Titans of industry and best-selling authors, world-renowned scientists and banking tycoons, top journalists and political power players have often turned to the same man for advice, connections and banter and business gossip about President Donald Trump. That man was Jeffrey Epstein, CNN reported.
According to the report, the new emails revealed that many of Epstein’s friends looked to him for advice on how to avoid their own sex scandals. This was even after Epstein was registered as a sex offender following his 2008 conviction for prostitution with a minor – but that didn’t seem to deter his pals.
The news was revealed in extraordinary fashion last week when the House Oversight Committee released more than 23,000 pages of records obtained from Epstein’s estate.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
The reports were reportedly scrutinized because of new revelations about Epstein’s relationship with Trump — and indeed show that Epstein enjoyed talking about their former friendship when Trump rose to political power, offering his opinions on everything from the president’s sanity — “damn crazy” — to who should be in his cabinet, CNN reported.
But there were thousands of Epstein emails that also showed another key aspect of his uniquely corrupting role in American society: How he placed himself at the center of a web of power and influence.
CNN’s analysis of about 2,200 email threads found that at least 740 were exchanges between Epstein and prominent figures in academia, government, media and business.
Epstein’s correspondence with them, which also included numerous text messages, spanned a decade from 2009 to the day before his arrest in July 2019.
Those text messages also showed him communicating with other figures apparently not listed in the unresponsive emails, including messages exchanged with Democratic Rep. Stacey Plaskett during a 2019 congressional hearing.
Plaskett told CNN that Epstein was a voter and that he is “a despicable person, absolutely disgusting.”
The emails clearly reveal personal conversations between American figures and a man they knew was a sexual predator – yet still trusted him for access, advice and friendship.
For example…
In November 2018, Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University and US Treasury secretary, forwarded Epstein an email from a woman he was romantically interested in, writing: “I probably won’t be responding for a while.
Epstein replied: “It’s starting to sound necessary 🙂 nice.”
In March 2019, following a Miami Herald investigation that revealed Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, Summers and Epstein exchanged emails that appeared to be a debate over whether Summers should message the woman.
Epstein claimed the note would be “POOR FORMAT”.
“Why the wrong form. Should it be face to face?” Summers wrote back.
“You care a lot about this person. You might want to show it. A note does the exact opposite,” Epstein replied.
The two exchanged friendly conversations, as in another email in which Summers called Epstein “a hard-on-the-wall guy with an intellectual curiosity.”
And they talked about politics, as in the October 2016 emails in which Epstein wrote about Trump bringing women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of abuse into a debate with Hillary Clinton. “It appears in Hillary that you should give the benefit of the doubt to the victims,” Epstein wrote, adding that it was “disgraceful.”
Summers responded: “The press is so outraged by Trump that I would expect them to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
Epstein also brokered the connection, as shown in a November 2016 email exchange in which Summers agreed to meet with Karim Wade, the son of the former president of Senegal, at Epstein’s insistence. Summers wrote: “Always quiet advice to anyone who can use it. Always try to be discreet.”
