From the January-February 2022 issue of News & Letters

by Gerry Emmett

The Dec. 29 guilty verdicts in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial don’t end the Jeffrey Epstein story. Prosecutors conducted it to reveal as little as possible about their network and associates—as if “settling family business”—but much has been learned.

That is, the public has learned what the ruling class already knew. For example, Donald Trump said in 2015, “That island [Epstein owned] was an absolute cesspool.…Just ask Prince Andrew.” Christine Pelosi wrote in 2019: “It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated.” Cindy McCain said in 2020: “We all knew about him. We all knew what he was doing.”

The names of men Epstein trafficked young women to were not released. Crimes seem to have been recorded, judging by the large number of DVDs that were seized from Epstein’s New York mansion. Why were they made? By and for whom?

Epstein connected to the fashion industry through his financial patron, Leslie Wexner, owner of L Brands, and through his alleged trafficking associate, modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel (who is set to go to trial in France, in what looks like another cover-up).

We now know that Epstein was a regular visitor to the White House within a month of his friend Bill Clinton’s inauguration. It shifts the question as to what Epstein’s project may have been, to “How might Epstein’s project have fit into Clinton’s project?”

The Clinton presidency corresponded to the fall of Communism in East Europe and Russia, a moment when compromising material on political figures would be useful. Access to the human trafficking networks that developed at the time could have helped supply that.