestic operation to recruit al-Mihdhar or al-Hazmi and they didn’t want the FBI to get involved. Keep in mind that the meeting in Malaysia where al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were seen meeting with al Qaeda was Kuala Lumpur, home of the 88-story tall Petronas Twin Towers. So we have evidence that elements of the US government were interested in ‘flipping’ members of hijacker network at the same time they were allowed to use the US as a place to receive their flight training. It was the kind of detail that raised the grim question: Was there an initial plan to havethe twin towers of Kuala Kumpur targeted, which was only later changed to US targets? This is a good time to recall how Michael Scheuer, the head of Alec Station, is an open fascist today. And one of the people named by whistleblowers as being one of the key figures at Alec Station who blocked the sharing of information about the 9/11 hijackers was Alfreda Bikowsky, who went on to become a central person in the CIA’s black site interrogation programs. Scheuer and Bikowsky married in 2014.

And that formal, too late, warning by Alec Station about the presence of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar in the US less than three weeks before the 9/11 attacks brings us to another investigative mystery: Omar al-Bayoumi isn’t the only suspected Saudi agent who appears to have played a direct support role for the hijackers and suddenly left the US shortly before the attacks. Recall all of the questions about the sudden disappearance of Abdulazzi al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud, who left their Sarasota home two weeks before the 9/11 attacks in what appears to have been such a hurry that they left dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms. Evidence indicates the family had been visited by some of the hijackers including lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. We also learned that FBI agents in New York had been exploring the possible prosecution of an unnamed suspect for providing material support to the hijackers. The suspect’s name was redacted but declassified information indicated this was in relation to the San Diego cell of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. And as we learned, Nawaf al-Hazmi spent time in South Florida in addition to San Diego

And, of course, there’s the lingering questions about the ‘fifth plane’, United 23, with substantial circumstantial evidence indicating the plane was intended as a hijacking target on 9/11, with four young Arab men in first-class who seemed extremely anxious to just take off as the airspace across the US was getting shut down. After the grounding, the cabin crew reportedly barricaded themselves inside the cabin and reported to ground crews their concerns about the four men, who quickly fled the airport following the return of the plane to the terminal. Box cutters and al Qaeda documents were apparently found in their baggage. All of their was described to the FBI and yet none of their made it into the 9/11 Commission report. In addition, two uniformed people were seen running into the plane cabin about 20 minutes after the plane was brought back to the terminal and evacuated, and authorities found the hatch leading to the belly of the plane had been left open. Adding to the mystery is that box cutters were later found in the first-class seat pockets of the plane that was adjacent to United 23, leading to speculation by United 23’s pilot that someone placed the box cutters in the wrong plane, adding to the mystery of the two uniformed employees. And that plane next to United 23 wasn’t even the only plane to have been found with box cutters hidden in the first class seat pockets during the immediate post‑9/11 investigations.

And that’s just some of the incredible updates we’ve received in recent years about the state of the 9/11 investigations. Investigation that have official closed when it comes to government agencies but are still chugging along in the courts, with more and more stunning revelations year after year. And that brings us to a new set of revelations from someone intimately familiar with one chapter of the pre‑9/11 story: Holly Ratchford, the apartment manager at the San Diego complex where Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar stayed for a while. She’s only now publicly sharing her story. As Ratchford makes clear, it was largely due to the assistance of Omar al-Bayoumi that the pair were able to get the apartment in the first place. “They didn’t meet the income criteria at all, or the bank account. They had none of that,” she told reporters, adding that it was initially a quick no to Bayoumi’s request. So Baymoumi took them to the bank the next day and helped them open an account. He then co-signed their lease, becoming the legal guarantor for their apartment. And when they fell behind on rent, Bayoumi paid it for them. He was also their emergency contact and his Parkwood home was listed as their current address.

All of this stands in stark contrast to the narrative Bayoumi told investigators, who claimed to have just a fleeting relationship with the pair. Bayoumi ended up leaving the US for the UK shortly before 9/11, but investigators soon identified him as a suspect. After being arrested on September 21, 2001, in Birmingham, Bayoumi was held by the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terror branch and faced questions for seven days. Initially denying he knew any of the hijackers, he later admitted to helping “Nawaf” and “Khalid”, but insisted that he merely met them randomly at a restaurant in LA, after overhearing them speaking in Arabic. He told them that if they were even in San Diego he could help them, and the next day they showed up at his local mosque in San Diego saying they needed a place to live. He then helped them find the apartment and then largely avoided them. That was the narrative he gave. Amazingly, the US DOJ decided not to extradite Bayoumi and he was released by the UK police after seven days.

And yet the FBI continued investigating Bayoumi, and discovered that two companies linked to the Saudi Ministry of Defense were providing Bayoumi with his $90,000 pay, and also that he never went to work and accrued “outrageous” expenses. And documents shared with the FBI by the Met police revealed letters to a Saudi government-linked charity with direct ties to al-Qaeda, materials which they assessed could “demonstrate Omar al-Bayoumi’s anti-American sentiments and beliefs”, and writings by Bayoumi himself which they determined “can be interpreted as jihadist”. According to Richard Lambert, the FBI agent who led the San Diego FBI office investigation after 9/11, “It was a general consensus of people in the San Diego Muslim community that Bayoumi was an operative of the Saudi intelligence service,” adding that, “as we began to identify the hijackers’ associates, what became clear is that there was a network headed up by Omar al-Bayoumi.” Lambert now works as a consultant for the families in the $1 trillion lawsuit. Additional support Bayoumi provided the hijackers included help obtaining California driver’s licenses, applying to flight schools, receiving Middle Eastern wire transfers, and even arranging dental treatment. This was all known at the time Bayoumi was held by the UK police. And yet, he was just let go with no extradition or eventual prosecution. Bayoumi left the UK for Saudi Arabia in August of 2002. Two years later, the 9/11 Commission report was released and absolved Bayoumi of any culpability, concluding he was “obliging and gregarious” and “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists”. When asked about why a prosecution of Bayoumi was never pursued, the DOJ told the BBC it was unable to comment on matters and decisions from 25 years ago, involving staff who no longer worked there. The BBC also asked the FBI why the agency had not known the 9/11 Commission the information it had on Bayoumi but the agency declined to comment.

But, despite the near complete capitulation by US investigator, the civil trial is at least proceeding for now. In fact, in August of 2025, Judge George B Daniels found that there was “a reasonable inference that all the apartment-related assistance he [Bayoumi] provided for the hijackers was not just acts of a good Samaritan, but rather that he was following” instructions from the Saudi government.” The judge ruled the $1 trillion lawsuit could move forward, with oral arguments scheduled to start in October. That’s the pathetic, arguably treasonous, state of affairs in the now-25-year-old 9/11 investigation. The evidence of government roles in the 9/11 plot continues to build, years after the official investigations ended in farcical ‘we had no idea’ conclusions. But it’s not just a role by the government of Saudi in setting up and facilitating the plot through agents like Omar al-Bayoumi. There’s also the role of US agencies in both blocking the pre‑9/11 investigations into the hijacker networks but also covering all of this up after the fact.

But let’s also keep in mind one of the other gross investigative failures that is potentially playing a role in how all of this pans out: the still-unexplained role played by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel in the 22016 race on behalf of the Trump campaign. As we’ve seen, there was the secret Trump Tower delegation in August of 2016 on behalf of the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE offering the assistance of a social media manipulation campaign that had been formulated by Israeli private intelligence firm PsyGroup. And then there’s the remarkable story about the role a close associated to Benjamin Netanyahu, Isaac Molho, played in serving as the alleged middle-man between ‘Guccifer 2.0’ and Roger Stone in the dissemination of the stolen DNC emails. The sad reality is that whatever sordid US government arrangement with the government of Saudi Arabia and others in the region that may have played a role in the execution of 9/11 is likely just one of a number of unacknowledged mega-scandals involving the US and Saudi governments. What kind of role might these other mega-scandals play in how this ongoing legal battle plays out? If the Saudi government, which is arguing that is has sovereign immunity in the case, does ultimately lose and faces a $1 trillion judgement, what are the odds the Trump administration wouldn’t somehow meddle on behalf of his Saudi friends?

That’s all part of the depressing context of this round of 9/11 revelations. The more we learn, the more apparent it becomes that a giant cover up started before 9/11 even happened and continues to this day. And the closest we’re going to get to any form of justice might be a lawsuit that had been strung along for a quarter of a century, no matter how much damning information we learn along the way:

BBC

Landlady to 9/11 hijackers reveals their links to alleged Saudi spy

Jane McMullen
BBC Panorama and BBC Radio 4
08/28/2026

Holly Ratchford still cannot believe that the man who moved into the residential complex she once managed would go on to be accused of involvement in the darkest day in recent US history.

“It’s almost impossible for me to wrap my head around who he said he was, and who he really is. I still struggle with that,” she tells the BBC.

The man, Omar al-Bayoumi — a Saudi in his early 40s — moved to the complex in San Diego, California, with his family in September 1999.

The new resident at number 152 Parkwood Apartments quickly became a regular at Ratchford’s pool parties. “He was always so bubbly and smiling,” she recalls, “and just very, very friendly.”

A few months later, Bayoumi would introduce Ratchford to two apparently unassuming, “polite” men, who would also become her neighbours.

The pair would become infamous for hijacking American Airlines flight 77, and crashing it into the Pentagon, in the 9/11 attacks.

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“Whenever I had parties he would come and be a part of the activities,” she recalls, adding that his family would invite her in for food.

“I enjoyed going over.”

But Bayoumi, the one-time resident of 152 Parkwood, is now at the centre of the $1 trillion (£733bn) lawsuit brought against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by several thousand families of victims and as well as survivors of 9/11.

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Bayoumi is alleged to have facilitated the 9/11 plot through the support he provided for the first two hijackers to arrive in the US — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — who lived at Parkwood for several months prior to the attacks.

The federal judge in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit in New York found a year ago that the evidence created “a reasonable inference” that Bayoumi and a Saudi diplomat based in the US had been “co-ordinating with the Saudi government when providing assistance to the hijackers”.

The judge’s ruling has allowed the families’ case to move forward. Saudi Arabia is appealing it and, together with Bayoumi, has always denied the allegations.

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Ratchford — who saw him interacting with the hijackers and witnessed him providing a crucial act of support for them — has given a sealed declaration to the New York court.

But she has never spoken publicly about what she saw.

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I tracked her down to the high desert in the western US — rattlesnake country. She told me she avoided the news, and definitely did not speak to journalists. But, to my surprise, she agreed to talk.

Her interview with me casts doubt on the version of events Bayoumi has told police, the FBI and the New York court, and features in the BBC Radio 4 podcast, Intrigue: A 9/11 Story, and an upcoming BBC Panorama, 9/11: The Saudi Connection.

In early 1999, Ratchford landed on her feet. Life before then had been untethered — she had moved around, been married, pregnant and divorced before she was 21. But now, aged 27, she had a job she loved and a home.

As the new property manager of Parkwood Apartments, a squat complex of 175 low-rise apartments and townhouses in the San Diego suburbs, she says she excelled. Properties were never empty for long. But it was not the paperwork, nor the healthy pay check, that made the job a dream, it was the people.

Ratchford not only worked at Parkwood, she lived there too. Her clients were also her neighbours. And many were more than that — she says they became her friends.

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Omar al-Bayoumi moved into Parkwood claiming to be a mature student.

“I knew he was going to school. I’m not sure, other than that, what he did,” Ratchford says.

More than two decades later, declassified FBI documents and court filings would reveal that Bayoumi’s studies had, in effect, come to a halt in 1998. He was spending much more time organising religious activities in the Muslim community, which he often videotaped.

His constant filming, and his inquiring questions, aroused suspicions.

“It was a general consensus of people in the San Diego Muslim community that Bayoumi was an operative of the Saudi intelligence service,” Richard Lambert, who led the city’s FBI office investigation after 9/11, tells me.

But it was not Ratchford’s business to pry. What mattered to her was whether he could pay the rent. And he could.

The FBI would later discover he was being paid about $90,000 (£55,600 at the time) a year.

Bayoumi presented himself as an ordinary family man.

The Bayoumi who Ratchford saw was captured on his never-before-broadcast home movies — throwing a ball around with his family by the Parkwood pool, laughing when it drifted into the water.

Another video reveals him on an excursion to Las Vegas with his family. Wearing a floral shirt, he points out the rollercoaster by the New York, New York hotel casino.

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But that version of Bayoumi is at odds with the man who emerges from other videos.

In summer 1999, Bayoumi filmed the United States Capitol in Washington DC from different angles, noting a “plan”, and turning the camera on himself to deliver a reporter-style commentary.

The 9/11 families’ lawyers allege he was surveilling the building as a potential target for the attacks. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia maintains it is a tourist video.

In his August 2025 judgement, the New York judge found that “all the Court can conclude” from the video is that Bayoumi “visited Washington DC and that he filmed the city”.

On 3 February 2000, Bayoumi brought two young men into Ratchford’s San Diego rental office. In an obvious hurry, she says, he perched on the filing cabinet as he told her that the two men were from his mosque and were staying with him while they looked for a place to rent.

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The two men spoke no English, but Bayoumi took charge. Ratchford says he asked her what the two men would need to show in order to qualify for a Parkwood apartment.

“They didn’t meet the income criteria at all, or the bank account. They had none of that,” she tells me.

Ratchford had rules. It was a quick no.

But the two men did have several thousand dollars in cash. Bank records show that, the following day, Bayoumi took them to the nearest bank and helped them open an account.

Back at Ratchford’s office on the third day, he figured a way around the problematic income criterion. He would co-sign their lease — becoming the legal guarantor for their apartment.

The rental agreement shows Bayoumi’s multiple signatures. He was their guarantor, their friend, their emergency contact, and his Parkwood home was listed as their current address.

Without further delay, the two men moved into number 150, a one-bed apartment just a few doors down from Bayoumi’s poolside townhouse.

The two men Bayoumi was assuming legal responsibility for — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — would become 9/11 hijackers.

Holly saw the pair repeatedly in the following few months.

“I would have cookies and tea with them. It wasn’t like they were just someone that came into the office and rented from us,” she says.

Hazmi and Mihdhar stayed in their apartment until the end of May that year, and then moved out. Ratchford thought no more about it.

Sixteen months later, as America reeled in shock and grief in the days following the 9/11 attacks, she says a woman called asking her for a rental reference for them. Without thinking, she rattled off their details.

But the woman was not a property agent — she was a reporter.

Her next question shook Ratchford: “Did you know that they were two of the terrorists that flew their plane into the Pentagon?”

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Then, the FBI came knocking.

On 14 September 2001, two special agents interviewed Ratchford in her Parkwood office.

She gave them Bayoumi’s guarantor form, triggering an investigation into the man they would come to see as the main facilitator of the two hijackers’ lives in San Diego.

Richard Lambert, now retired from the FBI and working as a consultant to the 9/11 families’ lawsuit, says “as we began to identify the hijackers’ associates, what became clear is that there was a network headed up by Omar al-Bayoumi”.

The FBI found that Bayoumi’s contacts had helped Hazmi and Mihdhar obtain California driver’s licences, apply to flight schools, receive Middle Eastern wire transfers, and even arrange dental treatment.

The FBI agents wanted to interview Bayoumi. They traced him more than 5,000 miles (8,000km) to the UK, to Birmingham, where he had moved just before 9/11.

On 21 September 2001, he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terror branch and detectives began questioning him.

Seeming unflustered, and at times indignant, Bayoumi initially denied knowing any of the hijackers.

He said he had often helped people find accommodation but, when detectives pressed him, said he could not remember the names of anyone for whom he had guaranteed an apartment.

A day later, he said he remembered helping two individuals, “Nawaf” and “Khalid” — the first names of Hazmi and Mihdhar.

He admitted they were the only two people to whom he had given this level of support.

Bayoumi claimed he had met the pair in Los Angeles, after briefly overhearing them speaking Arabic in a restaurant. He said he had told them that if they ever went to San Diego, he could help them.

The next day, he told the British detectives, the men had shown up at his local mosque in San Diego saying they needed a place to live. He had then driven them back to Parkwood to see Ratchford about finding them an apartment.

After Hazmi and Mihdhar had moved in, Bayoumi said he had avoided them. He said he had left town, and that when he returned, he found they had moved on.

In his account, Bayoumi’s association with the future hijackers was fleeting. But his story does not match Ratchford’s version of events.

“I know that’s what he said, and I know that’s bulls hit,” she says.

Before he brought the hijackers to her office, Ratchford says Bayoumi had asked her several times about finding an apartment for two people.

“I would tell him what would be available and he’d be like, ‘oh no, no, I want that one’,” she says. “He wanted something near him, and he was hoping for the least expensive place.”

She also contradicts Bayoumi’s claim that he hardly saw the hijackers after he secured their apartment, explaining that she had seen them together over the weeks that followed. On one occasion, the three of them had come to her office for tea and cookies.

“It’s not like he just found them an apartment and never talked to them again,” she says, adding that the three men “were definitely friendly”.

Ratchford also told the FBI that when the hijackers had fallen behind with paying their rent, Bayoumi had paid it.

The Met Police held Bayoumi for seven days — the maximum at the time. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to extradite him to face charges.

On 28 September 2001, Bayoumi was released.

Ratchford is still stunned.

...

The FBI continued to build a case against him, however.

San Diego agents discovered that two companies linked to the Saudi Ministry of Defence were providing Bayoumi with his $90,000 pay, but that he never went to work and accrued “outrageous” expenses.

His pay more than doubled just after the two hijackers’ arrival in San Diego, agents found, and fell again after they left the US west coast.

Meanwhile, agents from the New York FBI office combed through a trove of documents received from the Met Police, following the search of Bayoumi’s properties in Birmingham, the BBC has learned.

The FBI uncovered letters to a Saudi government-linked charity with direct ties to al-Qaeda, materials which they assessed could “demonstrate Omar al-Bayoumi’s anti-American sentiments and beliefs”, and writings by Bayoumi himself which they determined “can be interpreted as jihadist”.

But none of this led to an indictment or prosecution.

The DOJ told the BBC it was unable to comment on matters and decisions from 25 years ago, involving staff who no longer worked there.

Bayoumi left the UK for Saudi Arabia in August 2002.

Two years later, he was, in effect, cleared when the US’s 9/11 Commission — the independent inquiry into the attacks — concluded he was “obliging and gregarious” and “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists”. The FBI had not shown the Commission all the evidence it had gathered — and declined to comment when the BBC asked about this.

Meanwhile, the 9/11 families had started their attempts to pursue him through the courts, adding him as a defendant to their $1tn suit against various individuals, companies and governments for allegedly supporting al-Qaeda.

For years, the families campaigned for the FBI’s investigation to be declassified. The wait was agonisingly slow, but since 2018 tens of thousands of pages of documents have been released to the New York court and via a presidential order signed by Joe Biden — including the FBI’s interviews with Holly Ratchford.

In August last year, having considered the entire body of evidence, the judge in the 9/11 families’ legal case said the evidence did not support the conclusion that Bayoumi had been “just an innocent participant”.

Judge George B Daniels also noted later in his judgement that there was “a reasonable inference that all the apartment-related assistance he [Bayoumi] provided for the hijackers was not just acts of a good Samaritan, but rather that he was following” instructions from the Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia denies any involvement in 9/11 and has consistently argued that Omar al-Bayoumi was not a Saudi agent and did not have any involvement or foreknowledge of the attacks. It maintains that, under US law, it has sovereign immunity — official exemption of a ruler or state from certain types of civil suit and criminal prosecution — and that the case should be struck out.

The case is now with the US Court of Appeal, which will hear oral arguments in October.

...

———–

“Landlady to 9/11 hijackers reveals their links to alleged Saudi spy” by Jane McMullen; BBC; 08/28/2026

“But Bayoumi, the one-time resident of 152 Parkwood, is now at the centre of the $1 trillion (£733bn) lawsuit brought against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by several thousand families of victims and as well as survivors of 9/11.”

Questions around Omar al-Bayoumi have been lingering over the 9/11 investigation from the very beginning. And here we are, 25 years later, with al-Bayoumi at the center of a $1 trillion lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on behalf of several thousand 9/11 victims and survivors. And the pace of this trial has been agonizingly slow, for decades now, progress is happening, including a ruling last year by a federal just that the evidence created “a reasonable inference” that Bayoumi and a Saudi diplomat based in the US had been “co-ordinating with the Saudi government when providing assistance to the hijackers”. If Omar al-Bayoumi was indeed acting on instructions from the Saudi government, that $1 trillion lawsuit is going to have a lot more momentum. At least that’s assuming the Saudi government doesn’t ultimately prevail in its assertion that it has sovereign immunity over the entire matter. And with oral arguments slated to start in October, these are the kinds of rulings that will have to come sooner or later. With all of the diplomatic turmoil and backroom dealing that comes with it. Will the Trump administration allow such a case to move forward? And what kind of inducements are the Saudis offering Trump to just make it all ‘go away’? And what about all of the still-unanswered questions about the Saudi crown prince’s direct involvement in the 2016 US elections on behalf of Trump? And let’s not forget about all the questions implicit in this story about what kind of secret arrangements the US government may have had with the Saudi government in the lead up to 9/11. How are all of those still wildly under-explored topics potentially impacting not just the outcome of this legal case but much of US Middle Eastern foreign policy to this day? That’s all part of the wildly depressing context of this story. The case hasn’t just been progressing at an agonizingly slow pace. We also have every reason to suspect that agonizingly slow pace is intertwined with the deep corruption that has long defined the US’s relationship with the Saudi monarchy:

...
Bayoumi is alleged to have facilitated the 9/11 plot through the support he provided for the first two hijackers to arrive in the US — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — who lived at Parkwood for several months prior to the attacks.

The federal judge in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit in New York found a year ago that the evidence created “a reasonable inference” that Bayoumi and a Saudi diplomat based in the US had been “co-ordinating with the Saudi government when providing assistance to the hijackers”.

The judge’s ruling has allowed the families’ case to move forward. Saudi Arabia is appealing it and, together with Bayoumi, has always denied the allegations.

...

For years, the families campaigned for the FBI’s investigation to be declassified. The wait was agonisingly slow, but since 2018 tens of thousands of pages of documents have been released to the New York court and via a presidential order signed by Joe Biden — including the FBI’s interviews with Holly Ratchford.

In August last year, having considered the entire body of evidence, the judge in the 9/11 families’ legal case said the evidence did not support the conclusion that Bayoumi had been “just an innocent participant”.

Judge George B Daniels also noted later in his judgement that there was “a reasonable inference that all the apartment-related assistance he [Bayoumi] provided for the hijackers was not just acts of a good Samaritan, but rather that he was following” instructions from the Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia denies any involvement in 9/11 and has consistently argued that Omar al-Bayoumi was not a Saudi agent and did not have any involvement or foreknowledge of the attacks. It maintains that, under US law, it has sovereign immunity — official exemption of a ruler or state from certain types of civil suit and criminal prosecution — and that the case should be struck out.

The case is now with the US Court of Appeal, which will hear oral arguments in October.
...

And with that ongoing legal case slowly grinding through the US courts, we are only now getting an interview of Holly Ratchford, the apartment manager whose interactions with Bayoumi stand in stark contrast to the version of events Bayoumi told investigators. So with Bayoumi at the center of that trial, Ratchford’s recollections could now be crucial evidence in a $1 trillion lawsuit:

...
The man, Omar al-Bayoumi — a Saudi in his early 40s — moved to the complex in San Diego, California, with his family in September 1999.

The new resident at number 152 Parkwood Apartments quickly became a regular at Ratchford’s pool parties. “He was always so bubbly and smiling,” she recalls, “and just very, very friendly.”

A few months later, Bayoumi would introduce Ratchford to two apparently unassuming, “polite” men, who would also become her neighbours.

The pair would become infamous for hijacking American Airlines flight 77, and crashing it into the Pentagon, in the 9/11 attacks.

...

“Whenever I had parties he would come and be a part of the activities,” she recalls, adding that his family would invite her in for food.

“I enjoyed going over.”

...

Ratchford — who saw him interacting with the hijackers and witnessed him providing a crucial act of support for them — has given a sealed declaration to the New York court.

But she has never spoken publicly about what she saw.

...

I tracked her down to the high desert in the western US — rattlesnake country. She told me she avoided the news, and definitely did not speak to journalists. But, to my surprise, she agreed to talk.

Her interview with me casts doubt on the version of events Bayoumi has told police, the FBI and the New York court, and features in the BBC Radio 4 podcast, Intrigue: A 9/11 Story, and an upcoming BBC Panorama, 9/11: The Saudi Connection.

...

Ratchford — who saw him interacting with the hijackers and witnessed him providing a crucial act of support for them — has given a sealed declaration to the New York court.

But she has never spoken publicly about what she saw.
...

And as we can see, Bayoumi didn’t just help Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar find an apartment. He helped them open bank accounts, served as the legal guarantor for their apartment, and paid their rent when they fell behind, a far more involved role than what Bayoumi told investigators:

...
On 3 February 2000, Bayoumi brought two young men into Ratchford’s San Diego rental office. In an obvious hurry, she says, he perched on the filing cabinet as he told her that the two men were from his mosque and were staying with him while they looked for a place to rent.

...

The two men spoke no English, but Bayoumi took charge. Ratchford says he asked her what the two men would need to show in order to qualify for a Parkwood apartment.

“They didn’t meet the income criteria at all, or the bank account. They had none of that,” she tells me.

Ratchford had rules. It was a quick no.

But the two men did have several thousand dollars in cash. Bank records show that, the following day, Bayoumi took them to the nearest bank and helped them open an account.

Back at Ratchford’s office on the third day, he figured a way around the problematic income criterion. He would co-sign their lease — becoming the legal guarantor for their apartment.

The rental agreement shows Bayoumi’s multiple signatures. He was their guarantor, their friend, their emergency contact, and his Parkwood home was listed as their current address.

Without further delay, the two men moved into number 150, a one-bed apartment just a few doors down from Bayoumi’s poolside townhouse.

The two men Bayoumi was assuming legal responsibility for — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — would become 9/11 hijackers.

Holly saw the pair repeatedly in the following few months.

“I would have cookies and tea with them. It wasn’t like they were just someone that came into the office and rented from us,” she says.

...

In his account, Bayoumi’s association with the future hijackers was fleeting. But his story does not match Ratchford’s version of events.

“I know that’s what he said, and I know that’s bulls hit,” she says.

Before he brought the hijackers to her office, Ratchford says Bayoumi had asked her several times about finding an apartment for two people.

“I would tell him what would be available and he’d be like, ‘oh no, no, I want that one’,” she says. “He wanted something near him, and he was hoping for the least expensive place.”

She also contradicts Bayoumi’s claim that he hardly saw the hijackers after he secured their apartment, explaining that she had seen them together over the weeks that followed. On one occasion, the three of them had come to her office for tea and cookies.

“It’s not like he just found them an apartment and never talked to them again,” she says, adding that the three men “were definitely friendly”.

Ratchford also told the FBI that when the hijackers had fallen behind with paying their rent, Bayoumi had paid it.
...

But perhaps the most remarkable part of this whole story is the fact that Bayoumi moved to the UK shortly before 9/11, and was arrested there just 10 days after the attacks and kept for questions by the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terror branch. But he was never extradited back to the US despite the FBI immediately discovering Bayoumi was instrumental to the hijackers’ support network. Instead, the US DOJ decided not to extradite him to face charges and he was released a week after his arrest:

...
Omar al-Bayoumi moved into Parkwood claiming to be a mature student.

“I knew he was going to school. I’m not sure, other than that, what he did,” Ratchford says.

More than two decades later, declassified FBI documents and court filings would reveal that Bayoumi’s studies had, in effect, come to a halt in 1998. He was spending much more time organising religious activities in the Muslim community, which he often videotaped.

His constant filming, and his inquiring questions, aroused suspicions.

“It was a general consensus of people in the San Diego Muslim community that Bayoumi was an operative of the Saudi intelligence service,” Richard Lambert, who led the city’s FBI office investigation after 9/11, tells me.

...

Richard Lambert, now retired from the FBI and working as a consultant to the 9/11 families’ lawsuit, says “as we began to identify the hijackers’ associates, what became clear is that there was a network headed up by Omar al-Bayoumi”.

The FBI found that Bayoumi’s contacts had helped Hazmi and Mihdhar obtain California driver’s licences, apply to flight schools, receive Middle Eastern wire transfers, and even arrange dental treatment.

The FBI agents wanted to interview Bayoumi. They traced him more than 5,000 miles (8,000km) to the UK, to Birmingham, where he had moved just before 9/11.

On 21 September 2001, he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terror branch and detectives began questioning him.

Seeming unflustered, and at times indignant, Bayoumi initially denied knowing any of the hijackers.

He said he had often helped people find accommodation but, when detectives pressed him, said he could not remember the names of anyone for whom he had guaranteed an apartment.

A day later, he said he remembered helping two individuals, “Nawaf” and “Khalid” — the first names of Hazmi and Mihdhar.

He admitted they were the only two people to whom he had given this level of support.

Bayoumi claimed he had met the pair in Los Angeles, after briefly overhearing them speaking Arabic in a restaurant. He said he had told them that if they ever went to San Diego, he could help them.

The next day, he told the British detectives, the men had shown up at his local mosque in San Diego saying they needed a place to live. He had then driven them back to Parkwood to see Ratchford about finding them an apartment.

After Hazmi and Mihdhar had moved in, Bayoumi said he had avoided them. He said he had left town, and that when he returned, he found they had moved on...

...

The Met Police held Bayoumi for seven days — the maximum at the time. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to extradite him to face charges.

On 28 September 2001, Bayoumi was released.

Ratchford is still stunned.
...

And yet, despite the DOJ deciding against extradited Bayoumi, the FBI continued building a case against him, including $90,000 in payments from two companies linked to the Saudi Ministry of Defense. The FBI even uncovered letters to a Saudi government-linked charity with direct ties to al-Qaeda, materials which they assessed could “demonstrate Omar al-Bayoumi’s anti-American sentiments and beliefs”, and writings by Bayoumi himself which they determined “can be interpreted as jihadist”, and yet no indictment of prosecution followed. What is the explanation? There is none. The DOJ asserts that it is unable to comment on matters and decisions from 25 years ago. Worse, it turns out the FBI didn’t even show all of this evidence to the 9/11 Commission. Again, no explanation is provided:

...
The FBI continued to build a case against him, however.

San Diego agents discovered that two companies linked to the Saudi Ministry of Defence were providing Bayoumi with his $90,000 pay, but that he never went to work and accrued “outrageous” expenses.

His pay more than doubled just after the two hijackers’ arrival in San Diego, agents found, and fell again after they left the US west coast.

Meanwhile, agents from the New York FBI office combed through a trove of documents received from the Met Police, following the search of Bayoumi’s properties in Birmingham, the BBC has learned.

The FBI uncovered letters to a Saudi government-linked charity with direct ties to al-Qaeda, materials which they assessed could “demonstrate Omar al-Bayoumi’s anti-American sentiments and beliefs”, and writings by Bayoumi himself which they determined “can be interpreted as jihadist”.

But none of this led to an indictment or prosecution.

The DOJ told the BBC it was unable to comment on matters and decisions from 25 years ago, involving staff who no longer worked there.

Bayoumi left the UK for Saudi Arabia in August 2002.

Two years later, he was, in effect, cleared when the US’s 9/11 Commission — the independent inquiry into the attacks — concluded he was “obliging and gregarious” and “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists”. The FBI had not shown the Commission all the evidence it had gathered — and declined to comment when the BBC asked about this.
...

No comment. That’s the official US government response. And presumably will be the response no matter how much more damning information is revealed. It’s not like there’s a viable mea culpa option available at this point. More deafening silence is the only answer we’re going to get.

And as we also saw, it was a shared interest in cryptocurrencies and setting up alternative financial systems that apparently sparked Epstein’s multi-year quest, starting in 2009, to meet and collaborate with Peter Thiel, culminating in their 2014 meeting and the friendship and alliance that soon blossomed. In a November 2016 email exchange between Epstein’s longtime accountant, Richard Kahn, and Brock Pierce — a crypto investor who once called Bannon “my right-hand man for, like, seven years” — Kahn tells Pierce that Bannon should “talk privately with Jeffrey,” since Epstein “knows more about international finance than anyone on Trump’s team, by a long way,” with Pierce responding that he would “work on getting us all together.” Emails also show Epstein instructed Kahn to follow up by suggesting that Thiel be included. “Please communicate with Jeffrey, who is also close to Peter Thiel,” Kahn then write to Pierce. “Jeffrey thinks Peter is really thoughtful.”. As we’ll see, one of the things Epstein was offering Bannon was a cryptocurrency-based political funding architecture to finance the political movements they were envisioning.

And in a twist that is morally gross but not especially shocking, one of the promises Bannon repeatedly made to Epstein was that the political influence network they were constructing would stave off the ‘#MeToo’ movement for a decade or more. In fact, as Bannon writes to Epstein at one point, “there is a crazed jihad against u – ive never seen anything like it – and I’ve seen a lot.” Yes, Epstein was facing a ‘crazed jihad’ unlike anything Bannon had seen before. The private comments to Epstein are quite a contrast to Bannon’s claims during the Turning Point US conference in July of 2025, where Bannon declared Epstein to be a ‘deep state’ plot against Trump and the MAGA movement. “In that arc of looking at how the deep state has tried to stop Trump and the MAGA movement, you can easily fit in,” Bannon told the crowd.

During one exchange where Epstein and Bannon are discussing the details of crypto-based campaign financing, Epstein makes a remarkable suggestion. “should it have a christian component? tithe? if you form a church you may be able to tell mueller you have a confession privelege. :)” That obviously never happened, but try not to be shocked if we discover one day that crucial evidence for a political network has its communications protected from legal discovery through clergy-penitent privilege. This is a good time to recall how Bannon happens to be a member of the Council for National Policy (CNP), the powerful organ for Christian Nationalist-theme fascist politics in the US over the last 45 years. If any political network can arrange for the creation of a church-like entity for funneling political donations, that would be CNP.

Epstein and Bannon discuss at time who else they would like to bring into their crypo-political finance project, including Jeffrey Wernick and Jide Zeitlin. Wernick’s name was brought up in an email thread in February 2018 when Epstein asks Bannon if he knows of a ‘super smart FEC person’ they can reach out to. Bannon cites Wernick as the person he has in mind, with a rather amusing considering the ethics conundrum Wernick helped create for Trump White House back in 2020. Recall how, Wernick, an investor in the far right Parler social media platform, was involved with discussions to recruit President Trump to join platform. The negotiations were proceeding until the White House Counsel’s office found out about the negotiations and put a stop to it, arguing that it would constitute a violation of ethics. It was Epstein who brings up Jide Zeitlin, a former Goldman Sachs partner with access to world leaders. In March of 2018, Epstein sends Bannon an email about a dinner gathering they are organizing, with Epstein announced that attendees will include Gerald Baker, then editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, along with Miroslav Lajčák, a Slovakian minister who was then the sitting President of the United Nations General Assembly, along with Bannon. In May of 2018, Epstein sends an email about relaying how Zeitlin had failed in his plans to meet up with Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the chairman of Dubai World / DP World, offering the excuse that he was stuck at the White House during the narrow window when the Sultan would be available, while also mentioning how he was able to speak with then-Vice President Mike Pence. In July of 2018, Epstein is giving Bannon tips on how to expand his influence in Europe with lessons like, “If you are going to play here, you’ll have to spend time, Europe by remote doesn’t work. Lots and lots of face time and hand holding,”, following that up with another email hours later adding, “There are many leaders of countries we can organise for you to have one-on-ones. however… you will have to come, stay 8–10 days… The fear is that you gin up their hopes and emotions and then abandon them. I think you want to be an insider, not an outsider flying in and out.” And in mid-2019, not long before his arrest, Epstein sends a “list for bannon steve” that appears to be a list of contacts Epstein is planning on introducing Bannon to which included politicians, Nobel-calibre scientists, tech billionaires (including Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman), editors, bankers, diplomats, former prime ministers, celebrities, royalty, and intelligence-linked figures.

That’s the picture that emerge from an examination of what was just 45 emails between Epstein and Bannon sent in 2018–2019. Similar to his relationship with Thiel, Epstein is serving a international list of one elite contact after another as the two work toward a common goal of building a far right influence network financed with crypto currencies and spreading its influence in more than just the US. Epstein was even involved with the production of Bannon’s pro-GOP 2018 documentary Trump@War. Bannon’s characterization of Epstein as part of a ‘deep state’ doesn’t seem like a gross exaggeration. But as should be clear, if Epstein’s network is to be characterized as comprising a ‘deep state’, it was pro-Trump ‘deep state’ and Bannon clearly wanted in on all that ‘deep state’ action:

Byline Times

Steve Bannon Offered Trump’s MAGA as Shield for Jeffrey Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein helped shape Trump’s MAGA movement through a secret alliance with its chief architect, Steve Bannon, who told him it could help him “stave off Time’s Up for a decade” in return for strategic and financial support

Nafeez Ahmed
14 November 2025

Jeffrey Epstein – long portrayed by the Republican right as part of a deep state liberal conspiracy – was providing strategic, financial and media support to the very heart of Trump’s MAGA movement, working directly with Steve Bannon on political planning in Europe and US campaign messaging from 2018 to 2019. The payoff would be a movement that neutralised the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in the workplace.

For years, Bannon – the architect of MAGA, Trump’s first campaign manager and former White House chief strategist – has used his War Room podcast to promote QAnon conspiracy theories about the Democrat Party as a cabal of child molesters.

He once described QAnon as “the elephant in the room”; had Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on his show calling Democrats “the party of paedophiles”; and urged listeners to call their senators and oppose the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by relaying “your unexpurgated opinion on what you think of Judge Jackson in this area of child torture, child rape, baby torture, and baby rape.”

...

Resisting #MeToo

Epstein offered potential financial support to Bannon through opaque cryptocurrency schemes designed to evade regulatory scrutiny, along with extensive political networks, strategic planning and routes to European leaders – not to mention advice on pro-Trump video campaign materials.

In return, Bannon offered Epstein something irresistible: to build a right-wing MAGA coalition that would “stave off” the global movement against sexual harassment for more than a decade.

Earlier this year, Steve Bannon repeatedly claimed that the convicted child sex offender was operating as part of a deep state anti-Trump conspiracy. “In that arc of looking at how the deep state has tried to stop Trump and the MAGA movement, you can easily fit in,” Bannon told a crowd at a Turning Point US conference in July.

“Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things,” he said. “Not just individuals, but also institutions. Intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who was working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government.”

However, newly released emails now show Jeffrey Epstein acting as an intimate political fixer for Steve Bannon himself between 2018 and 2019.

Over this period, Epstein arranged access to world leaders for Bannon, proposing opaque crypto-based funding structures, drafting contact lists for the MAGA architect, and even offering the President of the UN General Assembly to guide Bannon’s “EU project.”

...

The correspondence also shows Epstein helping to shape Bannon’s public image. In one message, he tells journalist Michael Wolff that if Republicans held the House in 2018, “Steve would deserve most of the credit”, while Bannon privately reassured Epstein during renewed scrutiny that “there is a crazed jihad against u”.

The emails reveal a political partnership across these two years in which MAGA’s architect worked hand-in-hand with a convicted sex offender – contradicting everything Bannon has since claimed about Epstein and the so-called “cover-up”.

Undisclosed Meetings

Although it is known that Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein had several meetings that year through to early 2019 to provide him with media coaching, the extent of their relationship has remained opaque until now.

Byline Times can confirm that the newly released batch of Epstein emails includes at least 45 pieces of correspondence directly with Steve Bannon.

At 8:08 pm on 11 March 2018, Sean Bannon – aide and nephew to Steve – sends Jeffrey Epstein a brief message from his iPhone:

“Roger that. Thanks for having us today.”

The email appears to confirm that both Steve and Sean Bannon had met Epstein in person that afternoon. Epstein replied that same evening. His tone was brisk, confident, and already looking ahead:

“Spoke to [the] country leader we discussed… I leave Wednesday, back Friday. We should lay out a strategy plan when I’m back. Travel safe.”

This was not their first contact. In another message from the same period, Epstein’s brother Mark drops an almost throwaway line into an email to Jeffrey:

“Bannon with me.”

...

The weeks around the March meeting reveal that Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein were already speaking the same political language, exchanging ideas and intelligence in a way that makes the townhouse meeting feel less like a beginning and more like an escalation.

———–

A Hidden Working Relationship

An early signal appears on 24 February 2018, in a chain that starts with a Politico link but rapidly veers into the architecture of a political movement. Epstein opens with a technical query:

“coin issues: receive coins, distribute coins, pay in coins, coin cooperative, prohibitions foreign donor? i need to understand flow of funds… donor to campaign c’s. does it have to go to campaign first?”

It is a remarkable set of questions pointing straight at the rules governing political finance. Epstein is not dabbling – he is asking how to build an alternative funding system. Bannon replies without hesitation:

“On it.”

Minutes later, Epstein presses further:

“should it have a christian component? tithe? if you form a church you may be able to tell mueller you have a confession privelege. :)”

Even allowing for gallows humour, the suggestion is extraordinary: create a religious entity that could invoke clergy-penitent privilege to shield communications from the special counsel criminal investigation into Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 elections, led by then FBI director Robert Mueller.

Bannon’s response outlines the coalition he believes can power the next decade of right-wing politics:

“Populist/Nationalist first.Conservative Christians (catholic/evangelical) next.Reverse Alabama.This coalition staves off ‘Times Up’ for next decade plus.”

“Time’s Up” was a movement originating Hollywood designed to hold powerful men accountable for sexual abuse and misconduct. By September that year, Bannon publicly positioned himself as a supporter, describing Time’s Up as “the single most powerful potential political movement in the world” at festival in New York, and wondering why the #MeToo movement “hasn’t cut through corporate America with a bigger scythe”.

But earlier that year, Bannon wrote directly to Epstein – arguably the most notorious sexual predator in American public life even at that time – explaining how together, they can build a pro-Trump MAGA coalition that can neutralise the movement for the “next decade plus”.

The email chain continues on financial operations. Epstein asks:

“is there a super smart FEC person?”

Bannon provides one:

“I think I have the most solid guy on the right – tied into the ‘swiss’ guys – named Jeffrey Wernick… he can walk u thru the deal.”

Epstein then asks:

“do you have coin guys. brocks people. or should we find? some of the lefty crypto guys might find it difficult to join, but they said bringing tech to discourse is on a higher plane.”

While blockchain evangelist Jeffrey Wernick’s involvement in helping Bannon explore a crypto project for the populist right is a matter of record, Epstein’s secret proximity to Bannon’s efforts is revealed here for the first time.

...

And then the discussion widens. Epstein sends:

“BTW spent some time on the phone with Jide. he’s looking to be read into Saudi. too early.”

Jide Zeitlin – a former Goldman Sachs partner with access to world leaders – is being discussed as though he is part of the same operational landscape Epstein and Bannon are navigating. Bannon replies:

“Yes… I’ve got the 2nd best – best is Don McGahn who is occupied currently.”

Don McGahn, at that moment, is the sitting White House Counsel in the Trump administration. At face value, these exchanges are the behaviour of two actors building a political machine: one (Epstein) probing funding and legal structures, the other (Bannon) offering to supply operatives and strategic doctrine. Whether and what meetings they resulted in, Byline Times cannot confirm.

The tone continues into March. The thread that leads to the townhouse dinner on 15 March 2018 is, if anything, even more explicit. Epstein opens:

“yes I saw it. 1. I will invite Gerry Baker to our dinner tonight. 2. Miro Lajcak, president of UN, will guide the EU project if you like him. his govt will fall this week — as planned. :) 3. later today we can discuss michael and his coins. 4. sultan — dubai in new york 21 22.”

In this extraordinary email, Epstein is not only inviting the then editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Baker, he also offers up the sitting President of the United Nations General Assembly (Miroslav Lajčák), claims foreknowledge of the collapse of the Slovakian government, references “Michael and his coins” – tying directly back to the crypto-funding exchanges – and flags the visit of a Gulf actor.

...

————–

Epstein – Bannon’s Strategic and Operational Partner

The deeper one goes into the correspondence, the clearer Epstein’s position becomes. He speaks like a fixer – a man who still believes he can move governments, pull networks together, and put the right people in the right rooms. And Bannon receives him that way.

Just weeks after their March dinner, Epstein is already advising Bannon on the realities of building a political empire in Europe. In a message sent in the early hours of 23 July 2018, he writes from Europe:

“If you are going to play here, you’ll have to spend time, Europe by remote doesn’t work. Lots and lots of face time and hand holding.”

It is the voice of someone warning a client about the terrain he is entering. Hours later, he expands the point:

“There are many leaders of countries we can organise for you to have one-on-ones. however… you will have to come, stay 8–10 days… The fear is that you gin up their hopes and emotions and then abandon them. I think you want to be an insider, not an outsider flying in and out.”

The phrase “whatever is good for you – I’m in”, which Epstein sends later that day, lands like a pledge of loyalty:

“I am unaware of your playbook. however, whatever is good for you – Im in.”

The confidence that runs through his messages comes from somewhere – and the surrounding emails show where. Epstein is not just offering encouragement; he is offering people: diplomats, foreign leaders, sovereign wealth figures, tech financiers, media editors.

On 3 May 2018, he forwards Bannon one of the most extraordinary exchanges in the archive, again involving Jide Zeitlin. Epstein gives Bannon a one-line introduction:

“fyi.”

Then follows Zeitlin’s report of his failed attempt to meet Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the chairman of Dubai World / DP World, one of the largest port operators on the planet:

“Unfortunately, bin Sulayem and I did not meet. I was stuck at the White House and he had a narrow window before heading to Cyprus.”

Zeitlin then describes discussing port strategy with Nigeria’s trade minister:

“Okey Enelamah… stopped by my home this evening as he was still in town after Buhari’s visit with Trump.”

He adds, casually:

“Separately, I spoke earlier with the Vice President.”

Epstein’s network appears to include senior White House access, Gulf sovereign wealth leadership, African trade ministers fresh from meetings with the Trump administration. All packaged up by Epstein for Steve Bannon. By mid-2019, Epstein sends himself a document that reads like a fever dream of elite names, all poured into a single message with a subject line that reveals its purpose:

“list for bannon steve”

What follows is a continuous stream – politicians (Mitchell, Clinton, Richardson), oligarchs, Nobel-calibre scientists (E.O. Wilson, Brian Greene), tech billionaires (Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman), editors (Sulzberger), bankers (Jes Staley), diplomats (Jagland), former prime ministers (Barak), celebrities (Woody Allen), royalty (“queen, pres, king, pm”), and intelligence-linked figures.

Epstein appears to be assembling an inventory of relationships – people he can call, connect, or weaponise – specifically to support Bannon in his efforts to build a MAGA coalition that can neutralise scrutiny of offenders like Epstein. It strongly suggests that Epstein saw himself as part of Bannon’s project, and that he intended Bannon to draw on the full breadth of his network.

————-

Supporting Bannon’s Pro-Trump Campaigning

This dynamic carries straight into the summer of 2018, when the mid-term campaign begins to peak and Bannon is preoccupied with the release of his political documentary Trump@War, a film designed to energise Republican voters. The emails show Epstein was an insider to the production, not an observer. Epstein asks Bannon:

“did you get the first cut of American Carnage?”

A few hours later, Bannon writes back with his assessment:

“American Carnage amazing – An Emmanuel financed it and he loves it – Eroll’s besties tell him it will end his career because he gave a platform to a monster… Officially in Venice, Toronto and New York Film Festival.”

It is a revealing moment. Bannon is giving Epstein the details because Epstein is part of the process. The point is confirmed in a second thread that same month, when Bannon asks his aide Sean:

“Can we get Jeffrey latest version of film”

...

Epstein is no longer just receiving geopolitical gossip, but actively previewing Bannon’s propaganda films – being given cuts, and his feedback being solicited. He is inside the political machine that will be rolled out across the United States in the run-up to November.

————

‘Crazed Jihad’ Against Epstein

And Epstein wants Bannon credited for his pro-Trump efforts. That becomes evident months later, when journalist Michael Wolff writes to Epstein on 5 November 2018, outlining his plan to feature both men in his next book:

“I was thinking of opening with you and Bannon talking about Trump… would let you sound smart and offer… a crowd-pleasing perspective, and make you seem like a credible player – former friend of Trump, adviser to world leaders, sought after person…”

...

It is crucial to recall that all of this is playing out while public scrutiny of Epstein is accelerating in the form of civil suits and journalistic investigations. During this period when most public figures distanced themselves, Bannon writes to Epstein:

“there is a crazed jihad against u – ive never seen anything like it – and I’ve seen a lot.”

Steve Bannon has sought to recast himself as the man sounding the alarm about a liberal Epstein “cover-up”, insisting that the real scandal lies in the hidden networks Epstein built among Democrats, financiers and “globalists”. On his broadcasts, he has spoken in apocalyptic tones about dark elites and state complicity.

The newly released emails make that position untenable. Taken together, the 45 emails collapse the distance between two public myths. The myth of Epstein as a creature of the liberal elite, and the myth of Bannon as the man exposing him. In their place emerges a private record that is far more revealing. They show how a convicted sex offender and a self-styled populist strategist – the very architect of the MAGA movement – worked together in the shadows, swapping contacts, advice, political intelligence and favours, while hiding the relationship from the very public whose anger they sought to mobilise.

...

———–

“Steve Bannon Offered Trump’s MAGA as Shield for Jeffrey Epstein” by Nafeez Ahmed; Byline Times; 11/14/2025

“Earlier this year, Steve Bannon repeatedly claimed that the convicted child sex offender was operating as part of a deep state anti-Trump conspiracy. “In that arc of looking at how the deep state has tried to stop Trump and the MAGA movement, you can easily fit in,” Bannon told a crowd at a Turning Point US conference in July.”

Jeffrey Epstein was part of a deep state anti-Trump conspiracy. That’s been Bannon’s line for years now. And as we can see from the copious communications between the two, Steven Bannon was arguably Jeffrey Epstein’s closest pal and collaborator in the years leading up to Epstein’s ‘suicide’. And as we can see, Epstein wasn’t just offering Bannon accessing to his extensive list of elite contacts. Epstein was offering to help Bannon build a cryptocurrency-based political financial system. Amazingly, in return, Bannon seemed to be offering the promise of ‘staving off’ the #MeToo movement! Yes, ending #MeToo was apparently an Epstein priority. It’s not exactly shocking that Epstein would see ending #MeToo as desirable but it’s rather remarkable that Bannon was dangling that promise to Bannon in exchange for Epstein’s assistance in building a crypto-based financial system for right-wing candidates:

...
Epstein offered potential financial support to Bannon through opaque cryptocurrency schemes designed to evade regulatory scrutiny, along with extensive political networks, strategic planning and routes to European leaders – not to mention advice on pro-Trump video campaign materials.

In return, Bannon offered Epstein something irresistible: to build a right-wing MAGA coalition that would “stave off” the global movement against sexual harassment for more than a decade.

...

“Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things,” he said. “Not just individuals, but also institutions. Intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who was working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government.”

However, newly released emails now show Jeffrey Epstein acting as an intimate political fixer for Steve Bannon himself between 2018 and 2019.

Over this period, Epstein arranged access to world leaders for Bannon, proposing opaque crypto-based funding structures, drafting contact lists for the MAGA architect, and even offering the President of the UN General Assembly to guide Bannon’s “EU project.”

...

The correspondence also shows Epstein helping to shape Bannon’s public image. In one message, he tells journalist Michael Wolff that if Republicans held the House in 2018, “Steve would deserve most of the credit”, while Bannon privately reassured Epstein during renewed scrutiny that “there is a crazed jihad against u”.

The emails reveal a political partnership across these two years in which MAGA’s architect worked hand-in-hand with a convicted sex offender – contradicting everything Bannon has since claimed about Epstein and the so-called “cover-up”.

...

It is crucial to recall that all of this is playing out while public scrutiny of Epstein is accelerating in the form of civil suits and journalistic investigations. During this period when most public figures distanced themselves, Bannon writes to Epstein:

“there is a crazed jihad against u – ive never seen anything like it – and I’ve seen a lot.”

Steve Bannon has sought to recast himself as the man sounding the alarm about a liberal Epstein “cover-up”, insisting that the real scandal lies in the hidden networks Epstein built among Democrats, financiers and “globalists”. On his broadcasts, he has spoken in apocalyptic tones about dark elites and state complicity.

The newly released emails make that position untenable. Taken together, the 45 emails collapse the distance between two public myths. The myth of Epstein as a creature of the liberal elite, and the myth of Bannon as the man exposing him. In their place emerges a private record that is far more revealing. They show how a convicted sex offender and a self-styled populist strategist – the very architect of the MAGA movement – worked together in the shadows, swapping contacts, advice, political intelligence and favours, while hiding the relationship from the very public whose anger they sought to mobilise.
...

Adding to the remarkable nature oof the crypto-based scheming Epstein and Bannon were engaged in starting in 2018 is the proposal by Epstein to incorporate some sort of “christian component” to the scheme that somehow involves forming a church which would give Bannon the clergy-penitent privilege to shield communications from the special counsel criminal investigation then being led by Robert Mueller. Which makes this a good time to recall all the hints we’ve received that Epstein may have been part of the various Middle Eastern back channel negotiations underway during the first Trump administration. Was Epstein also interested in covering up his own role in that story?

...
An early signal appears on 24 February 2018, in a chain that starts with a Politico link but rapidly veers into the architecture of a political movement. Epstein opens with a technical query:

“coin issues: receive coins, distribute coins, pay in coins, coin cooperative, prohibitions foreign donor? i need to understand flow of funds… donor to campaign c’s. does it have to go to campaign first?”

It is a remarkable set of questions pointing straight at the rules governing political finance. Epstein is not dabbling – he is asking how to build an alternative funding system. Bannon replies without hesitation:

“On it.”

Minutes later, Epstein presses further:

“should it have a christian component? tithe? if you form a church you may be able to tell mueller you have a confession privelege. :)”

Even allowing for gallows humour, the suggestion is extraordinary: create a religious entity that could invoke clergy-penitent privilege to shield communications from the special counsel criminal investigation into Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 elections, led by then FBI director Robert Mueller.
...

And when see see how Bannon offered Jeffrey Wernick as someone who can help ‘walk u thru the deal’ when Epstein asked for a ‘super smart FEC person’ — which is presumably someone who is very familiar with US election finance law — it’s worth recalling the story Wernick was involved with in 2020 when Parler attempted to recruit then-President Trump to join the platform, with Wernick, a Parler investor, being involved with the discussions. But then the White House Counsel’s office found out about the negotiations and put a stop to it, arguing that it would constitute a violation of ethics. In other words, Bannon’s ‘super smart FEC person’ tried to recruit Trump into a blatant ethical violation in 2020. Because of course:

...
The email chain continues on financial operations. Epstein asks:

“is there a super smart FEC person?”

Bannon provides one:

“I think I have the most solid guy on the right – tied into the ‘swiss’ guys – named Jeffrey Wernick… he can walk u thru the deal.”

Epstein then asks:

“do you have coin guys. brocks people. or should we find? some of the lefty crypto guys might find it difficult to join, but they said bringing tech to discourse is on a higher plane.”

While blockchain evangelist Jeffrey Wernick’s involvement in helping Bannon explore a crypto project for the populist right is a matter of record, Epstein’s secret proximity to Bannon’s efforts is revealed here for the first time.
...

Then we get to the remarkable emails in February and March of 2018 with mysterious references to Middle Eastern actors. First, Epstein mentions how he spent some time talking to Jide Zeitlin — a former Goldman Sachs partner with access to world leaders — adding that Zeitlin is “looking to be read into Saudi. too early.” The next month, Epstein is planning a dinner with a guest list that will include Bannon along with the then-sitting President of the United Nations General Assembly (Miroslav Lajčák), and talks about the Sultan of Dubai visiting NYC later that month:

...
And then the discussion widens. Epstein sends:

“BTW spent some time on the phone with Jide. he’s looking to be read into Saudi. too early.”

Jide Zeitlin – a former Goldman Sachs partner with access to world leaders – is being discussed as though he is part of the same operational landscape Epstein and Bannon are navigating. Bannon replies:

“Yes… I’ve got the 2nd best – best is Don McGahn who is occupied currently.”

Don McGahn, at that moment, is the sitting White House Counsel in the Trump administration. At face value, these exchanges are the behaviour of two actors building a political machine: one (Epstein) probing funding and legal structures, the other (Bannon) offering to supply operatives and strategic doctrine. Whether and what meetings they resulted in, Byline Times cannot confirm.

The tone continues into March. The thread that leads to the townhouse dinner on 15 March 2018 is, if anything, even more explicit. Epstein opens:

“yes I saw it. 1. I will invite Gerry Baker to our dinner tonight. 2. Miro Lajcak, president of UN, will guide the EU project if you like him. his govt will fall this week — as planned. :) 3. later today we can discuss michael and his coins. 4. sultan — dubai in new york 21 22.”

In this extraordinary email, Epstein is not only inviting the then editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Baker, he also offers up the sitting President of the United Nations General Assembly (Miroslav Lajčák), claims foreknowledge of the collapse of the Slovakian government, references “Michael and his coins” – tying directly back to the crypto-funding exchanges – and flags the visit of a Gulf actor.
...

And by mid-2019, Epstein sends a “list for bannon steve” that politicians (Mitchell, Clinton, Richardson), oligarchs, Nobel-calibre scientists (E.O. Wilson, Brian Greene), tech billionaires (Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman), editors (Sulzberger), bankers (Jes Staley), diplomats (Jagland), former prime ministers (Barak), celebrities (Woody Allen), royalty (“queen, pres, king, pm”), and intelligence-linked figures. It’s not a random list. It’s a list of people Epstein is apparently hoping to somehow assists in their joint schemes:

...
The deeper one goes into the correspondence, the clearer Epstein’s position becomes. He speaks like a fixer – a man who still believes he can move governments, pull networks together, and put the right people in the right rooms. And Bannon receives him that way.

...

The confidence that runs through his messages comes from somewhere – and the surrounding emails show where. Epstein is not just offering encouragement; he is offering people: diplomats, foreign leaders, sovereign wealth figures, tech financiers, media editors.

...

Epstein’s network appears to include senior White House access, Gulf sovereign wealth leadership, African trade ministers fresh from meetings with the Trump administration. All packaged up by Epstein for Steve Bannon. By mid-2019, Epstein sends himself a document that reads like a fever dream of elite names, all poured into a single message with a subject line that reveals its purpose:

“list for bannon steve”

What follows is a continuous stream – politicians (Mitchell, Clinton, Richardson), oligarchs, Nobel-calibre scientists (E.O. Wilson, Brian Greene), tech billionaires (Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman), editors (Sulzberger), bankers (Jes Staley), diplomats (Jagland), former prime ministers (Barak), celebrities (Woody Allen), royalty (“queen, pres, king, pm”), and intelligence-linked figures.

Epstein appears to be assembling an inventory of relationships – people he can call, connect, or weaponise – specifically to support Bannon in his efforts to build a MAGA coalition that can neutralise scrutiny of offenders like Epstein. It strongly suggests that Epstein saw himself as part of Bannon’s project, and that he intended Bannon to draw on the full breadth of his network.
...

Epstein was apparently even helping Bannon produce his Trump@War pro-Trump documentary released in 2018 and designed to energise Republican voters. Epstein was literally helping Bannon craft the message designed to help Republicans in the 2018 mid-terms:

...
This dynamic carries straight into the summer of 2018, when the mid-term campaign begins to peak and Bannon is preoccupied with the release of his political documentary Trump@War, a film designed to energise Republican voters. The emails show Epstein was an insider to the production, not an observer. Epstein asks Bannon:

“did you get the first cut of American Carnage?”

A few hours later, Bannon writes back with his assessment:

“American Carnage amazing – An Emmanuel financed it and he loves it – Eroll’s besties tell him it will end his career because he gave a platform to a monster… Officially in Venice, Toronto and New York Film Festival.”

It is a revealing moment. Bannon is giving Epstein the details because Epstein is part of the process. The point is confirmed in a second thread that same month, when Bannon asks his aide Sean:

“Can we get Jeffrey latest version of film”

...

Epstein is no longer just receiving geopolitical gossip, but actively previewing Bannon’s propaganda films – being given cuts, and his feedback being solicited. He is inside the political machine that will be rolled out across the United States in the run-up to November.
...

If Epstein was part of an anti-Trump ‘deep state’, that ‘deep state’ sure has an odd way of manifesting that opposition. But, of course, everything we’ve seen points towards an Epstein ‘deep state’ that wasn’t just pro-Trump, but pro-Thiel and pro-Bannon too. And with Thiel and Bannon positioned to continue influencing the GOP long after Trump exits the stage, the question is raised: given everything we’ve seen about the last decade of Epstein’s life and his extensive interactions with top MAGA-aligned political movers and shakers like Thiel and Bannon, at what point should we start referring to the ‘Epstein network’ as the ‘Epstein/Thiel/Bannon MAGA deep state’?

In all probability, it was Thiel who drove the “Epstein train.”

I covered Thiel’s ascent in 2010:

https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-718-in-your-facebook-a-virtual-panoptican/

Keep up the great work!

This is a good time to recall the contents of Barrett Brown’s piece published back in April about Thiel’s ties to white supremacist hacker Andrew “weev” Auernheimer and other extremists in the 2016 election cycle. As Brown’s piece noted, the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence’s official journal StratCom actually published a 2016 paper by Jeff Giesea — a long-time close Thiel business associate with extensive extremist ties of his own to extremists — with the title “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare”, touting the psychological warfare social media methods of figures like Charles Johnson as a means of combatting ISIS. It was a story that raised enormous questions about the relationship between the US national security state and extremist hackers like ‘weev’, and what role ‘weev’ may have played on behalf of the US national security interests and the potential role Thiel may have played as a kind of behind-the-scenes organizer for these activities. And then Brown dropped that explosive revelation during the Patreon that knowledgeable sources consider Auernheimer’s ex-roommate, hacker Alex Pilosov, as the real culprit behind the DNC hacks, raising even more questions about what this Thiel-affiliated white supremacist hacker network may have been up to over the last decade.

This is also a good time to recall not just Epstein’s ties to the Qatari royal family but his apparent role in behind-the-scenes Middle Eastern diplomacy that put him very much in the same orbit as another figure who has an alarming number of parallels to Epstein: George Nader, the long-time ‘international man of mystery’ whose close ties to the UAE placed him in a number of still-unexplained roles involving ‘back-channel’ negotiations between the 2016 Trump campaign/first administration and the governments of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Back-channel negotiations that, based on available information, could very well have involved Epstein. At a minimum, Epstein was eager to play such a role in global affairs. And as we’ll see in the following piece, Epstein very much did play a kind of secret role in shaping global affairs when it came to his relationship with Thiel, with Epstein repeatedly offering to introduce Thiel one influential global figure after another.

It sounds like Epstein had been trying to get in touch with Thiel since at least as early as 2009, with Epstein’s interest in cryptocurrency being the initial reason. As Epstein saw it, it was time for setting up alternative financial and PayPal, founded by Thiel, served as a starting point. Ben Goertzel, a mutual acquaintance of Thiel and Epstein, informed Epstein back in 2009 that Thiel was interested in starting his own currency outside the scope of nation-states, a goal that could be see as a precursor to the ‘TheoBro’ agenda. Recall how AI proponent Goertzel is a key figure in the ‘Singularity’ movement and one of Epstein’s foundations made a $100k donation to the Worldwide Transhumanist Association — since renamed Humanity Plus — to pay Goertzel’s salary as the group’s vice chairman. One of the projects the donation helped to finance was the development of OpenCog, a software development kit that allows for the building of ‘smart’ AI characters. It’s a reminder that a shared interest in transhumanism and AI is also likely part of what drew Epstein to Thiel in addition to cryptocurrencies. But also a reminder that the transhumanist strains and focus on AI we see throughout the ‘TheoBro’ movement is something both Thiel and Epstein were promoting long before the TheoBros became a thing.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin was launched in January of 2009, so Epstein was onboard with the cryptocurrency ideology almost from the beginning and spent years trying to connect with Peter Thiel over it. Considering we still don’t know the identity of the pseudonymous ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, we have to ask if Epstein was at all connected to the secret network behind Bitcoin’s origins. People have satirically suggested Epstein is Satoshi Nakamoto. But considering Epstein was trying to create an alternative system of finance right as Bitcoin was getting start and demonstrably wanted to operate out of the public eye, we have to ask if Epstein at least knew Nakamoto’s real identity.

Epstein had a particularly bizarre idea for an alternative currency that would have some dark potential synergy with his alleged role as a kind of blackmail king pimp for elites: Epstein wanted to create a system where Facebook “friends” would trade “favors.” He floated the idea in two separate 2014 emails to Thiel, suggesting it would be huge.

Epstein even made a $3 million investment in the crypto-exchange Coinbase in 2014. Amazingly, in an August 2014 email from Epstein to Thiel, Epstein claims to have a meeting coming up with the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service’s chief legal adviser about cryptocurrency, offering to ask any questions during the meeting that Thiel might have. Was Epstein really meeting with Treasury officials in 2014 about cryptocurrency? In April of 2016, Epstein wrote to Thiel about how former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers “is now on board with rethinking the financial system, digital currency etc.,” and will “join with us in concocting a plan. Fun.”

Intriguingly, it was apparently Reid Hoffman — one of Thiel’s fellow ‘PayPal Mafia’ alums who has gone on to become a Democratic mega-donor — who finally introduced Epstein to Thiel in 2014. As we’ve seen, Hoffman has a number of ties that make him a rather interesting Democratic mega-donor. Recall how it was Hoffman who helped to financed the fake ‘Russian bot’ campaign that was influencing voters in Alabama’s 2017 special senatorial election. Other participants in the project, dubbed “Project Birmingham”, included Renee DiResta, the lead author on the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian disinformation. And as we saw, it was Hoffman who arranged for an August 2015 dinner where Epstein was a guest along with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel. Hoffman tried to deflect criticism when this dinner party was first reported by insisting it was just a fund-raising dinner for MIT’s Media Lab, one of the academic institutions whose reputation was most sullied by the Epstein scandal. Hoffman even visited ‘Epstein island’ at least once. And as we’ve also seen, while Hoffman is ostensibly a Democrat, he’s the kind of Democratic mega-donor who uses that influence to rail against ‘government bureaucracy’ and advocates for a kind of unrestrained hyper-capitalism global gig economy that sounds an awful lot like the ‘aristopopulism’ endorsed by the TheoBros.

Adding to the mystery of the nature of Epstein’s and Thiel’s relationship is that it sounds like Thiel actively served as a reputational shield for Epstein in exchange Epstein’s favors and tax advice. Keep in mind that Epstein was one of the leading figures in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the history back in the 80s. What kind of exotic ‘tax advice’ was Epstein offering that Thiel couldn’t easily get elsewhere? Is ‘tax advice’ a euphemism for something else? Either way, it appears that others would refer to potential Epstein associates to Thiel, who would apparently vouch for Epstein and point out that Epstein was a major investor with Thiel.

Amazingly, emails between Thiel and Epstein show how Thiel sought advice from Epstein on how to handle bad press. For example, in early 2015 the story about a lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre against Epstein made the news. Two weeks after those headlines, Thiel emails Epstein telling him that he made it to Miami at the end of the month, “I’ll stop by your island!” Eight days later, Epstein replies, “Does my bad press give you pause?” “If I was intimidated by bad press, I would not have gotten anywhere in life,” Thiel replied, adding “Do you have any sense on whether this press cycle is going to keep excalating [sic]?” Thiel then follows up with a message to Epstein about how, “It would be [good to] compare notes at some point, on strategies on this sort of stuff...”

As we’ve seen, 2015–2016 was also the period when Epstein made significant investments in Thiel’s Valar Ventures. And as we’ve learned from Ed Opperman, it’s the investments in Valar Ventures that constitutes the bulk of the remaining assets — worth potentially more than $100 million — left to the Epstein estate to use as it sees fit. Interestingly, at one point Epstein floated the idea of investing in Palantir, although Thiel advised he hold off until they discussed it later. It’s also worth keeping in mind that cryptocurrencies represent a particularly opaque class of asset to be dealt with following Epstein’s ‘suicide’ and the subsequent legal battle of the substantial assets in his estate. We know that federal prosecutors left the estate with substantial assets but that doesn’t mean the estate didn’t quietly retain control of undeclared cryptocurrency assets that may or may not have been disclosed to authorities.

That 2015–2016 period was also the time when Thiel took a much more public role as a Republican mega-donor, with Thiel serving as a Trump delegate and even taking a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Emails show how Epstein was actively encouraging Thiel to take on this public role. But as we’ve learned from Barrett Brown’s explosive reporting, 2015–2016 was also a period with Thiel and his close associate Jeff Giesea were cultivating ties to figures like Andrew ‘weev’ Auernheimer. And as Brown revealed in his Patreon talk back in July, knowledgeable insider suspect it was weev’s roommate and fellow hacker, Alex Pilosov, who carried out the 2016 DNC hacks. If true, it immediately raises questions about potential roles both Thiel and Epstein may have played in that subterfuge. That’s also part of the intriguing context of the guidance Epstein seem to be giving Thiel during this time.

It also sounds like the political guidance Epstein was conveying to Thiel during this period went beyond strategies for dealing with bad press. Once Epstein finally befriended Thiel, he proceeded to introduce Thiel to all sorts of influential figures in the world of government, finance, and politics. Epstein really was operating as a kind of behind-the-scenes elite matchmaker, constantly suggesting to one of his friends that they should meet another one of his friend. One of those old friends Epstein introduced Thiel to was someone who turned out to be an old friend of both Epstein and Donald Trump: Tom Barrack. As we’ve seen, Tom Barrack wasn’t just an old friend of Trump and fellow real estate developer. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee — which faced all sorts of investigations involving foreign influence peddling by governments that included Qatar, with Steven Bannon and Michael Flynn helping the Qataris — was chaired by Barrack. Also recall how Barrack is long-time friends with Paul Manafort and reportedly tried to get Manafort Qatari clients after Manafort was let go from the Trump campaign in August of 2016, a reflection of Barrack’s extensive Middle Eastern contacts. It was Barrack who reportedly recommended that Trump hire Manafort to run his campaign in the first place. Barrack was also deeply intertwined with the lobbying for a kind of ‘nuclear Marshall plan for the Middle East’ scheme during the first Trump administration. So when we see how Barrack was also an old friend of Epstein, it’s hard not to suspect that Barrack knew both Trump and Epstein back when the pair were close party pals. But it also places Epstein even closer to the whole 2016 ‘Russiagate’ affair and subsequent foreign influence peddling scandals. And as we’ve seen, with Epstein’s close ties to the Qataris and role as a behind-the-scenes Middle Eastern diplomat and deal-maker, it’s not hard to imagine Epstein was part of the numerous Trump 2016 backroom negotiations too. And with Epstein and Barrack being old friends and mutual acquaintances of Donald Trump, we have all the more reason to suspect that Epstein may have a much bigger role in all sorts of aspects of the 2016 Trump campaign fiascos than currently recognized.

And while there aren’t email or other documents that have been released with the Epstein Files with direct ‘Russiagate’ implications, keep in mind the substantial number of still-redacted or unreleased files. But also keep in mind that encrypted communications were very much a standard thing during this period. As we’ll see, in late August 2016, following the RNC Convention where Thiel spoke, Epstein emails Thiel to let him know that Barrack was very impressed with Thiel after the conversation the two had the convention greenroom. Thiel asks Epstein if he has thoughts on the 2016 race, with Epstein replies, “Lots, and you should be closer. So that your advice is considered.” At that point Thiel asks that they continue the conversation over Signal. It’s a reminder that the ‘Epstein Files’ from the later years when encryption became standard are really just the communications that Epstein or his cohorts didn’t feel needed to encrypt.

But the article points out another just incredible revelation that only adds to questions about what kind of behind-the-scenes diplomat/dealmaker role Epstein could have been playing during the 2016 campaign: Bill Burns, who became Joe Biden’s CIA director in 2021, actually met with Epstein back in September 2014, shortly before Burns retired as deputy secretary of state the next month. Yep, Epstein somehow managed a meeting with the deputy secretary of state in 2014. And given that Burns was soon retiring, we can reasonably speculate that his post-government work was likely a topic of discussion. In other words, there’s a very reasonable chance that Epstein did a favor for the then-deputy secretary of state and future director of the CIA. It’s the kind of context that makes a putative behind-the-scenes diplomat/dealmaker role for Epstein a lot more plausible.

As we should expect at this point, Bill Burns is another figure Epstein put Peter Thiel in touch with. In fact, Epstein made the suggestion that Burns meet Thiel on at least five different occasions between May and October of 2014. And not only did Epstein and Burns meeting in late September that year, but Burns had been supposed to attend a gathering Epstein arranged earlier that month that included retired senator Bob Kerrey, Kathryn Ruemmler, and Thiel. Burns had to back out at the last minute because of work, but it sounds like the gathering happened without him. Recall how, in addition to being an Obama White House Counsel from 2011 to June of 2014, Ruemmler was also the lawyer for George Nader during the Russiagate congressional hearings. Hearings about backroom deals involving Middle Eastern governments that Epstein had spent years cultivating relationships with. A White House Counsel has to know about a lot of powerful secrets. And her she was, dining with Epstein and Thiel in a dinner set up by Epstein with the apparent intention of introducing Thiel to Epstein’s other influential friends. How many times did this happen and to what extent is the rise of Peter Thiel as the super-villain oligarch he is today a product of Jeffrey Epstein’s tutelage?

Other figures Epstein offered to introduce Thiel to included Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen; Slovakian conservative politician Miroslav Lajčák; a“Sultan from Dubai,” which likely referred to businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; then-Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdor; Anil Ambani, an Indian businessman with close ties to Narendra Modi’s government; and Norwegian politician Børge Brende, who had become the president and CEO of the World Economic Forum. Epstein referred to Brende as the “new head of DAVOS” when he dangled the possibility to Thiel. Epstein offered to arrange a meeting for Thiel with then–Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland four time between 2014 and 2017. When the UN would convened, Epstein would invite Thiel to New York by dangling the opportunity to meet with foreign ministers and world leaders, at one point bragging, the “head of Nobel Peace Prize committee staying with me.” While we don’t know how many of these meetings Thiel accepted, the offers indicate that Epstein was in very regular communication with Thiel.

One foreign official Epstein did manage to arrange for Thiel to meet was Sergei Belyakov, a former Russian official and graduate of the country’s spy academy. Recall how Epstein’s ties to Belyakov were seen as hinting at ties to the Russian government and yet, as we saw, Epstein apparently attempted at one point to arrange a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Belyakov although there’s no indication that meeting ever happened. It’s a strong hint that Epstein’s relationship with Belyakov should not be seen as indicative of Epstein’s ties to Putin but more a propensity to make incredible claims about access. In other words, Epstein’s relationship with Belyakov was, if anything, likely fueled by the false assertion on Epstein’s part that he had Putin’s ear and it probably wasn’t the only time Epstein made such a false assertion. It’s a reminder that we should assume at least some of the claims found in the Epstein Files were false boast and part of how Epstein operated. He clearly had very real access to elites and governments around the world, but he presumably achieved that, in part, by selling himself as an individual with incredible access and influence.

That’s all part of why we increasingly need to ask what kind of role Jeffrey Epstein played in making Peter Thiel the power-mad behind-the-scenes techno-fascist oligarch he is today. Not that he wasn’t already fascist-minded decades ago. That’s well documented. But Epstein had a significant interest in first meeting Thiel over their shared ideologies and then went on to apparently introduce Thiel to his elite network while encouraging and coaching Thiel’s entry into politics. And here we are today with Thiel doing public speeches about the Antichrist and serves as a leading sponsor of the next generation of fascist-minded tech-oligarchs and an ideological figure in the TheoBros movement. Thiel and Epstein were ideological ‘bros’ laying the groundwork for the techno-fascist ‘TheoBros’ movement Thiel leads today. Which is why we have to ask: How much of Peter Thiel’s super-villainy can we attribute to the years Epstein spent promoting and shaping Thiel both a business partner and ideological ally:

Jacobin

Jeffrey Epstein Encouraged Peter Thiel’s Political Journey

Peter Thiel has gone from reclusive billionaire to high-profile political overlord. Hundreds of emails show that that journey was encouraged and facilitated by the late multimillionaire financier who considered him a “great friend”: Jeffrey Epstein.

By Branko Marcetic
April 27, 2026

It wasn’t so long ago that Peter Thiel was a reclusive figure, so protective of his privacy that he bankrolled a lawsuit to ruin the news outlet that publicly revealed he’s gay. A decade later, the fifty-eight-year-old Thiel no longer avoids the political spotlight.

Over the past decade, Thiel has become an increasingly active and vocal right-wing political donor. Central to this is his close, more-than-decade-long relationship with his former employee and protégé J. D. Vance, the vice president and Donald Trump’s likely successor as leader of the Republican Party, whose political ascent— first to the Senate, then into Trump’s good graces, and finally the vice presidency— Thiel has bankrolled and facilitated. As recently as a month ago, the two men reportedly sat down for a private dinner in the vice president’s residence.

Thiel’s close relationship with Vance and other young right-wingers all but ensures that the tech billionaire will continue to shape politics and policy for many years— decades, if his technological plans to extend his lifespan work out. And, in spite of Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death seven years ago, it ensures the same for the quiet influence of the billionaire pedophile, who private emails show was not only good friends with Thiel but encouraged Thiel’s involvement in right-wing politics.

Among the millions of Epstein-related documents released by the Department of Justice so far are hundreds of email exchanges between Epstein and Thiel that show the deep, symbiotic friendship between the two men. In return for Epstein’s favors and tax advice, Thiel provided investment insights and served as something of a reputational shield. When Thiel expressed a growing interest in geopolitics, Epstein encouraged his curiosity, setting up meetings with officials and political power players at home and abroad. After Thiel became part of the 2016 Trump campaign, Epstein urged him to grow his influence within Trumpworld and advised him on how to do it.

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“Will Peter Thiel Be Around?”

It’s not clear exactly when Epstein and Thiel became friends. Emails suggest the two had no relationship in February 2013, the date of an audio recording unearthed earlier this year in which Epstein advised his friend, then-outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, to get involved with Thiel and his surveillance firm Palantir.

For years, Epstein unsuccessfully tried to connect with the tech billionaire, at that point best known for cofounding PayPal and later selling it to eBay for $1.5 billion— at least ten separate times between August 2009 and November 2012, according to emails reviewed by Jacobin. Other times, people in his circle offered to make an introduction, his primary conduit being Ian Osborne, a former British fixer who was well connected, and well invested, in Silicon Valley.

Emails suggest that what may have initially drawn Epstein to Thiel was his interest in creating an alternative financial system. In one of the earliest Epstein documents that mentions Thiel, an August 2009 email from Epstein to literary agent John Brockman requesting that they be brought together, Brockman told him that he would need a reason for the sit-down to happen.

“Idea is now is the time for a new financial alternative, that is what PayPal started as,” Epstein replied. (Jacobin has, as usual, cleaned up Epstein’s often borderline-incomprehensible grammar.)

Another mutual acquaintance, computer scientist Ben Goertzel, an early champion of AI, dangled the prospect of personally interacting with Thiel as a way to get Epstein to the Singularity Summit, a yearly gathering of AI superintelligence enthusiasts, in October that year. Thiel “wanted to start his own currency outside the scope of nation-states,” Goertzel told him.

The vision Epstein had in mind bordered on the goofy. He told a friend years later that he thought Facebook could be the basis for that alternative system, in which Facebook “friends” would trade “favors.” Silly as it sounded, Epstein was dead serious, pitching the idea personally to Thiel two separate times years later. It appeared to be related to his interest in cryptocurrency, as suggested by an April 2016 email to Thiel about former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers joining the effort.

“Larry Summers is now on board with rethinking the financial system, digital currency etc.,” he wrote Thiel. “He will join with us in concocting a plan. Fun.”

Epstein’s interest in Thiel was undeterred by the fact that several of his acquaintances were far from impressed by the PayPal founder. Brockman warned him that Thiel disliked democracy and considered the granting of voting rights to women and the poor a mistake. Another contact told him that while she had once found Thiel interesting, after seeing him speak about Singularity, she decided she “didn’t think he knew what he was talking about and lost interest.” Epstein acknowledged that while most of the big names on the Singularity side were “goofballs,” there did seem “to be a kernel of an idea here and there, even if by accident.”

The two men seem to have finally connected in March 2014, thanks to another Epstein associate from the tech world: Reid Hoffman, whom Osborne had once charmingly described to Epstein as the “fatty at LinkedIn.” Emails indicate that Hoffman set up the meeting between the two men that month at his house, seemingly at Epstein’s nudging.

“Will Peter Thiel be around, as you said he was in your first circle?” Epstein somewhat thirstily emailed Hoffman at the start of that month.

“Does My Bad Press Give You Pause?”

Once the two connected, they appear to have become fast friends. Thiel and Epstein exchanged constant emails, regularly met and talked on the phone, collaborated on business ventures, and discussed everything from politics and science to investment possibilities— as in one now-notorious email exchange about Brexit, in which Epstein seemed to revel in the “return to tribalism” and “collapse” that it heralded.

By the time their friendship was in full swing, Epstein’s crimes against underage girls were years old. In fact, they had become national and global news at the start of 2015, after Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz were named in a lawsuit against Epstein that alleged he had run an underage sex ring.

Roughly two weeks after that lawsuit made global headlines, Thiel emailed Epstein, telling him that if he made it to Miami at the end of the month, “I’ll stop by your island!” Eight days after that, as the unflattering headlines and public denunciations piled up, Epstein followed up.

“Does my bad press give you pause?” he asked.

“If I was intimidated by bad press, I would not have gotten anywhere in life,” Thiel replied. “But I do hope that you’re holding up well, and that the cycle won’t go much further.”

“Do you have any sense on whether this press cycle is going to keep excalating [sic]?” Thiel asked eighteen minutes later. “It would be [good to] compare notes at some point, on strategies on this sort of stuff...”

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Just like with his close friendship with Steve Bannon, Epstein lavished Thiel with generosity. He proposed flying the billionaire to the Virgin Islands in his helicopter, offered to connect him with “the top sleep doctor in NY” (“I would like you to stay alive,” Epstein told him), and encouraged and advised him on buying a private plane. “We need to hang out way more often,” Thiel told him in one of these exchanges.

Early on in their friendship, Epstein suggested speaking with Thiel or one of his advisers to give him financial advice.

“I suspect your personal tax regime can use some tweaking,” Epstein emailed him. “Yes, this would be awesome,” replied Thiel. “I *never* question your judgment on tax-related issues,” he reiterated a few months later. Another time, Epstein informed Thiel he would be discussing cryptocurrency at a meeting with the Treasury Department and what appeared to be the Internal Revenue Service’s chief legal adviser, and asked him if he had any questions he wanted asked.

Epstein in turn solicited investment advice from Thiel. He at one point floated giving him $50–$100 million to invest, which Thiel gladly accepted (“Whenever someone offers you money out of the blue, you should always take it :),” he wrote) and proposed they discuss where best to put it.

Epstein asked for Thiel’s thoughts on an offer to invest in Spotify, as well as the prospect of investing in Thiel’s own company, Palantir, with Thiel advising he hold off until they discussed it later. A month after that, Thiel arranged a meeting between Epstein and his two fellow cofounders of venture capital firm Valar, counseling the convicted sex offender to invest between $10 and $20 million into a new fund they were starting.

“I thought your insight into the Israeli startup world was great,” Epstein emailed Thiel later that month on Christmas eve.

At one point, Thiel’s business partner, Blake Masters, at Thiel’s request, sent Epstein a physical copy of the book the two men had cowritten. “I know he’d love to hear what you think...lt’d be great to meet you sometime in NYC. Warm Regards, Blake,” the note read. (Eight years later, Masters ran a failed Senate campaign in Arizona on a supposedly pro-family platform, costing Thiel $20 million.)

In the case of one business venture, Epstein leaned on his relationship with Thiel to overcome how reputationally toxic his name had become.

In a July 2018 email exchange, Epstein and Bitcoin developer Jeremy Rubin strategized how exactly they would have him invest in Bitcoin mining startup Layer1 while keeping his identity under wraps, since Rubin worried “otherwise potential investments Googling your name might get spooked (especially given SF politics).” When the company refused to move forward until they knew who they were getting in bed with, Epstein instructed Rubin to be honest about who he was and to tell them “I am a major investor with Thiel, they can ask him.”

“They’re not bothered, they’ll chat with Thiel,” Rubin reported back after the conversation.

“Playing With Donald”

As the pair’s friendship deepened, emails suggest Epstein encouraged Thiel’s growing interest in politics.

“Trump delegate? Fun,” Epstein emailed him a day after Thiel’s name popped up in a Trump campaign filing in California in May 2016.

Thiel quickly became one of Trump’s most high-profile supporters, garnering attention not just because of his sexual orientation, but because of his status as an outlier in a Silicon Valley that generally leaned liberal and Democratic. Throughout that year’s July and August, during which Thiel appeared in a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention (RNC), Epstein emailed him praise and encouragement, calling him a “star,” and asking him, in response to a recent article about him, if he was “enjoying raising your public profile.”

“Not really...need to stop this!” was Thiel’s somewhat unsurprising reply. Though it’s unclear exactly which article Epstein was referring to, two weeks earlier, his accountant, Richard Kahn, had sent him a now-infamous report alleging that Thiel was funding a project to prolong his life by transfusing young people’s blood into his own veins.

Epstein appeared eager to make sure Thiel, his new friend, grew his influence with his old friend, the future president of the United States, through a mutual friend: real estate investor Tom Barrack, who would end up serving in both of Trump’s administrations.

“Don’t know how well you know Tom Barrack he is great,” Epstein emailed Thiel a week before he was due to speak at the final night of the RNC, directly before Barrack, who was himself the last speaker before Trump was introduced. “He will be a speaker at the convention,” Epstein explained when Thiel told him he didn’t. “He runs Colony Capital. Solid, great real estate judgement. Donald’s fund raiser.”

An email exchange from the end of August that year suggests Barrack and Thiel may have connected at the RNC, something Epstein urged Thiel to seize on to cultivate greater influence within Trumpworld.

“Tom Barrack really liked you, he told me the conversation in the green room,” Epstein emailed Thiel. When Thiel asked if he had thoughts on the race, Epstein told him: “Lots, and you should be closer. So that your advice is considered.” The two men then turned, at Thiel’s request, to a phone conversation on Signal.

A few weeks later, Epstein offered to call Thiel while Barrack was visiting him. What appears to be a list of calendar items from Epstein’s computer dated to late 2016 includes an hour-long meeting that October, which involved all three men and someone who appears to be former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, another close Epstein associate. Once Trump won, Thiel would end up serving on the then-president-elect’s transition team.

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“Are you still playing with Donald?” Epstein asked him six months into Trump’s presidency. Kahn regularly kept his client abreast of news about Thiel, passing on to Epstein, on the day of the 2017 inauguration, a CNBC story about Trump possibly tapping the PayPal founder to serve as US ambassador to Germany and, seven months later, a Buzzfeed article reporting unflattering comments Thiel had privately made about the administration.

“Read the Buzzfeed article. Careful!” Epstein emailed Thiel the same day. “Donald is vindictive, especially when it is pointed out that he is not the smartest person in the room. Or it is just made obvious.”

“Yes, agreed...Will call later today, sorry I’m so overdue,” Thiel replied.

Thiel did take more care from there on. His public comments about Trump and his administration were invariably, carefully positive, as when he defended Trump’s frequent lies as mere “exaggerations of the truth” that were par for the course in politics (“I liked your Trump exaggerations not lies,” Epstein emailed him). By the end of 2018 Thiel was again an extravagantly generous donor to Trump’s coming presidential campaign.

Steve Bannon, the president’s former Svengali, was another Trump insider Epstein tried to connect Thiel with. Bannon’s close relationship with the late pedophile was one of the major revelations of the first round of DoJ document releases, but more recently released emails suggest Epstein’s efforts to ingratiate himself with Bannon began earlier than previously thought.

According to a November 2016 email exchange between Kahn and Brock Pierce, a crypto investor who once called Bannon “my right-hand man for, like, seven years,” Pierce had consulted Epstein’s accountant about the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Kahn emailed Pierce that Bannon should “talk privately with Jeffrey,” since Epstein “knows more about international finance than anyone on Trump’s team, by a long way,” with Pierce responding that he would “work on getting us all together.” Emails show Epstein instructed his accountant to follow up by suggesting Thiel be thrown into the mix.

“Please communicate with Jeffrey, who is also close to Peter Thiel,” Kahn dutifully emailed Pierce. “Jeffrey thinks Peter is really thoughtful.”

Later, once Epstein had teamed up with Bannon in earnest to try and create an oligarch-funded movement of right-wing populism, he tried several times to get the two men in a room together, and may have succeeded at least once. In one case, he suggested the trio could “discuss response to tax cut criticism”— specifically, work on talking points pushing back on the portrayal of Trump’s tax cuts as a handout to the rich.

Yet for all this work to connect Thiel with Trumpworld, Epstein could also be disdainful toward the tech billionaire. When Larry Summers emailed him a list of possible Treasury secretary picks for Trump shortly after the 2016 election, Epstein dismissed the inclusion of his “great friend.”

“Peter Thiel autistic, no global sense,” Epstein told Summers.

“Many Interesting People”

It wasn’t just Trump. Epstein regularly proposed to introduce Thiel to a variety of influential political players, often in the fields of foreign policy and intelligence. Jacobin has previously reported on Epstein’s successful efforts to connect Thiel with Ehud Barak, efforts that produced a business relationship that prefigured Thiel’s current partnership with the Israeli military. But it went far beyond that.

Epstein appeared particularly set on connecting Thiel with Bill Burns, the future CIA director who at that point was at the tail end of his stint as deputy secretary of state for Barack Obama. “Best and most respected diplomat in the admin, you should meet him, he conducted the secret Iran negotiations, kept them secret for a year and was involved in the most sensitive of missions for years,” Epstein told Thiel. “I can set up when you are avail.”

Between May and October 2014, emails suggest that Epstein made at least five attempts to get the two together in the same room, including a September 13 meeting that, according to a text exchange between Burns and Epstein, the diplomat had to back out at the last minute because of work.

“Please give my best to Peter, and look forward to another opportunity to meet soon,” Burns texted him. One of those times, with Burns’s permission, he put the two in touch directly, telling them they “would enjoy each other.”

“Peter, look forward to meeting, and sorry I wasn’t able to come to NY last month,” Burns emailed Thiel three days later. “Jeffrey, many thanks for making introduction.”

“Bill— likewise, on this end. Look forward to meeting in person!” Thiel replied.

Another former Democratic official meant to attend that weekend was retired senator Bob Kerrey, whose former role on the Senate Intelligence Committee Epstein specifically advertised to Thiel, and who enthusiastically agreed to the meeting (“I think both [dates] work but let me double check with Jen!” Kerrey replied, referring to his firm’s executive assistant). “Sunday lunch with Kerrey would be great,” Thiel told Epstein.

Kathryn Ruemmler (“former Obama counsel for five years,” as Epstein pitched her) was likewise invited to a dinner with Thiel that weekend. “You should meet,” Epstein told her that month, as he tried repeatedly to connect the two. “Any of your spook friends might want to attend,” Epstein emailed her about a June 2015 meeting he proposed, referring to connections Ruemmler may have had in the intelligence world.

Epstein was similarly eager to introduce Thiel to Tom Pritzker, hotel billionaire and executive chairman of the foreign policy think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and a contact he had tried to connect with others in his circle on the basis of a shared hostility on China. Epstein would insist to Thiel that Pritzker was “a good contact for you,” even as CSIS’s hawkish outlook clashed with what Thiel as late as 2019 described as his belief that “the US should have a less interventionist foreign policy.” Epstein took the rare step of putting the two in touch directly (“have fun”) while Thiel was visiting Pritzker’s hometown of Chicago in October 2014, and nudging Thiel when he failed to respond to Pritzker’s outreach.

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Epstein fed Thiel’s growing interest in politics by trying to introduce him to a parade of foreign government officials, many of them European. A year earlier he had taken the rare step of connecting Thiel directly with Sergei Belyakov, a former Russian official and graduate of the country’s spy academy, who later told the pedophile that Thiel’s insights on subjects like the Russian economy had been “very helpful.”

Belyakov wasn’t the only Russian official. Epstein tried several times to have Thiel meet decorated and long-serving Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin (“Russian ambassador, most involved, he and [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov control,” as Epstein put it to him), including a month before Churkin’s death in 2017. “Sorry you are not here, Vitally [sic] Churkin debriefing on Syria, wild,” Epstein emailed Thiel in late September 2016.

It’s not clear if a meeting with Churkin, who served as Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN until the day he died, ever happened, though an October 2016 schedule shows a lunch meeting involving the trio. Elsewhere, in December 2017, Epstein told Maria Drokova, a Kremlin-sponsored activist who became a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, she would meet Thiel when Epstein visited her.

“I’ve been learning from him through his books/speeches,” she replied. “Seems like he has very certain political plans now...”

Other European officials Epstein tried to connect Thiel with included longtime friends and associates like Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen; Slovakian conservative politician Miroslav Lajčák (“great friend would like to do big things”), whom Epstein and Bannon viewed as the future European leader of Bannon’s right-wing movement; and then–Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland (“I think if you want Europe...He has the best understanding of reality on the ground. And I will vouch for your discretion,” Epstein told Thiel), who Epstein tried to arrange Thiel to meet at least four times between 2014 and 2017.

At least three times, in 2014, 2015, and 2018, Epstein invited Thiel on the week that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was convening, dangling the possibility of encountering various power players: “foreign ministers,” “many of the worlds [sic] leaders,” the “head of Nobel Peace Prize committee staying with me.”

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In spite of Thiel’s professed interest in European politics, Epstein also tried to put him in touch with leaders in Asia beyond Israel’s Barak: “Sultan from Dubai,” which likely referred to businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; then-Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, attending a UN summit in New York at the time; “the Qataris,” including “his highness”; and Anil Ambani, an Indian businessman connected to the far right government of Narendra Modi. In late May 2017, Epstein suggested individually to both men that they meet each other.

Other times, Epstein dangled the possibility of meeting the “new head of DAVOS,” as he put it— meaning, Norwegian politician Børge Brende, who had become the president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (Brende resigned two months ago over his relationship with Epstein). _And as he invited Thiel to his New Mexico ranch, he casually mentioned that also in attendance would be “some presidents next week.”

“There are no people for miles and miles,” he told him. “No eyes, just peace and quiet.”

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“Jeffrey Epstein Encouraged Peter Thiel’s Political Journey” By Branko Marcetic; Jacobin; 04/27/2026

“Thiel’s close relationship with Vance and other young right-wingers all but ensures that the tech billionaire will continue to shape politics and policy for many years— decades, if his technological plans to extend his lifespan work out. And, in spite of Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death seven years ago, it ensures the same for the quiet influence of the billionaire pedophile, who private emails show was not only good friends with Thiel but encouraged Thiel’s involvement in right-wing politics.”

They weren’t just good friend. It was Epstein who encouraged Thiel’s foray into right-wing politics, which makes it all the more interesting that Epstein apparent spent years unsuccessfully trying to connect with Thiel before they finally met some time in 2014. Epstein sought out the role of being a kind of Thiel influencer and succeeded.

Notably, the person who finally served as that connection was Reid Hoffman, someone who is not only one of Thiel’s fellow members of the ‘PayPal Mafia’ but has also been shown to have an intriguing relationship with the US national security state. Recall how it was Hoffman who helped to financed the fake ‘Russian bot’ campaign that was influencing voters in Alabama’s 2017 special senatorial election. Other participants in the project, dubbed “Project Birmingham”, included Renee DiResta, the lead author on the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian disinformation. And as we saw, it was Hoffman who arranged for an August 2015 dinner where Epstein was a guest along with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel. Hoffman tried to deflect criticism when this dinner party was first reported by insisting it was just a fund-raising dinner for MIT’s Media Lab, one of the academic institutions whose reputation was most sullied by the Epstein scandal. Hoffman even visited ‘Epstein island’ at least once. And as we’ve also seen, while Hoffman is ostensibly a Democrat, he’s the kind of Democratic mega-donor who uses that influence to rail against ‘government bureaucracy’ and advocates for a kind of unrestrained hyper-capitalism global gig economy that sounds an awful lot like the ‘aristopopulism’ endorsed by the TheoBros. So when learn that it was Epstein who encouraged Thiel’s interest in financing right-wing politics and it was Hoffman who was apparently the person who first connected Thiel to Epstein, it raises more questions about the role Hoffman, as a mega-donor seeking to shape the Democratic party’s priorities towards a libertarian pro-corporate bent, is playing in US politics:

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It’s not clear exactly when Epstein and Thiel became friends. Emails suggest the two had no relationship in February 2013, the date of an audio recording unearthed earlier this year in which Epstein advised his friend, then-outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, to get involved with Thiel and his surveillance firm Palantir.

For years, Epstein unsuccessfully tried to connect with the tech billionaire, at that point best known for cofounding PayPal and later selling it to eBay for $1.5 billion— at least ten separate times between August 2009 and November 2012, according to emails reviewed by Jacobin. Other times, people in his circle offered to make an introduction, his primary conduit being Ian Osborne, a former British fixer who was well connected, and well invested, in Silicon Valley.

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Epstein’s interest in Thiel was undeterred by the fact that several of his acquaintances were far from impressed by the PayPal founder. Brockman warned him that Thiel disliked democracy and considered the granting of voting rights to women and the poor a mistake. Another contact told him that while she had once found Thiel interesting, after seeing him speak about Singularity, she decided she “didn’t think he knew what he was talking about and lost interest.” Epstein acknowledged that while most of the big names on the Singularity side were “goofballs,” there did seem “to be a kernel of an idea here and there, even if by accident.”

The two men seem to have finally connected in March 2014, thanks to another Epstein associate from the tech world: Reid Hoffman, whom Osborne had once charmingly described to Epstein as the “fatty at LinkedIn.” Emails indicate that Hoffman set up the meeting between the two men that month at his house, seemingly at Epstein’s nudging.

“Will Peter Thiel be around, as you said he was in your first circle?” Epstein somewhat thirstily emailed Hoffman at the start of that month.
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Fascinatingly, we are told it was an interest in creating an alternative financial system that first drew Epstein to Thiel, and this interest was already there by August of 2009, right as the US was in the middle of the 2008 global financial crisis. But Thiel wasn’t the only person alternative financial system ambitions. Larry Summers — the Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001 — was on board with the plan too. And based on emails from 2016, Epstein, Thiel, and Summer gathered at least once that year to discuss that agenda. But Epstein didn’t just have access to a former Treasury Secretary. As an August 2014 email indicates, Epstein had a meeting with the Treasury Department and what appeared to be the Internal Revenue Service’s chief legal adviser about cryptocurrency! How was Epstein able to get that kind of access in 2014? And why would the Treasury Department have any interest in Epstein’s views on crypto? And then we get to the claim by Richard Kahn in 2016 that Epstein “knows more about international finance than anyone on Trump’s team, by a long way,” which only adds more questions to the role Epstein was playing as a kind of global elite influencer. Is it just a coincidence that the guy who managed one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history was apparently a global elite finance guru? And when we see Ben Goertzel as a mutual acquaintance of Thiel and Epstein and the person who let Epstein know that Thiel was interested in starting his own currency outside the scope of nation-states, recall how Goertzel is a key figure in the ‘Singularity’ movement and one of Epstein’s foundations made a $100k donation to the Worldwide Transhumanist Association — since renamed Humanity Plus — to pay Goertzel’s salary as the group’s vice chairman. It’s a reminder that a shared interest in transhumanism is also likely part of what drew Epstein to Thiel in addition to cryptocurrencies:

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Emails suggest that what may have initially drawn Epstein to Thiel was his interest in creating an alternative financial system. In one of the earliest Epstein documents that mentions Thiel, an August 2009 email from Epstein to literary agent John Brockman requesting that they be brought together, Brockman told him that he would need a reason for the sit-down to happen.

“Idea is now is the time for a new financial alternative, that is what PayPal started as,” Epstein replied. (Jacobin has, as usual, cleaned up Epstein’s often borderline-incomprehensible grammar.)

Another mutual acquaintance, computer scientist Ben Goertzel, an early champion of AI, dangled the prospect of personally interacting with Thiel as a way to get Epstein to the Singularity Summit, a yearly gathering of AI superintelligence enthusiasts, in October that year. Thiel “wanted to start his own currency outside the scope of nation-states,” Goertzel told him.

The vision Epstein had in mind bordered on the goofy. He told a friend years later that he thought Facebook could be the basis for that alternative system, in which Facebook “friends” would trade “favors.” Silly as it sounded, Epstein was dead serious, pitching the idea personally to Thiel two separate times years later. It appeared to be related to his interest in cryptocurrency, as suggested by an April 2016 email to Thiel about former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers joining the effort.

“Larry Summers is now on board with rethinking the financial system, digital currency etc.,” he wrote Thiel. “He will join with us in concocting a plan. Fun.”

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Just like with his close friendship with Steve Bannon, Epstein lavished Thiel with generosity. He proposed flying the billionaire to the Virgin Islands in his helicopter, offered to connect him with “the top sleep doctor in NY” (“I would like you to stay alive,” Epstein told him), and encouraged and advised him on buying a private plane. “We need to hang out way more often,” Thiel told him in one of these exchanges.

Early on in their friendship, Epstein suggested speaking with Thiel or one of his advisers to give him financial advice.

“I suspect your personal tax regime can use some tweaking,” Epstein emailed him. “Yes, this would be awesome,” replied Thiel. “I *never* question your judgment on tax-related issues,” he reiterated a few months later. Another time, Epstein informed Thiel he would be discussing cryptocurrency at a meeting with the Treasury Department and what appeared to be the Internal Revenue Service’s chief legal adviser, and asked him if he had any questions he wanted asked.

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Steve Bannon, the president’s former Svengali, was another Trump insider Epstein tried to connect Thiel with. Bannon’s close relationship with the late pedophile was one of the major revelations of the first round of DoJ document releases, but more recently released emails suggest Epstein’s efforts to ingratiate himself with Bannon began earlier than previously thought.

According to a November 2016 email exchange between Kahn and Brock Pierce, a crypto investor who once called Bannon “my right-hand man for, like, seven years,” Pierce had consulted Epstein’s accountant about the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Kahn emailed Pierce that Bannon should “talk privately with Jeffrey,” since Epstein “knows more about international finance than anyone on Trump’s team, by a long way,” with Pierce responding that he would “work on getting us all together.” Emails show Epstein instructed his accountant to follow up by suggesting Thiel be thrown into the mix.

“Please communicate with Jeffrey, who is also close to Peter Thiel,” Kahn dutifully emailed Pierce. “Jeffrey thinks Peter is really thoughtful.”
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We are also told that Thiel served as a kind of reputational shield for Epstein in exchange for Epstein’s favors and tax advice. What kind of favors and tax advice is Epstein offering someone like Thiel? As we’ve seen, Thiel was already using a Roth IRA to shield himself from billions of dollars in taxes over his PayPal investments. Was Epstein really offering some kind of exotic financial advice that Thiel couldn’t get elsewhere? This is a good time to recall how Epstein was one of the leading figures in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the history back in the 80s. Was he offering financial advice? Or something more criminal?

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Among the millions of Epstein-related documents released by the Department of Justice so far are hundreds of email exchanges between Epstein and Thiel that show the deep, symbiotic friendship between the two men. In return for Epstein’s favors and tax advice, Thiel provided investment insights and served as something of a reputational shield. When Thiel expressed a growing interest in geopolitics, Epstein encouraged his curiosity, setting up meetings with officials and political power players at home and abroad. After Thiel became part of the 2016 Trump campaign, Epstein urged him to grow his influence within Trumpworld and advised him on how to do it.

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Once the two connected, they appear to have become fast friends. Thiel and Epstein exchanged constant emails, regularly met and talked on the phone, collaborated on business ventures, and discussed everything from politics and science to investment possibilities— as in one now-notorious email exchange about Brexit, in which Epstein seemed to revel in the “return to tribalism” and “collapse” that it heralded.

By the time their friendship was in full swing, Epstein’s crimes against underage girls were years old. In fact, they had become national and global news at the start of 2015, after Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz were named in a lawsuit against Epstein that alleged he had run an underage sex ring.

Roughly two weeks after that lawsuit made global headlines, Thiel emailed Epstein, telling him that if he made it to Miami at the end of the month, “I’ll stop by your island!” Eight days after that, as the unflattering headlines and public denunciations piled up, Epstein followed up.

“Does my bad press give you pause?” he asked.

“If I was intimidated by bad press, I would not have gotten anywhere in life,” Thiel replied. “But I do hope that you’re holding up well, and that the cycle won’t go much further.”

“Do you have any sense on whether this press cycle is going to keep excalating [sic]?” Thiel asked eighteen minutes later. “It would be [good to] compare notes at some point, on strategies on this sort of stuff...”

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In the case of one business venture, Epstein leaned on his relationship with Thiel to overcome how reputationally toxic his name had become.

In a July 2018 email exchange, Epstein and Bitcoin developer Jeremy Rubin strategized how exactly they would have him invest in Bitcoin mining startup Layer1 while keeping his identity under wraps, since Rubin worried “otherwise potential investments Googling your name might get spooked (especially given SF politics).” When the company refused to move forward until they knew who they were getting in bed with, Epstein instructed Rubin to be honest about who he was and to tell them “I am a major investor with Thiel, they can ask him.”

“They’re not bothered, they’ll chat with Thiel,” Rubin reported back after the conversation.
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And, that brings us to Epstein’s investment in Thiel’s Valar Ventures fund in the 2015–2016 period. As we’ve learned from Ed Opperman, it’s the investments in Valar Ventures that constitutes the bulk of the remaining assets — worth potentially more than $100 million — left to the Epstein estate to use as it sees fit. Epstein’s investments with Thiel are alive and well long after Epstein’s ‘suicide’ in prison:

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Epstein in turn solicited investment advice from Thiel. He at one point floated giving him $50–$100 million to invest, which Thiel gladly accepted (“Whenever someone offers you money out of the blue, you should always take it :),” he wrote) and proposed they discuss where best to put it.

Epstein asked for Thiel’s thoughts on an offer to invest in Spotify, as well as the prospect of investing in Thiel’s own company, Palantir, with Thiel advising he hold off until they discussed it later. A month after that, Thiel arranged a meeting between Epstein and his two fellow cofounders of venture capital firm Valar, counseling the convicted sex offender to invest between $10 and $20 million into a new fund they were starting.

“I thought your insight into the Israeli startup world was great,” Epstein emailed Thiel later that month on Christmas eve.
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Incredibly, it really does appear to be Jeffrey Epstein, of all people, who was pushing Thiel into becoming the active right-wing political kingmaker back in 2015–2016 when Trump was first running for office, with Epstein encouraging Thiel’s backing for Trump and public role as a speaker at the RNC. Epstein really was a kind of Thiel-whisperer with real influence:

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As the pair’s friendship deepened, emails suggest Epstein encouraged Thiel’s growing interest in politics.

“Trump delegate? Fun,” Epstein emailed him a day after Thiel’s name popped up in a Trump campaign filing in California in May 2016.

Thiel quickly became one of Trump’s most high-profile supporters, garnering attention not just because of his sexual orientation, but because of his status as an outlier in a Silicon Valley that generally leaned liberal and Democratic. Throughout that year’s July and August, during which Thiel appeared in a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention (RNC), Epstein emailed him praise and encouragement, calling him a “star,” and asking him, in response to a recent article about him, if he was “enjoying raising your public profile.”

“Not really...need to stop this!” was Thiel’s somewhat unsurprising reply. Though it’s unclear exactly which article Epstein was referring to, two weeks earlier, his accountant, Richard Kahn, had sent him a now-infamous report alleging that Thiel was funding a project to prolong his life by transfusing young people’s blood into his own veins.
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Epstein’s ties to Tom Barrack add another layer to the question of what possible role did Epstein and/or Thiel play in the various 2016 campaign ‘Russiagate’ mysteries. Recall how Tom Barrack wasn’t just an old friend of Trump and fellow real estate developer. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee — which faced all sorts of investigations involving foreign influence peddling by governments that included Qatar, with Steven Bannon and Michael Flynn helping the Qataris — was chaired by Barrack. Also recall how Barrack is long-time friends with Paul Manafort and reportedly tried to get Manafort Qatari clients after Manafort was let go from the Trump campaign in August of 2016, a reflection of Barrack’s extensive Middle Eastern contacts. It was Barrack who reportedly recommended that Trump hire Manafort to run his campaign in the first place. Barrack was also deeply intertwined with the lobbying for a kind of ‘nuclear Marshall plan for the Middle East’ scheme during the first Trump administration. So when we see how Barrack was also an old friend of Epstein, it’s hard not to suspect that Barrack knew both Trump and Epstein back when the pair were close party pals. But it also places Epstein even closer to the whole 2016 ‘Russiagate’ affair and subsequent foreign influence peddling scandals. And as we’ve seen, with Epstein’s close ties to the Qataris, it’s not hard to imagine Epstein was part of these backroom negotiations too. At this point, given everything we’ve learned, it would almost be surprising if he wasn’t:

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Epstein appeared eager to make sure Thiel, his new friend, grew his influence with his old friend, the future president of the United States, through a mutual friend: real estate investor Tom Barrack, who would end up serving in both of Trump’s administrations.

“Don’t know how well you know Tom Barrack he is great,” Epstein emailed Thiel a week before he was due to speak at the final night of the RNC, directly before Barrack, who was himself the last speaker before Trump was introduced. “He will be a speaker at the convention,” Epstein explained when Thiel told him he didn’t. “He runs Colony Capital. Solid, great real estate judgement. Donald’s fund raiser.”

An email exchange from the end of August that year suggests Barrack and Thiel may have connected at the RNC, something Epstein urged Thiel to seize on to cultivate greater influence within Trumpworld.

“Tom Barrack really liked you, he told me the conversation in the green room,” Epstein emailed Thiel. When Thiel asked if he had thoughts on the race, Epstein told him: “Lots, and you should be closer. So that your advice is considered.” The two men then turned, at Thiel’s request, to a phone conversation on Signal.

A few weeks later, Epstein offered to call Thiel while Barrack was visiting him. What appears to be a list of calendar items from Epstein’s computer dated to late 2016 includes an hour-long meeting that October, which involved all three men and someone who appears to be former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, another close Epstein associate. Once Trump won, Thiel would end up serving on the then-president-elect’s transition team.
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And all of those questions about what Epstein was up to in the 2014–2016 period brings us to what is arguably the most incredible Epstein revelation we’ve learned: At some point in 2014, Epstein arranged a weekend gathering that initially included former CIA director Bill Burns, then the deputy secretary of state for Barack Obama before he retired in October 2014, along with Bob Kerrey, the former senator who was a longtime member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Kathryn Ruemmler, along with Thiel. Recall how Ruemmler was not just a longtime associate. She was also the lawyer for George Nader during the Russiagate congressional hearings. Hearings about backroom deals involving Middle Eastern governments that Epstein had spent years cultivating relationships with. Burns had to back out of the meeting at the last minute but it sounds like happened without him and Epstein and Burns met later that month. It’s like an Epstein US foreign affairs gathering, in 2014, that almost included the deputy secretary of state:

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It wasn’t just Trump. Epstein regularly proposed to introduce Thiel to a variety of influential political players, often in the fields of foreign policy and intelligence. Jacobin has previously reported on Epstein’s successful efforts to connect Thiel with Ehud Barak, efforts that produced a business relationship that prefigured Thiel’s current partnership with the Israeli military. But it went far beyond that.

Epstein appeared particularly set on connecting Thiel with Bill Burns, the future CIA director who at that point was at the tail end of his stint as deputy secretary of state for Barack Obama. “Best and most respected diplomat in the admin, you should meet him, he conducted the secret Iran negotiations, kept them secret for a year and was involved in the most sensitive of missions for years,” Epstein told Thiel. “I can set up when you are avail.”

Between May and October 2014, emails suggest that Epstein made at least five attempts to get the two together in the same room, including a September 13 meeting that, according to a text exchange between Burns and Epstein, the diplomat had to back out at the last minute because of work.

“Please give my best to Peter, and look forward to another opportunity to meet soon,” Burns texted him. One of those times, with Burns’s permission, he put the two in touch directly, telling them they “would enjoy each other.”

“Peter, look forward to meeting, and sorry I wasn’t able to come to NY last month,” Burns emailed Thiel three days later. “Jeffrey, many thanks for making introduction.”

“Bill— likewise, on this end. Look forward to meeting in person!” Thiel replied.

Another former Democratic official meant to attend that weekend was retired senator Bob Kerrey, whose former role on the Senate Intelligence Committee Epstein specifically advertised to Thiel, and who enthusiastically agreed to the meeting (“I think both [dates] work but let me double check with Jen!” Kerrey replied, referring to his firm’s executive assistant). “Sunday lunch with Kerrey would be great,” Thiel told Epstein.

Kathryn Ruemmler (“former Obama counsel for five years,” as Epstein pitched her) was likewise invited to a dinner with Thiel that weekend. “You should meet,” Epstein told her that month, as he tried repeatedly to connect the two. “Any of your spook friends might want to attend,” Epstein emailed her about a June 2015 meeting he proposed, referring to connections Ruemmler may have had in the intelligence world.
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And when we see how Epstein reportedly used a shared animosity towards China as a grounds for introducing Thiel to elites like Tom Pritzker, hotel billionaire and executive chairman of CSIS, it’s a good time to recall how Bannon and Thiel were publicly accusing Google of “treason” for its business in China back in July of 2019, which would have been right when Epstein was in arrested and weeks before he ‘committed suicide’. Was that coincidental timing? Either way, it’s clear that anti-Chinese chauvinism has a lot of uses in these circles:

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Epstein was similarly eager to introduce Thiel to Tom Pritzker, hotel billionaire and executive chairman of the foreign policy think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and a contact he had tried to connect with others in his circle on the basis of a shared hostility on China. Epstein would insist to Thiel that Pritzker was “a good contact for you,” even as CSIS’s hawkish outlook clashed with what Thiel as late as 2019 described as his belief that “the US should have a less interventionist foreign policy.” Epstein took the rare step of putting the two in touch directly (“have fun”) while Thiel was visiting Pritzker’s hometown of Chicago in October 2014, and nudging Thiel when he failed to respond to Pritzker’s outreach.
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And when we see how Epstein’s interactions with Russian officials included directly connecting Thiel with Sergei Belyakov, a former Russian official and graduate of the country’s spy academy, recall how Epstein’s ties to Belyakov were seen as hinting at ties to the Russian government and yet, as we saw, Epstein apparently attempted at one point to arrange a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Belyakov although there’s no indication that meeting ever happened. It’s a strong hint that Epstein’s relationship with Belyakov should not be seen as indicative of Epstein’s ties to Putin but more a propensity to make incredible claims about access. In other words, Epstein’s relationship with Belyakov was, if anything, likely fueled by the false assertion on Epstein’s part that he had Putin’s ear and it probably wasn’t the only time Epstein made such a false assertion:

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Epstein fed Thiel’s growing interest in politics by trying to introduce him to a parade of foreign government officials, many of them European. A year earlier he had taken the rare step of connecting Thiel directly with Sergei Belyakov, a former Russian official and graduate of the country’s spy academy, who later told the pedophile that Thiel’s insights on subjects like the Russian economy had been “very helpful.”

Belyakov wasn’t the only Russian official. Epstein tried several times to have Thiel meet decorated and long-serving Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin (“Russian ambassador, most involved, he and [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov control,” as Epstein put it to him), including a month before Churkin’s death in 2017. “Sorry you are not here, Vitally [sic] Churkin debriefing on Syria, wild,” Epstein emailed Thiel in late September 2016.

It’s not clear if a meeting with Churkin, who served as Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN until the day he died, ever happened, though an October 2016 schedule shows a lunch meeting involving the trio. Elsewhere, in December 2017, Epstein told Maria Drokova, a Kremlin-sponsored activist who became a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, she would meet Thiel when Epstein visited her.

“I’ve been learning from him through his books/speeches,” she replied. “Seems like he has very certain political plans now...”
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And when we see how it was Epstein who was repeatedly introducing Thiel to one world leader after another in the 2014–2017 period, including the “new head of DAVOS”, it’s apparent that Epstein’s influence of the global elite has been, if anything, understated in the coverage since his death and the release of the Epstein files. Keep that in mind when it comes to all of the Epstein files that have yet to be released:

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Other European officials Epstein tried to connect Thiel with included longtime friends and associates like Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen; Slovakian conservative politician Miroslav Lajčák (“great friend would like to do big things”), whom Epstein and Bannon viewed as the future European leader of Bannon’s right-wing movement; and then–Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland (“I think if you want Europe...He has the best understanding of reality on the ground. And I will vouch for your discretion,” Epstein told Thiel), who Epstein tried to arrange Thiel to meet at least four times between 2014 and 2017.

At least three times, in 2014, 2015, and 2018, Epstein invited Thiel on the week that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was convening, dangling the possibility of encountering various power players: “foreign ministers,” “many of the worlds [sic] leaders,” the “head of Nobel Peace Prize committee staying with me.”

In spite of Thiel’s professed interest in European politics, Epstein also tried to put him in touch with leaders in Asia beyond Israel’s Barak: “Sultan from Dubai,” which likely referred to businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; then-Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, attending a UN summit in New York at the time; “the Qataris,” including “his highness”; and Anil Ambani, an Indian businessman connected to the far right government of Narendra Modi. In late May 2017, Epstein suggested individually to both men that they meet each other.

Other times, Epstein dangled the possibility of meeting the “new head of DAVOS,” as he put it— meaning, Norwegian politician Børge Brende, who had become the president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (Brende resigned two months ago over his relationship with Epstein). _And as he invited Thiel to his New Mexico ranch, he casually mentioned that also in attendance would be “some presidents next week.”

“There are no people for miles and miles,” he told him. “No eyes, just peace and quiet.”
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Did Thiel ever end up meeting “some presidents” and “No eyes, just peace and quiet” at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch? We’ll probably never know. Just as we’ll probably never know about the vast majority of what Epstein was up to. But that doesn’t mean we don’t already know enough to conclude that Peter Thiel probably wouldn’t be the person he is today were it not for the ‘wisdom’ and ‘guidance’ of Jeffrey Epstein. He would undoubtedly still be a techno-fascist lunatic, as we clearly the case well before he met Epstein. It’s not really in question. But would Thiel be the public super-villain he is today had he not befriended Epstein? That’s a much more interesting and open question.

Never heard of the filmmaker, but Thornley and his ilk were sacks of Fresh Fertilizer.

Sounds like this bag got torn open and enriched some unfortunate seedlings.

Best,

Dave