In 2012 I had some interaction with Jeffrey Epstein, only remotely by calls and emails, and where we reached no agreement. I mentioned this experience with the deceased and now-infamous criminal billionaire in my 2023 book, and in a 2024 article on the topic (here). The matter of his life (including crimes, accomplices, purposes and death) is highly charged, especially for survivors of sexual abuse and child abuse. The survivors of abuse, by him and his accomplices, as well as independent media, are doing immense work to obtain greater transparency, in the pursuit of truth, accountability, and justice. Because of the bizarre online interaction I had with Epstein, I followed that struggle, as well as the slow release of information about the case. This culminated last week with me finally appearing in the Epstein files, specifically my email correspondence about his interest in alternative currencies. A few people have asked me about it, so I thought it helpful to share what I think I know of what’s most important about this ‘story’ (based on what I have gleaned from the public information). As it would take a long time, I will not elaborate with examples or put in links to sources – so if you are intrigued or doubtful, please use search and/or AI to identify further information about what I mention here. I know some people prefer to dismiss it all as conspiracy-laden speculation, but the evidence is now sufficient to point not just to sex crime, but to both a sinister agenda and network, and to a ‘wealth supremacy culture’ that affects everyone’s lives and the direction of humanity.
Epstein had at least 10 co-conspirators, additional to Ghislaine Maxwell, according to the FBI, and the survivors deserve justice. That alone means the work of the US policing and legal systems has not been good enough. Not all victims were Americans, and so other countries should be putting on pressure for more transparency, accountability and justice. People should not only be sacked, disgraced or apologetic: more of them should be in prison.
Epstein verifiably worked with Israeli intelligence and military contractors, and might also have worked with CIA, or at least with specific people in the CIA. Dropsite News has been the best at covering those connections and I recommend you visit their site for reportage. The mainstream media have been sidestepping this issue of his work with persons from security agencies, which points to a systemic lack of independence and credibility in such media. Companies should withdraw their adverts from media corporations that do not cover the news properly.
Epstein used sex to entice, reward and blackmail. Evidence includes the use of cameras in his guest bedrooms, and his draft emails outlining blackmail possibilities (as he emailed himself as a note-taking tool). Some of that scheming involved under-18s, which was not only a crime, but created greater a chance for blackmail. Due to his international reach, key questions for any of us are: who did he corrupt through either sexual rewards or blackmail, who for, and with what outcome on politics and economics? Once again, this has not being looked at properly by mainstream media, which should not be tolerated.
Epstein’s career progression points to him both being ‘taken under the wing’ and used as a front for others. Looking at his writing and interviews, Epstein wasn’t that smart or literate and yet he ran a global network. He got his big break when given full power to manage billionaire Les Wexner’s money, despite not having relevant experience. He was invited onto philanthropic boards without relevant experience (e.g. Rockefeller foundation). If we rewind, it might be relevant that he got his first job at a school headed by a CIA operative (who strangely also wrote a novel about organised pedophilia). It is not unreasonable to assess that Epstein was given part of his network to manage rather than starting it from scratch. Therefore, we can ask to what extent was he doing the normal ongoing work of private clandestine global networks, or state security agencies, or both? If so, with the information coming out about his positions on various issues, such as geopolitics, bitcoin, genetics, biotechnology, and so on, this points to how such networks or agencies try to manipulate society at large. If this is a feature of global politics, where is it happening now? How do we stop it rather than just gossip about, shame, or prosecute, a few individuals?
Epstein paid money to politicians in government, such as British ministers, according to his own records. He also asked those ministers for policies he wanted and received positive replies, as well as inside information on decisions that moved markets. That raises a range of questions. In many countries there is no specific criminal offence that made it automatically a crime 20 years ago for a serving government minister to lobby inside government on behalf of a private friend or donor without disclosure. In countries like the UK there are bribery acts that have come in more recently. Every country needs such laws and, perhaps, new (non-criminal) laws that apply retroactively to strip previous offenders from any titles, privileges, pensions, as well as requiring repayments of ill-gotten gains. In addition, such behaviour points to a culture of cronyism that exists in politics around the world and delivers undemocratic processes and outcomes. The political, bureaucratic and managerial classes have tolerated this in many countries for decades (centuries), and so there should be a Truth and Reconciliation process which past politicians are required by law to participate in.
Epstein became involved in saving and shaping Bitcoin in the early years (at least 2012 onwards). Why was someone who worked for intelligence services or a ‘private clandestine global network’ on top of what was just an oddity at the time? Does it suggest that cryptographic currencies were designed or supported by the type of people and groups that Epstein worked with, and if so why? What does that imply for how we look at the macro effect of these currencies or the people involved in them now? How did his financial funding of MIT to save Bitcoin then influence the way it was developed, and with what effect i.e. who benefitted? This is geopolitically key, as with the advent of Stable Coins, cryptocurrencies have become a new form of backing for the US dollar as a global reserve currency. There was no civil society engagement and real political discussion of such developments, in the US or elsewhere.
The fact people and institutions took Epstein’s money despite the information on his conviction in 2008 suggests a culture of disregard for ethics at many top institutions when there’s money involved. I recall at the time of being introduced to Epstein that the conversations were peppered with phrases such as “maybe it was a sting operation,” “maybe it was an attempt to bribe him by sending him someone underage,” “I hear he is a reformed man,” “well, he did his time,” and “it appears the top universities in the world have accepted his apologies and now work with him.” I was partly swayed by such narratives in 2012, but not enough to be able to accept him as a host of a project and network on alternative currencies. After I communicated that, he never replied again: perhaps as MIT was already saying yes please. Looking back, I realise there is a type of ‘wealth supremacy culture,’ whereby people disregard if someone is a jerk, a bully, an abuser, a criminal, if they are rich and connected. How does that get changed? What might we ask of institutions in our own sphere of influence? I am surprised at the lack of sackings, let alone resignations, not just of people whose email correspondence we can see, but those in the institutions who gave the green lights to work with Epstein.
The email correspondence and audio discussions that have been released in the Epstein files provide us a window into a world of political influence at national and international levels that is both unacceptable in principle and damaging in practice. He described people in politics making millions for themselves – reminding us of something that many of us know, or suspected, to be true. Then there is the issue of dangerously undemocratic influence. Even people without Epstein’s criminal behaviour and blackmailing schemes should not have such influence on global and national politics just because they are wealthy and met someone at a party. He and others like him had influence not just on arms deals, surveillance technology, and advances in biotechnology and genetics, but on the people shaping the governance of those areas. There is evidence he worked with people like Steve Bannon to boost and influence the far right in the UK and the EU, with the former claiming that means they get whatever policies they want on matters like cryptocurrencies. Therefore, one can wonder what was his involvement in the first Trump administration motivated by. Epstein and others like him expressed views that are racist, sexist, eugenicist, and psychopathic. We must not let a tiny section of society have influence on humanity and our future just because they got lucky, or were greedy, to amass huge sums of money. This isn’t about envy… it is an issue of our personal and national sovereignty.
Since Edward Snowden’s revelations, it is clear that intelligence agencies in the US, the UK, and allied states possess capabilities for bulk digital surveillance, operating in ways that have stretched or obscured legal limits. It is plausible that security services had at least partial intelligence relating to the activities of Epstein and his network. How was such knowledge handled and why? According to former US Attorney Alexander Acosta, Epstein was effectively shielded on grounds linked to national security – and he continued offending for years after that. While policing ordinary crime is not the role of intelligence agencies, in the UK as much as in the US, there is a clear boundary that should not be crossed: national security bodies may withhold intelligence for genuine security reasons, but they should never interfere with, obstruct, or neutralise lawful criminal investigations. When intelligence ‘discretion’ is used to suppress accountability rather than protect public safety, it ceases to be a security function and becomes an abuse of government’s executive power. That is a huge issue for the Epstein case where the redactions in the files are not only of survivors’ identifying information or people’s personal details. Instead, many of the redactions have been independently proven to be of people who worked with Epstein and where it would be difficult-to-impossible to imagine them as victims. Were they all really working for secret services? That would be a bizarre situation, and further incriminating of systems of power. Perhaps one of the longer-term implications from the Epstein Files will be greater demands for accountability from secret services, and perhaps that’s why there is such little coverage of this dimension of the scandal in mainstream media.
The evidence from the autopsy, showing broken bones in the neck, and the lack of a means of hanging oneself in the cell, indicates that whoever died in Epstein’s cell that night was strangled. The lack of video footage despite many cameras in the prison, the image of an arm of someone unknown walking up the stairs that night, the guards being asleep, the removal of his cell mate, the unexplained +1 counted in the roll call the night of the death, the photo after the death of a corpse on a trolley which did not fully match Epstein’s nose or ear, all are factoids that will continue to fuel conspiracies about what happened and why. This isn’t just idle talk: the death matters as it prevented a fuller investigation at the time and the chance of proper justice for the survivors. If it was a conspiracy, then it was elaborate, and indicates how powerful those involved are. I presume this is part of the story that will not be resolved, as with JFK, RFK, MLK and other significant deaths where powerful people benefitted.
Stepping back from the specifics of the contents of the Epstein Files and the various stories that are emerging, we can reflect on what it tells us about ‘the way the world works’. That is a topic that is motivating many independent journalists and podcasters. Many are tempted to conclude that a private clandestine network of elites is running the show and manipulating everything we focus on. Some of them then insinuate or claim ethnonationalist aims for such networks. I have not concluded that. Instead, I continue to know that the system of national and global capital dominates our lives, including culture, education, science, economy, politics and so on. I summarised the evidence for that in Chapter 10 of Breaking Together. I recognise that there are different factions of capital fighting each other within that broader global capitalist context. For instance, the fossil fuel faction of capital and the clean tech faction are both worth trillions of dollars and have distorted the public discussion of environmental degradation and climate change. Clearly there are networks of people at high levels in business and politics, influencing specific policies within the broader systemic process of capitalism. Some of them do that for narrow commercial self-interest, where others do it for ideological ends, including national, racial and religious. Some politicians, bureaucrats and others are indeed their puppets. However, such elite networks could disappear tomorrow, and yet we would still exist within an extractive dominating system which manipulates our worldview, identity and life choices in ways that undermine the beauty of life for the majority. Revelations of the actions and views of disgusting old men, and the impunity they have had, doesn’t change that broader focus on the illegitimacy and redundancy of the current global capitalist system. Our repugnance at them can therefore be channelled into our efforts to end obscene inequality and reclaim our societies from the new technofeudal oligarchy that is being established in the world by BigTech and our subservient political class.
The full impact of the revelations on global power, not just specific crimes, that come from the Epstein Files, is difficult to assess. There will be efforts to confuse everyone, by putting out fake content that misleads people, so that more people might give up giving proper attention to them. That is partly why I am sharing my assessment of the files and the implications right now. Ultimately, I think people who want to know what’s happening in the world rather than just consume nonsense, will conclude that national and global systems of economy and governance are illegitimate. That will add to the crumbling of support for such systems, which I chronicled in Chapter 7 of Breaking Together. As such, I think the Epstein Files might be seen as another straw that broke the back of tacit support for ‘life as we know it.’ That makes these very unstable times. I offer my analysis of what to do about that in the second half of my book.
Right now, we can all do a little bit to help the news cycle not to forget the rights and demands of justice for the survivors, and the rights and demands of all of us to not have our lives affected by unaccountable billionaires with deviant attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. That’s why I decided to write this blog. Let’s keep sharing our thoughts on the matter as more news trickles out…
Some links:
My previous article on my experience of Epstein and lessons from that, from a couple years ago
The tweet that alerted me to being in the files (but not on the client list)
My chapter on the economic system that shapes our lives and how
Dropsite news reporting on the topic
Discover more from Prof Jem Bendell
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