Chris

Epstein used money (philanthropy, plane, ranch, island) to attract models and celebrities and academics and politicians (and to a lesser extent, rich people). Epstein used models to hold raucous parties and celebrity academics to hold midwit-intellectual parties. Epstein used these connections and parties to make himself seem (and in effect be) well connected and attract rich people. Network network network. Epstein used rich people to make money. Didn’t have a great batting average with that, but it was a Dave Kingman sort of batting average where he would play a long game and fearlessly swing for the fences once he ensnared a Wexner or a Black, who together generated the majority of Epstein’s wealth. All along, Epstein would cultivate an air of mystery (pretend to be CIA, have weird art and a James-Bond-villain-style staff of model-quality assistants) to make himself seem more than he was. Like Bernie Madoff before him, Epstein targeted wealthy Jews in particular, creating an us-versus-them paradigm (“goyim”, making fun of JP Morgan WASPs) to make his marks trust him more and disregard his common and sketchy resume. He’s just a rogue getting one over on the high school jocks; stick with me because we Jews need to stick together. Again, a low batting average, but he did pull hundreds of millions from the wealthy Jews he did persuade that he was being particularly helpful. (Seems unbelievable unless you’ve talked to enough wealthy people to know how much trouble it is to staff a trustworthy family “office.” Grifting or just plain principal-agent conflicts seem to happen much more often than is publicly reported, if on a considerably smaller scale than what Epstein pulled off with Wexner.) An amazing ecosystem bootstrapped out of nothing more than Epstein’s charm and his amoral shamelessness. If this was all there was to Epstein, we can only guess what a #MeToo scandal might’ve looked like eventually (though lots of rich men have womanized extensively without real consequence), but he might well have gotten away with all of this and died a billionaire from existing investments. Epstein’s former clients hated him, but he wasn’t losing any sleep over it. But Epstein also had an entirely separate and justifiably illegal fetish for teenage girls, spending millions in a reckless scheme to constantly import more for a sick sexual hunger. It doesn’t matter that many of the teenagers were delinquents thrilled with the sex-for-cash trade, so thrilled that they’d happily collect bounties to recruit their underage friends to work the massage tables also; it’s still illegal and immoral; the age of consent is there for a reason. He’d use his money and exaggerate his connections and his past to intimidate women from complaining, though plenty spoke to police in Palm Beach without the Mossad killing them. That’s what eventually brought Epstein (and his right-hand woman Ghislaine) down. Epstein spent enough money to almost get away with that, too—except Epstein had the bad luck to negotiate his plea deal with a future Trump cabinet secretary. And journalists wanting to tar Trump’s administration, combined with lawyers with clients who both had the incentive to make the story bigger than it was, dug up the old scandal and wondered why a 2009 prosecution was evaluated with a 2009 jury pool rather than 2017 mores. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, the celebrities were irrelevant to the trafficking of teens for Epstein’s self-gratification. Epstein had plenty of legal means to attract celebrities and borderline-legal means to attract much more money with much less risk than by pimping or blackmail. That Epstein was spending time recruiting members of royal families and retired politicians and Hollywood actors to his collection is further evidence that this was all an operation of ego rather than American or foreign intelligence. But too many people with bad motives to tell a false but bigger story with no credible evidence.