Epstein Files: Heads Of State And The Teflon Of Power

When a reluctant Donald Trump administration was finally forced by a vote in the US Congress to release the first chunk of the Epstein files, it triggered a political and social storm whose ripples were felt throughout the world’s most powerful capitals.

Jeffrey Epstein’s sordid tale was well known. So were some of the names. But the three million documents uploaded by the US Justice Department opened a window into the lives of the rich and the famous spanning oceans and borders exposing an amoral global elite that cloaks itself in philanthropy and intellectual glamour. The files do not merely catalogue who met whom. They expose a dark web of intrigue in which influence is currency and where there is no fear of accountability.

Presidents and princes, billionaires and Nobel laureates, hedge fund titans and university presidents, royalty and tech founders, and figures from the Left and the Right alike appear in flight logs, address books, guest lists and donor rolls.

The names are a veritable list of the world’s movers and shakers, including Presidents Trump and Bill Clinton, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, the infamous son of Queen Elizabeth—stripped of his royal title and now known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor—his former wife Sarah Ferguson, British ambassador to US Lord Mandelson, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, one of Dubai’s most powerful and well-connected people and former chief of logistics giant DP World. Tech billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Steve Bannon, the one-time Trump adviser and Make America Great Again (MAGA) influencer. The list is too long.

The surveillance cameras found in Epstein’s various properties, including on his island, raise the question: was he keeping tabs and filming his guests to blackmail them? Was he working for an intelligence agency? Since he was a committed Zionist, there is speculation that he worked for Israel’s deep state. No one is certain. What is known is that he was a paedophile and a sex trafficker. He had scouts across Europe and Russia to pick up young girls and arrange their passage to the US. How many of those named in the files were aware of this dark secret remains unclear.

Ironically, the drumbeat for the release of the files was initiated by Trump’s MAGA supporters. Why the files were not released during the four years when former US President Joe Biden was in office is not known. Yet through his presidency, MAGA influencers like Marjorie Taylor Greene called for making the files public.

More than concern for the victims was the belief that leading figures from the Democratic Party were involved with Epstein and the MAGA camp was determined to expose the excesses of the Left-Liberals.

Trump himself promised during his campaign that once he returned to power he would make sure that the files were released to the public. Trump’s attitude changed once he was elected to office. Initially, his Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk” and she would soon release them to the public, raising expectations in MAGA circles. But the US Department of Justice walked back on Bondi’s promise and acknowledged that Epstein did not have a ‘client list’ or names of underage girls who were trafficked. The Justice Department went through the files with a fine-tooth comb to obliterate names that could hurt Trump and his close-knit billionaire friends. Greene said recently that Trump’s handling of the Epstein case is the “biggest political miscalculation” of his career. She also said that Trump fought the “hardest” against the release of the documents. The President’s hand was forced when a few Republicans broke ranks and voted with the Democrats to release the files, and the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law.

Epstein’s victims and their families, who have fought hard for the release of the files, are disappointed that instead of exposing the sex trafficking rings, the published documents have only exposed the faces of the victims and redacted the identities of the culprits. The fight is still on to get the rest of the files released and the girls who are now grown women are in no mood to let their predators escape. But so far in the US, no action has been taken. Not that every name is involved in wrongdoing. But the fact that Trump is not keen on more revelations has been a major stumbling block. Lutnick, who initially said he knew Epstein merely as a neighbour, was lying. The files have shown that he and his family had lunch with Epstein in his private island in 2012. Yet Lutnick has not been asked to step down until an investigation is done. “It isn’t a crime to party with Epstein,” said US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, dismissing prospects for further action.

President Trump’s name is all over the Epstein files. But perhaps because he fell out with the former predator, no one is asking questions. Yet even with disclosures, accountability has been uneven. Some resignations are in. Larry H. Summers, Clinton’s treasury secretary, has resigned from his teaching post in Harvard. Brad Karp resigned as chair of the prestigious law firm, Paul, Weiss. Kathryn Ruemmler, a top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, too has stepped down. Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell remains imprisoned. Beyond that, consequences appear limited.

Much of this also has to do with the crisis in capitalism—the worship of money and power has reached a level of decadence, as the Epstein files reveal. “To my mind, the deeper effect has been to show the extent of the decay of ethics and morals among the US elite under late capitalism,” says Philip Golub, a professor at the American University of Paris. He says that the past two decades have highlighted the excesses of capitalism in America. “Epstein was an exceptionally talented predator and his rise occurs in the midst of a general wave of Wall Street hubris and malfeasance and sometimes outright illegality in the context of total market liberalisation and ‘creative’ financial engineering, which ultimately led to the national, then the global 2008 financial crisis,” says Golub. “The investment bankers and the shadow bankers began amassing enormous fortunes, and were the object of self-adulation and adulation by the financial press. Remember the “titans” of finance, the “masters of the universe”? Cocaine-laced sex parties were part and parcel of this late-capitalist social pathology, well rendered in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street,” adds Golub.

In Europe, however, heads have rolled. Beginning with royalty, the former prince Andrew has not only been stripped of his royal title, he has been sent packing from his royal lodge to a smaller home and funding for his private security has been cut off. UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has faced a serious political challenge that nearly brought him down over the appointment of Peter Mandelson—named several times in the Epstein files—as his envoy to the US. Mandelson, a Labour politician, served under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Like many others, Mandelson had continued his friendship with Epstein despite knowing that he had been convicted in 2008 for soliciting a 14-year-old. He used his position as Business Secretary in Brown’s ministry to pass on market-sensitive financial tips to his friend Epstein. He is being investigated for receiving payments amounting to $75,000 from Epstein in 2002-2004. Starmer’s long-time top aide and the PM’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned, taking “full responsibility” for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson as envoy to Washington. By accepting the blame for the choice of envoy, McSweeney tried to shield his boss. Calls for Starmer’s resignation forced his top aide to quit. Labour MPs are questioning Starmer’s judgement.

Norway’s former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland, former foreign minister Børge Brende, who runs the World Economic Forum now, Mona Juul, Norway’s former high profile diplomat as well as the Crown Princess have been named in the Epstein files. The Norwegian parliament has set up an independent commission to investigate these links, though the Princess will probably not be questioned.

Other resignations are coming in by those tarred by the Epstein brush across Europe. France’s cultural icon Jack Lang, who served under President Francois Mitterrand, resigned as the head of the prestigious Arab World Institute in Paris. This is over his family’s financial links with the financier. He is now 86 years old.

Miroslav Lajčák, the national security adviser and former foreign minister of Slovakia, is out after discussing “gorgeous girls” with Epstein. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also been named, so has former diplomat and current minister Hardeep Puri, but it has not made much of an impact. Epstein’s remarks were in connection with Modi’s 2017 visit to Israel. The Union Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reaction was sharp, dubbing Epstein’s words as “little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal, which deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt”.

“In the UK, I think it is that key people lied about and played down their involvement with Epstein (Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Peter Mandelson), but got caught. Maybe there is less European tolerance for lying to the public? Trump does it all the time on big and small things, so the US has got used to it?” says Joanna Spear, a British national who teaches at George Washington University in the US. “The situation in the US is intriguing, leading many to speculate that Trump does not want to punish anyone as he has more Epstein skeletons in his closet, but it is speculation,” she adds.

In the US, from where Epstein operated, the disclosures tarnished reputations, but little else. For victims and their families, the document dump is bittersweet. No one knows whether the remaining sealed records will change that equation. The fight for full disclosure continues. The women who were once vulnerable girls have made it clear that they will not relent. But will accountability ever be fixed?

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?

Seema Guha is a senior journalist covering foreign affairs