We convened an expert panel to discuss the most intriguing unanswered questions about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. riceid reports
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Last Friday, the prosecution rested its case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the British heiress and former companion of Jeffrey Epstein. Her trial, in which she stands accused of federal sex-trafficking offenses, was supposed to provide some measure of resolution to the many mysteries surrounding the life and death of Epstein, the superwealthy globetrotting sexual predator who hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
Jose Lambiet: South Florida private investigator who formerly worked as a gossip columnist for the Palm Beach Post and other news organizations Were Epstein and Maxwell actually romantic partners, and if so, for how long? What role did she play in his life? Vanessa Grigoriadis: I don’t know if they were sleeping together or not, but she would tell Epstein’s above-age girlfriends that they were. They thought she did it to make them jealous.
Julie Brown: What else did she really have? Her father was dead. She no longer had the kind of money that she was accustomed to growing up. Her career was her social connections and being a socialite, so she made a bargain and decided she was going to stay with him, despite knowing everything that she knew about what he was doing. She’s a victim in the sense that all adults, they are confronted sooner or later with someone in their life that they know is toxic and shouldn’t be in their lives.
Julie Brown: A lot of people don’t understand that it was Maxwell that really started that whole book. It was a computerized list that she would go in on the computer and she would update repeatedly. She was the person that gathered those social connections. It really wasn’t Epstein. Julie Brown: Joe Recarey, the lead detective, got pieces of the book from Rodriguez. What Rodriguez did was he circled certain names on that list. If you look at the list, what Recarey told me was that Rodriguez circled the names of people who were involved in Epstein’s activities, or knew about what he was doing. For example, Trump is circled in there.
Julie Brown: Epstein and Trump are kind of two different animals, so to speak. Epstein really aspired to hang out with people who were very, very bright and brilliant scientists, and to talk about all kinds of esoteric research. And he just saw himself on a different playing field than Trump. Trump was a guy that made a lot of money, but made it off of his family.
Why were so many academics, especially at Harvard, so taken with him? Vanessa Grigoriadis: People love money. Julie Brown: I think they were to some degree outlawyered, but they allowed themselves to be outlawyered. They were all enamored with each other. I know one of the prosecutors told me words to the effect that they were all sitting in the room, and there was Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz and Jay Lefkowitz, and he was sitting there thinking to himself how much money an hour they were all making. Alexander Acosta had ambitions to be a Supreme Court justice.
Lachlan Cartwright: It is total and utter bollocks to say that Epstein was a Mossad asset or part of the intelligence community. Gabriel Sherman: He by all accounts was a psychopath, right? He is the kind of person who had no conscience and could lie convincingly. I think he cultivated this aura of himself, that he was this connected person who had Prince MBS on speed dial. I think people like Gates were brought into this world and it was like this billionaire club. Epstein would host these gatherings at his house and it was this secret society and there were models and beautiful women around.
Vanessa Grigoriadis: I’ve heard that the scene at his house wasn’t actually all that fun, and even though people wanted to check out the amazing townhouse, it was, most of the time, all old people and a few young women who didn’t talk. Lachlan Cartwright: Ask yourself why Wexner gave Epstein full power of attorney over his affairs? It is extraordinary! That then allowed Epstein to manipulate Wexner’s finances and take control of his private jet and the now infamous Upper East Side mansion. Epstein then parlayed the appearance of wealth to con other rich and gullible men.
Was he actually a skilled investor? Or an investor of any kind? Gabriel Sherman: People who have been to Epstein’s offices say he had no Bloomberg Terminals. He didn’t have a team of analysts. People said he didn’t even have a computer on his desk. Essentially, Epstein was a fund-of-funds manager. He would direct his clients’ money to big, powerful institutions and hedge funds and they would invest it. He didn’t do a lot of the trading himself. But Epstein would be in control.
Nick Bryant: I believe that there was obviously blackmail going on. Why else would you have the hidden cameras? But what people miss about this, and this is a very important point, is that Jeffrey Epstein by himself could not be a blackmail artist. Some of these men who he reportedly recorded are some of the most powerful men in the world. There’s no way that Epstein could be blackmailing these people unless there was an organization behind him, and Alexander Acosta said it was intelligence.
Lachlan Cartwright: This is the fantasyland stuff. There is no evidence of it. None. If those tapes existed we would know about them by now. I’ve spent a shitload of time running this down and can confidently tell you there are no videos and any “vault” was just as likely to safely secure Epstein’s lunch as it was secret videos.
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