The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Should Never Stop Shocking Us (and Won’t)

Examples abound in the files, many in unlikely places. If you liked Poetry in America, the PBS special, you were enjoying an Epstein joint that set out to feature his buddy and accused fellow child molester Woody Allen. According to the files, the production included Epstein’s bonding in 2013 with the director, Elisa New (Mrs. Larry Summers), over pedophilic romances, including that of “a man whose whole life is stamped forever by his impression of a young girl.” Epstein’s connection to PBS and poetry after his conviction as a sex offender just five years earlier certainly would have helped launder his reputation.

Above all, the Epstein elite—whether from their perch at Mar-a-Lago or Silicon Valley, Harvard or MIT, the White House or Buckingham Palace, the Lolita Express or Pedophile Island—licensed its members to gouge as many resources out of the simpletons as they pleased. They staked a claim to our bodies, our minds, our loved ones, and a country that was supposed to belong to the people. Trump “loved to fuck the wives of his best friends,” Epstein said in 2017. As Trump himself said about his grabbing habits, “When you’re a star they let you do it.”

But do they? The story of the Epstein circle’s extractive approach to the rest of us is a story not of seduction or consent, but of coercion and force. Epstein specifically licensed a grabby, monopolizing impulse in other men, priding himself on teaching nerds to mog. “He changed my life,” said Martin Nowak, a physicist and especially craven Epstein hanger-on. “Because of his support, I feel I can do anything I want.”