Comedian George Carlin had a famous quote from a set he performed toward the end of his career: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
The latest tranche of emails from deceased child predator Jeffrey Epstein are damning in more ways than one. Obviously, the most horrifying thing about them is Epstein’s cavalier attitude toward his monstrous crimes. There are numerous examples in the searchable database created by Yale School of Management professor Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, but one particular email from 2014 stands out. When former Obama White House counsel and Goldman Sachs partner Kathy Ruemmler lamented to Epstein that “most girls don’t have to deal with this crap” in reference to a professional dispute, Epstein responded with “girls? Careful I will renew an old habit.”
However, the second-worst element of these emails—which are all from well after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2008 and was required to register as a sex offender—is just how many members of elite society knowingly associated with and befriended a convicted pedophile. Virtually every facet of the upper echelons of American society is represented in the emails, from legacy media to academia, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington DC. Their casual and warm tone toward Epstein shows that there are apparently no depths to which elites will sink in order to advance their careers.
While President Donald Trump’s associations with Epstein are obviously the biggest news item from the House Oversight Committee’s newest email release (including Epstein calling Trump “that dog that hasn’t barked” who “knew about the girls”), the less-discussed element is just how deeply intertwined Epstein was with some of the biggest names in both politics and big business. The credibility of elite American institutions took a major hit in the latest Epstein emails, and the fact that there is still so much evidence pertaining to Epstein being withheld from the public by the Department of Justice (DOJ) means these emails may just be the tip of the iceberg.
Elites’ warmth toward Epstein was apparently universal
Epstein was a “serial emailer,” according to The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, who emailed as often as most people send text messages or post to social media. And his rolodex included top members of both political parties and decision-makers at numerous publicly traded companies.
It’s important to note that not all of the people Epstein emailed have been charged with or convicted of crimes (though some have, like former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon) and that the emails—while shocking—are not by themselves enough to convict anyone of a crime. And some mentioned in the emails, like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, have advocated for the full release of the Epstein files in order to prove their innocence (Hoffman said his lone association with Epstein was in the context of fundraising for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Other emails, however, are damning all on their own. Former New York Times financial reporter Landon Thomas maintained a friendly tone with Epstein between 2015 and 2018. Emails show him giving Epstein advice on how to rehabilitate his reputation, and even tipping him off about a journalist “digging around again.” In December of 2015, Epstein asked Thomas in his signature style of lowercase letters and sometimes frequent spelling errors “would you like photos of Donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?” Thomas responded affirmatively, but also told Epstein that he wouldn’t personally write about it and that Epstein should shop the photos around to other reporters.
Thomas maintained as recently as November of 2025 that Epstein was a “longstanding and productive source.” For its part, the Times has yet to elaborate on what it knew about Trump and Epstein, and how long the paper sat on that knowledge while writing dozens of stories about 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server and former President Joe Biden’s age. A recent article about the newest Epstein emails by New York Times White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh had a noticeably fond tone lamenting about “a lost Manhattan power scene.”
“[The emails] depict the twilight of an old guard made up of Wall Street billionaires, media-industry heavyweights, politicians and old-money socialites, many of whom gathered at Mr. Epstein’s seven-story townhouse on the Upper East Side—a mansion that one guest, Woody Allen, compared to Dracula’s castle,” McCreesh wrote.
Epstein was also on close enough terms with former Obama and Clinton administration official (and former Harvard University president) Larry Summers for Summers to lament about women to the convicted child sex trafficker. The Times reported that Summers once sent an email he received from a woman in November of 2018 and then commented: “think no response for a while probably appropriate.” Epstein responded with “She’s already beginning to sound needy 🙂 nice.”
“I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank,” Summers wrote in a 2017 email, before telling Epstein “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”
Steve Bannon was also a regular in Epstein’s inbox, both before and after his time as Trump’s White House chief strategist during his first term. In one series of emails from late September of 2018, Epstein is seen advising Bannon on how to attack Christine Blasey Ford, who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high school party. Epstein sent Bannon a 2015 article about medications that have been associated with memory loss. Bannon replied with “is this a hint” to which Epstein responded “duh.”
That same year, Epstein exchanged emails with former DOJ independent counsel Kenneth Starr (famous for authoring the Starr Report that accused then-President Bill Clinton of perjury) who mentored Kavanaugh. Epstein was hoping to help an unnamed friend with a sexual misconduct allegation, and Starr offered to introduce Epstein to Yale University law professor Jed Rubenfeld, and ended his email to the convicted pedophile with “Hugs, Ken.”
Just two years prior to that email exchange, Starr was fired as president of Baylor University for covering up sexual assault allegations on campus. And in 2020, Yale placed Rubenfeld on leave amid his own sexual misconduct allegations. And as further proof that the world Epstein inhabited was so small, Rubenfeld is married to Yale law professor Amy Chua, who mentored eventual Vice President JD Vance.
Other emails are more innocuous, though still merit further investigation. One cryptic 2014 email Epstein sent Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel (who also bankrolled Vance’s 2022 US Senate campaign to the tune of $15 million) simply reads: “That was fun, see you in 3 weeks.” and on June 30, 2019 – roughly 40 days before Epstein was found dead in his prison cell—Epstein sent an email to himself with the subject line “list for Bannon Steve” with numerous names listed.
The context of those names remains unknown and the list itself is rife with typos, but several names are noticeable. The list mentions “thiel,” “leahy,” schumer,” “summers,” “prince andrews,” “clinton,” and “rockefeller,” among others. The “prince andrews” Epstein mentioned could be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was recently stripped of all royal titles. Andrew’s expulsion from the British Royal Family came after Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre detailed a time in her posthumously published memoir when Epstein and his chief accomplice, Ghisliane Maxwell, forced her to have sex with Andrew when she was 17 years old.
Trump has even more lingering Epstein questions to answer
Trump biographer Michael Wolff—who was also seen on friendly terms with Epstein in the Oversight Committee’s latest release—has maintained that he personally saw Polaroid photos of Trump with several topless young women on his lap. Wolff said Epstein kept the photos in a safe, and fanned them out on his dining room table “like a deck of cards.” The author said he was visiting Epstein’s home at his invitation, as Epstein was hoping that Wolff would write a book about him.
Epstein had bragged in the past about how he and Trump were best friends for more than a decade. Trump referred to Epstein as a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with” in a 2002 interview with New York Magazine. He famously said Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” The two later had a falling out sometime between 2004 and 2007. The Trump White House has repeatedly said that Trump revoked Epstein’s Mar-a-Lago membership because he was a “pedophile” and a “creep.” Trump himself said Epstein “stole” young women from Mar-a-Lago’s spa, including Giuffre.
The facts of Epstein and Trump’s falling out remain murky, however, as the newest emails show Epstein was apparently with Trump on Thanksgiving Day in 2017, during Trump’s first term in the White House. While emailing with Faith Kates (co-founder of NEXT Model Management) on November 23, 2017, Epstein told her he was spending Thanksgiving with “eva,” which USA TODAY reports is likely a reference to Epstein’s former girlfriend, Eva Andersson-Dubin, who is married to hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin (Kates exclaimed over the “red hair” on “glenn” in the exchange). When Kates asked Epstein who else he was with, Epstein responded: “david fizel. hanson. trump.” David Fiszel is a co-founder of the hedge fund Honeycomb Asset Management. It’s unknown who “hanson” is, but the mention of “trump” means that Epstein may have been at Mar-a-Lago, where CNN reported Trump spent November 23, 2017.
In the same exchange that the Times’ Landon Thomas had with Epstein where the convicted pedophile mentioned having compromising photos of Trump, Epstein sent Thomas a link to an article about Norwegian heir Celina Midelfart, referring to her as “my 20 year old girlfriend I had in 93, that after two years i gave to donald.” Trump and Midelfart were dating in 1998, when the eventual president first met Melania Trump (née Knauss) at New York’s Kit Kat Club.
Epstein also mentioned “hawaian tropic girl Lauren Petrella” to Thomas after the two discussed the photos of Trump and “girls in bikinis.” Petrella was mentioned in a now-withdrawn lawsuit by New York City-based makeup artist Jill Harth, who accused Trump of sexual misconduct in 1993. Petrella—a contestant in a Trump-sponsored beauty pageant who was staying at Mar-a-Lago at Trump’s invitation along with other contestants—accused Trump of showing up uninvited in her room (which was Ivanka Trump’s childhood bedroom, according to Harth).
“You said you don’t sleep with men on the first date,” Trump allegedly said. “Now it’s the second date, and here I am.”
Epstein is dead and many of his secrets may have died with him. But should Democrats reclaim a majority in the House of Representatives after the 2026 midterms, they could issue subpoenas to Dubin and Fiszel, and ask them if they indeed spent Thanksgiving 2017 with Trump and Epstein at Mar-a-Lago. Kates could also be subpoenaed on her connections to Epstein, given her association with NEXT Model Management co-founder Jean-Luc Brenel, who died by suicide in his Paris prison cell in 2022 while awaiting trial for Epstein-related sex crimes.
Regardless of how any Epstein-related investigations proceed, it’s clear that the true depths of Trump’s closeness to the convicted child predator have yet to be plumbed. Connor Ewing, who is a University of Toronto assistant professor of political science, posted to Bluesky that it was “important to remember” that “if the worst of the Epstein stuff had already been released, there would be no reason for Trump to keep fighting it.”
“If he’s trying to stop it, there’s a reason why,” Ewing added.
Prior to her death by suicide in April of this year, Virginia Giuffre said Trump never forced himself on her or did anything untoward while in her presence. And to date, none of the materials released to the public suggest Trump personally committed any crimes in Epstein’s presence. However, the newest batch of emails suggest that Epstein had some form of incriminating knowledge about Trump, writing in 2018 that he was “the one able to take him down.”
Michael Wolff told Epstein in 2016 that he would soon be interviewing then-candidate Trump and asked for advice on types of questions to ask him. Epstein referenced the now-defunct “Trump Shuttle” airline that folded in 1992, and said that questions about a casino bankruptcy could prove to be “provocative.”
In June of 2019, Epstein’s accountant emailed him to let him know that while President Trump’s financial disclosure forms were “100 pages of nonsense,” he said he had “interesting findings” relating to Trump’s income, debts, and charitable foundation. Epstein’s response to that email has not yet been made public, nor the reason why he asked his accountant to probe Trump’s finances.
All of these lingering questions are all the more reason the DOJ needs to release all of the remaining evidence pertaining to Epstein that it continues to keep under lock and key. ABC News reported in July that the FBI’s categorized index of Epstein evidence includes “40 computers and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, more than 70 CDs and six recording devices” containing “more than 300 gigabytes of data.” There are also “approximately 60 pieces of physical evidence, including photographs, travel logs, employee lists, more than $17,000 in cash, five massage tables, blueprints of Epstein’s island and Manhattan home, four busts of female body parts, a pair of women’s cowboy boots and one stuffed dog.”
Perhaps most interestingly, the FBI has in its possession a “logbook” of visitors to Epstein’s “Little Saint James” island, which housed his private compound, along with a record of boat trips to and from the island. There is also a list described as a “document with names,” which could potentially be the rumored “Epstein client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi said does not exist.
As long as Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel continue to sit on this evidence, it’s incumbent on Congress to pass the discharge petition compelling the DOJ to release it. Not only so Epstein’s victims can have justice, but so there can finally be accountability for Epstein’s associates and accomplices.
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