Jeffrey epstein

Epstein and Lutnick, sitting in a tree?

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted that he went on vacation, with his family, to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012. How very White Lotus! Suddenly, every ear in Washington cocked Lutnick’s way, like he was starring in an old E.F. Hutton commercial.  “My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with, they were there as well, with their children, and we had lunch on the island – that is true – for an hour.” Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland gave America this early Valentine’s Day present during ​a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee session on broadband funding – what was supposed to be a dull parliamentary proceeding

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Ken Paxton’s turning point

Turning Point USA’s political-action committee showed just how “family friendly” it is Monday – by endorsing serial adulterer Ken Paxton for Texas’s open Senate seat. Paxton, who’s battling Republican incumbent John Cornyn and Congressman Wesley Hunt for his party’s nomination, accepted the endorsement, saying, “I’m proud to be standing alongside Turning Point Action in carrying on the fight to save this country and defend our freedoms.” Sensible Republicans, of which there are at least a half dozen left, understand the hypocrisy of the organization started by the late Charlie Kirk, the world’s most earnest family man, backing one of America’s most ethically compromised politicians. Texas lawyer and Cornyn supporter Amy

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Takeout with Woody, Soon-Yi and Epstein

The more salacious aspects of the Epstein files are well known – but what of the banal side of being a billionaire sex pest? It’s no secret Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn were close friends with Epstein, as the trove of emails show. One food-obsessed friend of Cockburn alerted us to the non-stop back and forth of emails, spanning years, between Soon-Yi and a coterie of Epstein assistants. The topic? Scheduling dinners at Epstein’s townhouse, along with directions on what Woody and Soon-Yi would like to order-in that night. Soon-Yi does all the ordering and coordinating, as she explains in an email to one of Epstein’s assistants when

Prince Andrew’s business blueprint for Trump 2.0

President Trump has had a mixed reaction to the enormous document dump of “Epstein files” from the Department of Justice a week ago. The President had a terse exchange with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when she asked about the files Tuesday – yet in his pre-Super Bowl NBC interview, Trump was empathetic toward one of his predecessors. “It bothers me that they’re going after Bill Clinton,” he told Tom Llamas, referring to how the former president and his wife, Hillary, were being compelled to testify before Congress about Epstein. Cockburn wonders if that compassion extends to another figure he moved in the same circles as back in the early 2000s: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The former prince

andrew epstein trade business

Epstein, the Clintons and the death of trust

Bill and Hillary Clinton had a choice: face criminal contempt charges or come clean about their friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. After months of resisting, the former president and his wife have now agreed to testify before the House. Clinton will be the first former president to appear before Congress since 1983, when Gerald Ford discussed bicentenary celebrations for the enactment of the Constitution. An appearance of this gravity, however, is unprecedented; it may well mark the start of a true Epstein reckoning in America. The Epstein scandal has become a strange monster, hell-bent on devouring the old elite In typical Clintonian style, the couple presented their initial refusal as a

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The plight of Peter Attia

The Epstein files, while they still haven’t harpooned their biggest whales, continue to destroy reputations on the side. One of the most unusual scalps claimed last week was that of celebrity doctor and “longevity expert” Peter Attia, creator of the “Outlive” brand. Last month, CBS News named Attia one of 19 new essential contributors. Now it’s cutting ties with him. And they’re not the only ones.   Attia was born in Canada but graduated from Stanford University Medical School in 2001. He spent five years as a general surgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was named “Resident of the Year,” followed by a surgical oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute focusing on melanoma.   After a brief tenure at McKinsey

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Why I’m in the Epstein Files

“Always knew you were a nonce.” That text, from a coworker in London, is how I learned my name appeared in the latest tranche of the Epstein Files. In the moments prior, I had been sweating profusely – unlike a certain former prince. I can explain. First off, “nonce” is British slang for “pedophile.” More important: at around noon today, the Department of Justice released a series of documents relating to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex trafficker and financier. Among the documents: an email I sent in June 2020 to a number of senior figures who worked in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of

matt mcdonald epstein files

The French obsession with Epstein

The ongoing revelations about the rich and famous who rubbed shoulders with Jeffrey Epstein are receiving extensive coverage in France. Print and broadcast media have pored over the details of the deceased sex offender and the famous names contained in the Epstein files, from princes to presidents to pop stars. There is a French connection to Epstein in model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who was alleged to have trafficked girls for the pedophile financier. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2020 and was found hanged in his prison cell two years later. But overwhelmingly what the French media have described as l’affaire Epstein is an Anglo-Saxon sex scandal.

Why I corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein

Olivia Nuzzi, the young and talented Trump reporter, committed the apparently cardinal sin of becoming romantically entangled with a subject. And, worse than that, the subject was widely reviled, particularly among journalists: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-Kennedy. And then it turned out –her jilted fiancé, another journalist, was telling all – that there were other politicians she’d been involved with, too. This scandal, which has consumed the journalism world, was good for me because it forced the heaps of opprobrium I was getting from other journalists for my emails with the reviled Jeffrey Epstein off the front page. I had interacted with Nuzzi a few times shortly after my

Will we ever know the truth about Epstein?

Now that Congress has passed a law – not a flimsy resolution, but a law – mandating that the Trump administration release all its files on Jeffrey Epstein, here’s what we know, and what we still need to know. The basic elements of Epstein’s crimes were established back in 2006 by the Palm Beach Police, who began investigating the previous year after a woman reported that he had paid her 14-year-old stepdaughter for a massage. Over the next 13 months, the police gathered sworn statements from dozens of witnesses, including five underage girls who said they’d been paid $200 to $1,000 to engage in sex acts with Epstein. “The more

Epstein, like Russiagate, damns the elite

As President Trump’s first year back in office drew to a close, his enemies had high hopes they’d hit on a scandal that could do to his second term what the “Russian collusion” story had done to his first. Donald Trump didn’t have to be found guilty of any wrongdoing tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s sleaze. All that was necessary was to stain his reputation indelibly and distract his administration from its work. The Epstein weapon even had an advantage over the Russia allegations of yesteryear – it resonated with much of Trump’s own MAGA base. Trump campaigned in 2024 on releasing the Epstein files, and many in MAGA considered it

How the ‘deep state’ enabled Epstein to operate

How do characters like Jeffrey Epstein come about, really? One way to find out is to read his emails, 20,000 of which were released by the House Oversight Committee in November. What they show us is that people like Epstein were a product of the second half of the 20th century, their existence more or less impossible outside this era and its conditions. After World War Two it was decided that majoritarian democracy was too dangerous and had to be replaced by international law, human rights and expanded bureaucracies. Epstein took this state of affairs for granted. In a 2016 email to the New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr.,

Jeffrey Epstein

Marjorie Taylor Greene: anti-Trump resistance hero?

It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fit the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New York Times and others were obsessed. Vanity Fair would send reporters to follow Bannon as he conquered America and, er, Europe. Documentary crews were perennially in tow. Indeed one documentary following Bannon around included a scene in which they followed him to the showing of another documentary about him from a crew who had similarly followed him around.

Prince Andrew finds refuge in video games

Oh God, not that. That’s all we need, I thought, reading in a long account of Britain’s Prince Andrew’s current travails that “according to visitors to Royal Lodge,” he now “spends much of his time playing video games.” Even before all the unpleasantness with the child-rape allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, one of the Prince’s more embarrassing qualities was his appearing as an “ambassador” for this or that – usually accompanied by a helicopter trip to a golf course. Now he’s reduced – no chopper, no putting green; woe is him – to being an ambassador for adults who play video games. As an adult who plays video games, and even

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