Harv's Corner 02/16/2026

Harv's Corner

"Reading the Star Tribune’s summary of the newly unsealed Epstein documents is a difficult but necessary task. Beyond the high-profile names and political firestorms, we must not lose sight of the survivors who fought for decades to see this information made public. Their courage is the only reason we are finally seeing the light of day."

The Epstein files and the hidden world of an unaccountable elite
Tale of sexual predators given a free ride by the ruling class emerges.
By ROBERT DRAPER The New York Times

​WASHINGTON — Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged.

In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex.

That story of impunity is all the more outrageous now in the midst of rising populist anger and ever-growing inequality.

The Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends occurred over two decades that saw the decline of America's manufacturing sector and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which millions of Americans lost their homes.

If Epstein's goal was to build a wall of protection around his abuse by surrounding himself with the well connected, he failed in the end. But both before and after he was first prosecuted for abusing girls, his correspondence described a network of people whose high-flying lives belied the struggles of ordinary Americans. And at the center of that network was a sexual predator seemingly on top of the world.

"We've heard so much about the Epstein scandal over the past several years," said Nicole Hemmer, a history professor at Vanderbilt University who writes frequently about political culture. "And yet people do seem shocked by the scope of elite complicity in his world.
It's a level of corruption that the public is now getting a full view of."

In 2002, Epstein hosted former President Bill Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey on a tour of African countries aboard his private jet.

His talent for entertaining attracted interest from one of the world's richest men, Elon Musk, who emailed Epstein in 2012 to ask, "What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?" (Musk has said on social media that he "had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island.") There was of course his friendship with Donald Trump.

And he dispensed favors to, and rubbed elbows with, Woody Allen; Noam Chomsky, the linguist and intellectual; Kenneth S tarr, the independent counsel in the Clinton investigation; Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House counsel who resigned Thursday night as general counsel of Goldman Sachs amid scrutiny of her ties to Epstein; Steve Bannon, one of Trump's top political allies; Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard and former Treasury secretary; Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; and a cavalcade of financial titans.

James Staley, who recently stepped down as the CEO of Barclay's in the wake of allegations involving his ties to Epstein, emailed Epstein in 2014 to suggest that upper-caste Americans like themselves were unlikely to ever face a populist uprising like the protests taking place in Brazil at the time.

Pointing to Super Bowl ads that year, Staley wrote: "Its all about hip blacks in hip cars with white women. The group that should be in the streets, has been bought off. By Jay-Z."

The shocking nature of some of the revelations, combined with the prominence and status of those in Epstein's orbit, has done nothing to quiet the conspiracy theories that his behavior spawned and that both the right and the left have sought to weaponize for political advantage.
If anything, the raft of new details has spiraled into feverish new speculation with little or no factual basis.

In 2014, Epstein received an email from an associate whose name has been redacted that said in full, "Thank you for a fun night ... your littlest girl was a little naughty." In another email, Epstein instructed a recipient whose name is also redacted to buy several sex toys, adding: "I want you to talk as nasty, vulgar, imaginative as you can ... It will free your mind. Its like a mental sneeze."

Epstein wrote to another undisclosed recipient in 2009, who was identified Wednesday in a House hearing as Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a powerful Emirati businessperson: "where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video."

Lacking context, such messages are subject to speculation about their meaning and provide fresh opportunities for those intent on drawing attention to themselves and their views.

Hemmer, the Vanderbilt professor, said the shadowy nature of Epstein's life, coupled with the Trump administration's haphazard production of the documents, was "bound to beef up a ton of conspiracy theories."

Newly released video logs of the prison wing where Epstein was found dead, for example, suggest that a human figure not previously accounted for in the records was moving in the general direction of Epstein's cell late that evening.

This has led some internet sleuths to conclude that Epstein, whose death in federal custody in 2019 was ruled a suicide, might have been killed. Others have speculated that he might not be dead at all, given that Epstein testified in a deposition in 2017 that he had a barbed-wire tattoo on his left biceps, but no such tattoo is visible in the recently released photo of his body.

Rep. Ro Khanna, the D-Calif., who worked with former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to pass legislation compelling the release of the documents, dismissed the conspiracy theories.

But, he said in an interview, "we must ask ourselves how we have produced an elite that is so immature, reckless and arrogant."
​
In the end, Epstein was arrested, charged with serious sex crimes and died in prison while awaiting trial. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell also remains incarcerated.