Elite Ties, Manipulation and Controversy: The Expanding Shadow Of Jeffrey Epstein

March 8, 2017. Deepak Chopra, an Indian-origin, US-based alternative medicine promoter, started an email conversation with US financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on form and formlessness. At one point, Epstein asked, “Does a cell have form? Is a cell aware? Does it have emotion? Does it perform actions?” These deeply scientific and philosophical questions were supplemented by another curious one. “Did you find me a cute Israeli? :)”

Chopra’s answers were interesting. “Cells are human constructs. No such thing! (The) universe is (a) human construct. No such thing,” he wrote, implying that neither cells nor the universe was real; they were human constructs. Then, possibly answering whether cells have awareness, Chopra wrote, “Cute girls are aware when they make noises.”

“Thank god,” replied Epstein. Chopra elaborated his proposition: “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.” The conversation was heading exactly where they both wanted it to. “So, when the girl says, ‘oh my god’…?” Epstein asked. “That’s divine transcendence,” answered Chopra. Epstein quickly disputed that divinity: “Oh, I thought she was just referring to me.” Chopra affirmed and summed up: “That’s because you are God in drag.”

In essence, sex, especially with cute girls, is the only real thing.

This conversation took place when allegations related to Epstein’s sexual offences had resurfaced in the media due to new court cases, especially of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s key accusers, reviving the legal battle against his sexual exploitation of minors in 2015.

Epstein had served a 13-month jail term during 2008-09—albeit an insignificant punishment that he managed to bargain with the authorities—on charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Of course, everybody knew of his insatiable hunger for minors. In the famously quoted words of two-time US President Donald Trump in 2002, “He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” After his release, discussions had largely died down, but revived with Giuffre’s efforts in 2015. By January 2017, Sarah Ransome, another accuser, had moved court, complaining of sexual assault when she was a minor. These court cases involved names of influential people such as then-Prince Andrew.

All these developments got substantial media coverage. But that did not stop Chopra from discussing “girls” with Epstein on multiple occasions. Voices demanding action against Epstein became louder by the end of 2018, with new investigative media reports and the revival of federal investigation. On February 23, 2019, Epstein wrote to the celebrated linguist Noam Chomsky—who had been seeking financial advice from Epstein—asking for his guidance on handling the “putrid press”.

The media coverage was “spiralling out of control”, Epstein complained to Chomsky, and asked if he should have someone write a newspaper op-ed, defend himself, or try to ignore. “Realising that mobs are dangerous!” Epstein wrote.

Chomsky sounded deeply sympathetic because of “the horrible way” Epstein was “being treated in the press and public”. Chomsky advised him to ignore. “What the vultures dearly want is public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts—which are impossible to answer,” he wrote. “How do you prove that you are not a neo-Nazi who wants to kill the Jews, or a rapist, or whatever charge comes along?” he asked.

Chomsky went on to say that this observation was particularly true now—this was a time when the #MeToo movement revived discussions around Epstein’s sexploitations—when, in Chomsky’s words, a “hysteria” had “developed about abuse of women” and “reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder”.

Chomsky suggested that it is best not to react unless directly questioned, particularly in the current mood—which, he presumed, will fade away, “even if not in time to prevent much torture and distress” to Epstein.

That was the charm of Epstein. He could facilitate most of his associates—political, business or cultural elite—to take the moral fall. Epstein’s friendship always came with its perks. And, perhaps, also perils.

***

Epstein was found hanging in his cell at a prison in New York on August 10, 2019, leaving his death as mysterious as his life was. The State ruled it a suicide. Many people, including his brother, allege murder. He was 66.

The millionaire serial rapist was not born rich, but was talented. He grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. His father, a Jewish immigrant, worked as a groundskeeper for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Epstein dropped out of college, yet bagged a science and maths teacher job at the Dalton School, an elite private school in New York City, around 1973-74.

In 1976, a chance meeting with a student’s father opened the door to Wall Street, where he joined Bear Stearns, then a prestigious investment firm, as an account executive. Sometime after joining, he was caught submitting fake degrees from two colleges but was spared punitive action; he was already dating his supervisor’s daughter.

By 1980, when he resigned from Bear Stearns after a dispute over giving a loan to a friend to buy stocks, he already owned a house in his hometown neighbourhood and another in Manhattan and had started visiting Palm Beach, Florida, with the intention of buying an apartment.

He never took up any full-time job after leaving Bear Stearns. He worked as a consultant. He brokered deals. He also served the US government as a “financial bounty hunter”—to report financial misconduct such as money laundering to the authorities, and got rewarded for that.

His name had begun to surface in various controversies by the early 1990s. After the collapse of Towers Financial Corporation, which then ran America’s biggest Ponzi scheme, the firm’s owner called Epstein—who worked as a consultant for the company between 1987 and 1989—the “technical wizard” of the scheme. However, Epstein’s name was dropped from the charges as he had left the company four years before it collapsed.

By that time, Epstein had found a true partner in crime in Ghislaine Maxwell, eight years younger than him. This British socialite had access to the who’s who in London and New York. Her father, the disgraced yet immensely powerful British media baron, Robert Maxwell, was friends with the Queen, and deeply influential in the UK. Maxwell first came to New York early in 1991, and following the mysterious death of her father later that year, settled in New York.

Maxwell was already 30 when she met Epstein. She was older than Epstein’s preferred age group for females. Yet, they bonded perfectly. She provided Epstein with the social ladder—an entry pass to glittering ballrooms and private salons frequented by diplomats, politicians and royalty. As early as 1996, Epstein had a private plane nicknamed ‘Lolita Express’—a name alluding to Vladimir Nabokov’s novel—to ferry minors to a Caribbean island for their wild parties.

By 2002, he was wealthy and powerful enough to fly former US President Bill Clinton, actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker on his customised Boeing 727 to Africa—drawing the world’s attention to this mysterious financier who had risen from nowhere.

***

One of the most significant traits that his victims and associates spoke about was his ability to manipulate—whether out of a situation or his way up. As soon as charges started pouring in against him in the mid-2000s, Epstein earned the reputation of a “master manipulator”—one he would carry all his life.

On July 27, 2013, after he wished someone on her birthday, she answered back, calling him “a liar, sick, manipulator, old man” and asked him to stay away. On March 1, 2016, yet another woman—from whom Epstein expected “girls” and “massage” in exchange for monetary help—wrote to him: “I’m not a manipulator, I’m a truth-teller,” implying that he was the manipulator.

In 2014, a lawyer who had enjoyed a “Nabokov-Lolita experience”—implying sexual engagement with minors—that Epstein had facilitated some years ago complimented Epstein as “the most talented psychologist and the most dangerous manipulator”. The person also sent girls to Epstein to shape them the way he deemed fit.

According to Virginia Giuffre—now deceased and a survivor of Epstein and then-Prince Andrew—Epstein’s New York mansion had cameras even in the toilets. During parties, Epstein was always collecting evidence: prepared to either blackmail to ensure his own crimes are never exposed or to ensure that his work as a power broker continued flawlessly.

Epstein funded education, scientific research and arts to build his reputation, especially after the scandal and his first prison term. He would show up at academic events with big cheques, says one former associate in a documentary. The funding was a way to trap young girls.

For instance, Annie Farmer, who was lured by Maxwell on the promise that Epstein would fund her foreign education, was subsequently assaulted. He threw hundreds of dollars at the young teens who Maxwell ‘procured’ for him for his sexualised massages.

Maxwell—who has been serving a jail term since 2021—not only recruited girls for him, but also participated in some of his sexual ventures with her recruits, several survivors have alleged. The sex often included torture.

“Epstein was a sociopath who could afford to live out his perversions,” a former employee at the Little Saint James Island—also known as the ‘orgy island’—once said.

He could because his assets included powerful people whom he had drawn into his game. As a perfect facilitator, he extended the perks of his sociopathic zeal—the kind of fun suitable for the world of dark web—to his peers. And his peers grew in number. In a June 17, 2013, email to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s advisor Olivier Colom, Epstein said some girls are “like shrimp, you throw away the head and keep the body”. Colom appreciated Epstein.

Kathryn Stamoulis, a psychologist who appeared in a Netflix documentary on Epstein, claimed that Epstein was ‘a narcissist, with no ability to feel empathy, and saw himself as a master of puppets’. This sentiment, in part, is repeated by one of the survivor’s lawyers who claims, ‘he tries to be the master of his domain; as soon as he feels out of control, it is unsettling to witness’. The lawyer said this based on Epstein’s demeanour during the 2009 deposition.

***

“I’m very comfortable in my own skin. What I’m really free to do is I feel free to follow my own personality,” Epstein once said. And his freedom meant others’ slavery. He must control the strings to pull them whenever he wishes.

Outlook sent some publicly available video clips of Epstein speaking—in the aftermath of the paedophilia and child assault accusations—to Megha Kalra, a clinical psychologist based in Delhi, to analyse them. She finds that his interviews reflect narcissistic tendencies and a defensive personality style, marked by grandiosity and avoidance of emotional accountability.

“He tried to control the narrative by intellectualising or reframing questions. This aligns with traits of defensiveness and avoidance of emotional vulnerability. By intellectualising and reframing, he avoided direct emotional accountability,” she says.

She suggests that his manner of speaking about his actions indicates minimisation and rationalisation—both are common defence mechanisms for individuals who are unwilling to confront wrongdoing. His effective presentation, such as incongruent smiling, conveys detachment and manipulation.

“In the limited public interviews available, he does not outwardly display clear behavioural signs of fear or anxiety about punishment. I could only observe his controlled exposure,” says Kalra, adding that the emails to and from him also reflect no emotional attachment to what they are doing. “Their personality is that they get a thrill out of it and they enjoy it. The thought is never of something wrong being done. A complete detachment is seen in these.”

Epstein reportedly planned to use his New Mexico ranch to impregnate women with his sperm, hoping to have up to 20 women at a time carrying his children. The Zorro Ranch “baby farm” allegations have been surfacing since 2019. The plan was prepared with scientists at his New York mansion.

Professor Ayesha Kidwai, a linguist at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, analysed the language of some of Epstein’s emails. They reflect not only great impunity and lack of humanity and fear, but also linguistic camouflage. She points out that he, in one of his emails, said that he did not use ‘pro’—a word for sex workers. “What we need to do is break the linguistic camouflage,” she says.

“He only wanted children and young girls because this is the power he wants. It is not enough to get the sex, it is the need for power and control and a feeling of grandeur,” says Kidwai. She points out that while the media and politicians keep referring to his survivors as “underage women”, they were all, in fact, children. “He needed children because they cannot push, attack, make a scene or offend his power status in any way.”

Some saw his death as his last deed of manipulating his way out of consequences—he had no chance of getting bail till the trial ended. And the evidence kept mounting. He was caught, caged and robbed of his freedom of puppet-mastery.

“He died the way he lived. He lived his life with a total lack of accountability, and him taking his own life was just one last ‘f*** you’ to his victims,” said Sigrid McCawley, the attorney representing several of Epstein’s survivors.

However, another of his last shows of ‘venality’ mostly failed. Two days before his alleged suicide, he moved all his wealth to a trust in a bid to ensure his money would not go to the survivors as compensation. As it turned out, none of the beneficiaries he named in his will would receive any money from his estate unless and until all creditors and claims on the estate have first been satisfied in full, including compensating Epstein’s victims.

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is a journalist, author and researcher

Anwiti Singh is assistant Editor, Outlook. She is based in Delhi

This article appeared in Outlook's March 01 issue titled Horror Island which focuses on how the rich and powerful are a law unto themselves and whether we the public are desensitised to the suffering of women. It asks the question whether we are really seeking justice or feeding a system that turns suffering into spectacle?