Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law in November last year, the Trump administration was obliged to release all unclassified files relating to Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days. Trump’s shameless flouting of that requirement turns out to be typical of someone in Epstein’s circle: laws don’t apply to them. Raping children, avoiding tax, standing over elected governments and generally living lives of moral depravity are their birthright.
Predictably, Trump is mentioned 4,000 times in the released documents, and likely many times more in the 3 million yet to be released. But the Epstein scandal does much more than simply expose odious individuals. It is an indictment on the entire system of global capitalism, those who run it and those who hold positions of influence within it. The scope is astounding: powerful figures from politics, business, science, the arts, academia, the media, all connected through financial deals, mutual favours, access to money and sex and social networks.
The files reveal abuse of women and children on an industrial scale, from the modelling agency that helped Epstein traffic young women from Eastern Europe to the dozens of working-class girls from a nearby middle school lured into a ring of abuse. The Department of Justice estimates that Epstein abused more than 1,000 women.
This was no secret to his friends and associates. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor to avoid federal prosecution and served only 13 months of a cushy 18-month sentence. Most of the sentence was served on work release at his Palm Beach offices, and he slept in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail, sequestered from other inmates. Then-US Attorney Alexander Acosta, who would later go on to be secretary of Labour in the first Trump administration, was there to smooth the way—including granting immunity to co-conspirators and helping Epstein avoid federal charges despite extensive evidence of mass sexual exploitation. The victims, including 36 minors identified by the investigation, weren’t even notified of the deal.
Epstein’s network of powerful friends continued to grow after his conviction. At his New York town house, Florida mansion or private island, Hollywood producers could rub shoulders with billionaires, spies, cabinet ministers, princes and Harvard professors.
Some of the latest friends of Epstein to be exposed in the files are among the richest capitalists in the world. Elon Musk exchanges emails asking when the “wildest party” would be thrown on Epstein’s Little St James Island. Richard Branson emails that he would love to meet up with Epstein “as long as you bring your harem!” Bill Gates, Google’s Sergey Brin and an endless list of Wall Street bankers and businessmen are implicated.
We are told that Western liberal capitalism stands for equality, human rights and respect for the law. That there is a “rules-based order” which includes checks and balances on politicians, banks and businesses that ensure transparency, the smooth functioning of free markets and a justice system before which all are equal. This peek behind the curtain exposes that as a big sick joke.
JPMorgan Chase and then Deutsche Bank spent years shielding Epstein from any regulatory oversight of his shell companies, charities, massive suspicious cash withdrawals and payments to modelling agencies. That kind of hands-on service is common practice for high net-worth individuals.
Epstein was an asset both as a client and as a conduit to new business deals and introductions to new wealthy clients. Former CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jes Staley regularly holidayed on Epstein’s island, flew on his private plane the “Lolita Express” and even visited Epstein when he was on work release from prison. In 2008, in the midst of the global financial crisis, the head of the investment bank reached out to Epstein, saying, “I need a smart friend to help me think through this stuff”—this “stuff” being the collapse of the global financial system.
One shocking aspect of the files is the bipartisan nature of Epstein’s world. Underneath the apparently furious debates of political life, elites are fundamentally the same. Republican and Democratic Party presidents like Trump and Clinton could share the same social world. Their sense of elite solidarity went beyond sexism, entitlement and impunity. Epstein’s emails reveal a porous network of unofficial politics, backroom deals and grift available only to the mega-wealthy. They expose the casual nature with which the ruling class cut diplomatic and economic deals through back channels, seamlessly mixing statecraft with personal interest.
Lord Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of Blair’s New Labour in the UK, is one of the most high-profile heads to roll. Mandelson’s casual emails to Epstein included leaked plans about the bailout of the euro and the suggestion that JPMorgan should “mildly threaten” Mandelson’s own government to undermine a tax on banker bonuses.
A consistent feature of Epstein’s political agenda when partying with the diplomatic, political and security corps was his support for Israel and his ties to the Israeli political establishment. It’s certainly plausible that Epstein was an intelligence asset for Israeli security. Regardless of whether the links were formalised, he consistently advocated for Israeli interests. His close relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak included working with Barak to sell and develop Israeli weapons, arranging back-channel diplomatic meetings with the Qatari prime minister and redrafting opinion pieces about the Iran nuclear deal.
His close advocacy of the US-Israel alliance was consistent with Epstein’s political outlook and economic interests. But this wasn’t his only foreign policy concern. A close friendship with far-right adviser Steve Bannon included a shared hawkishness towards China. In one of the released emails with Bannon, Epstein discusses MAGA domestic ideology and US competition with China; in 2019 he wrote to Bannon, “Your deplorables need an enemy, china, china, china [sic]”
Mention should be made of the high-profile academics willing to debase themselves (and possibly debase others) looking for patronage from Epstein. The heads of prestigious colleges and art schools, scientists and professors clamoured for attention from Epstein, attending his informal intellectual summits at his New York apartment where he would dazzle them with insightful questions like “What is gravity?” and dangle the promise of grant funding.
Noam Chomsky is a particularly disgraceful example. The left academic who wrote about imperialism manufacturing consent for war was privately happy to keep up a cheerful and sympathetic correspondence with Epstein. It’s a reminder to be perennially suspicious of those who critique power from within its institutions and without actively organising against it.
The sexual abuse that underpinned much of Epstein’s circle should be seen as more than just the excesses of the leisure class. Such practices are deeply rooted in the structures of capitalism.
To the ruling class, ordinary people are just things—like a super-yacht or a Maserati, only much less expensive. Workers—the majority of the population—are mere factors of production from the point of view of those who control capital and their hangers-on. And using people for their own enrichment easily transfers to using them for sexual gratification.
Abuse is made immeasurably easier when there is an extreme power imbalance between the abuser and abused. The drive from Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion to the poor neighbourhoods most of Epstein’s Florida victims were from has been described as going “from heaven to hell in 15 minutes”. In the richest country in the world, “the help” live in run-down neighbourhoods next door to presidents and bankers, who treat them as their personal servants in every regard.
Epstein is the sick and depraved face of capitalism. He is a conduit to the accumulation of profit and power whose interests cut across political party lines and national borders and whose friends ranged from corporate executives, bankers and financiers, to princes, prime ministers and presidents, spies, Hollywood moguls and stars of academia. His victims were poor and working-class children, girls and young women.
They keep their depraved dealings secret because they know that people being aware of their extreme hypocrisy and abuse would delegitimise the rich and powerful’s privileged position in society, and they know where that could lead. If anyone needed another argument for overthrowing the ruling class, the Epstein files are it.
