Why the rich and powerful couldn’t say no to Epstein

It was one of the biggest sets in Washington in 2019.

All eyes were on Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who testified before a House committee about his former boss.

Stacey Plaskett, the committee’s Democratic member, was preparing to question Cohen and was seen on camera texting someone on his phone.

This week, the public learned the identity of the other person in this exchange, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump was encouraging her to ask questions about a Trump Organization employee, according to emails made public by her estate under a subpoena. After Ms. Plaskett did so, Epstein sent her a “Good Job” message.

Looking back, this incident attracted the attention of many who said it highlighted the extent of his influence over America’s elite.

Plaskett denied seeking Epstein’s advice, saying he exchanged messages with several people that day, including Epstein, one of his constituents. As a former lawyer, he says he has learned to get information from all sources, even people he doesn’t like.

“I am disgusted by Epstein’s perverse behavior. I strongly support his victims and admire their courage. I have long believed in and supported the publication of the full Epstein files,” he said in a statement sent to the BBC.

He says their meeting took place before he was arrested for sex trafficking. But this was a long time after he was convicted of soliciting prostitution in 2008.

A damning investigation by the Miami Herald a year ago identified his private island in US territory as one of the places where he sexually assaulted several underage girls.

Just six months after his meeting with Epstein, the disgraced financier would be dead in his prison cell, according to one medical doctor; This too was a result of suicide. His death and the conspiracies surrounding it would trigger a showdown that caused ripple effects in Washington and Wall Street and brought down some of his former friends.

Their exchange was just one of the latest trove of more than 20,000 pages of personal documents that reveal Epstein’s ability to maintain elite social circles even after his criminal conviction and Herald exposure.

How and why these relationships survived while his other friends cut him off tells us as much about Epstein’s influence as it does about the dynamics of social circles at the top of US society.

“He was an evil monster, but he was also amazing in the sense that he managed to maintain this incredible network of some of the most powerful individuals in the world,” said Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

“He had a certain charisma about him that put him in a position where people gravitated towards him.”

Mr. Levine said Epstein viewed himself as a “collector of people” who made connections for commercial purposes.

“He was going to use the information he was gaining with the intention of, at the end of the day, either getting favors from them, financing from them, or in a darker sense, I guess, blackmailing some of these people.”

The relationship between Epstein and Labor Lord Peter Mandelson has come under particular scrutiny in Britain; Lord Mandelson was removed from his post as Britain’s ambassador to the US in September.

Documents released by Congress show he maintained his connection to pedophilia as late as late 2016; This was before the Herald revealed it but after his conviction.

“63 years old. You did it,” Epstein tells her in a November 2015 email after her birthday.

Lord Mandelson responds less than 90 minutes later, saying: “Just. I’ve decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the USA.”

He has vehemently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes or any wrongdoing and expressed regret over his ongoing communications with him.

Documents released by Epstein’s estate reveal his eclectic social circle of distinguished academics, business moguls and politicians.

Mr. Levine said some of Epstein’s casual acquaintances may not have known about his abuse or were so unimpressed by his influential connections that they ignored it.

“People forget things,” he said. “His reputation among the power brokers was extremely high, and I think a lot of people probably rejected the conviction against him.”

Journalists and those who knew him suggested that others may have been dazzled by his wealth.

“Prison time doesn’t matter anymore,” David Patrick Columbia, founder of New York Social Diary, told The Daily Beast in 2011 after Epstein’s first conviction. “The only thing that excludes you in New York society is poverty.”

Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, who was appointed president of Harvard University, asked Epstein for romantic advice; They included an exchange in November 2018 (the same month the Herald investigation was published) in which he forwarded an email from a woman to Epstein asking how she should respond.

Epstein responded: “Already starting to look needy 🙂 nice.”

Summers’ interactions with his former confidant came back to haunt him last week, leading him to announce that he was backing away from his public commitments and quitting teaching at Harvard.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and aware of the pain they have caused,” Summers said.

Epstein also reportedly used his money skills to help famed linguist Noam Chomsky, with whom he exchanged several messages over the years and invited to stay at their home.

The flattery went both ways. In an undated letter of support included among the emails, Chomsky spoke highly of Epstein and said the two had “many long and often in-depth discussions.”

The 96-year-old man previously told the Wall Street Journal that he helped Epstein move money between accounts without “a dime from Epstein.”

“I knew him and we saw each other occasionally,” he said.

In the same article, he said: “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he was convicted of a crime and served his sentence. Under US laws and norms, this creates a clean slate.”

He did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Chomsky was one of Epstein’s famous financial clients, many of whom helped him save billions of dollars, Mr. Levine said.

Mr. Levine said he achieved this because he “understands tax laws and finance perhaps to some extent better than the highest-paid people on Wall Street.”

Throughout Epstein’s 23,000 pages of documents, one man’s name appears perhaps more than any other.

Trump did not send or receive any of the messages contained in the thousands of documents because he cut ties with Epstein.

In 2002, Trump described Epstein as “a great guy.” “I was Donald’s best friend for 10 years,” Epstein would later say.

However, the relationship will eventually break down. According to Trump, they had a falling out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein’s first arrest. By 2008, Trump said he was “not a fan” of him.

Trump has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking. The White House also said Trump kicked Epstein out of his club “decades ago for terrorizing his female employees.”

Mr. Levine said after the conviction there were many people who said their messages with Epstein would embarrass them, but that did not mean they participated in any of his crimes.

“Of course, each of them regrets the day they interacted with or spent time with Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “This is one of the most incredible stories of our time: power, privilege, predation.”

But there was at least one person who said he knew right away that Epstein was “disgusting.”

Howard Lutnick, the president’s commerce secretary, was Epstein’s next-door neighbor for 10 years. She told the New York Post’s podcast that her first encounter with Epstein was her last.

It says that shortly after Lutnick moved into his Upper East Side property in 2005, Epstein gave Lutnick and his wife a tour of his large home.

After seeing a massage table surrounded by candles in Epstein’s dining room, Lutnick asked him how often he used it.

“‘Every day,’ he says. Then he awkwardly approaches me and says, ‘And the right kind of massage.'”

Mr. Lutnick said he and his wife exchanged glances, excused themselves and left.

“I decided to never be in the same room with that disgusting person again,” he said.