He has been dead now for over five years. Yet, just when you thought you knew everything, the incredible tale of Jeffrey Epstein gets creepier.
Epstein, who was 66 years old when he hung himself inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York in 2019, was connected to a long-suspected, vast universe of VIPs, conservatives, progressives, right, left, Republicans, and Democrats. This guy had the world in his black book.
As Epstein’s estate, Congress and the courts slow walk the release of documents and photos, the pervert’s long shadow will fall on American public life for years to come.
The saga is a testament to the arrogance of the power of money and the conceit that it can always buy redemption. How else to explain how titans of industry, technology, academia, politics, art, theater, movies, and society flocked to Epstein’s side even after his 2008 stint in state prison for procuring a child for prostitution?
His friend circle must have known the broad strokes of his wicked exploitation of teenagers, yet the fast crowd was apparently eager to experience decadence. The 95,000 documents and photos released most recently by the House Oversight Committee show how the rich and famous elbowed each other to get close to the perverse financier, party boy who knew everybody.
The documents cache released is a cornucopia of celebrity.
It includes self-help guru Deepak Chopra, billionaire banker Ariane de Rothschild, longtime investor Leon Black, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and former Trump White House bully boy Steve Bannon, who met with Epstein in glamorous locations from Paris to the Virgin Islands. Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers is so contrite that he has removed himself from public life.
Just last week Woody Allen described Epstein as a “substantial character” whose dinners when he knew him from around 2010 to 2019 were full of “illustrious people, college professors, scientists, Nobel laureates, accomplished people who are fun to listen to.”
I joked on the air last week with my talented NewsNation host and colleague Connell McShane that I thanked my lucky stars that I never met Epstein, never took a picture with him, never went on his plane or visited either his mansion on Fifth Avenue or his island in the Caribbean.
Happily, I was never in the same place as the man whose toxic friendship cost Prince Andrew his royal title, Bill Gates half his vast fortune and his marriage, Bill Clinton, what remained of his tattered reputation, and President Trump his infallibility with the Marjorie Taylor Greene/MAGA crowd.
Woody Allen has embraced his relationship with the notorious pedophile.
Woody, I do know, both as a fan and as a mutual dinner guest of long-time New York politician Andrew Stein. As far as I can tell, the famed director of “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” is unfazed by the shock and outrage over his long friendship with Epstein. Woody, who famously married his adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, told The New York Times about his sympathy for the devil.
“He (Epstein) told us he was trying to make up for it now by being philanthropic and giving money to cutting-edge scientists and universities. He could not have been nicer.”
Woody’s own unique life choices make his willingness to speak kindly about Epstein seem reckless and insensitive to the victims of Epstein’s exploitation.
It is unlikely to be well-received, although it will be widely broadcast. The conspiracy theorists were right about the existence of a giant cover-up. It turns out so many people from so many aspects of American life were involved with the shameless pervert, it is unlikely either side can claim the moral high ground.
