There’s no shortage of outrage at Jeffrey Epstein and those who were in his web of power and influence.
Finding accountability, on the other hand, is a much more complicated thing, as aftershocks from the files hit government, politics, academia, business and Hollywood.
Most notably, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British Prince, alleged by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre to have raped her, lost his royal title and house and is facing a criminal investigation in the UK. Andrew denies the charge. But remember: It has been years since he was first publicly accused by an Epstein survivor.
Still waiting for prosecutions
There have been conflicting messages from the Department of Justice about whether any more criminal investigations will occur as a result of the release of the DOJ’s files on Epstein.
It is only because of pressure by members of Congress, including Rep. Ro Khanna, the California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican, and public anger over the Epstein scandal that the documents were released – and that more and more have been unredacted by the Department of Justice.
The government passed on prosecuting some potential cases
Epstein’s former patron, the billionaire Lex Wexner, whose fortune comes from the clothing conglomerate that includes Victoria’s Secret, has long said he was embarrassed by his ties to Epstein. The new documents show that he was once viewed by prosecutors as a possible co-conspirator. They never followed up or accused Wexner of wrongdoing. Another potential co-conspirator listed in that document, the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, killed himself in a French prison cell while awaiting trial for rape in 2022. Other names are still redacted.
A request to undo some accountability
The only Epstein enabler or accomplice who now sits in federal prison is Ghislaine Maxwell, his former girlfriend and longtime associate. It should be noted that Maxwell sits in a relatively comfortable prison after she met last year with Todd Blanche, the former Trump attorney who is now a top official at the DOJ. Maxwell has offered to clear the names of both President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton in exchange for clemency, according to her attorney.
Such clemency, especially since it’s offered as a part of an exchange, would seem like the opposite of accountability.
Just being in the Epstein files is not evidence of wrongdoing
Both Trump and Clinton deny any wrongdoing with regard to Epstein, and simply appearing in the Epstein files, as both men repeatedly do, is not evidence of any kind of wrongdoing. Whenever someone is mentioned in the files, you’re likely to see a disclaimer like that: Simply appearing in the Epstein files is not an indication of inappropriate or illegal behavior.
But there is certainly a taint that has affixed itself to the powerful people with whom Epstein once interacted, and it is amplified for people who continued to interact with Epstein long after he was convicted on state prostitution charges over his involvement with underage girls.
When should people have known?
The Hollywood lawyer Casey Wasserman exchanged flirty emails with Maxwell in 2003, before allegations against her or Epstein were public. He has lost at least one high-profile client, Chappell Roan, in recent days, but is set to keep his post as head of the board coordinating the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Wasserman said he regretted his correspondence with Maxwell in a statement reported by the Associated Press in January, adding that the exchange “took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”
The first reports of Epstein’s deeds began to trickle out in court and in the media in 2006, and he was convicted in 2008.
Chief recalled Trump saying ‘everyone’ knew
One interesting revelation in the new documents is that a former police chief recalls Trump calling the Palm Beach Police Department around 2006, according to the Miami Herald.
“Thank goodness you’re stopping him,” Trump said, according to an FBI document describing an interview more than a decade later with the former chief. “Everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
If everyone knew, why didn’t anyone say anything?
Companies are responding
DP World, the Dubai-owned logistics giant, replaced chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. The news comes after Massie and Khanna named Sulayem, whose name was redacted in coarse messages to Epstein over the course of years. At one point, Epstein wrote to bin Sulayem, “I loved the torture video.”
DP World declined to comment on bin Sulayem’s relationship with Epstein when contacted by CNN before his removal.
Kathy Ruemmler, the former Obama White House counsel, will step down later this year from her lucrative position at Goldman Sachs, it was announced on Thursday. She was long known to have communicated with Epstein, but the recently released documents showed her to be closely advising Epstein long after he was a convicted sex offender.
Steven Tisch, who is chairman of the New York Giants, corresponded with Epstein about meeting women in Epstein’s orbit in 2013. Tisch at one point asked if one woman he was interested in meeting was “pro or civilian?” Epstein responded the woman is, “civilian, but russian, and rarely tells the full truth, but fun.”
The NFL has apparently launched a review.
“We had a brief association where we exchanged emails about adult women, and in addition, we discussed movies, philanthropy and investments,” Tisch told CNN. “I did not take him up on any of his invitations and never went to his island. As we all know now, he was a terrible person and someone I deeply regret associating with.”
Universities are responding
The Epstein files have rippled through the scientific and university communities. Epstein was a major donor and also sought out top professors in physics, paleontology and many other fields.
Harvard, for instance, has widened its probe, which reportedly was focused largely on former college president Larry Summers’ correspondence, to include major Harvard donors, according to the Harvard Crimson. Multiple people with ties to Harvard, including the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, had close ties to Epstein. Math professor Martin Nowak was sanctioned by Harvard for ties to Epstein in 2021, but the sanctions were later lifted, according to the Crimson.
Summers, the treasury secretary under Clinton, is no longer teaching students at Harvard and has been kicked off boards.
A Yale computer science professor, Dale Gelernter, who recommended a student for a job with Epstein in 2011, after Epstein’s controversial plea deal, was suspended this week by the university. It didn’t help that Gelernter described the job candidate as a “v small goodlooking blonde.”
Rare pushback from an Epstein emailer
But Gelernter defended the referral in an email to a university official, according to the Yale Daily News, arguing he was simply trying to help the woman get the job by appealing to what he knew of Epstein as a heterosexual male.
“She was smart, charming & gorgeous. Ought I to have suppressed that info? Never!” Gelernter wrote in his own defense in an email to colleagues. “I’m very glad I wrote the note.”
That’s a rare pushback against the stigma of having corresponded with Epstein.
A new asterisk for Clinton’s legacy
Clinton’s place in the presidential history books already includes scandal and impeachment tied to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
That legacy will now also include an Epstein asterisk for the trips he took onboard the former financier’s plane. Being hauled up to Capitol Hill later this month to give testimony about a scandal could be one of Clinton’s last political acts.
Former presidents do not generally testify on Capitol Hill, and certainly not under duress. Gerald Ford did it as president when he explained his pardon of Richard Nixon, and as a former president when he talked about a commission to honor the country’s 200th birthday.
Clinton, who was famously deposed on camera about the definition of “sexual relations” with regard to the Lewinsky affair, will now also have to answer questions about his ties to Epstein, which includes the flights, a foreign trip and, most recently, photos of him, Epstein, Maxwell and other unidentified women swimming in a pool and sitting in a hot tub.
The former Democratic president’s travels with Epstein are documented to have occurred in 2002 and 2003, before Epstein was known to be under investigation for inappropriate behavior.
A Clinton spokesman told CNN in 2019 that the two men hadn’t spoken in “well over a decade.”
Bill Gates is still a billionaire
The Microsoft founder and erstwhile world’s richest man, among Epstein’s most famous associates, has, arguably, faced personal and reputational consequences for interactions with Epstein. Gates’ ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, recently said Gates will have to explain his relationship with Epstein.
“Whatever questions remain there of what – I can’t even begin to know all of it – those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me,” she said.
Of the newest documents, Gates has said this:
“It reminds me. Every minute I spent with him I regret and I apologize that I did that,” he told a TV station in Australia. “I never went to (Epstein’s) island. I never met any women, and so the more that comes out the more clear it’ll be that although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior.”
But Gates was involved with Epstein long after his conviction. A Google calendar invite suggests a meeting between the two as late as 2014.
The plea deal everyone regrets
Trump would later appoint the US attorney behind Epstein’s plea deal, Alex Acosta, to be his first secretary of labor. Acosta, who was once a rising star in the GOP, was forced out of Trump’s administration in 2019 over backlash to that plea agreement, which resurfaced a decade later after a Miami Herald exposé.
Before that exposé, Epstein engaged in a yearslong image rehabilitation campaign, employing a PR specialist and hosting dinners with luminaries like Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos (both regret going). He enticed them to the dinner by promising that then-Prince Andrew would be there.
Public backlash for public people
The self-help guru Deepak Chopra, celebrity doctor Peter Attia and billionaire Richard Branson were also chummy with Epstein in private long after he was a public pariah, but none are accused of any wrongdoing. They will have to navigate any public backlash as they try to sell books and maintain their followings.
Calls for a Cabinet secretary to resign
Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed last year on a podcast that he was creeped out by Epstein, his next-door neighbor in New York, and didn’t meet with him after 2005. But that claim was contradicted in the files by emails that showed Lutnick took his wife, children and nannies to Epstein’s island for lunch in 2012.
In congressional testimony, Lutnick said he had no relationship with Epstein.
“We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children with my nannies and my wife… I don’t recall why we did it.”
But his poor memory has led Massie and several Democrats to call for his resignation. There’s no indication Trump has lost faith in Lutnick.
An earlier period of accountability
It was also in that 2019 period that another Epstein billionaire associate, Leon Black, was forced to step down early from his role as CEO at Apollo Global Management.
The head of MIT’s media lab, Joi Ito, also resigned that year after revelations about his fundraising for the lab with Epstein.
There’s nothing like documents to jog a person’s memory
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has faced new scrutiny this year for his involvement in that fundraising effort, alongside Epstein, which ran into 2018.
In a post on X, Hoffman acknowledged additional meetings with Epstein and said the files should be more fully released.
“The victims of Epstein’s abhorrent and vile actions deserve all the information they are seeking, and I continue to call on President Trump to deliver that for them,” Hoffman wrote.
Tesla and SpaceX founder and Trump ally Elon Musk found his own story about rebuffing an invitation to Epstein’s island complicated by the files, which showed it was Musk who asked when the “wildest party” on the island would be. There’s no evidence Musk ever ended up visiting Epstein’s island and he denies ever going.
But who would own up to any interaction with Epstein at this point? The public will have to wait for more documents and fewer redactions if they expect any more accountability.
