Who was Jeffery Epstein?
Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender who was accused of serial sex trafficking of women and girls. While jailed and awaiting a federal sex-trafficking trial, Epstein killed himself by hanging. In the wake of his 2019 death the content of the so-called Epstein files including who is named in them and in what context became a topic that roiled both sides of the political aisle. During the second administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump the call for the release of the files became a national conversation.
Finance career
In 1980, four years after joining Bear Stearns, Epstein was made a limited partner. In 1981, however, he left the company in order to run his own business. About this time, Epstein’s personal financial situation, as well as his business practices, became increasingly murky. Some of his associates during the 1980s stated that he referred to himself as a “bounty hunter” who recovered stolen money for the ultra-wealthy. In 1987 Epstein began working with Towers Financial Corporation executive Steven J. Hoffenberg. The two attempted—but mostly failed—in their attempts at corporate takeovers. In 1988 Epstein founded J. Epstein & Company, a consulting firm that provided money-management services to individuals with a net worth of more than $1 billion. His major client for some 20 years was the billionaire retail magnate Leslie H. Wexner. Epstein came to manage much of Wexner’s holdings and benefited enormously as a result.
In the 1990s Epstein began running his business from the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands—a tax haven—where he owned the nearby small island of Little St. James. (He later purchased another island in the same vicinity, Great St. James.) He also owned what was then the largest private mansion in Manhattan, as well as properties in Palm Beach, Florida; Paris; and New Mexico. It was said that Epstein used hidden cameras at his Manhattan residence to record sex acts performed by his wealthy associates, probably for blackmail purposes. He also kept a log of those who traveled on his private jet, which locals in the Virgin Islands referred to as the “Lolita Express” (in reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita [1955], whose antihero is a middle-aged man who obsessively lusts after young girls). Among persons on the log were former U.S. president Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, the prominent attorney and Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew, duke of York, who was eventually accused of repeatedly having sex with one of Epstein’s underage victims and led to Andrew losing his princely title.
Epstein Files
The Epstein files are a body of documents detailing the criminal activities of American financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his affiliates. The Epstein list is a purported document within this body that contains the names of high-profile clients to whom Epstein trafficked young girls. Epstein cultivated a social circle of public figures that included politicians and celebrities, fueling claims suggesting that he maintained such a list to blackmail these associates—and that his 2019 death was not a suicide (as officially reported) but a murder to protect his clients.
Claims surrounding the existence of a client list first surfaced in the immediate aftermath of Epstein’s death, later reaching heightened prominence in 2025 following a now-deleted tweet from former White House senior advisor and Department of Government Efficiency associate Elon Musk alleging that United States president Donald Trump was among the names listed. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump floated the idea of releasing the Epstein files,[1] though he has since said that they are simply fabrications by members of the Democratic Party.[2]
The Trump administration’s United States Justice Department (DOJ) released a memo on July 7, 2025, which stated the list did not exist and “no credible evidence [was] found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” The memo was met with skepticism from political commentators across the political spectrum, such as Alex Jones[3] and John Oliver.[4]
In November 2025, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a set of emails involving Epstein in which he wrote, “[The] dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” and mentioned that Trump had “spent hours” with one of the victims.[5][6][7] On November 18, 2025, the House of Representatives passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in a 427–1 vote.[8] The Senate would unanimously approve the bill the same day,[9] sending it to Trump’s desk the next morning.[10] Trump signed the bill the day he received it, officially requiring the DOJ to release the files within 30 days.[11] The U.S. Department of Justice released some, but not all, of the Epstein files by the act’s deadline of December 19, 2025.[12]
Leave a Reply