EDITED URL to unlocked gift article link kindly provided by [email protected]. Many thanks!

The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself.

By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
June 10, 2026

On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.

Ten days earlier, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had jointly released a memo that bluntly stated that their review had found no “client list” of powerful men for whom the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had allegedly procured underage girls and young women. Intended to put to rest years of speculation and end the pressure campaign to release the voluminous material in the department’s possession, the memo instead had the opposite effect, setting off a backlash that was notably loud among the MAGA base.

And it was about to get worse: The Wall Street Journal was preparing a damaging article about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The president’s desperate attempts to kill the story had failed. His team now had to get everyone onto the same page about how to counter the growing swarm of attention. They needed a gesture of transparency to appease an increasingly angry base, but also a way to convey the message that the president was sympathetic to his supporters’ concerns. Which itself was a problem, because he clearly wasn’t.

Oddly, this Google Drive link was provided by the Committee itself in its associated press release as opposed to anything hosted on their own site. But you can see (it's the very last line in the release) that as of today, this is the official link.

This press release itself is worth a glance in its own right as it repeats a couple of the names offered by Ms. Kellen as Epstein co-offenders and others the Committee plans to call.

As I noted in the title, Ms Kellen has been named by multiple victims as a co-offender of Epstein. Ms Kellen, for her part in this, maintains that she was herself a victim of Epstein. Either way, she is frequently named in the files and both she and her ex-husband were friendly with Epstein until his death.

From the introduction (page 4):

This is a transcribed interview of Ms. Sarah Kellen conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under the authority granted to it pursuant to House rule X.

Accordingly, House rule X grants the Committee broad jurisdiction for the Committee to conduct investigations of any matter at any time.

This interview was requested by Chairman James Comer as part of the Committee's investigation into the circumstances and subsequent investigations into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell; the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the Federal Government to effectively combat them; the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities; and potential violations of Ethics rules related to elected officials.

From the introduction (page 4):

This is a transcribed interview of Tova Noel, conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under the authority granted to it pursuant to House rule X.

Accordingly, House rule X grants the Committee broad jurisdiction for the Committee to conduct investigations of any matter at any time.

This interview was requested by Chairman James Comer as part of the Committee's investigation into the circumstances and subsequent investigations into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the Federal Government to effectively combat them, the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

Note: Tova Noel received intermittent "mystery payments" from April 2018, over a year before Epstein was arrested, until the day before Epstein's death. While the FBI subpoenaed her bank records in 2019, and the DoJ-OIG* interviewed her directly pursuant to their deferred prosecution agreement with her that was finalized in December 2021, they never asked her about these payments.

In this hearing by the House Oversight Committee, the committee members did inquire into the "mystery payments" Ms. Noel received shortly before Epstein's death, but didn't get much in the way of answers.

*DoJ-OIG: Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice (DoJ has oversight of the Bureau of Prisons, and it is the DoJ-OIG that investigates misconduct involving prisons and BoP personnel)

EDITED TO ADD: The transcript is now up on https://oversight.house.gov/ (official government site for the committee) and you can definitely download it from there now:

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Final-Bondi-Transcript.pdf

From the introduction (pages 4 - 5):

This is a transcribed interview of former Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi, conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under the authority granted to it pursuant to House rule X.

Accordingly, House rule X grants the Committee broad jurisdiction for the Committee to conduct investigations of any matter at any time.

This interview was requested by Chairman James Comer as part of the Committee's investigation into the circumstances and subsequent investigations into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the Federal Government to effectively combat them, the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

Her remarks, delivered during a closed-door interview before the House Oversight Committee, were a candid admission of her own powerlessness.

May 29, 2026 - Updated 6:21 p.m. ET

Pam Bondi, fired as attorney general by President Trump in April, insisted on Friday that she had little real authority in overseeing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, putting responsibility squarely on her former deputy and successor, Todd Blanche.

Her remarks, delivered during a closed-door interview before the House Oversight Committee, were a bracingly candid admission of her own powerlessness that belied her nominal role as one of the most powerful figures in government. It was a noticeable shift from her past appearances on Capitol Hill, when she resorted to maximum-volume attacks on Democrats who raised questions about her performance or challenged her authority.

Ms. Bondi told committee members that Mr. Blanche was managing “the entire investigation,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said after emerging from a tense session Ms. Bondi had long sought to delay or dodge.

She added in the hearing that Mr. Blanche was responsible for determining which documents would be released, another person present for her testimony said, describing how she also repeatedly punted to Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I.

Current and former Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, disputed Ms. Bondi’s characterization. She was not only informed of every key development in the Epstein case, they said, but signed off on every major decision — including by issuing a memo in July 2025 that formally ended the government’s review of the files.

Ms. Bondi, in a social media post after she left the interview, praised Mr. Blanche’s “herculean task” of handling the Epstein case, said he was an “incredible” attorney general and denied there was any friction between the two.

Asked by lawmakers about key details of the Epstein case, Ms. Bondi expressed ignorance and flatly declined to answer any queries involving Mr. Trump. She urged committee Democrats to ask Mr. Blanche instead of her as they pelted her with inquiries about the Justice Department’s missteps in releasing the files, like publishing information that identified or embarrassed Epstein victims, Mr. Garcia said.

In one remarkable exchange, Ms. Bondi claimed to have played no role in the drafting or release of the July 2025 memo — now seen as a major blunder that fed a political backlash, claims of a cover-up and eventually paving the way for the Justice Department’s full release of the files.

When asked if she knew what information was used to put a stop to the review, Ms. Bondi told committee members that they needed, yet again, to ask Mr. Blanche and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, not her.

How did Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice, manage to secure a transfer to a more comfortable federal prison last year — after sitting for an interview with Mr. Blanche, then the deputy attorney general?

Ms. Bondi said she had no idea about it until she read about in the news.

To lower the stakes of Friday’s hearing, Ms. Bondi and committee Republicans agreed to conduct a “voluntary” interview rather than a sworn deposition that would have been legally binding, or a formal committee hearing with greater consequences and heightened scrutiny.

The hearing took place early on a Friday of a holiday week, with most of Congress, including all but one of the committee’s Republicans, out of town.

Most of the committee’s Democrats attended, and relished the opportunity to grill, leaving Ms. Bondi without the support of her fellow Republicans.

The exception was the committee’s chairman, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, who had to be there, and offered her a polite thank-you for appearing before the panel a second time.

“I appreciate that she’s coming back today,” he told reporters as he headed into the interview.

Ms. Bondi’s exit from the Justice Department was hastened by a disastrous appearance before a House committee in February, when she hurled insults, stonewalled questioners and refused to make eye contact with several of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims in the audience.

On Friday, some of those same women gathered outside the closed-door committee room to criticize Ms. Bondi, but also to make the point that she was not the only one who needed to be held accountable.

“I really hope that we are not using Pam Bondi as a scapegoat,” said Danielle Bensky, one of the survivors. “I feel that Todd Blanche is actually more dangerous in a lot of ways than Bondi.”

That Ms. Bondi was compelled to testify at all reflected the growing anger in her own party about the department’s erratic actions in the Epstein case that grew from a conspiracy theory sideshow into a crisis that engulfed the Trump presidency.

In mid-March, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina and four other Republicans on the committee blindsided their own leadership, and Ms. Bondi, by joining Democrats to vote to subpoena her to testify under oath behind closed doors about the Epstein case.

Mr. Comer scheduled a deposition for April 14.

Ms. Bondi and Mr. Comer began quietly working together to avoid the deposition. To ease the pressure, Ms. Bondi appeared at the Capitol on March 18 for a briefing with members of the committee. Democrats pelted her with questions, then stormed out, saying her appearance was no substitute for her sworn, transcribed testimony.

She was fired on April 2, and weeks of negotiations followed to determine the format of Ms. Bondi’s interview — which Democrats have criticized as an attempt to shield the former attorney general and her party from answering questions under oath in a televised spotlight.

Democratic lawmakers questioned the unusual presence of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, at Ms. Bondi’s side, where she frequently intervened to advise Ms. Bondi not to answer questions.

Democrats have accused Ms. Dhillon of serving as an enforcer to ensure that Ms. Bondi did not answer potentially damaging queries, but Ms. Dhillon has said she was appearing as Ms. Bondi’s private lawyer.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.

Also from NYT today on the same subject:

May 29, 2026, 12:10 p.m. ET
Glenn Thrush

Democratic lawmakers questioned the presence of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, at Pam Bondi’s side in her interview before the House Oversight Committee on Friday. Dhillon frequently intervened to advise Bondi not to answer questions.

She has said she is appearing as Bondi’s private attorney — but Democrats accused Dhillon of serving as an enforcer and spy to ensure that Bondi did not answer potentially damaging queries.

May 29, 2026, 12:04 p.m. ET
Glenn Thrush

The former attorney general Pam Bondi flatly refused to address any questions about President Trump’s appearances in the Jeffrey Epstein files. When asked why she wouldn’t answer, Bondi cited a deal with the committee’s Republican leadership allowing her to “voluntarily” testify on issues of her choosing, Democratic committee members said outside the committee room.

Quote taken from the video featuring Ranking Member Robert Garcia D-CA (same link):

I also personally asked the former A.G. five times and five different questions about her conversations with President Trump, whether he directed her at any given time on the Epstein files, what he knew, what he asked her to redact or not, and she refused to answer any questions about President Trump. In fact, she said that she would not speak or respond to any questions that had anything to do with President Trump.

Groff worked for Epstein for 18 years, from 2001 until his arrest in July 2019. No criminal charges have ever been brought against her (or anyone else connected to Epstein, apart from Maxwell). Since Epstein’s death, in August 2019, Groff has remained almost invisible and spoken only through her lawyers. Recent photographs have shown her going to pilates or walking her dog near her home in Connecticut, off-duty and low-key. Compared to the royals, politicians, billionaires and professors who have featured in the Epstein files, Groff is low status – a non-celebrity with no public reputation to lose. But when you search for her name in the files, you receive more than 160,000 results, more than anyone else. (I have read perhaps 10,000 of these, a fraction.) No one was more regularly in contact with Epstein, day-to-day.

After the release of the Epstein files, the US Congress’s committee on oversight and government reform decided to review the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes. On 3 March 2026, they sent a letter to Groff asking her to attend an interview in Washington on 9 June: “The Committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation.” They believe, in other words, that Groff knows more than she has ever said she knows.

Beyond her laughable attempt to overcome years of her own history with Jeffrey Epstein -- thoroughly documented both privately and in the media -- by simply ordering discussion of it to stop, Mrs. Trump has called for a hearing not for the perpetrators, nor for Epstein's co-conspirators, but a hearing in which the survivors testify.

I wish I were joking, but no. The linked BBC article, which focuses more on Mrs. Trump's well-established, undeniable ties to both Epstein and Maxwell, also has information on this proposed hearing:

In a surprise announcement on Thursday, the first lady called for congressional hearings for survivors of Epstein's sex trafficking.

Melania Trump on Thursday additionally called on lawmakers to "give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony".

"Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record," she said. "Then, and only then, we will have the truth."

Family of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, Sky and Amanda Roberts, and other survivors told BBC Newsnight that they "have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony.

"Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice," they said in a statement. They accused the first lady of protecting "those with power", including members of her husband's administration who they said still have not released all of the investigative files related to Epstein.

"Survivors have done their part," they said. "Now it's time for those in power to do theirs."

EDITED to note: I did not realize when I posted this that it was actually written in October, 2025 about an older NYT op-ed, because the complaint is exactly the same. Fresh off the current NYT article linked here, I happened to see this in the sidebar of the Common Dreams article about Saturday's (March 28, 2026) protests and assumed it was about the current NYT op-ed. My error. Thanks to @[email protected] for pointing it out.

For those who haven't read it, this is the NYT article in question. I should note that the author gets thoroughly schooled in the comments:

A Challenge for ‘No Kings’ Protests, the Third Time Around -- by Jeremy W. Peters for the NYT

Archive.world link
(I am aware this site has problems, but it has the content. If you have a better archive link, please post it)

Invidious link

“Little Mike Johnson and all those Republicans have just created yet another participation trophy to give their very special boy in the White House to make sure he feels good about himself,” said Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary and the host of a show on MS Now.

“Any other adult in this country would feel completely embarrassed by the patronizing way that Trump is showered with fake awards on a near-daily basis. That’s just how Republicans have to treat this president,” Psaki added.

The “America First” award follows a series of other similar awards that have been manufactured and given to Trump.

Last month, Trump was given the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful, Clean Coal” award by a number of mining executives at the White House. In December, Trump was given the Fifa peace prize, an award that was made up and presented to him for promoting “peace and unity” around the world. And in October, the recipient of the Nobel peace prize, María Corina Machado, the rightwing Venezuelan opposition leader, dedicated the prize to Trump.

The above-linked EFTA file is a "Notice of Appeal and Petition to Review" filed against the Epstein estate in 2021.

Normally these things are drier than a fart in the Sahara -- and really, don't expect anything different now -- but it was just something that came up today when I was trying to find a transcript of the USVI probate court proceedings I read several months ago.

But what first caught my attention -- and I mean beyond the fact that they have moved many (most?) of the PUBLIC probate court records off the "Court Records" section of the main DoJ Epstein library -- is that these PUBLIC records are now all redacted.

Okay, fine. I've seen enough redacted instances of the word don't to know what they're doing.

But I'm looking through this and noticing they're redacting unrelated place names, and select individual names, that have nothing to do with anything but the filing itself, and are themselves not only public record, but in the news.

For example, in every mention of St. Thomas, the name Thomas is redacted.

In every mention of Denise George, the Attorney General of the USVI, the name George is redacted.

Yet a great many other proper names are NOT redacted. Denise, Carol, Shari, Daniel and Marc are just fine with the DoJ. Even Andrew is in there a few times, unredacted for all the world to see.

So out of curiosity and maybe a bit of spite, I found an unredacted version of this very public (and honestly quite boring) record and compared them side by side, and found a pretty clear pattern.

These are all the unique redactions. Do you see it too?

THOMAS
GEORGE
JACOBS
CHRISTOPHER
ALLEN
FERGUSON
ROYAL
WHITE
SMITH
FOSTER
RUSSELL
SINGER
GORDON
PARRIS

First, this is very clearly auto-redaction. No human did this, inasmuch as it makes zero sense to redact the partial name of the court where the filing was made, in every instance where it appears, for example. Or half an attorney's name, or half of the name of a public official. So I think it's safe to conclude as a hypothesis that these are machine redactions.

If that's true, then we're looking at a list of specific terms fed into a program to be redacted no matter where they appear, whether in whole or in part. We know this because partial and not whole names are redacted, and the same parts are consistently redacted.

So you'd expect to see victim names redacted, right? Or female names? No. Except for a handful, they are ALL male first names, or could be. No female first names were redacted.

But then there's Royal, lol. And Ferguson. (But not Andrew.)

Parris is best known as Parris Island, a military training center off the coast of South Carolina, but it could refer to a number of people (including at least one in politics) or places.

Singer and White also fall into this latter "could be anyone or anywhere" category, but these too are not self-evidently victim names, which are the only names, by law, that EFTA files are supposed to have redacted. They're just the partial names of rando attorneys attached to a mundane probate filing in the USVI.

Below are the actual page by page redactions, for anyone interested.

The REDACTED file (also linked above)

The UNREDACTED version (scroll down to get to the actual document)

The redactions, in bold by page:

Page 1

In the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands
Division of St. Thomas and St. John

THOMAS

Page 2

(no redactions)

Page 3

DENISE N. GEORGE, ESQUIRE
ATTORNEY GENERAL
By: /s/ Carol Thomas-Jacobs
CAROL THOMAS-JACOBS, ESQUIRE
Chief Deputy Attorney General
Virgin Islands Department of Justice

St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands 00802

GEORGE
THOMAS
JACOBS

Page 4

CHRISTOPHER ALLEN KROBLIN , ESQ.
KELLERHALS FERGUSON KROBLIN PLLC
Royal Palms Professional Building
9053 Estate Thomas, Suite 101
St. Thomas, V.I. 00802-3602

WHITE & CASE, LLP

By: /s/ Carol Thomas-Jacobs
CAROL THOMAS-JACOBS, ESQUIRE

CHRISTOPHER
ALLEN
FERGUSON
ROYAL
THOMAS
WHITE
JACOBS

Page 5

Division of St. Thomas and St. John

Ariel Smith, Esq., Chief of the Civil Division
Attorneys Ariel Smith and

THOMAS
SMITH

Page 6

In the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands
Division of St. Thomas and St. John

Carol Thomas-Jacobs, Esq.
Sean Foster, Esq.
KELLERHALS FERGUSON KROBLIN PLLC
Christopher Kroblin, Esq.
Attorney Thomas-Jacobs
Attorney Foster's Joinder

THOMAS
JACOBS
FOSTER
FERGUSON
CHRISTOPHER

Page 7

Attorneys Ariel Smith and
Carol Thomas-Jacobs, Esq.
filed by Sean Foster, Esq.
KELLERHALS FERGUSON KROBLIN PLLC
Christopher Kroblin, Esq.

SMITH
THOMAS
JACOBS
FOSTER
FERGUSON
CHRISTOPHER

Page 8

Carol Thomas-Jacobs, Esq.

THOMAS
JACOBS

Page 9

Division of St. Thomas / St. John

THOMAS

Pages 10 and 11

(no redactions)

Page 12

Division of St. Thomas / St. John
John-Russell B. Pate,
Linda Jill Singer,
Carol Laura Thomas-Jacobs,
Ariel M. Smith
Gordon C. Rhea,
Christopher A. Kroblin,
Sean Foster, Esq.
Denise N. George, Esq.
Cheryl Parris, Court Clerk III

Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, is one of the Democrats making it his business to understand the depth of the coverup happening in regard to the Epstein files, the ongoing preferential redactions of names of doers while exposing victims, and the dog and pony show he has to go through once he gets behind closed doors at the DoJ to actually view the unredacted files — which, unsurprisingly, are still redacted.

Here Rep. Frost is interviewed by Heather Cox Richardson, a historian in her own right, and like all of her interviews it is incisive and deeply informative.

Being Gen Z, Rep. Frost went in to the special DoJ facility to see the unredacted-but-actually-still-redacted files with a better grasp of technology than many of his older peers, and thus was readily able to navigate the bizarre technological obstructions that had been put in Congress' way before the first member ever showed up to see the files.

Rep. Frost describes this at length, and the patterns he sees in the redactions, and the length to which the DoJ has tried to prevent anyone from being able to "connect the dots" and get the larger picture of the entire ring, not only of pedophilia but of influence peddling and criminal conspiracy to evade any kind of justice.

I will try to attach a cleaned transcript later this evening (for those of us who prefer to read) but in the meantime you should know that pretty much everything that he describes are illegal acts in and of themselves, even before you get to specific violations of EFTA, perjury under oath, etc.

Congress, the legislative branch of government, is co-equal with the judicial and the executive, and wherever he and his fellow legislators are being denied full access to anything they request, and whatever lies/distractions/untruths they are being served in furtherance of that denial of access, are already unconstitutional and illegal from the outset.

Invidious link

TRANSCRIPT

The Epstein Files Coverup With Representative Maxwell Frost
Heather Cox Richardson

Richardson: I am thrilled today to have with me Representative Maxwell Frost, who is a representative from Florida's 10th district [Orlando]. He has represented the district since 2023, and he is the co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. But we're going to be talking about something a little bit different today than what is in the news. It's probably what should be in the news, but we'll talk a little bit about the Epstein files today. So, Representative Frost, thank you so much for being here this morning.

Frost: Of course. Thanks for having me on. It's good to be here.

Richardson: So, I really wanted to talk to you about the Epstein files, in part because they seem to have fallen off the the people's radar screen because of everything else that's going on, but also because you and your staff did something really unusual when it came to looking at the Epstein files that are available, the ones that are available at the Department of Justice. Can you walk us through that?

Frost: Yeah. Well, for people who don't know, just to take us a few steps back, right? Donald Trump ran on releasing the Epstein files, right? It was one of the central points points of his campaign. It's how he got a lot of different communities off the internet, especially a lot of young people who've been looking into this, involved in his campaign, and it's something he talked about time and time again.

Okay. Then he gets elected. We don't hear anything about the Epstein files anymore.

And people start bringing it up. "Why aren't you talking about it? Why haven't you released it?"

And then we start hearing different things from different people, right? Kash Patel under oath says, you know, "We have nothing that shows that Jeffrey Epstein did anything criminal." I mean, that's what he said, right?

Then you have Pam Bondi who invites right-wing influencers to the White House and gives them these folders that they say they are the Epstein files, but they really weren't, and it was just something that they did.

So then in Congress, we start looking into it even more and say, "No, we do need these files released." Number one, you ran on it. But number two, more and more we're finding out that there is an elite group of billionaires and politicians and elite people in this country and around the world who were a party to these crimes.

When we talk about a two-tier justice system, we see in this country that, depending on how much money you have in your bank account or what your connections are, you might or might not have to face accountability for your crimes. And obviously, human trafficking, pedophilia, sexual abuse, assault, rape, these are all the things that have happened within— connecting to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

So, fast forward, we get the bill passed to release the files. Pam Bondi and Donald Trump are engaged in the greatest cover up that we've seen in terms of the Epstein files. And they released a good amount of the files, but not all of them. But still, there are millions of files out there.

So, my team and I, you know, we knew we wanted to go into the Department of Justice to view the unredacted files because, in case your viewers haven't seen them, if you go on the website and you look at these files, there are just entire pages that are just black. And it just shows that they're really not interested in transparency.

In fact, a lot of these documents are documents that have to do with Donald Trump, that they have completely redacted or, in many cases, they put them online, people found them and then they [the DoJ] ripped them back off. They took them off the internet so people can't see them anymore.

So we said, look, there are people around the world who have been really following this closely for years, people who have a deep understanding of what Jeffrey Epstein did, and who have really good questions informed by their own research and their own work that they've done. So we took to the internet and we went — really, predominantly we went on Reddit — and we asked people, we told people, "Hey, I'm Congressman Maxwell Frost. I'm going to the Department of Justice tomorrow to look at the unredacted Epstein files. What should I be looking for? What specific file number should I look at?"

And it blew up. Millions of hits. Thousands of people writing in, calling into my office, commenting, not just saying, "Check this file out," you know, just a random file, but saying "Check this file out because I think it's connected to this and that, and this and that, and check out this other file as well."

And it really helped us put together specific file numbers that we should view, which really helped me going into the Department of Justice. I've been there twice so far. I'll be going again in the coming weeks.

Richardson: Well, so I want to get into what it's like to look at those files, but first of all, I think that was just brilliant, the whole idea of crowdsourcing the Epstein files. Did you find that people tended to group in different places that there were certain things that people thought were more important than other things?

Frost: 100%. You know, there's different groups of people who have been focused on different parts of this. For instance, we had a lot of people that were from Florida that submitted things having to do with Florida-specific parts of the case. Mar-a-Lago, the jail he went to. A lot of people don't realize this, that when Jeffrey Epstein went to jail, he was actually allowed to do what's called work release, right? When he's able to leave jail for a few hours a day to go to work. And he actually— there was an organization set up that he went to go work at and he was actually going there to sexually abuse and— somebody while he was in jail through work release. So we had many people who would send us information having to do with that, having to do with local Florida politicians.

We also had a lot of people who wanted us to look into the Zorro Ranch, which has been a big deal, as you know, recently. So there's different folks who I think have really focused in on very different parts of this. And you know, it makes me think a lot about my own dad who, after the JFK assassination, joined a group of local people in his community, and people across the country, that would just look into it, right? Research, try to figure out more information. I mean, there's in my house that I grew up in, there's a bookcase full of JFK books, of what happened on that day, and it's a very similar thing with this. And something my dad always tells me is, "We had groups of people who would become experts on specific things, on specific people." And I think it's very similar with the Epstein files, and with the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, there are people who are experts on very specific things.

And it's really helped to me to go into the Department of Justice and not just look at [specific] files — like "What files do you think I should look at?" — but also understand what you're seeing, because when you're in that room you're just viewing unredacted files. Unless you understand what you're seeing, it's hard to navigate, right? It's millions of files. And I think in many ways, they really focused on redacting specific ones that keep you from connecting dots.

Richardson: So, I want to ask about a couple of things there. I do want to point out that what it reminds me of is less JFK than those people who are currently even chasing down the identities of people who have been found dead, that are Jane Does or John Does, and are able by extraordinary amounts of work to bring those families some closure by discovering who those people were. And I always wondered why QAnon didn't do that. Now, instead, we have people actually getting their hands in the files and I'm— you know, I agree with you, when you hear "millions of files," that's the sort of thing that makes historians' hair catch on fire, because you can't just start at number one and start turning pages.

Frost: Exactly.

Richardson: Can you tell us literally what it's like to go look at these files? And then I'd like to talk a little bit about why the Department of Justice has redacted certain things, and why you think that might be the case.

Frost: Yeah. So I'll tell you exactly what it's like. So first off, 24 hours before you want to go, you make an appointment with the Department of Justice. You pull up to the building which is in the NoMa area of Washington DC, maybe like 10, 15 minutes away from Capitol Hill. You go in through the front door, someone's waiting for you, expecting you. Usually a career Department of Justice person, someone who's been there for a long time. They walk you in, very cordial. You go upstairs, you go to a room where you're then handed off to the political people from the Department of Justice.

So people should understand, you have people who work in the government who've been there for a long time, and then you have people who are political appointees who are new, who are probably more aligned with the Trump agenda.

So then you're kind of handed off to a political appointee. They walk you over to a locker where you lock up all your electronics, phone, everything like that. And then you go into this room.

Now, a lot of people think it might be some grand thing. It's not. And it's actually just like a white room with four computers, two on each side of two tables facing each other. That's it.

There's a table on the corner where two people from the DOJ sit and kind of watch you. And then there's a tech guy who comes in and he signs you in with a very specific sign-in credential, which we'll get to in a minute because they're spying on us. So every person, when you sit down at the computer, you have a very specific sign-in credential to their kind of law library of Epstein files, which is an online thing, right? It's on the computer. So you sit down.

I'll be honest, I'm pretty quick on my feet with technology, so I was able to understand how to navigate it very quickly. But I sat in there with some other members who it took a lot of time to understand how to use it, because every time you had a question, they would have to go and get the tech guy who's in a different office, and you have to walk through every time and answer a question.

You only get two hours in the room.

So, what I started doing is kind of giving people tech lessons before they showed up, and giving them the basics of what they need to know so they don't waste time waiting for somebody to come and show them different things.

I mean, one of the big ones I'll tell you is when you click on a file, you might assume, right, it's unredacted already. No, actually, you have to click a different button in the toolbox, which is not— like there's not a button that says unredact. It's like kind of a like a small button that you click, and then you can see the unredacted one. So most people waste the first 15-20 minutes just looking at redacted stuff. So it's stuff like that, that can help you understand how to navigate this platform that has the files.

But I've got to tell you, there are so many files that you click unredact and it's the same thing [still redacted].

And in fact, what I wanted to do is have them side by side, so I could really understand how redact— how unredacted are the files. And the tech person came in and told me, "You're not able to do that in this system, you're not able to have it side by side," which is crazy.

I actually found a way to do it anyway by using a specific keystroke, and by doing that I was able to kind of ascertain that files connected to Donald Trump were still redacted, by and large, files that had nothing to do with victim names. And everything to do with exposing clients were completely redacted as well.

I'll tell you, a lot of people have reached out to me and said, "Maxwell, how come you haven't gone to the floor and read out a client list?" I haven't seen a client list. I've seen a list of co-conspirators, which Ro Khanna went to the floor and he read those names out loud. I went to the floor last week and read some of what I [found] out loud. But a lot of the co-conspirators we already know, right? It's like public information. A lot of these names are already out there.

The thing that people want is the list of clients of people who were part of this by, you know, paying for it, essentially. And I have not seen something like that unredacted yet. [There are] files where I feel like it could be hidden in it. For instance, there's a diary from one of the victims that you could redact anything that would give away the name of the [victim]. But why are entire pages redacted? Entire pages of the diary are redacted. Most of it's redacted. And conceivably there's some information in there that'll help us.

So that's just a little bit about that.

Richardson: Wait, stop. So, are you saying that even the files that the Department of Justice is showing to Congresspeople, claiming that they are unredacted, are still redacted? You can't unredact them yourself.

Frost: 100%. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And it'll be a lot of the ones that you think, "Let's go see it." For instance, one of the charging documents that came from the department of— or came from the [U.S.] Attorney, Alex Acosta, in West Palm, which is probably one of the most important things we can see, [is] completely redacted to us members of Congress.

They said, "You can go in and view everything unredacted." It's a lie.

And in fact, I asked the Department of Justice, because I had a whole thing pulled up that had to do with Donald Trump, and I said, "Why is this redacted?" And they said, "We received it that way." I said, "What do you mean you received it that way?" They said, "Well, we at the Department of Justice received it from the FBI, and so conceivably they gave it to us redacted. We just unredacted the things that we had redacted to the public," which means Kash Patel's FBI, of course, has redacted things having to do with Donald Trump. And having to do with clients, conceivably his friends, which is exactly what he told Marjorie Taylor Greene on the phone. "Stop this because my friends will be in trouble."

Richardson: So, you know, I confess I'm a little bit gobsmacked here, because when you just said, "This is the biggest cover up in US history," or maybe I'm misquoting you on that, the fact— I would agree with that, the fact that the Department of Justice is keeping from Congress the files that implicate a number of important people, including perhaps and I would actually go beyond perhaps, the President of the United States, is earth-shattering for our democratic system.

Frost: It is. And I did say I do believe this cover up is the biggest one that we've seen from a president in our country's history. Because it doesn't have to just do with the cover up itself, or the political pressure he put on members of his own party, but also has to do with the fact that they invited us in to view these unredacted files. Which, by the way, we compelled them to do through law damn near unanimously.

They broke the law by waiting an additional month to release it.

Then they also broke the law by redacting the names of billionaires and politicians when we told them, "We only want victim names redacted."

But it's not even just all that, Heather. It's also the fact that they spied on us as we were viewing the documents, not just to see what we were looking at and say, "Look at that," but to then use that on the political side to harm us politically for looking into it.

And what I mean is, for people who don't know, Pam Bondi was testifying to the House Judiciary Committee, where she was pummeled for the cover up of the Epstein files. And many of you saw the photo, that she had this binder. Like she had one binder per Democratic member, and it was like a— I call it— it was like a burn book, right? It was a bunch of material for her to use to embarrass the member, to speak back to the member in her defiant, you know, tone.

And we all saw that thing. A photographer caught a photo of one of the pages, and the page was a complete search history of Representative Pramila Jayapal's visit to the DoJ to view the unredacted files. A complete violation of the checks and balances and separation of branches.

And I just think that this cover up is an impeachable offense for Pam Bondi, 110%.

But that is the reason I say it's the biggest cover up we've seen, because it's not just a cover up. It's a cover up; a spying operation on members of Congress; and then a political operation that uses the information they got from the official government to harm them politically, which also is against the law, by the way.

Richardson: So, I want to get into that in a second, but one of the things that really interests me about the operation surrounding Epstein is the money. When you listed off the different ways in which there appear to have been crimes in those files, what I didn't hear you say was money laundering, or some of the other ways in which a number of people could be involved with the exchange of money. We know that Senator Ron Wyden is trying desperately to get files out of the Treasury about the movement of money through the banks surrounding Epstein, money going out as well as money going in, because that speaks to this web you're talking about. Have you seen anything like that in the files, or is that something you're interested in?

Frost: It is something I'm interested in. I'll tell you, you know, the two hours go by very fast and it— it's sometimes you go in on a specific subject or two. I find going in on one or two things is better than a ton. But one of the next visits I'm going to do, I'm going to focus on the bank.

So, everyone knows the House Oversight Committee. This is something we've been looking into. When we first met with the lawyers of a lot of the survivors, they told us something— they said something very direct. They said, "Go for the estate. Subpoena the estate." They said, "Also subpoena the banks, because what you won't be able to find in the Epstein files that the Department of Justice has, you might be able to follow the money." And this is really important.

So, we did send out two subpoenas at J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank, which are two of the primary banking institutions that were used by Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators. But there's more that we need. Venmo transactions, Zelle transactions, I mean that we could go down the list of ways that we think money was both laundered, and hidden, to pay for services. There's also— it's just so deep, right?

There's also the question of people unknowingly moving money for this operation. And truth be told, there's a lot of folks that are considered co-conspirators that didn't— that actually didn't know what was going on, but they were used by Epstein and the real co-conspirators, and people that were making things. We could talk about whether it's a maid, or a driver, or this and that, that were in this.

A lot of folks don't understand how big this operation was. It wasn't just the island. The island's a big part of it, but it's his home. It's Mar-a-Lago. It's all these different things that tie it together. Which is part of the reason that we have to get to the bottom of this. It's not just about justice for the survivors, but it's about making sure it never happens again. And the fact of the matter is the whole— there's many entities that were involved in this.

Richardson: Well, but that speaks to where you started today, and that's that it is certainly about the survivors, but it's also about the idea of a predatory class that's not accountable to the law. And that seems to be what you're uncovering, right?

Frost: 100%. I mean, that is the basis of this entire thing. Because if we go back to when there was the first indictment, or when Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested for these very crimes, he was given a sweetheart deal by Alex Acosta, who by the way is full of crap. We deposed him for hours and hours and hours. Apparently, he didn't know anything that was going on in his office. And he's also very defiant. He believes— he hates the word sweetheart deal. He thinks he got the best he could get. He also stated to us that he didn't bring the survivors on the witness stand because he "didn't feel like they were going to be very credible" is what he said.

That is when all of this should have ended. The guy should have been held accountable. Everything should have been uncovered. But the fact of the matter is the dude served the year in jail, left, and continued to offend. And that's when things blew up even more. And the fact of the matter is, if Jeffrey Epstein wasn't a billionaire that was backed by elites, not just in this nation, but across the entire world, he would have faced justice in that moment. I promise you that. And I think because he had those connections, he was able to continue to do this.

And that's this two-tier justice system of rich billionaire elites doing whatever the hell they want and breaking all the laws in the world. I mean, and it's the same case on everything. You want to talk about theft, the biggest theft is the wage theft and white collar crimes, and these billionaires who are getting away with all of this. And so, of course, they're going to get away with [it], whether it's stealing money, or stealing people and selling people, they're getting away with it. And that's part of the reason why this is so important and uncovering this, is it's about integrity in our justice system, from A to Z. And if we don't uncover this and we don't get to the bottom of it, it will happen again. It could be happening right now. And I think that's important for people to understand.

Richardson: Well, and I think that you've put your finger on it there, that it is about accountability, but in a way it's an indictment of the development of the American justice system, and the American economic system, really for the last 30 years anyway, that has permitted the development of this sort of elite predatory group that could literally buy and sell people, which is sort of the ultimate, right?

Frost: Yeah. And what happens too, Heather, is that it's also connected. Because as they consolidate power in our economy, and as they continue to own everything — from the things that we watch, the news that we consume, the buildings that we live in, the cars that we drive — when fewer and fewer people have the keys to society, it is more likely that even when they commit the most heinous of crimes, that they are bailed out and protected. Because they own the keys to society.

And that's part of the reason why fighting the massive wealth inequality we have in this country is so important, is because that [inequality], in and of itself, does corrupt our justice system. And it puts in considerations, to politicians and people like that, that should not exist. I mean, how much money you have in the bank, the companies you own, all of that should not be a consideration when we're talking about you facing justice.

But when you have Alex Acosta, the U.S. Attorney who gave [Epstein] the sweetheart deal, who then years later becomes the Secretary of Labor for Donald Trump, you really realize that it's one big club and none of us are part of it. And I think it's really important for us to uncover what this is all about.

Richardson: Well, so that does raise the question now. It seems very clear from looking in from the outside, that the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi is openly breaking the law. I believe this morning they said they're done, there will be no more Epstein files coming out. And— the— you know, that we're seeing stuff that is— is, you know — listen to me stammer, I just don't even know how to describe it.

What comes next? I mean, Bondi is due to testify before Congress under oath. [She] is sort of openly saying, "We're done. We're not going to follow any more the Epstein Transparency Act." What does it look like might happen to try and bring some of this to some sort of accountability?

Frost: Well, I believe Pam Bondi needs to be impeached. I think she has done multiple impeachable offenses, paramount of which is the cover up of this Epstein investigation, and her complete defiance of Congress. I think that is an impeachable offense.

Now, where do we go from here?

Well, first off, we've been trying to subpoena Pam Bondi on the oversight committee for damn near a year. We have not been able to do it. However, just a few days ago, as you just said, we were finally able to get a couple Republicans on, because— believe it or not, I think it's important for people to understand this, that part of the ways— and you're a historian — throughout history, authoritarians usually are not gifted legislators, and usually what they do doesn't have a ton of staying power, right? It's usually a legacy or something that you can work at undoing it and building back our democracy afterwards.

But the way that they rule has to do with people obeying in advance, and an opposition that believes there's nothing they can do. I mean, when the opposition says there's nothing we can do, you've given the authoritarian the real power that they want.

You know, I think about DEI. People would think there's probably a bunch of DEI laws Congress passed because all these companies are getting rid of it. Well, no. We passed zero laws having to do with that. There's zero law having to do with that. It is people obeying in advance, and giving power to the authoritarian before you've told them, "No, no, you're going to have to— you're going to have to do something about it."

So, the reason I bring this up is I know people feel hopeless in this moment, but do not buy into a politics of despair and feeling like there's nothing you can do because when we do that, we've lost half the battle already. And so, yes, we know we don't have the votes to subpoena. We knew we didn't have the vote to subpoena Kristi Noem. But Donald Trump— because of the way the country is falling apart, the economy is falling apart, wealth inequality is blowing up, politicians are starting in the Republican party to little by little defy Trump at different parts.

Now, is it because they woke up one morning and they felt like, "Let me be a good person?" No. It's because they're getting the polling numbers in their districts. They're getting the polling numbers and they're feeling like they might lose their job. So, we were able to get four Republicans to vote with us to subpoena Pam Bondi.

And that's really important, because having her in front of us testifying under oath, working at and covering on a national scale, this cover up is going to help us moving toward eventually impeaching her, which I think is something that will, knock on wood, hopefully if we're able to get in the majority, is something we need to move forward once we're in the majority. I think we could move it forward now as well, but I think in this hearing, looking at the way that the Republicans question her might help give us some insight as to whether or not we can move through impeachment and it be successful.

Look at what happened with Kristi Noem. She lost damn near— you know, a ton of Republicans in the Senate and in the House as well. And Trump— I think part of the reason Trump fired her is because he knew that impeachment was inevitable there. And so it just shows that we have to continue putting the pressure on. There's some Democrats who think that in this moment we need to lay low, be very risk adverse, and let them mess up, and people will run to our arms. I don't think that's true. I think in normal times, maybe that's true. We're not in normal times.

Richardson: Well, so what you're saying to people, it sounds like, is to keep the pressure on all of these issues, including the Epstein files.

Frost: 110%. And people, continue— definitely, know that all these issues are so deeply connected to a small group of billionaires and mega-corporations protecting themselves from the law, and trying to make as much money, and consolidate power. That is what the whole damn thing is about. From the Epstein files to the Big Beautiful Bill to everything.

Richardson: Well, I hope that you will come back at some point and talk to me about that, because that of course is the project near and dear to my heart, is the concentration of wealth and how one addresses that. But I want to thank you so much for being here. I feel like I've got so much better an idea of what's happening in that DoJ room, and what the files look like, and why it matters. So, thank you so much for coming, and good luck up there on the hill these days. It must be absolutely wild.

Frost: It's completely wild. But I'm really proud to be able to go to Congress and say I represent Orlando, Florida and be a loud progressive voice from the South. So, thanks for having me on. Thanks for all your work. Thanks everybody.

Richardson: They're lucky to have you. Thank you everyone for being here, and I'll talk to you soon.

On 9 September 2022, Lucia Osborne-Crowley flew from London to Miami and caught a Greyhound bus north to West Palm Beach. The writer and journalist had arranged to meet Carolyn Andriano, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the age of 14 until she was 17, starting in 2001. Andriano had been a crucial witness in the trial against Maxwell in 2021.

When the two women met, Andriano said she had just been visited by a private investigator – a man in his 60s, who had heard she was talking to someone about a book. In a restaurant that afternoon, Osborne-Crowley was approached by a man in his 60s. What was she writing, he wanted to know. He offered her drugs, cash and a meeting with one of Epstein’s pilots, then put his hands under her skirt. When the manager asked him to leave, he waited in the car park; Osborne-Crowley had to escape through a staff exit.

She had been following the Epstein case for six years by then and had written a book about the Maxwell trial, The Lasting Harm; this was just a taste of what others had experienced. In November 2025, 28 Epstein survivors released a statement saying many of them had received death threats. They all asked for police protection.

With Epstein dead and Maxwell in jail, who was paying these men? “It could be any of the people who are not yet facing charges,” says Osborne-Crowley when we meet. “Firstly, they can afford it. The weekend I was in Miami, there was a person following me, a person following a survivor in South Africa who was in my book, and a person following a survivor in the UK. Just so that we all were aware.” Two women withdrew from The Lasting Harm after receiving threats. “Ghislaine used to tell them: ‘If you ever tell anyone what’s going on here, no matter how far into the future, we will find you and we will stop you.’ And in a lot of ways, that promise was kept.”

NOTE: This transcript now appears in the Senate section of the official Congessional Record of March 5, 2026, pages 18 - 23, with Sen. Whitehouse's own list of sources appended.

The following is the YouTube transcript which I cleaned up, checked for errors, lightly edited for readability, verified spelling of proper names via Wikipedia, and added links to any quotes that I checked myself.

(EDITED to add links to individuals mentioned, correct placement of quotes, and insert links to original articles where I could find them online)

I found myself doing it anyway just for me, to keep track of who's who, and then I realized I might as well do it for you as well.

This is an unparalleled speech: while the substance of it might be available elsewhere and I've just missed it, Sen. Whitehouse has answered a lot of questions in my mind about not just the links between Trump, Russia, and Epstein -- and William Barr as one of many links -- but also about the recording equipment and blackmail angle that is present in so many survivor accounts and so noticeably absent everywhere else.

It's truly worth listening to, but if you can't sit still that long, here's the transcript.

Thank you, Madam President.

It was the spring of 2019. Public and media interest in special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russia's election interference operation reached a fever pitch. There had been a steady drip, drip, drip of reporting on the Trump team's cozy and peculiar relationship with Russia.

Since his surprise election victory in 2016, ahead of the Mueller report's release, Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr, issued a letter to Congress purporting to summarize the report's findings. The letter declared that Russia and the Trump campaign did not collude to steal the election. The press, ravenous for any news of the long-anticipated Mueller report's conclusion, largely accepted Attorney General Barr's narrow, carefully worded conclusion and, not yet having access to the full report, blasted the attorney general's summary around the world.

Trump himself declared, all caps, NO COLLUSION. He said he had been cleared of the Russia "hoax," a term he reserves only to describe things that are true, like climate change.

Frustrated, Mueller wrote to Barr that the attorney general's letter did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of the investigation. But by the time the dense, voluminous Mueller report was issued the month after Barr's letter, its message had been obscured. The Mueller report actually concluded that the Trump campaign knew of and welcomed Russian interference and expected to benefit from it.

That conclusion was later echoed and reinforced by an investigation led by then-chairman Marco Rubio's Senate Intelligence Committee, a bipartisan report.

But Barr's scheme had largely worked. Many in the media and in the Democratic Party seemed to internalize that the Russia speculation had perhaps gotten out of hand, and that perhaps we had been wrong to believe there was a troubling connection between Trump and Russia after all.

But were we? Let's take a look at a sampling of what Trump has done for Russia just lately, and usually at the expense of American interests. There are many, but here's a top 10.

One, after Trump and Vice President Vance theatrically chastised the heroic Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in front of TV cameras in the Oval Office last year, Trump paused our weapons shipments to Ukraine.

Two, in July, during the worst Russian bombing campaign of the war until that point, Trump paused an already funded weapons shipment for Ukraine, including the Patriot interceptors that protect civilians from Putin's savage attacks.

Three, that same month, Trump's Treasury Department stopped imposing new sanctions and closing sanctions loopholes, effectively allowing dummy corporations to send funds, chips, and military equipment to Russia.

Four, leaked phone calls show that White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev have worked together closely behind the scenes on a peace deal favorable to Russia.

Five, last summer, Trump rolled out the presidential red carpet for the Russian dictator on American soil. with a summit in Alaska that yielded unsurprisingly no gains toward ending the war in Ukraine.

Six, Trump's vice president traveled to the Munich Security Conference last year to parrot Russia's anti-western talking points pushed by right-wing groups that Putin has long funded and used to create political strife in Europe.

Seven, Trump installed Russia apologist Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence, much to the glee of Russian state media.

Eight, upon the confirmation of Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice shuttered its anti-kleptocracy work that had successfully targeted Putin's Russian oligarchs.

Nine, late last year, Trump unveiled a new so-called national security strategy which abandoned traditional alliances in Europe and favored a transactional foreign policy that the Kremlin praised as quote "largely consistent" with Moscow's vision and desires.

And ten, the Trump administration is even paving the way for Russia's return to global sports competition, ending its isolation in those arenas in the wake of the hostile Ukraine invasion and state-backed systemic doping programs in Russia.

That's a Top 10, but the list goes on. If Trump were purposefully doing Russia's bidding, it is hard to see what he would be doing differently.

The United States is the most powerful nation in the world. Russia is a weak, corrupt regime. My old friend, Senator John McCain, used to say that Russia is a gas station run by gangsters with an army. It doesn't make sense that the president of the United States, who insists insists on being dominant in essentially every relationship, is so submissive to one person, and that one person is Russia's dictator, Vladimir Putin.

So, what is it about Trump and Russia? And could it have any connection with Trump's close friendship with the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein?

Much about Epstein remains unknown, but the survivors who have come forward, and the millions of emails released through the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, have shed some light on the operation of the late financier's global pedophile ring, and over and over it touches Russia.

When recently asked by a reporter about the Epstein files, Trump said in part, "It's just a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax." Again, hoax, the word he uses for when something is true. But the most telling part is that Trump's mind, asked about Epstein, immediately went to Russia. "Russia, Russia, Russia."

I should start by pointing out that Epstein's ties to foreign intelligence may never be fully known. It's a murky world. He had links to officials in the United States, Russian and Israeli governments, and many others. But it's worth looking at those ties to Russia, a nation so hostile to the United States.

Epstein's career began in the mid 1970s at the prestigious Dalton School in New York City, where despite dropping out of college, 21-year-old Jeffrey Epstein was given a position teaching high school mathematics to the children of some of New York's wealthiest families. Perhaps of note, the outgoing headmaster at the time of Epstein's hire was Donald Barr, the father of future Attorney General Bill Barr and a former intelligence officer during World War II. The elder Barr was known for making unconventional hires at Dalton.

After a couple of years, Epstein was able to leverage the elite connections he made at Dalton to a job at Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, where he rose quickly through the company. However, after getting caught fabricating his resume, using the company credit card on expensive gifts for his girlfriend, and ultimately providing privileged stock information to a girlfriend, among other unscrupulous behaviors, Epstein called it quits and started his own financial firm.

Those early scams were just the start. Shortly thereafter, Epstein fell in with a wealthy man named Douglas Leese, a British defense contractor with connections in the arms industry and the British government. During this period, Epstein would tell people he was a bounty hunter who tracked down hidden money. According to Steven Hoffenberg, a former business mentor of Epstein's who went to prison for a massive Ponzi scheme that he later said Epstein had designed, Leese introduced Epstein to Robert Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell, who became Epstein's girlfriend and sex trafficking accomplice after her father's death, was Robert Maxwell's favorite daughter, and he involved her deeply in his work.

An opportunist in pursuit of wealth, the Czechoslovakia-born Robert Maxwell had complex shifting ties to British, Soviet, and Israeli intelligence. Initially bankrolled by MI6, he accepted secret payments from the KGB through his Soviet-friendly publishing company, and was the rare individual who traversed both sides of the Iron Curtain.

In 1992, the British newspaper, The Sunday Express, wrote that a secret document, signed by the head of the KGB months before Maxwell's death at sea, showed that Maxwell was a political and intelligence asset for the Soviet Union. The newspaper claimed that the document indicated Soviet leadership had instructed the KGB to protect Maxwell's reputation and business activities. Maxwell's UK foreign office file, released more than a decade after his death, described him as, I'm quoting here, "a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia."

Journalist Vicky Ward wrote the following in Rolling Stone magazine in 2021. She said, "Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he'd worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell's 'debt' issues." The word debt is in quotes.

"Maxwell died in 1991 under very 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 hundreds of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees."

The story continued. "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.'"

The story concluded, "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." End quote.

Epstein's strategies for making money and working intelligence contacts seem to have some similarities to Robert Maxwell. For the record, Epstein, a profligate liar, once told Ward that he never met Robert Maxwell or Leese.

At some point in the 1980s, Epstein struck up a friendship with a fellow brash New York businessman by the name of Donald Trump. Author Michael Wolff has said of Trump and Epstein, "They shared everything. They shared their airplanes. They shared women between them. They shared, constantly, business and financial advice." End quote. There are many photos of the two men together on the New York and Palm Beach party circuits throughout the 1990s. Trump now famously said in 2002, "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do and many of them are on the younger side."

Alan Dershowitz told the New York Times in 2019 (archive link here) that, "In those days, if you didn’t know Trump and you didn’t know Epstein, you were a nobody." Dershowitz is the well-known lawyer who served both on Epstein's defense team when he was charged with having sex with minors back in 2006, and on Trump's impeachment defense team in 2020.

The president of Trump's Atlantic City Trump Plaza Hotel in the late 1980s said he saw Trump and Epstein together so frequently that he believed Epstein was Trump's best friend. That same man described an incident where Trump brought Epstein and a 19-year-old girl to the casino gaming floor.

Epstein once took a model to Trump Tower where she says Trump groped her while laughing with Epstein. She remarked that it seemed like a twisted game between the two men.

One survivor says Epstein summoned her to his offices late one night. Trump soon arrived and according to the New York Times, she recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs. Then Mr. Epstein entered the room and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump, "No, no, she's not here for you." After the men left the room, she said she overheard Trump commenting that he thought she was 16 years old.

In 1992, Trump hosted a calendar girls competition at Mar-a-Lago for dozens of young women. The event organizer was appalled to learn that Trump and Epstein would be the only men present.

At a private showing during during Maxwell's trial, one of Epstein's victims said he took her to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was 14.

Maxwell recruited 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre from the spa at Mar-a-Lago. Giuffre was abused by Epstein and trafficked to other men in Epstein's orbit. Trump said in 2025, "I think Giuffre worked at the spa. He stole her." He being Epstein.

In 1997, the UK tabloid The Daily Mirror, formerly owned by Robert Maxwell, claimed that Trump was dating a 20-year-old British model and that Ghislaine Maxwell had introduced them at a party. The tabloid notes Trump met the model at a party in Manhattan. Several American millionaires already had their eyes on the model, but she was there with Robert Maxwell's daughter, Ghislaine, who has introduced several of her attractive friends to the property developer, Trump.

According to the Mirror, after their meeting, Trump flew Madame Maxwell and the model south to the Sunshine State, where they enjoyed a happy weekend together. When they returned to New York, the model was installed in one of Donald's many apartments there. In an interview with BBC Newsnight, the model stated, "Ghislaine Maxwell did introduce me to him, that is Trump, and she introduced me to him with a clear message of my being with him in the same way that she had trafficked me and brought me to Jeffrey Epstein." End quote. She also said, "I can only speak for myself, and this in no this is in no way to negate any other experience that anyone else might have had with him, but at no time did President Trump behave with any impropriety with me." The same woman accused Epstein of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager in a 2019 interview with NBC. From NBC, I'm quoting, "The abuse spanned several years and locales. In addition to the estate on his private island, she said Epstein preyed on her at his homes in New York and Paris."

According to Craig Unger's book, American Kompromat, and I'm quoting here, "Trump was often the center of Maxwell's attention. And women who entered Trump's orbit sometimes ended up being associated with both Trump and Epstein, spending part of their time living in a Trump Tower condo and part in Florida at Mar-a-Lago or one of Epstein's homes. Among them was a Russian model and beauty pageant contestant, whose journey from the world of beauty pageants and modeling to Trump's Mar-a-Lago and Epstein's island retreat is highly suggestive in terms of how Epstein and his associates began manipulating young women."

The story continues. "In the early nineties, before coming to the United States, the woman had placed well in a number of beauty pageants, coming in second in Miss Russia 1993, and winning the 1994 Miss Baltic Sea title that year. In 1995, she left Moscow, spent six weeks learning English in St. Petersburg. That's St. Petersburg, Florida, not Russia, and she was profiled in the Tampa Tribune as reigning Miss Russia. And before long, she met Donald Trump." Quoting here, "Notwithstanding the fact that Trump was still married to his second wife, Marla Maples, the woman moved into a 30th floor condo in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. There, according to an item in the New York Post, her lavish accommodations were taken care of 'courtesy of an unidentified sugar daddy.' . . . She spent time with both Trump and Epstein. Flight logs released by a federal judge in New York in 2019 showed that in February 1999, the woman, then 27, flew on board Epstein's Gulfstream, the so-called Lolita Express, with Maxwell and Prince Andrew, from Epstein's Little St. James, aka Pedophile Island, back to Florida." End quote.

Trump has tried to distance himself from his former friend, the monstrous pedophile who was believed to have abused at least a thousand women and girls. It's worth taking a look at how the friendship between Trump and Epstein allegedly soured.

There are varying accounts as to whether Trump ever banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago over his recruitment of spa workers from the resort. But we know the falling out was at least in part related to a bidding war between Trump and Epstein over a Palm Beach mansion in 2004. Trump won and purchased the property for $41.3 million. Just four years later and after modest renovations, Trump sold the mansion to billionaire Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. At the time, it was reported to be to be the most expensive residential property sale in United States history. Pretty stellar investment for Mr. Trump. The oligarch, for his part, after paying the $95 million, never even moved in.

Which brings us back to Russia. Epstein claimed to have given at least some insight on Trump to the Russians. Epstein met on many occasions with Vitaly Churkin, Russia's representative to the United Nations from 2006 until Churkin's death in 2017. Epstein wrote in an email, "Churkin was great. He understood Trump after our conversations. It is not complex. He must be seen to get something. It's that simple." End quote.

Epstein wrote in 2018 to Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was then head of the Council of Europe. I'm quoting here. "I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov can get insight on talking to me." That appears to be a reference to Sergey Lavrov, Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs. The email was sent prior to the Helsinki summit between Trump and Putin.

In another email to Jagland, Epstein wrote that he wanted to help Putin and Russia reinvent the financial system. A 2017 FBI report based on a confidential human source claims that "Epstein was President Vladimir Putin's wealth manager." End quote.

Epstein tried several times to meet with Putin, often via Jagland, although it is unclear if any such meeting took place. But Putin is named almost a thousand times in the latest tranche of Epstein file documents, and there are almost 10,000 references in the documents to Moscow.

Epstein roped many Russian and East European girls and women into his trafficking operation. The New York Magazine profile of Epstein, published all the way back in 2002, reads, "Indeed, at a party at Maxwell's house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew." End quote.

In Ward's 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein, (archive link here) a guest described a quote "cocktail party thrown by Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended which was filled, she says, with young Russian models."

In a 2010 email, Epstein suggested a young woman as a dinner companion to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, assuring him that she was, and I'm quoting here, "Russian, beautiful, and trustworthy." End quote.

The Daily Beast recently reported on an alleged classified US intelligence document claiming that, and I'm quoting here, "Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was drawn into Moscow's orbit thanks to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which the Kremlin allegedly used as a route into the British establishment."

In another 2010 email to a person whose name has been redacted, Epstein wrote, and I'm quoting here, "Tomorrow I'm organizing a dinner for some new Russian girls. See you at 10."

He received an email from a redacted sender in 2012 that read, "I have two Russian girls for you to meet. One 21, another 24."

A message left for Epstein by one of his employees in 2005 claims that French model scout Jean Luc Brunel had found a teacher who could give Epstein quote free lessons. Quote, "He has a teacher for you to teach how to speak Russian. She is 2x8 years old, not blonde." End quote. Two times eight years old.

According to American Kompromat, in addition to whatever legitimate careers Brunel may have fostered as a model scout, he also allegedly hired scouters to identify, procure, and transport underage girls, many 15 years of age and under. He hired them to give quote "massages" and traffic them. Brunel was found hanged in his French jail cell in 2022 after being arrested on rape and sex trafficking charges.

Bill Gates appears, said he had affairs with two Russian women which Epstein later discovered.

Somewhere along the way, Epstein struck up a relationship with Sergei Belyakov, Russia's former deputy minister of economic development and a graduate of the FSB, Russia's intelligence academy. Epstein introduced him to contacts like Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, who would go on to give $10 million to the super PAC that helped elect now-Vice President J.D. Vance to the Senate in 2022.

In 2015, Epstein warned Belyakov that, I'm quoting here, "A Russian girl from Moscow is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessmen in New York." End quote. It was, Epstein said, quoting again, "bad for business for everyone involved." Belyakov responded back with information about the woman who he said worked in the sex and escort business. The FSB Academy graduate said he would meet with someone who knows her.

The following year, Belyakov told Epstein that he had a new position at the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the Russian sovereign wealth fund headed by current Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, the same guy who was caught in those friendly leaked phone calls with Steve Witkoff that I mentioned earlier.

Masha Drokova, a former spokesperson for Nashi, the pro-Kremlin Youth Movement, was in regular touch with Epstein in the last couple of years before his death in prison. She was ostensibly helping Epstein with his public relations.

According to the Washington Post, she was quote "the subject of the 2011 documentary Putin's Kiss, whose title refers to a widely publicized awards ceremony in which she received a medal from Putin and spontaneously kissed him on the cheek." End quote. In a 2017 email, Drokova asked Epstein to connect her with "adequate Russian oligarchs." The Post reported in 2022 that her fundraising pitches highlighted her ties to wealthy Russians.

Although Drokova denied writing those emails and said she did not receive Russian funding, Epstein advised Drokova as she launched her Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and she introduced Epstein to the contacts she had made in the tech world.

In one emailed interaction in 2017, Drokova, after claiming to meet billionaire Jeff Bezos, tells Epstein she is quote "trying to understand what she is not understanding about him," end quote. Epstein writes back that Bezos is quote "Smart, funny, and visionary. He's a very nice person," probalty is mistyped, but obviously means "probably the best in the valley amongst the Bs."

The files also indicate that Epstein had dealings with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire whom the Treasury Department has identified as a money launderer for Vladimir Putin.

Deripaska also cultivated a friendship with Peter Mandelson, a senior figure in Britain's Labour Party. It appears that Mandelson tried to use Deripaska's contacts to acquire a last-minute Russian visa for Epstein in 2010. Correspondence also shows Epstein's assistant trying to set up a meeting for Epstein and Deripaska in Moscow or Paris.

There's also audio of Epstein advising then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to have dinner with Putin to line up work after he leaves government.

There is at least one itinerary for a lengthy trip across Russia and photos of Epstein and Ghislaine in what is believed to be Russia, including with people who appear to be Russian soldiers.

Umar Dzhabrailov, a former Russian senator who committed suicide in recent days, described Maxwell as a soulmate.

Epstein had a series of Russian visas between 2011 and his death in 2019. Epstein's crimes left a long money trail, and that trail winds back to Russia.

Ranking member of the finance committee, Ron Wyden, has doggedly sought the truth about Epstein's transactions with Russian banks and Eastern European entities. One suspicious activity report filed by JP Morgan Chase after Epstein's death shows that between 2003 and 2019, Epstein conducted $4,725 wire transactions totaling over $1 billion.

And that's just one bank. Epstein used multiple banks.

According to JP Morgan Chase, the wire activity was flagged for the suspicious activity report for being, and I quote, "consistent with alleged sex trafficking of minors" and for involving quote "the high-risk jurisdiction of the Russian Federation," end quote. CNN notes that two accounts, including in the suspicious activity report, were linked to now sanctioned Russian banks, Alfa Bank and Sberbank. Also named in the suspicious activity reports: Maxwell, associated entities like Brunel's MC2 Model Management, and various women and girls.

Let's go back to the journalist Vicky Ward. "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."

"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." I'm still reading the same quote. "He was known in the intelligence world as a 'hyper-fixer,' somebody who can go between different cultures and networks."

Epstein was of course known for his parties, which he insisted on hosting in his various mansions where he could completely control the environment. Many of Epstein's victims have said they believe they were recorded. Virginia Giuffre wrote in her posthumous memoir that Epstein had a huge library of videotapes and a room in his New York home where monitors displayed real-time surveillance footage from his properties. Quote, "He explicitly talked about using me, and what I'd been forced to do with certain men, as a form of blackmail so these men would owe him favors," she wrote.

Another survivor said Epstein once walked her through his mansion, pointing out pinhole-sized cameras. He boasted that they were in every room. According to Epstein's emails, in 2014, he directed a staffer to procure hidden cameras which were installed in tissue boxes. The New York Times obtained photos of the interior of Epstein's New York mansion, which show a camera installed near the ceiling of the master bedroom and another along the molding of an adjoining room. The Times also spotted cameras near a suite of bathrooms on the same floor as Epstein's bedroom. When police searched his Palm Beach home in 2005, they quote "located two covert (hidden) cameras" end quote. Both cameras were located inside clocks, one by a desk and the other in the garage.

It's worth noting that Epstein often seemed to get tipped off in advance as to when the Palm Beach police would be dropping by. Epstein is said to have once told an ex-girlfriend, "I collect people. I own people. I can damage people." The disgraced financier Hoffenberg allegedly claimed to the National Enquirer in a final account before his death that quote "Wherever Epstein was entertaining, he and Ghislaine were taping." That report was only released last summer as Hoffenberg had asked the Enquirer not to publish his comments until three years after his death.

According to the Daily Beast, the former US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, is once said to have claimed Epstein quote "belonged to intelligence" and that the decision to let him off easy in 2008 was made above his pay grade.

The prime minister of Poland, a country that has extensive experience with Russian intelligence operations, has opened an investigation into potential links between Epstein and Russian intelligence. Prime Minister Tusk said, "More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services."

According to alleged anonymous intelligence sources published in the British tabloid The Daily Mail last month, some believe, and I'm quoting here, "Jeffrey Epstein was running the world's largest honey trap operation on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates." End quote.

I want to stress that we don't have answers here. Epstein was an inveterate liar and a criminal who often sought to exaggerate his own power and influence. And the Epstein files need to be viewed through that lens. He could have been working with an intelligence agency or several intelligence agencies. He could have just been what the Russians call a useful idiot. We may never know.

What we do know is that a significant number of powerful men, our current president, some of his cabinet secretaries, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others were very mixed up with Epstein at different times. And Epstein seems to have been very mixed up with Russia.

We also know that there is a cover up afoot at the Department of Justice. The MAGA Department of Justice is trying to shield Trump from something in the Epstein files. We know that documents in the files about President Trump that should be released have not been released. The missing files, first discovered by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger, are alleged to detail claims by an Epstein accuser who said she was also sexually assaulted by President Trump when she was a young teenager.

One of the great forces that Washington runs on is normalcy bias. It's often in the interest of the bureaucratic establishment to look skeptically towards outlandish or extreme stories because in most cases the truth is more ordinary than what may first appear.

What I've done here today is lay out the facts as documented by the many brave survivors who have come forward at great personal risk, as well as by the many journalists who have tried, and continue to try, to get to the truth.

As a lawyer, I know that you can prove cases with circumstantial evidence. You don't always need the smoking gun. Here we have links with Russia, girls from Russia, money from Russia, people from Russia, deals and transactions with Russia, contacts with people with Russian intelligence, news reports, exploring contacts with Russia, and an official investigation from the government of Poland into an Epstein-Russia connection. Sometimes with a little imagination, you have the chance to see what's right in front of your face.

And Mr. President, I'd like to ask unanimous consent that this document, which is a bibliography of all of the sources that I quoted from in this speech, to be made a part of the record and appended at the conclusion of my remarks. Without objection, then I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

From Mediaite:

DOJ Chose Which Epstein Files You’d See — And Left Out the Trump Ones: WSJ

The biggest Epstein files story yet dropped Tuesday night in the Wall Street Journal, and you probably missed it.

The United States has just launched military strikes on Iran, and every screen in the country was pointed at the Middle East. In that environment, a major accountability story about the Justice Department and 47,635 missing Epstein files didn’t stand much of a chance of breaking through the noise. It deserves one.

Here is what the Journal found: After analyzing the DOJ’s public Epstein database, the paper identified tens of thousands of files that appeared to be missing. When reporters Sadie Gurman and Caitlin Ostroff pressed the Justice Department about the discrepancy, a spokeswoman confirmed that 47,635 documents were being held offline for further review. The department hadn’t previously volunteered that information and confirmed it only after being asked directly about the gap.

That number alone should reshape how the public understands the DOJ’s legally bound rollout of Epstein documents . . .

Note: While worthy on its own, this Mediaite opinion piece relies heavily on Wall Street Journal original reporting. I highly recommend reading it for additional context:

There Are 47,635 Epstein Files Offline for Review, DOJ Says -- WSJ
Archive.world link (archive org can't jump the paywall)

Five Republicans on the House oversight committee joined with Democrats to subpoena the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, as part of the ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The House oversight committee voted 24-19 to approve a motion introduced by Republican representative Nancy Mace to compel Bondi to testify. In addition to Mace, Republican representatives Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania voted for the motion.

The motion comes amid growing criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle of the Department of Justice’s failures regarding the Epstein files, including accidentally releasing the names of survivors and redacting, without explanation, the names of people who may have committed crimes.

Directly related articles with more info:

House Panel Votes to Subpoena Pam Bondi Over Epstein Files -- NYT
Archive.today link (archive.org doesn't return article)

Pam Bondi Subpoenaed By GOP-Led House Oversight Committee -- Mediaite

A law firm that represented multiple women who accused former Jeffrey Epstein associate Leon Black of sexual misconduct alleged in a Manhattan civil suit on Monday that the powerful financier deployed “multiple frivolous and malicious lawsuits” as retaliation for representing these accusers.

Wigdor LLP claimed Black, who co-founded and formerly chaired Apollo Global Management, tried “to use his billions to buy his own form of justice” and “to weaponize the civil justice system to silence and destroy those who seek to hold him to account for alleged sexual assault”. Black has emphatically denied all wrongdoing.

Finally. Leon Black is one of the most protected names in the entire Epstein saga, up there with a handful of others like Les Wexner that until recently seemed untouchable.

And what he is doing -- suing maliciously in retaliation as a matter of weaponizing the law -- is incredibly vicious, and far worse than it might seem at first glance.

It drowns the victims in filings and demands and mounting legal bills even as it requires that they sit for hours at a stretch for hostile, verbally battering depositions in front of entire teams of opposing attorneys, depositions that don't actually go anywhere or accomplish much beyond being just another means of retaliation, of forcing the victim to sit still for their own abuse at the whim of their abuser, again.

Meanwhile their own primary lawsuits against the abuser just linger, stalled, because the billionaire has an army of attorneys to keep it tied up in various legal exercises and pre-trial motions for years before it is ever heard. It is a hell that women suing these men in an effort to be free of them find themselves entrapped in for years, handcuffed by their own lawsuits to their abusers because the law itself has been transformed into a means of abuse.

So if the feds can't or won't deal with Black and his SLAPP suits, I'm very glad to see the women and their attorneys pursuing justice via litigation that deals with the malicious lawsuits as a separate matter in itself.

Archive.org link

This is the video and edited transcript of yesterday's “The Ezra Klein Show” podcast with guest Anand Giridharadas, a journalist and author who has long been focused on how the elite shape the world the rest of us occupy without ever actually changing it much, and who is now focusing on Epstein.

This is an incredible deep dive into how the Epstein class as a whole operates, and how Epstein operated in it to such great success, even though it was such an open secret that the writer Tina Brown, upon being invited to a dinner with Epstein, Prince Andrew and Woody Allen, replied, “What the fuck is this — the pedophiles’ ball?”

If you want to know what's in it for the rich who already have all the money in the world but are not themselves pedos, or the famous or socially lofty who already have all the social cachet they'd ever want but are not themselves pedos, or what sucks people into that network of supporters and enablers of well-connected pedos who would not necessarily choose to be there, this is for you. A sample:

E.K. - There’s this amazing quote from Justin Nelson, Epstein’s personal banker. I’m quoting Nelson from the Times piece: He prepares a memo trumpeting Epstein’s large volume of business with JPMorgan, and noting that despite his status as a sex offender, he was “still clearly well-respected and trusted by some of the richest people in the world.”

His network is the proof that he is worth dealing with and not beyond the pale. Because if he was, well then how would he still have this network?

A.G. - He is revealing how these elites make decisions about trust — that I think are really different from the way folks at home go through the world and make decisions. I think you make character judgments about people, about how honest they have been and therefore will be.

These billionaires, these superelites, these superlawyers are working on a whole different kind of system. Their system has to do, as you say, with how loaded with connections you are in this network, how high your stock is on a given day in this network.

What Epstein figured out was how to game this. He figured out the vulnerability of this entire network, which is that these people are actually not that serious about character. In fact, character may be a liability for some of them, may be an unnecessary source of friction. These people are actually not that grounded in the evidence of how someone has lived.

This is one of the best articles I have ever read on how all the people involved and their hierarchies of favor worked together to protect Epstein, and are still working to protect others equally as heinous but of that same seemingly untouchable class.

The NYT column (embedded video plus lightly edited transcript, not paywalled):
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-anand-giridharadas.html

Archive link:
https://archive.ph/XdncI

Direct NYT link to podcast (not paywalled):
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010705735/the-infrastructure-of-jeffrey-epsteins-power.html

Other links to Ezra Klein podcasts (not paywalled):
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/opinion/how-to-listen-ezra-klein-show-nyt.html

I'm not posting this for the information described by the article title. Rather, I'd like to draw your attention to the very end of the piece:

The justice department had earlier told CBS News that the four men Khanna mentioned were “only included in this one document out of all the files. Wexner is referenced nearly 200 times in the files, and Bin Sulayem appears over 4,700 times.”

A legal representative for Wexner said: “The assistant US attorney told Mr Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr Wexner was being viewed as source of information about Epstein and was not a target in any respect. Mr Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”

Not entirely true. Les Wexner got a proffer from SDNY. I'll explain.

Looking at the photo of Pam Bondi's folder in this article, I got intrigued by the list of Jamila Priyapal's EFTA searches, and looked up the documents myself. The very last document listed in the photo is a PowerPoint presentation created by the federal Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and the NYC Joint Bank Robbery / Violent Crime Task Force for distribution to law enforcement.

On page 11 of this presentation, both Les Wexner and his wife Abigail are listed as two of the people receiving proffers, some via the FBI and some via the Southern District of New York.

A proffer is when law enforcement makes you an offer saying, in effect, "If you tell us what you know about this crime, we promise that what you tell us will not be used against you." (In case you're wondering, there is no non-criminal proffer possible in the context of this law enforcement presentation.)

In criminal law, proffers are made to people believed to be chargeable with an offense, usually serious, related to the evidence sought. Proffers are the carrot on the stick of criminal charges. Without a possible charge, a proffer has no power to protect.

Just so you know.

And frankly, had DoJ done their jobs and followed the law as written, Ro Khanna would never have been put in the position of trying to figure out who was who in the files in the first place. Redacting according to the provisions set forth in EFTA was what the DoJ was supposed to have done before the files were released, and did not. The release of unredacted victim names, including these four unrelated persons, is NOT on Ro Khanna. That's on the DoJ.