The New York Times reports:

Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged.

In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex.

That story of impunity is all the more outrageous now in the midst of rising populist anger and ever-growing inequality. The Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends occurred over two decades that saw the decline of America’s manufacturing sector and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which millions of Americans lost their homes.

If Mr. Epstein’s goal was to build a wall of protection around his abuse by surrounding himself with the well connected, he failed in the end. But both before and after he was first prosecuted for abusing girls, his correspondence described a network of people whose high-flying lives belied the struggles of ordinary Americans. And at the center of that network was a sexual predator seemingly on top of the world.

“We’ve heard so much about the Epstein scandal over the past several years,” said Nicole Hemmer, a history professor at Vanderbilt University who writes frequently about political culture. “And yet people do seem shocked by the scope of elite complicity in his world. It’s a level of corruption that the public is now getting a full view of.”

In 2002, Mr. Epstein hosted former President Bill Clinton and the actor Kevin Spacey on a tour of African countries aboard his private jet.

His talent for entertaining attracted interest from one of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk, who emailed Mr. Epstein in 2012 to ask, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” (Mr. Musk has said on social media that he “had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island.”)

He dispensed favors to, and rubbed elbows with, Woody Allen; Noam Chomsky, the linguist and intellectual; Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel in the Clinton investigation; Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House counsel and currently the general counsel of Goldman Sachs; Stephen K. Bannon, one of President Trump’s top political allies; Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru; the film producer Barry Josephson; Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard and former Treasury secretary; Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway; and a cavalcade of financial titans.

James E. Staley, who recently stepped down as the chief executive of Barclay’s in the wake of allegations involving his ties to Mr. Epstein, emailed Mr. Epstein in 2014 to suggest that upper-caste Americans like themselves were unlikely to ever face a populist uprising like the protests taking place in Brazil at the time. [Continue reading…]