On the chronicle of a life wasted

Karma came for Jeffrey Epstein. Eventually.

Realizing what isn’t in the Epstein files takes a while.¹

The big names grab attention, especially the tech moguls in the early 2010s. At the time, Epstein hoped to leverage relationships with Bill Gates and Peter Thiel to return to respectability after his 2008 conviction for soliciting underage girls.

References to Donald Trump and Bill Clinton give the files a sheen of importance too, though Epstein’s dealings with both largely ended years before that conviction.

—

(Finding the truth. Even when it’s not what you expect.)

—

But search long enough through the millions of documents that the Department of Justice released last week from its investigations of Epstein, and what’s not there eventually becomes clear. (And I don’t mean a Satanic child-eating pedophile ring, though that’s not there either. Let’s stick to reality.)

Epstein’s world was more limited than it seems.

A-list celebrities and athletes and top Hollywood agents are generally absent from the post-2008 files. Media moguls, cable news stars, and big names in journalism and publishing don’t appear much either — unless one counts the odious gossiper Michael Wolff, who happily carried water for Epstein in exchange for scraps about Donald Trump.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden were no friends of Epstein. Nor was George W. Bush. Even Hunter Biden doesn’t come up much. (Hunt was probably too messy for Epstein, who seemingly didn’t like drugs.) The state and local politicians who are constantly glad-handling rich guys like Epstein for money are mostly absent too. The Hamptons invitations? Epstein’s lucky he had his own beach, because he wasn’t getting them.

It’s no wonder that Epstein was so interested in Silicon Valley, where he didn’t live — the elite social settings of New York and Florida were mostly closed to him after 2008, at least publicly.

But by 2014, after a couple of fancy dinners Epstein arranged, the tech moguls start to vanish too. Epstein keeps emailing them, but they stop emailing him back.

What’s left? A relative handful of longtime confidants and friend including some women he helped financially. Some sleazy Middle Eastern sheikhs who had no cultural or moral worries about the way Epstein had treated adolescent girls.

Plus would-be entrepreneurs from (mostly) third-tier tech companies looking for start-up money and academics desperate for research grants. And a handful of late-onset losers like Dr. Peter Attia blinded by Epstein’s townhouse and the young women in it.

—

In truth, though, Epstein was a loser himself by 2015.

The biggest celebrity in the files is Woody Allen, who turned 80 that year — and was himself a social pariah after Mia Farrow’s allegations that he had sexually abused their adoptive daughter Dylan. Aside from the occasional mention of Jeff Koons, the files are strikingly thin on references to contemporary American culture, high or low. In the unlikely event someone had parachuted in from 1975 and wanted to be an extra on a Woody Allen movie, Epstein could help. But access to Lin-Manuel Miranda or Jay-Z or Taylor Swift? Guess again.

In part, this strange ossification comes because Epstein was so unacquainted with youth culture. (Oh the irony.) But he didn’t have kids of his own, and he wasn’t getting invited to too many sweet sixteens.² Yes, he could still find needy young women from Eastern Europe — the Nadias and Anastasias and Milas pile up year by year — but they weren’t exactly in the cultural vanguard.

—

(Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn having a great time!)

—

And after 2014, as the MeToo movement gained force, Epstein’s remaining opportunities slowly faded.

He was still rich, but he was more and more a social pariah. By 2017, he was so frustrated he even considered trying to blackmail some of the billionaires who had helped him accumulate his fortune in happier times. Ultimately, he kept his mouth shut, apparently realizing that doing so would have destroyed the only currency he had left, his reputation for discretion.

So as the 2010s passed, Epstein flew from his townhouse to his island to his ranch and complained about Trump, whose success he could not abide. He never ran out of women — there was always another Russian — but he became more and more isolated as the years passed.

Shed no tears for Epstein. He was a terrible guy, a liar and thief and sociopath who, at a minimum, took advantage of vulnerable teenage girls and paid the lightest possible penalty when he was caught.

But the understandable anger at him and the foolish men (and women) around him, especially those who initially remained in his orbit after 2008, shouldn’t blind us to the reality that the stigma of Epstein’s conviction actually grew over time. He was a dead man tanning, even if it took him a while to realize that fact.

—

(Thinking independently, with your help.)

—

In fact, the files make the story of Epstein’s suicide more believable.

By the time he was arrested in 2019, he had to know that no one was coming to save him. He had no levers left to pull, and he — like Harvey Weinstein — would likely spend most of the rest of his life in prison.

And so he wrapped a rope around his neck and took the coward’s way out.

1. No, this isn’t the big story. Still working on that.

2. One notable exception came when an old friend of Epstein’s, Eva Dubin, told him in 2010 he should “visit next week” when her 15-year-old daughter would have “5 friends over.” Epstein declined, responding that he was out of town.