What Are the Big Takeaways From the Epstein Emails?

It’s a scandalous multi-elite affair

The New Yorker’s Jessica Winter sums up an ugly truth:

As is the case with the Epstein birthday book, these documents run an enervating gamut from the inane to the depraved. Not one of these people can do evil banter; it’s incredible that so much of their lives revolves around networking and socializing. The most amusing aspect of the correspondence, given the figure at its center, is its streak of censoriousness, as when the publicist Peggy Siegal disparaged a socialite in their orbit as “a fat drunk with no money and a bad marriage.”

The darkest thread, meanwhile, is the obsequious reverence for Epstein. In a 2015 exchange, Landon Thomas Jr., then a financial reporter for the Times, encouraged Epstein to “show the world that you are no longer that guy. You have made changes — and that this is the past.” Two years later, Thomas, ever the supportive friend, e-mailed Epstein to warn that the investigative journalist John Connolly, the co-author of the Epstein exposé “Filthy Rich,” was “digging around again.” In a letter of recommendation, the linguist Noam Chomsky contended that “Jeffrey constantly raises searching questions and puts forth provocative ideas, which have repeatedly led me to rethink crucial issues.” Such assertions sit uneasily beside Epstein’s notes to self (e.g., “beards and long hair , are meant to catch and hold smells. ?” and “does the eye tranmsit information.”), or his orthographically complex lists of names, which read like a blackout-drunk attempt to update “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in time for karaoke on Little St. James: “bill clinton. hamad bun jasem. donalad trup. gov mapp. governoe young. governoe king. . woody allen . morgain fairchild.”

This is America

So writes Matt Ford at The New Republic:

It would be tempting to dismiss the Epstein scandals as a purely elite phenomenon. But this is the society for which the American people have voted. The 2016 election could once be dismissed as a constitutional fluke since most Americans voted for Trump’s opponent. The 2024 election is more definitional. This country had nearly a decade of experience with Trump in power — the corruption, the lies, the bigotry and misogyny and abuse and violence — and welcomed more of it …

In Trump’s America, all of us are not created equal. There is a hierarchy atop which the Lutnicks and Kennedys and Thiels and Musks of the world can prosper, free from government regulation or union negotiations or press scrutiny or law-enforcement investigations. Everyone else is part of a underclass whom the wealthy can abuse and immiserate at their own discretion. The Epstein emails give the rest of us a glimpse into this world, where even the most grotesque crimes can be forgiven or ignored out of a sense of elite solidarity — at least until they become too publicly awkward to privately sustain — and where amorality is required to participate.

The Founders were not without their own sins, of course, but at least they had higher aspirations for their new nation. “Avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net,” Adams once wrote to another friend. “Our Constitution was made only for a [moral] people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” So far, Americans are failing that test — and the republic itself.

But maybe it’s an American tipping point

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch certainly hopes so:

[O]n some level, Trump’s White House must also realize that the Epstein file is the Jenga piece that brings the whole thing crashing down — the end of America, or, more to the point, the version of America getting financially drained, sexually abused, and basically ruined by all the people getting emails from jeevacation@gmail.com.

The timing couldn’t be better, or worse, for this midnight of the elites. The overblown stock market fueled by an AI hallucination is set to burst any moment, and new hiring is already grinding to a halt — just as the price of everything from steak to coffee goes through the roof, and health insurance is doubling or tripling for millions of Americans. When this perfect storm strikes, an electoral bloodbath in the 2026 midterms is the best outcome Trump can hope for, on a list of dire possibilities.

It’s no coincidence Trump is accelerating the pace of dictatorship, not because he’s at the peak of power, but because he knows he’s running out of time. Thus, the wag-the-dog war drums off Venezuela are pounding louder, and the muck of naked corruption — from Swiss gold bars to real estate deals with the murderous Saudi prince — is getting filthier. All of it haunted by the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein isn’t debonair; he’s just a schmuck

Notes New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie:

What I’ve read and heard about Jeffrey Epstein is that he was this remarkably charming and intelligent guy. And then you read these emails and frankly, he sounds like an idiot. He writes in this half-literate style. Nothing he says is particularly perceptive. And one thing I was struck by is the extent to which, with these very wealthy, very powerful people, you always hear that they’re so charming. I think it’s that people want to be charmed by someone with wealth and with power and with access to things that they might want. I think that’s true for Epstein. I think it’s true for Trump. One of the useful things about a glimpse into maybe more intimate communications is, it allows you to see how much these people aren’t particularly remarkable, that the only thing that really distinguishes them is that they have money and power.

Dan Brooks makes a similar point about how uncool and neurotic and ordinary Epstein and his ilk come off, writing that “the most unsettling thing in these files may be the subjective experience of reading them and feeling like he was one of us”:

What one looks for in the Epstein files is evidence of conspiracy. What one finds is evidence of humanity — in the man himself, undeniably a monster, and in the various known figures who make cameo appearances and fail to live up to their public images. One of the more shocking discoveries of the past week is that these people seem to be as stupid, scared, and scattered as everybody else. The conspiracy we imagined may be just another gang of pudgy nerds, no better equipped to rule the world than we are.

Epstein’s writing style is telling too

Slate’s Imogen West-Knights is among those highlighting how obnoxious and arrogant his emails are:

To have one’s emails set to lowercase implies a looseness, a conversational tone, and sends its own message. He did not consider these matters, nor the people he was discussing them with, to be worthy of formality. Some typos are just typos. We all make them. But to consistently leave highly noticeable typos and errors of punctuation in his emails, even when he is writing about sensitive topics like seeming accusations of wrongdoing against the president of the United States, as well as references to his own depraved sex crimes, is a choice. A choice not to care.

It boggles the mind for most people to try to think their way into the perspective of a person like this, so assured of the invincibility that the shield of their untold wealth affords them. But Epstein’s behavior, both before and after the revelation of his crimes, bears it out. He never showed remorse, never took responsibility for the terrible things he inflicted on his victims. And anyway, to perpetrate those crimes in the first place, a person would need to have a near-inhuman disregard for others. So it doesn’t surprise me, given what we know about the person that sent these messages, that this is the manner in which he sent them: riddled with errors, blunt where tact might be expected, oblique where others would want to demonstrate transparency.

It doesn’t seem to cross his mind while firing off any of these emails — from the private jet, from one of his many palatial residences, from the back seat of an expensive car — that they might one day come back to bite him, despite the fact that the emails come footed with the now highly ironic-feeling disclaimer that “the information contained in this communication is confidential.” That law enforcement agencies and the world’s media would one day have occasion to be reading them, and that all his power and wealth would not, in fact, be enough to save him.

It’s a mass demonstration of misogyny

The Cut’s Andrea González-Ramírez shakes her head:

Epstein does not come across like a scholarly powerhouse in these latest emails, however. It’s not only that his messages are filled with boomerish typos and grammatical errors or that he sent himself stream-of-consciousness notes that included such deep insights as ”skin as part of brain?“; instead, the emails show that so much of Epstein’s purported “genius” seemed to stem from his ability to effusively praise rich people and mold himself into whatever they needed him to be. Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers told Epstein in a 2017 email, “U r wall st tough guy w intellectual curiosity,” to which the financier replied, “And you an interllectual [sic] with a Wall Street curiosity.” Reading this correspondence is like listening to two drunk girls in a bar restroom telling each other, “You’re gorgeous” and “No, you are!”

Epstein’s allure was deeply rooted in gender solidarity. How else can you explain the way his social circle cut across class, background, political ideology, and occupational fields? …

Epstein’s worldview as articulated in these documents was so predicated on subjugating women and girls that it’s hard not to read praise for his supposed genius as cover for what he truly offered his well-placed friends. That influential players continued their relationships with Epstein long after his 2008 plea deal shows just how disposable his victims were, the late financier’s crimes easily waved away by those he could enrich while simultaneously promising access to a steady stream of painfully young, beautiful female bodies to admire at best and abuse at worst. It’s morally bankrupt, yes, but it’s also just plain pathetic to ruin one’s reputation over such an unremarkable, violent man.

Epstein’s foreign ties deserve more attention

The Nation’s Jeet Heer highlights earlier reporting about how Epstein tried to wield his influence among the foreign-policy elite:

Epstein’s name is inextricably linked with sexual predation, as it should be. But it should just as readily be linked to global militarism and authoritarianism. Epstein trafficked not just in the bodies of the children he abused but also in social connections that could bring elites together. He well understood that the “desperation of those in power” could make them eager to buy what he was selling: connections with other powerful figures and security systems to clamp down on dissent …

Thanks to diligent reporting from two independent outlets, Drop Site and Reason, we now have a much better sense of Epstein’s relationship with the foreign policy elite of the US and Israel. It seems that Epstein was not a CIA or Mossad asset — not because he didn’t have it in him, but because that was too lowly a role. Rather, he was a power broker, an American oligarch, who played a major role in shaping Western policy, which brought him in contact with spy agencies and diplomats.

The Epstein emails are a time capsule

At the New York Times, Shawn McCreesh explains how the emails — many of which were written by once-powerful elites who have since experienced their own downfalls due to their associations with Epstein and/or their individual scandals — are a snapshot of a New York that no longer exists:

The emails are like a portal back to a lost Manhattan power scene. Mr. Epstein’s inbox was larded with boldface names — many of them now faded or forgotten — that once meant everything to status-obsessed New Yorkers. It was the world that Donald Trump came out of, and the one that Mr. Epstein had so effectively beguiled after having grown up in a middle-class household in Coney Island.

As the emails stretch through the years, they show how that protected realm vanished into the mists of time, pulled under by the rising forces of the internet and the #MeToo movement. Mr. Epstein and some of his male correspondents seem to squirm as they notice society changing around them.

Maybe the conspiracy theorists have a point

Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan wonders if he should want to believe:

I have to be honest. I have spent my career resisting conspiracy theories: about 9/11, moon landings, and more. But the Jeffrey Epstein saga may have finally made a conspiracy theorist out of me.

Now, some of you might be wondering: how can we really believe wild conspiracy theories about murder, child rape, and top elected officials, as if we’re living in some sort of episode of ‘Scandal’ or ‘House of Cards’? But the real question is: how can we not? How can we not entertain conspiracy theories about the death of the world’s most famous child sex offender when we see the world’s most powerful man frantically spending weeks pressuring members of his own party to vote against the release of all the records, throwing his own loyal allies under the bus in the process, and ordering blatantly partisan investigations into only his political opponents?

How can we not entertain conspiracy theories when Donald Trump’s name appears in the Epstein emails and files released by the House Oversight Committee more than anyone else? When those emails show Jeffrey Epstein saying the president ”knew about the girls” and that Trump is the ”dog that hasn’t barked“?

How can we not entertain conspiracy theories about a dead pedophile who was a close friend of the president, especially when that president is also a convicted criminal himself and was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury of his peers in New York?

In defense of Trump

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York argues that Trump’s presence in the Epstein emails doesn’t mean he did anything wrong:

Of course Trump is in the Epstein files; he’s all over this set of Epstein files because he was so deeply in Epstein’s head. Trump will be in other Epstein files, too, because Epstein apparently could not stop thinking and talking about him.

Finally, one problem with reading the Epstein emails today is that Epstein was, in the words of one recent assessment in the Atlantic, a “notorious liar.” It is reasonable to take Epstein’s statements of opinion at face value — he appeared to really think Trump was dumb — but not his statements of fact. So when Epstein says that victim Virginia Giuffre “spent hours at my house with [Trump],” there’s no compelling reason to believe him. Giuffre, now dead, wrote a book that said no such thing about Trump and also testified under oath that Trump “didn’t partake in any sex with us … [and] never flirted with me.” Giuffre said she never saw Trump and Epstein together. She was asked, “Did you ever see Donald Trump at Jeffrey’s home?” and answered, “Not that I remember.” In addition, she said she did not remember seeing Trump at Epstein’s island, or his house in New Mexico, or his house in New York.

So what to make of it? First, even though he was a friend of Epstein’s for several years up to around 2004, there is still no evidence linking Donald Trump to any wrongdoing. And second, Trump is nevertheless everywhere in the Epstein files because Jeffrey Epstein was out of his mind with resentment toward a former friend who not only succeeded in business but became president of the United States, even as Epstein raced toward ruin.

Epstein’s being full of it doesn’t exonerate Trump

At Bloomberg, Timothy O’Brien acknowledges that Epstein can’t be trusted but adds that neither can Trump (who brought this on himself):

The wrinkle here, as they say in the trade, is that Epstein was an unreliable narrator. He made his fortune and forged a formidable social network by offering financial advice and strategic acumen alongside gossip — and, in some cases, sex — to the rich and powerful. He had every incentive at every turn to inflate his expertise and to claim unusual proximity to the celebrated. When being an insider is more important to your well-being than professional aptitude, spinning yarns comes with the territory.

That’s why it’s also important for Congress and the law enforcement community to undertake a full vetting of Epstein’s intersection with the president, and to release as much information as they can. An accurate accounting of the Trump-Epstein relationship shouldn’t be dependent on unreliable narrators and conspiracy theorists. Trump’s own constituents and some members of his party have been clamoring for that.

The earlier Trump-Epstein files may be worse

Vox’s Andrew Prokop makes an important point about the timeline of Trump and Epstein’s relationship:

In the frenzy of interest over the newly released Epstein emails, decontextualized tidbits have been rocketed across social media and been treated as damning. But there have also been a lot of misinterpretations and misreadings. If the DOJ’s Epstein files ever do get released, that will likely continue.

In my view, the most helpful thing to keep in mind when assessing the import of new information about the Trump-Epstein relationship is that the relationship had two phases:

1. From the 1990s to about 2004, Trump and Epstein were friends, frequently seen together, exchanging bawdy messages, etc.

2. After 2004, they had a falling out, reportedly over that mansion auction; the reporting has been quite consistent that this was a bitter falling out and their relationship did not continue after that.

Naturally, Trump’s defenders are preferring to focus on the second phase. Indeed, after this week’s release of tens of thousands of Epstein’s emails, many claimed there was surprisingly little about Trump. But those emails were from the 2010s. It’s more likely that the things Trump’s most worried about in the Epstein files would be about the earlier period, when Trump and Epstein really were close — things like Trump’s birthday book message to Epstein: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”