1. Discuss (what else) the problems with the modeling industry and

2. Debate the most f**ked up news story of the week! The debate starts around the 30 minute mark so feel free to skip ahead :).

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Innocence en Danger - a French non-profit dedicated to the protection of minors from sexual violence - filed the lawsuit against the French state this week after the death of notorious Epstein model scout, Daniel Siad.

Innocence en Danger founder, Homayra Sellier (who I interviewed here last month), argues that countless delays and a lack of transparency has allowed too many opportunities for justice to slip by.

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Here’s her argument, in full:

[Innocence in Danger] denounces what it describes as glaring inertia, excessive delays, and a lack of transparency in the investigation opened in Paris in August 2019, following its own reports to the Public Prosecutor concerning the French ramifications of the Epstein network.

Epstein’s Paris apartment on Avenue Foch was searched only on 23 September 2019, five weeks after he died in custody in the United States — a delay Innocence in Danger describes as both incomprehensible and deeply troubling.

Despite the international scope of the scandal, the association notes that the French authorities have provided no public explanation for the choices made, the investigative acts carried out, or those never undertaken, and that the French ramifications of the network remain largely unexplored.

The death in detention of modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel in 2022, officially ruled a suicide, did not lead to any visible acceleration of the case.

The lawsuit also highlights a troubling series of deaths among people linked to the case, including victims and key witnesses, and now the recent death of Daniel Siad, a central figure in the French dossier.

Siad, 69, was the subject of five complaints for rape and human trafficking, was cited in more than a thousand documents in the case file, and was described in the press as “the model scout suspected of sexual violence and of having steered young women towards the American pedocriminal Jeffrey Epstein.”

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In court documents reviewed by Ouest-France, Daniel Siad appears as one of the key men in the Paris strand of the Jeffrey Epstein case. According to these documents, he allegedly used several identities to approach young women over the years. One of them claims to have become the American financier’s “slave” and to have lived until 2019 in the maid’s room of his Paris apartment. Never prosecuted nor convicted in this case; he denied any involvement.

The circumstances of his death, on 22 July 2026, remain unclear.

Innocence in Danger stresses that these abnormally long delays have “dramatic consequences,” both for the credibility of the judicial institution and for the victims, who feel ignored despite the seriousness of the crimes they report.

The association recalls, among others, the testimony of former Swedish model Ebba P. Karlsson, who accuses Siad of raping her in Cannes and of having taken her to Gérald Marie — then head of the Elite modeling agency — whom she also accuses of rape.

Legally, the action is based on the French Code of Judicial Organization and on Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires that justice be delivered within a “reasonable time.”

Under established French case law, excessive and unjustified delays in proceedings can constitute a denial of justice, engaging the liability of the State for the defective functioning of the public service of justice.

The association has expressly refused a simplified written procedure without a hearing and demands that the case be examined in open court, in the name of transparency and accountability in a case involving serious sexual crimes committed against minors.

Daniel Siad, The primary model scout for Jeffrey Epstein was found dead at his home in Colombes, a suburb outside of Paris, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office confirmed this morning (Wednesday). He was sixty-nine years old.

He died of cardiac arrest, and the authorities are currently investigating his cause of death, announcing that they will conduct an autopsy. His body was discovered by his 28-year-old, female roommate, who had been in the house for a week and called the neighbors. Rescuers arrived and attempted to resuscitate Siad, but were unable to do so.

What’s incredible about this particular death is not only the identity of the man, but… the timing.

The Timing

Last week, a group of six victims filed a case against Gérald Marie — a longtime modeling industry executive and notorious predator — for rape and sex trafficking.

That filing received very little mainstream media attention, but a dedicated group of activists and journalists – Carré Otis, the model who initiated the case against Marie, the non-profit Innocence en Danger, who fights for child victims of trafficking and rape, and ourselves – had spent the last week explaining how this new filing represented a very real opportunity for taking down Epstein’s broader network. You can read our article about that critical moment here.

And that argument had direct ties to Daniel Siad…who is now dead. He was under investigation by the French authorities on allegations that he had materially supported Epstein in his trafficking of women and girls. The police had yet to question Siad before his death. Now, it is impossible.

The Daniel Siad Link

Daniel Siad was a “model scout” for both Jeffrey Epstein AND Gérald Marie. Siad traveled all over the globe to find teenage girls that he then recruited and delivered to both predators.

In the Epstein Files, as presently redacted and released by the Trump Department of Justice, there are thousands of emails between Daniel Siad and Jeffrey Epstein. The word “Siad” appears more than 2,000 times. And that is just the files that have been released.

One victim of Epstein named “Anya” told the BBC that Siad had introduced her to Epstein. “It was a complete set-up,” she said. “[Siad] was essentially a professional trafficker.” Siad sent photos and detailed descriptions of young women to Epstein, who one time advised Siad that the girl was “too old.” Luring them in under the guide of casting to find models, Siad facilitated the connection and introduction to Epstein. In other words, Siad was paid handsomely by Epstein to travel the world, hunting for prey.

We know that Siad also recruited for Gérald Marie, in part, because former model, Ebba Karlsson, filed a complaint in France alleging that Siad raped her in the south of France before bringing her to meet Marie, who then assaulted her in his Parisian office.

And this overlap between Epstein and Marie is critical.

It was – as we explained last week – what would allow a French “investigative judge” (a powerful and unique role that doesn’t exist in the American justice system) to take the complaints filed against Gérald Marie last week and then investigate not just Marie, but the entire network that enabled him, which included the network that enabled Epstein, as well.

In this way: Siad was the best known living link between Gérald Marie and Jeffrey Epstein’s international sex trafficking networks.

And now he is dead.

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What Does This Mean for the Victims?

Exactly what this means for the future of the investigations, we don’t yet know.

Nothing has changed about the allegations – or guilt, as far as we are concerned – of Gérald Marie, himself, a man who has been accused of assault by dozens of women since 1988, when 60 Minutes put out an entire investigative report into Marie’s notorious predation.

But is there still some path to investigate Epstein’s broader network by way of Gérald Marie? It certainly just got more difficult with the death of Siad.

The Suspicious Circumstances of Siad’s Death

Was Siad murdered? This is, of course, the elephant in the room. Epstein died by alleged suicide in a Manhattan jail cell awaiting trial. Jean-Luc Brunel – a notorious predator and one of Epstein’s primary trafficking partners, who ran MC2, the modeling agency Epstein financed – also died by alleged suicide in a Paris prison cell awaiting trial two and a half years after Epstein.

And now Siad has died at home as well, just days after a filing that was built to open up this entire network to an investigating judge.

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the causes of his death.

So it is impossible to ignore the idea that perhaps somebody wanted this broader investigation into Epstein’s network stopped, and by getting rid of Siad they eliminated the best link to that network that existed.

It is, however, also possible, of course, that Daniel Siad died of natural causes such as a heart attack from the stress induced from the new complaints filed last week, and from a separate investigation he’s been under in France – a case that had been handed over to the French police unit that specializes in human trafficking.

We will continue to get as much information as we can and keep folks updated as we learn more.

PSA: We are in touch with Innocence en Danger — the non-profit organization that initially got the investigation into Epstein’s French network launched — and their founder, Homayra Sellier, and lawyer, who represents many of the survivors mentioned here.

If you are a survivor of Gérald Marie, Ghislaine Maxwell, or other French abusers from the modeling world, your case could bring this network to justice. We are happy to discreetly connect you with the right people in France.

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This event has received very little attention, as most people are not familiar with the name Gérald Marie, and don’t understand the potential implications of this case with its new victims.

But this filing is tied to something much larger: a broader effort, by a small team in France, that has a real chance of exposing Jeffrey Epstein’s wider network and delivering justice for countless victims.

There has been enormous, rightful, international frustration over how little accountability there has been for the crimes committed by Epstein and his associates. To date, only Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have been arrested and prosecuted for their crimes.

What we want to lay out here is why this case in France represents a genuine opportunity for that accountability, and why we hope more people pay attention to it.

First, some background.

Who Is Gérald Marie?

For over 10 years, Marie was the European president of Elite Model Management – one of the most powerful positions in global fashion. He is also a notorious sexual predator, one about whom nobody, including the French government, did anything for decades, despite overwhelming evidence and claims of his abuses.

In 1988, 60 Minutes aired a Diane Sawyer-led investigation into the predation of Gerald Marie and others.

In 1998, the BBC journalist, Lisa Brinkworth, was allegedly sexually assaulted by Marie on camera while posing undercover as a model. The BBC, under pressure from Elite Models Management, allegedly buried the story.

A former modeling agent described overhearing a conversation in which two female employees at Elite Models “begged” Marie to “stop sleeping with the young teenage girls.”

He refused.

One French attorney says she has so far spoken with 31 women all detailing similar stories of rape and sexual assault by Marie, but the true number of survivors is likely many, many more.

Unfortunately, Gérald Marie was not an aberration. Marie’s boss, John Casablancas, founder of Elite Model Management, and a long-time friend of Donald Trump, was notorious for his predation: dating 14 year old Stephanie Seymour when he was 42 and marrying a 17 year old, at 50.

John Casablancas and Donald Trump

And then there was Epstein’s business partner and co-conspirator, Jean Luc Brunel, who ran Karin Models Management in Paris before moving his operations to the United States, where he founded MC2 Model Management, financially backed by Epstein.

Brunel was similarly featured in 60 Minutes’ story all the way back in 1988, but wouldn’t be arrested until 2020 – 32 years later.

While in a Paris prison awaiting trial for rape and trafficking charges, he allegedly committed suicide by hanging, 2.5 years after Epstein’s own alleged suicide by hanging in an American jail.

The international modeling industry has, therefore, been ground zero for predatory men for more than 50 years and was - above all - the industry that directly enabled the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

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The Epstein Part of the Story

Which brings us back to Epstein. We have no evidence at this time that Gérald Marie and Jeffrey Epstein were in direct communication.

However, Epstein’s use and abuse of the modeling world is well-documented.

Starting as early as the 1990s, Epstein used his ties to Victoria’s Secret founder, Les Wexner, to lure girls to his homes and hotel rooms under the false promise of modeling contracts.

He financially supported Jean-Luc Brunel’s MC2 modeling agency, which Epstein then used to import hundreds or thousands of girls into the United States, including many who were underage.

He used his apartments in the Upper East Side to house models – often four girls per apartment at a time.

He was in regular contact with Faith Kates, founder and CEO of Next Model Management, to whose charitable projects Epstein donated at least tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, it seems he once even offered to help Kates purchase a New York City apartment.

And, of course, Epstein was, for years, in touch with a series of “model scouts” (each with varying degrees of legitimacy) who presented him with images, videos, and opportunities for meet-ups with girls of varying ages.

And thus, what Epstein and Gérald Marie fundamentally shared was a network of individuals who enabled their crimes, helping to recruit young girls through oft-empty promises of modeling careers.

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Daniel Siad

And one of the key names in that shared network is Daniel Siad.

Daniel Siad is a Swedish-French modeling scout, who has been accused of rape by former model Ebba Karlsson, who says Siad raped her in the south of France before bringing her to meet Gérald Marie himself in 1990. She says Marie then sexually assaulted her as well.

And this is critical. Because Daniel Siad, as it turns out, was one of, if not the primary recruiter, for Jeffrey Epstein. His name appears in Epstein’s emails thousands of times, and he presented Epstein with tens, if not hundreds, of girls over the years.

Siad, of course, has claimed he knew nothing about what Epstein was doing. That he was simply a model scout who happened to recruit models for Epstein.

Nevertheless, the link between Gérald Marie and Epstein’s broader network, through people like Daniel Siad, is exactly what opens the door to bringing the whole network down within the French justice system.

The Promise of the French Justice System

To understand the opportunity here, you have to understand something about the French judicial system.

In criminal cases of a violent nature – rape, sex trafficking, etc. – there are two different paths to justice in France.

The first is a plainte simple, a simple complaint. Several of the women who filed this week tried this route in 2020 and 2021. Those earlier cases were dismissed, largely on procedural grounds tied to the statute of limitations.

But there’s potentially another reason those cases stalled: bureaucratic overload.

As any French lawyer will tell you, the French justice system is overwhelmed with cases and simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to take them all on.

Prosecutors tend to prioritize active threats to society: i.e. the case of a woman who walked into a police station because she was raped yesterday by a man still on the street rather than a case implicating men in their seventies, many living internationally, whose accusers are presenting decades old cases.

But the second path to justice in France is actually very well-suited for taking on cases exactly like those of the survivors of Gérald Marie.

This second path to justice can lead to investigations designed precisely for the purpose of dismantling broad, powerful, criminal structures, like the networks of Marie and Epstein.

The Critical Piece: the Juge d’Instruction

At the center of this second path is a figure with no real equivalent in the American system: the juge d’instruction, or investigating judge.

This is a judge who operates outside the normal hierarchy of political power in the French system, giving them a very different kind of latitude to operate and investigate.

And crucially, unlike a judge in the United States, the juge d’instruction holds the powers of a prosecutor. They can direct the police, order search warrants, search homes, and gather evidence. It is, in fact, part of the investigating judge’s job to expand their search to an entire criminal network – not just one defendant – where applicable.

In fact, it is this system that, years ago, brought down former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, after his presidency.

And so this is the opportunity.

With the right survivors – and enough of them – there is a real chance of investigating and charging not just this one man - Gèrald Marie - but the many others he is connected to, very much including Epstein’s network.

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The Waiting Game

The six additional women who filed complaints of rape and, in some cases, sex trafficking against Gérald Marie this week, are joining a case filed last month by the American model Carré Otis.

If it moves forward, it could present a real opportunity for tackling the broader network that enabled Jeffrey Epstein.

The French system does not move quickly. It could be six months or more before a juge d’instruction is even assigned to this case.

But that wait is itself an opportunity. Every month that passes is a chance for more survivors to come forward and strengthen the case, not just against Gérald Marie, but against the entire network of powerful men who operated with impunity for decades inside the modeling world, systematically raping and trafficking young women and girls.

And that is why six complaints, filed today without fanfare in a courthouse in Paris, could be an incredibly important start to the accountability that so many have been fighting for.

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PSA: We are in touch with Innocence en Danger – the non profit organization that initially got the investigation into Epstein’s French network launched – and their lawyer who represents many of the survivors mentioned here.

If you are a survivor of Gerald Marie, Daniel Siad, Ghislaine Maxwell, or other French abusers from the modeling world, your case could bring this network to justice. We are happy to put anyone in touch with the right people in France discreetly.

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PSA: I am in touch with a French lawyer who is actively fighting for justice against Epstein’s network. The problem is: the current, outspoken survivors are past the statute of limitations to bring their cases in French courts. This lawyer (and there are others) are looking for more recent survivors willing to come forward – survivors whose cases could put men like Gérald Marie and Daniel Siad behind bars. Please help spread the word. I’m happy to put anyone in touch with the right people in France discreetly.

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Yesterday, Jeffrey Epstein’s primary “model scout,” Daniel Siad, gave an interview to CNN in which he denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes.

“I trusted [Epstein],” Siad told CNN. He simply was not, he has said, “in a position to know that this man was dangerous.”

Here's the problem. The released files contain thousands of emails between Siad and Epstein, spanning nearly a decade.

While scouting across Eastern Europe, Paris, Ibiza, South Africa, and Morocco, Siad would send Epstein hundreds of photos and videos of young women and girls, and arranged for many to meet Epstein directly. All while Epstein’s actual role in the modeling world was tenuous at best.

At one point, Siad even helped Epstein search for a “good looking, young” assistant.

Siad claims he thought Epstein was a legitimate modeling industry insider and benefactor, though he also admits he knew about Epstein’s 2008 conviction of “soliciting prostitution from a minor” (aka, raping a 14 year old).

And while it is true that Epstein did help some young models get work, mostly, he just abused them.

I believe Siad knew this.

Because Siad isn’t just accused of supplying a predator. He’s accused of being one.

Former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson filed a complaint in Paris this year accusing Siad of raping her at a villa in Cannes in 1990, when she was 20 years old, and then of trafficking her to another of the modeling world’s most notorious alleged predators: Gérald Marie, the former European head of Elite. (Both men deny everything. Neither has ever been charged.)

So the question is: what can we do about it?

Siad was born in (what was at the time) French Algeria and today holds French, Swedish, and Algerian citizenship. The part that matters for our purposes: he’s French.

Daniel Said surrounded by young women

I spent this morning with Maître Mathias Darmon, a French criminal lawyer, who works alongside the non-profit Innocence en Danger in combating child sex trafficking and abuse.

Last week, Darmon filed a case in French courts on behalf of American supermodel Carré Otis, who is herself fighting against former Elite Models executive, Gérald Marie, who Otis says raped her repeatedly in 1986, when she was just 17 years old.

Otis’s rape case, like Karlsson’s against Siad, is, unfortunately, past the French statute of limitations. On its own, it will never reach trial. Otis knows that, but she is pursuing it anyway, in the hope that it inspires more recent survivors to come forward and join her. And the way she filed her case this time is the whole story.

**Note: in France, the statute of limitations for rape is 30 years after the victim’s 18th birthday if the abuse happened when they were a minor – so, until age 48 – or 20 years after the abuse if the victim was an adult. Otis first filed against Marie in 2021, in her early fifties, several years past the deadline. That case was dismissed.

This time, Otis’ lawyer has taken her case directly to a juge d’instruction – an investigating judge.

This is a legal track that runs inside the French justice system, but parallel to its usual machinery – and it exists that way for a reason.

Ordinary cases live or die with prosecutors, who answer to the Minister of Justice. A juge d'instruction, by contrast, answers to no one in that chain of command.

Once a case is his, he drives it forward himself: directing the investigation, ordering searches, compelling witnesses, commissioning psychological evaluations. He has authority over the police – in French it's called a commission rogatoire: the judge commands, the police execute.

The position was built to operate outside the normal bounds of power precisely so that it can pursue power. It is this mechanism, in fact, that took down the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

So a trafficking network run by rich, powerful, internationally connected men is exactly the kind of undertaking this system was built for.

The question is… will they have the survivors to do it?

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Which brings us back to Siad.

Loosely speaking, French prosecutors – those who operate inside the more “traditional”1 French justice system, not the parallel system, I just described – reopened the case against Epstein’s French network this winter.

Since then, prosecutors have indicated they are investigating Siad specifically.

But Siad, for his part, told CNN that no police or investigators have ever contacted him.

And that, unfortunately, is… not surprising.

The French justice system, I have learned, is notoriously slow and drowning in more cases than it can handle. “We don’t have enough judges, we don’t have enough policemen,” Darmon told me. “It’s one file among thousands.”

The “parallel” system is also slow, though once a juge d’instruction agrees to take on a case, it has something the “traditional” system often does not: momentum. Once a judge owns the file, it can't be quietly buried.

When I asked Darmon directly whether the parallel-system-playbook that he and Otis are pursuing against Gérald Marie could be run against Siad, he said he believed it could.

What it needs are survivors who can still legally use it.

And so this is one reason Darmon spoke to me in the first place.

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Many (perhaps even most) of the victims of this French predator network were not French. They were American girls sent to Paris by their agencies. Or Eastern European girls, targeted by these men precisely because they didn’t know the language, the culture, or the geography. They were the most vulnerable, and now they are the hardest to find. Many may not even know the names of the men who abused them.

“They didn’t speak French,” Darmon told me, “so we lost them.”

Karlsson didn’t know Daniel Siad was the man who raped her until his picture arose in association with the Epstein case. When she met him in 1990, he used a fake name and a fake passport, she has said.

But if even one survivor of Gérald Marie or Daniel Siad (or another French recruiter not yet named) who is still within the statute of limitations comes forward, this stops being a symbolic fight and becomes a prosecutable one. That’s the entire strategy. It’s why Otis has filed a case she knows she can’t win for herself.

If that survivor is you, or someone you know: my inbox is open. I would be happy to connect you with the right people in France discreetly and without questions.

**Reminder again about how French statutes of limitations work: the statute of limitations for rape is 30 years after the victim’s 18th birthday if the abuse happened when they were a minor – so, until age 48 – or 20 years after the abuse if the victim was an adult. Otis first filed against Marie in 2021, in her early fifties, several years past the deadline. That case was dismissed.

Gerald Marie, a well-documented French sexual predator

She maintained she knew nothing of his crimes and her defense rested on a few specific claims: that Epstein kept her “on the outside of his corrupt and perverted life,” that she “never met any of the masseuses,” and that nothing she saw led her to believe any of them were minors.

Below, I’ve put those claims next to what Epstein’s victims and associates told federal investigators – drawn from the Justice Department’s released interview memos and FBI 302s – so you can draw your own conclusions.

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Anything in quotes come directly from a primary source document.

TRIGGER WARNING: this post contains some graphic depictions of sexual abuse, including of minors.

Victim 1: 14 years old

NOTE: To book commercial flights - which it is repeatedly mentioned that Groff did - you must input a passengers birthday…

“For the next approximately two years, Epstein continued sexually abusing [REDACTED] by, among other things, fondling her genitals and using vibrators to touch her genitals. During that period, Epstein also photographed while wearing only underwear. [REDACTED] recalled travelling to New York and New Mexico with both Epstein and Maxwell during this period. She indicated that both Epstein and Maxwell participated in sexual encounters with her during this period, but she was not at that point prepared to go into more details regarding the specifics of the contact. [REDACTED] recalled that either Groff or Maxwell would arrange her travel.

While travelling with Epstein, [REDACTED] became familiar with the people in his world, including Leslie Groff, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Jean Luc Brunel. [REDACTED] provided us with copies of photographs [REDACTED] still had from her time with Epstein, including photographs featuring Epstein, Maxwell, and Brunel.

Victim 2: 14 years old

“After initial meetings with Epstein, he asked her, in sum and substance, to recruit other girls for the same activity. Over approximately the next two years, [REDACTED] estimates that she brought dozens of girls to Epstein to provide massages at his New York residence, starting with girls she knew from her community and eventually strangers whom met at bars, clubs, or other locations. [REDACTED] would describe to the girls what was expected, i.e., that they would provide erotic massages to Epstein, while nude, and that Epstein might touch them or ask them to touch him. [REDACTED] would schedule appointments for the girls by phone with Leslie Groff.

Although [REDACTED] recalls meeting Groff on at least one occasion at her office to pick up some money, she did not have extensive interactions with Groff and did not tell Groff her age.

Victim 3: 17 years old

“[REDACTED] explained that Leslie Groff arranged payments for [REDACTED’s] schooling and also coordinated her commercial flights. [REDACTED] did not see Groff as often as she saw [—] and Maxwell because Groff did not travel with Epstein.”

…

“Following that meeting, Epstein called [REDACTED] on multiple occasions, sometimes with Leslie Groff connecting the calls.”

Victim 4: 14 years old

“[REDACTED] recalled that either Epstein himself or a secretary would schedule massage appointments. [REDACTED] also recalled that the secretary would be near the entrance to the house when [REDACTED] arrived for massages and sometimes paid after the massages.”

Victim 5: 16 years old

“[REDACTED] recalls that she was given the phone number of a woman to call to schedule massage appointments. That same woman contacted [REDACTED] to tell her not to bring that friend again because she was too old.”

Victim 6: 17 years old

“When [REDACTED] arrived at Epstein’s New York residence, an older woman in her 40s or 50s, who appeared to be a secretary, answered the door… The secretary directed [REDACTED] to the massage room, where they met Epstein… After the massage, the same secretary provided [REDACTED] with a white envelope containing cash.”

Victim 7: 14 years old

“Other than Epstein, [REDACTED] recalled speaking with Leslie Groff on the phone when scheduling massages. Primarily, though, [REDACTED] recalled that Groff would answer the phone and then transfer her call to Epstein.”

Victim 8: 17 or 18 years old

A victim who was 17 or 18 called Groff because she needed $400 for an abortion and “needed to speak to Epstein immediately.” Groff “connected her to Epstein ‘on the phone right away,’” and Epstein then gave her $1,000.

2019 FBI 302 — DOJ EFTA00090339

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Victim 9: 14 years old

A victim who was 14 at her first contact with Epstein called Groff to schedule “massages” for herself and other girls. Groff “never discussed … what was really going on with the massages,” but after the massage she asked: “Was this her first time?”

2019 FBI 302 — DOJ EFTA00068137

Victim 10: over 18

“[REDACTED] recalled that Leslie Groff and Maxwell coordinated the travel logistics for her and Epstein. She recalls that Groff was right outside the closed door to Epstein’s office on one occasion when Epstein forced [REDACTED] to perform oral sex on him, but she does not know whether Groff knew what was happening inside the office.”

Victim 11: over 18

“[REDACTED] recalled that Leslie Groff would schedule her massage appointments with Epstein and make her travel arrangements. Groff worked in an office inside Epstein’s New York residence during the times [REDACTED] visited, and [REDACTED] met her many times.”

Victim 12: over 18

“The appointments were scheduled at first by [—] and then by either Leslie Groff or [—]. [REDACTED] recalls being paid for the massages by Epstein, Groff, [—], and Bella Klein.”

Victim 13: over 18

“She stated generally that Epstein, Maxwell, [—], and Groff all ruined her life, but she was too distressed to answer questions about what each of those individuals did.”

Victim impact statement – age unknown

“Epstein even got his assistant Lesley Groff to monitor my weight loss and [I] had to send her nude pictures of myself.”

DOJ EFTA00143438

Leslie Email - 16 February 2007

“…Jeffery is awaiting your picture! … and why were you hoping to hear from me before going to bed?? ;)Les”

DOJ EFTA00143438

Leslie Email - July 2013

“please check for a green bikini (kind of a jungle print) in one of the drawers… the girl who was there last thinks she left it in the drawer.”

DOJ EFTA02133728

Leslie Email - May 2012

A contact wrote to Groff, attaching photographs of a “new girl”; Groff forwarded the message to Epstein without comment:

“Darling, here is the pictures of new girl. She is 21. Very sweet and lovely. Let me know you received them please. I took them from her portfolio… I think you can still see everything. ;)))”

DOJ EFTA01788279

Leslie Email - Sept. 2011

Epstein employee

“Lesley Groff was responsible for scheduling the massages when Epstein was in New York.”

Epstein Employee + Victim

“[REDACTED] recalled that he would usually have a morning and afternoon massage, both of which were ordinarily scheduled by Lesley Groff.”

The prosecutors who reviewed all of this weighed the question of Groff’s culpability directly:

“… we evaluate whether there is sufficient evidence to charge [—] Lesley Groff and/or Ghislaine Maxwell with a federal crime, and, if so, whether such charges would be in the interests of justice.”

Notes:

• Lesley Groff’s name is frequently, incorrectly, spelled “Leslie” inside the DOJ files. I left those misspellings in and transcribed what is written in the DOJ files exactly.

• Where not otherwise specified, the source is: EFTA02731082

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Her defense, in short, is that she knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes; that he deliberately walled her off from that side of his life. The trouble is that scheduling Epstein’s daily appointments with his rotating cast of underage “masseuses” was her job. Groff insists that, to her knowledge, she “never met any of the masseuses.”

But… She did – including some who were minors, as documented in internal notes from the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who investigated Epstein’s co-conspirators.

I’ll publish a fuller breakdown of Groff’s truths and untruths later today. For now, here is what she told the committee (all typos have been intentionally preserved):

Carly: Ellie, as soon as you told me you wanted to read depositions aloud, THIS deposition came to mind. It’s the most informative deposition I’ve seen anyone give. You can’t quite believe it’s real.

Ellie: Yes. So, to give people context: we’re discussing a deposition from a woman named Maritza Vasquez. She was the bookkeeper for Jean-Luc Brunel, who owned MC2 Models. Brunel was a close friend and confidant of Jeffrey Epstein — more of a business friend. This woman’s deposition is stunning. I had never read it before. The amount of information she gives, often without even knowing that the thing she’s saying is a big deal. She’ll go, “Oh, what’s their name, what’s their name…” and the attorney says, “Robert Maxwell,” and she goes, “That’s the one.” The list of names is staggering.

And this is a completely unredacted deposition. It includes the names of girls as young as 13 from all over the world. They didn’t redact any of them, except for one name at one point, and I’m not sure why. Because it’s fully unredacted, it’s in clear violation of the Epstein Transparency Act, which is supposed to protect victims. But it also names all the headhunters, all the business associates, all the people finding girls in other countries — names we’ve never heard before.

Carly: And phone numbers. Speaking of things that should be redacted, someone’s personal phone number is in there. Personally identifiable information.

Ellie: Phone numbers, emails. The names of the people who ran the Einstein Visa Program for all these young girls coming in for modeling. You sent me a video of MC2 Models where a girl says, “I started when I was 12.” All the people in charge of that program are named, and there’s verification that they all stayed at the apartments on 66th Street, where Brunel also had an apartment. It’s the most insane deposition. I’m going to read the entire thing on Friday night — but I’m going to personally redact the names of the girls, because I think they should have been redacted in the first place.

Carly: Just to give people context: this is a deposition that took place in 2010. What’s so striking to me is how it reinforces the question — how did it take so long for anyone to be held accountable? We have some sense of Epstein, but Brunel wasn’t even arrested until 2020. You have the bookkeeper of this modeling firm essentially saying, “Yeah, we all knew they were sleeping with underage girls.”

I found this deposition about a month ago. I came to it because I was personally interested in the financial side of these modeling agencies — MC2, ID Models, these smaller agencies that felt like they were largely fronts for sex trafficking. And here’s the nuance: like every good lie, the best lies are 70% truth. A lot of these agencies functioned that way. If they had been entirely illegitimate, it might have been easier to bring them down. But they did do legitimate work — they had some legitimate models, they let girls work for legitimate brands — and then there was a huge component that was completely illegitimate.

The question that had been bouncing around in my head was: is there any legitimate reason for grown men to own these small-scale modeling agencies? Is there any legitimate reason that grown straight men are model scouts? I was starting to feel like the answer was no — that the men involved are perverted. And this deposition confirmed that in some ways, because she’s so open about how bad the economics of the business were. Its only purpose was to funnel girls to the men they wanted to funnel them to.

Ellie: To the point that they were lying to Jeffrey Epstein about it.

Carly: Right — Epstein was being defrauded by his own business partner.

Ellie: Yes, by Jean-Luc Brunel. Epstein had invested about a million dollars into the agency — a line of credit. He wanted to handle the business end, so he needed Brunel to keep showing him receipts proving the business was thriving and making money. And the bookkeeper says they were making zero dollars. They weren’t making anything, but they had to fudge the receipts so Epstein would think MC2 Models was growing and would keep funding it. The only real purpose of MC2 was to travel the world — Ecuador, Brazil, Paris, Australia, Colombia, Slovakia — to recruit girls as young as 12 and bring them to Miami Beach.

They even have promotional videos — I put the YouTube link in the chat. The headhunter was Jeff Fuller. The girls say things like, “I started when I was 12.” They weren’t making money. The only purpose was sex trafficking, and it’s devastating. They list all these young girls in the document, and she refers to them as children.

Carly: There’s so much on the financial side. The line of credit was through BNY Mellon, but also JPMorgan — and there are even internal JPMorgan communications asking, “Should we extend this line of credit ahead of his plea deal?” This was in 2008, after the accusations and criminal charges had already come out. There’s a lot there, but maybe let’s set that aside and get into the meat. Do you want to start with the first thing that jumped out at you?

Ellie: One of the first things was the verification of Nadia Marchenkova’s age. She has many variations of her name — Natalia, Nadia, Marchenko, Marchenkova. She worked for Epstein from roughly 2001 to 2015. There have been various claims about how old she was when she started. This bookkeeper verified that in 2003, when she herself started working with Epstein, Nadia was already there and had been for a few years. Nadia was born in 1986, so she would have been 17 when she met Maritza. That confirms she was underage — and makes the idea that she arrived in the U.S. at 14 entirely plausible. She even says 14 somewhere in there.

Carly: Pausing on that, because we talked about this on our live last week — the BBC recently reported she was 18 when she met Epstein.

Ellie: No.

Carly: Right. Julie K. Brown, you, and others have said that probably wasn’t the case. So having the BBC say she was 18 makes it fascinating to see this corroborate the opposite.

Ellie: It corroborates it, and she even says 14. The second thing that jumped out at me was the deep dive into the Einstein Visa Program. She basically says Epstein was getting freaked out because all these girls were in his apartments — 13, 14, and 15-year-old girls housed across three different apartments. They had this massive complex on 66th Street on the East Side, maybe 200 units. At the time, three or four units were being used to house girls, with about four girls in each — so maybe 16 at once, likely many more. Because Maritza was a mother herself, she’d sit the girls down. She describes a 14-year-old going out clubbing and telling her, “You can’t go out clubbing, you’re going to get hurt.”

Carly: Specifically, she references that Brunel had taken a 14-year-old out to a club — I think this was in Miami, since she was based there for a number of years before New York. The next day there was talk of police. The office was nervous, so she took the girl home with her and told her not to do that again.

Ellie: Right — “Don’t do that again. You’re 14.” Then there’s her unfiltered description of the Einstein Visa Program, which is something I’ve really wanted to hunt down: who was in charge of the visa program specifically for modeling. She names two people whose whole job was to funnel young models through the program. We have their phone numbers now, because she lists them, unredacted.

Carly: The attorney in charge of processing them is named.

Ellie: We could literally call them today and ask how many girls came through and who was in charge — because she said Epstein signed off on all of them.

Carly: Again, she includes Nadia. He was freaked out — “All these girls are here illegally, we have to get them visas.”

Carly: This is a good point, because you get a sense of the personality differences. Epstein was very careful — you can see it even in the emails, especially after 2008. He knew people were aware of what he was up to. Compare that with Brunel, who — partly because of cultural differences between France and the U.S. — had no compunction about any of it. He describes openly telling Maritza he wanted to have sex with one of the girls. She said, “She’s underage,” and he said, “Oh, I know.” That’s not the kind of thing Epstein would say out loud.

Ellie: Right, he really wouldn’t.

Carly: Brunel was bringing these girls in on tourist visas. By the way — what Melania Trump almost certainly did was come in on a tourist visa, and if you work on one, you’re in violation of it.

Ellie: Yes.

Carly: The bookkeeper also implied they withheld wages from the models. The girls weren’t being paid, taxes weren’t being paid.

Ellie: There were ways they couldn’t be paid, and they used that as a reason to take the money.

Carly: This is where the financial side really gets me. They set up a British Virgin Islands company that Epstein had them create to route MC2 earnings through — which also became a way to hide money from the girls. She describes a specific instance: a girl earned $20,000, got paid $2,000, and the remaining $18,000 was funneled through the BVI company. Meanwhile, Brunel was putting all his personal expenses on the business — his credit card was the first thing that got paid off. The detailed machinations of how they structured this to screw the girls over financially, on top of abusing them, are staggering.

Ellie: The most stunning part — or maybe it’s just what I’ve always thought, but it’s stunning to see on paper — is the Maxwell exchange. She says there was a man and his daughter who were the original source of all of Epstein’s money. She says, “I can’t remember his name.” The attorney says, “Ghislaine Maxwell and Robert Maxwell?” And she goes, “That’s the one.”

Carly: Let me find the exact quote — I have it up. The questioner is Brad Edwards. He asks, “Did you ever hear anything about Jeffrey Epstein’s relationships? Who he was with — male, female, a person’s name?” She says, “I knew because Eve told me that he had a relationship with a woman, that her father was very wealthy, and that’s how he started his own money. And if you tell me the name, maybe I can remember, but I don’t.” He says, “Ghislaine Maxwell?” She says, “Yes.” He says, “And her father was Robert Maxwell?” “Yes.”

Ellie: That’s the thing we all know but that people deny — that Robert Maxwell was the original funder of Jeffrey Epstein.

Carly: This is actually a very big deal, because there are so many questions about Epstein’s life in the 1980s. He gets fired from Bear Stearns around 1981 or ‘82. He’s a fired ex-trader, 28 years old. We know he starts working with Douglas Leese, a British arms dealer, and then there’s this big black hole. He might have been working for Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer who was the wealthiest man in the world. But between roughly 1983 and 1987, he basically disappears from the financial record. That’s the period where you have claims — from former Israeli intelligence, for example — that they had met him in Robert Maxwell’s office.

Ellie: Yes.

Carly: So if it’s true that Epstein knew Robert Maxwell before he knew Ghislaine, that starts to confirm the Israeli intelligence connection. He would almost certainly have been connected to Maxwell through arms dealing and Israeli intelligence ties. The evidence for that has been decent, but there’s never been one complete smoking gun, and the two men who’ve talked about it most have some credibility questions. So this could still be a rumor that was floating around — but here you have a woman with no dog in the fight, in 2010, who didn’t even remember his name.

Ellie: Right — who didn’t even remember his name.

Carly: She’s just giving what she heard as someone professionally close to these people.

Ellie: And it’s interesting, because in the birthday book we have Elliot Wilk — who I believe worked at Bear Stearns — saying they were working with Robert Maxwell in the ‘70s. He says, “And would you have met his teenage daughter back then?” — meaning Ghislaine. So there’s at least conjecture that this goes back much further, which would explain why Epstein climbed the ladder so quickly. Maxwell was wrapped up in Bear Stearns at the time. If they saw Epstein as a protégé and he moved up, that’s much earlier than the 1991 we’re told over and over again that he met Ghislaine.

Carly: Over and over there are moments like that — that one perhaps being the biggest — where this document confirms things that aren’t even shocking to us now, this deep into it. But to think this information was public in 2010, and that a decade later was when any accountability even started — and we still haven’t gotten the accountability we should — is pretty incredible. I know you’re going to read the whole thing Friday, but maybe pull up some specific pieces.

Ellie: I’ll stop at certain points and say, “Pay attention.”

Carly: I have a few categories I flagged: the material on underage girls — I won’t read any names — the financial defrauding, and the modeling industry in general. Let me read this modeling one. This is what was so interesting, because I’ve had this working thesis. I hate being a black-and-white thinker, but I have this feeling that if you’re a grown straight man who owns one of these boutique agencies, or you’re a model scout, it’s nefarious. It’s very hard for me to find a legitimate reason a grown straight man would want anything to do with this industry, especially at the boutique level.

I’ll say — your big three, IMG, Elite, Ford — one of them is currently owned by Potanin, a Russian oligarch whose former business partner has already been arrested for sex trafficking. So even the big agencies, which are more systematized and do a lot of legitimate work, have ties in this world.

Anyway, here’s an exchange between Vasquez and Brad Edwards. He asks, “What was Jeffrey Epstein getting out of MC2?” She says, “The only thing I can think he was getting was the girls, nothing else, because he has all the money.” Edwards: “And the company wasn’t making money anyway?” “No.” “And you know the company wasn’t making money?” “It wasn’t at all, at all. So the only thing I believe he wanted to get involved for was the girls. That’s it.” Then it gets to what we’ve been talking about — “But he wanted to do it legally, like girls coming here, even if they were underage, with visas.” Edwards: “Because the modeling industry is one of those industries where there are a lot of underage girls coming into the country, right?” “Yes.” “It’s pretty easy access to underage girls.” “Yes.” “And they come into the country without their parents, so they don’t have any parental supervision while they’re here.” “Not at all.” “So the modeling industry is one some guys use to get underage girls, and that’s happened for a very long time, right?” “Yes.” “So is that what Jean-Luc Brunel still does?” “Yes.” This is in 2010. “Still uses it to get underage girls to sleep with, really?” “Yes.” “And Jeffrey Epstein, too?” She says, “I cannot tell you that because I don’t know. I know if there is a kind of relationship. I believe they will, or he will.”

I think English is her second language, so it comes through a bit. But she’s essentially saying, “I was never in the room with Epstein and a 13-year-old, but everyone around the office talked about this.” That exchange, a month ago, was the one that made me go: burn the whole industry to the ground.

Ellie: Right. And finding things like this in the files keeps bringing me back to the DOJ having had this for 10, 15, 20 years. They’ve had it the entire time — these names that keep popping up. I did the Unknown Survivors Journal last Friday. Now we’re reading this, and it has a list of all the headhunters — Jeff Fuller, a guy named Pink, and — what was his name, Khalid?

Carly: Khalid Salam.

Ellie: Khalid Salam, yes. All these people I’ve never heard of, whose whole job was to go to Ecuador and find 12-year-old girls for Brunel to bring to Miami, then Palm Beach, then New York. I’ve never heard of these men, and suddenly I have a full document showing exactly what they were doing, how many girls they brought, how they got the visas going, who was monitoring the visa system. None of these people have ever been mentioned. This is the most obvious document we have, and I’ve never heard of any of them.

Carly: We even have assistants to Epstein named here that I’ve never heard of. An office manager for MC2 coordinating with Epstein’s assistants, and Brad Edwards naming potential assistants being coordinated with — names I’ve never heard.

Ellie: Like Cecilia Stein.

Carly: Cecilia Stein.

Ellie: I thought he was going to say Leslie’s girlfriend. I was like, who is this person, and why was she his assistant? I’ve never heard her name.

Carly: Eric Gainey — never heard the name.

Ellie: Amanda Grant. Who’s Amanda Grant?

Carly: Amanda Grant worked on the MC2 side. She’s fascinating in this deposition because she’s named as someone treated very badly by Epstein and Brunel. She was a single mother of four. Vasquez essentially says they gave her immigration troubles. There were problems with Nadia Marchenkova’s visa — and they blamed Eve for that, actually, not Amanda Grant.

Ellie: Eve, right. They blamed Eve.

Carly: Someone in the chat asked: “Isn’t running a clean, legit agency a niche a small entrepreneur might explore?” My feeling is twofold. First, these aren’t good, profitable businesses. People can have a passion for an industry without it being profitable — independent journalism isn’t profitable either, so I understand doing something for love rather than money. But when you look at the people involved — women, gay men, people who love fashion and want to be in this world, sure. It’s these 50-year-old straight men, businessmen first and foremost, multimillionaires who care about money, running money-losing businesses. That’s the tell.

I’ve struggled with this. There’s a man named Andrew — I can’t remember his last name, maybe that’s for the best — who was trying to buy MC2. There’s a whole email chain between Epstein, Brunel, and Andrew. He owns a private equity firm that may have been doing roll-ups of modeling agencies, so maybe it’s an economies-of-scale play. But even in these business emails about buying the agency, what are they talking about? They went to a party the night before, and Andrew emails asking, “What did Milan say about me?” He met a girl at a party. So in the middle of a business negotiation, he’s talking about the girls he wants to be hooked up with. These are the people drawn to this industry.

I don’t even think all these men start out like that guy. I don’t know him. I don’t think he goes in trying to be a rapist. But —

Ellie: Who knows? He could very well be. I’m just skeptical.

Carly: In the best-case scenario — we’re still talking about someone willing to consistently put himself in environments with alcohol, drugs, and teenage girls. That’s a bizarre combination for a grown man to seek out. It’s inherently odd and suspicious.

Ellie: Yes. And I had a question — this document isn’t very searchable because it’s scanned.

Carly: I got it into a Word doc, so you can search it by text.

Ellie: Can you find what they said about Donald Trump? The Trump piece was quick. He wasn’t a politician then, wasn’t on everyone’s mind, but he was mentioned, and I remember thinking about it.

Carly: The context: Epstein and Brunel were thinking about setting up a French office or company. Interestingly, MC2 had offices in Miami, New York, and Tel Aviv — but not Paris, even though Brunel is French. He’d moved to the U.S. partly to evade French taxes. They were looking at a French offshoot, and Epstein said he wanted the scouts and the business set up the way Trump did it.

And I’m so glad you flagged this, because I’d flagged it too. What’s incredible about doing this work is that no matter what topic you go into, Donald Trump’s name comes up. This is well past his breakup with Epstein. I do something on modeling — Trump’s everywhere. I do something on Epstein’s ties to Iran in the ‘80s — Trump’s name comes up. It’s unbelievable.

Here’s the quote. Vazquez is talking: “They were planning on buying or associating with a girl in France for a company. They were planning to do a company. And actually, I gave the paper to Mr. Sean Connolly” — I don’t know who that is, but he doesn’t seem to be a victim, so I’ll say his name — “which is an actual paper that came from the office of Jeffrey Epstein, that he was giving instructions to Jean-Luc saying he wanted to have the same contracts as Donald Trump. That he wanted to have the same kind of benefits for the scouters. So he was giving instructions to Jean-Luc on what to do. There was a woman in Paris, I don’t recall her name, but there were three of them trying to do a new company, but then everything was on zero, and they never did it.” This was about structuring another modeling agency the way Trump structured Trump Model Management.

Ellie: It’s interesting, the dynamic between Epstein and Trump. There’s this idea of — were they totally broken up, totally separate, did they hate each other? Or do these things keep coming up? In the modeling world, if Epstein was involved, especially through Brunel — who was more modeling-focused even than Epstein — there’d be no way to avoid Trump. He was very heavy in modeling and pageantry. They’d be at the same events, the same social events afterward, with young girls, at parties. There’s not really a way to avoid one another at that point, so I wonder how separate they really were if his name keeps coming up.

Carly: Absolutely. One name people aren’t familiar with — I genuinely wonder if he’s even alive, he’s gone off the map — is Tigran Katrian.

Ellie: I don’t know the name.

Carly: What I know for sure is that Tigran was a scout for Donald Trump. He’s mentioned in the files because Daniel Syed, one of the primary recruiters for Epstein specifically — and this is what’s interesting: you have Khalid Salam mentioned as a primary scout for MC2, but Daniel goes directly to Epstein. The files are full of flip-camera videos sent from Daniel to Epstein of girls he’s finding all over the world. At one point Daniel is feverishly emailing Epstein from somewhere — Ibiza, maybe — saying he’s with Tigran Katrian, that Tigran was the main scout for Trump but stopped working for Trump, and that he told Tigran to give Epstein a first look.

The thing about Tigran is he had an agency or scouting hub in Moscow, and he’d go to remote parts of Siberia and Eastern Europe to recruit young girls and send them all over the world. What’s so chilling is the name of his agency — Noah Management. He openly said, “Because just like Noah was saving the animals two by two, I’m saving these young girls one by one.”

Ellie: Gross.

Carly: These 13-year-olds from Siberia he’s taking away from their families and sending all over the world to meet people like Epstein, to go to Trump Model Management. Anytime you get into any industry, you realize the world is small — and this modeling world was small. These recruiters all knew each other.

Ellie: And when you look at a lot of these countries — I don’t know exactly where Siberia stood, but it’s close to Russia — a lot of them were still under communism, with heavy rules about how many people per family could travel at once. The girls often couldn’t travel with their parents. So when they were recruited — and often a woman was the face of the recruitment even if a man was doing the recruiting, so the girls felt safe — they’d be brought to America with the promise of making money, getting a visa, getting citizenship. The parents would say, “This is safe, it’s America, she’ll have a great job, she’ll get out of Slovakia, she’ll have the American dream. I feel comfortable that this woman is taking my child.” That was Ghislaine Maxwell’s job too — to make the girls feel safe when she recruited them.

Then they’d never actually be with that woman. They’d be immediately housed in those apartments. There’s that story of the girl who went to California for a modeling job, and after the first day the guy said, “I want you to come on my yacht.” She said, “I’m not comfortable with that.” Good for her — she stood up for herself. So he canceled the entire job and said, “I’m not paying you.” They eventually had to force him to fulfill the contract, whether or not she actually got the money. If they got jobs, the jobs were all fairly nefarious. And this woman isn’t emphasizing that these girls were 18 or 19 — she’s emphasizing 13, 14, 15. She says it multiple times. A 12-year-old is mentioned. These are very young girls being put in apartments with no supervising adult, other than Brunel living down the hall.

Carly: Someone in the chat asked, “Was the system designed that way on purpose?” This has become my pet fascination. To give context: modeling agencies didn’t really exist until the 1950s. The idea of a model — putting clothes on a woman to sell them to other women — started in late-1800s France. Then in the mid-1950s, Eileen Ford set up the first modeling agency. But back then, women looked like women. Grace Kelly was the archetype. They were in their early 20s — young, but the goal was not for them to look like children. And it’s the 1950s, pre the suffragette energy of the ‘60s, so these early-20s women still couldn’t get credit cards on their own and so on. Eileen Ford had her models live in her home; she and her husband were surrogate parents while the girls were in the industry.

Then comes the 1960s — the youth movement, the Beatles, a youth revolution — and suddenly you have Twiggy as the seminal example of a prepubescent body. Twiggy becomes the “it” thing, and there are two results. One, childlike bodies become what’s wanted. Two, you get the new economics of the supermodel — the money one international model can make. Twiggy was British and all over America, so the international competition to scout and recruit girls skyrockets. You have this confluence: it’s now normalized for agents to house models, models are supposed to look like children, and there’s international competition to find the next “it” girl. Predators flock to it. The next big agency after Eileen Ford’s was John Casablancas’s — and Casablancas was openly dating a 14-year-old model when he was 50. So when we ask, “Was it designed this way?” — I’ve gone back and forth, but structurally, it’s set up for this.

Ellie: I get that there are children’s clothes. But I question why we have something like a Teen Miss USA pageant. Why is there a teen version? It’s clearly for children, and the purpose — even though they frame it as a scholarship program — is to make underage girls look like women, do bathing-suit competitions, do their talent, and parade their bodies in front of a panel of judges. The purpose behind a teen national pageant is the same purpose we find in very young modeling. Why are we bringing girls to the U.S. to model at 12? Why aren’t there the same age limits?

Carly: To your point — there are children’s clothes, so why are 15-year-olds modeling Calvin Klein jeans for adult women? Why are teenagers modeling adult women’s clothing? It’s crazy.

Ellie: There’s no purpose for it other than what we’re talking about. I still believe these things happened. The modeling agencies have never been investigated, and they’re the central figure in this case, because that’s how all the girls came in. The girls coming into Palm Beach for “massage” — even those from bad homes — were always enticed with modeling. It clearly never happened; it was never the intent. And all the girls from overseas came over specifically with the intent of modeling.

Going back to Nadia Marchenkova — there are pieces I learned about her that are hard to verify, but one thing mentioned here is that she disappeared when she came to the U.S. She took off. I don’t know if it was considered an escape, but they brought her back and started grooming her. She was very young — likely an eighth grader. There was a financial transaction made with her parents. Her parents saw it as her going to work in the U.S. Epstein saw it as paying for a sex slave, which he said many times. They brought her back, started grooming her toward things she wanted — pilot school, for instance — so she’d stay. She was there 15 years. She was one of his favorites.

Carly: She was really a girlfriend. Most of the girls who were abused were not his girlfriend — but he saw her, in a very warped way, as his girlfriend.

Ellie: Right.

Carly: Someone in the chat said, “In the 1960s the Ford company hired young teenage girls. How do I know? I knew some of them.” Again — you can look up who the top models were in the 1950s. They don’t look like children. Even if some were teenagers, they don’t look like children. In the ‘60s, they start looking like children.

Ellie: Right. Then you get to the ‘90s — the Victoria’s Secret Angels, the height of the supermodel era — and they’re intertwined in these files, especially Naomi Campbell. My guess is the people involved in that system, which was owned by Leslie Wexner, who owned Victoria’s Secret — that’s very warped, and it’s never been explored.

Carly: Here’s a fact — I hesitate to call it a fun fact — that shows how intertwined this is, and how much our fashion world has been shaped by the desires of pedophiles. That’s been my takeaway from diving into this. Victoria’s Secret wasn’t considered a chic thing for top models to do for a while. They wanted to put it on the map. There’s a documentary — one of those “dark side of the ‘90s” series — that talks about how the model who really made Victoria’s Secret cool for top supermodels was Stephanie Seymour. And what I know for a fact is that Stephanie Seymour was the 14-year-old who was dating John Casablancas when he was 50. She went on to have a massive career, and was then leveraged by Victoria’s Secret to put the brand on the map.

What comes up over and over is that sleeping with these men could work — not for all the girls, but it was true that if you didn’t, your odds of a career dropped to basically zero. So these men who wanted to sleep with 14- and 15-year-olds were deciding who got magazine covers, who put brands on the map. They were making the models. It’s incredible when you think about how our tastes have been shaped by it.

Ellie: I’m going to repost the YouTube link in the chat — the promotional video for MC2 Models. It’s sketchy to say the least, and it includes Jeffrey Fuller, one of Brunel’s biggest headhunters.

Carly: I think he was actually the president of MC2 Models. He basically ran the company, because Brunel was off scouting. Brunel was the owner but didn’t want to do the work of running it. He wanted to travel.

Ellie: He liked to travel. She says, “He’s world-traveling all the time,” and Brad Edwards goes, “But he has no money,” and she says, “You’re right, he has no money, but he travels all the time.”

Carly: He has no money problems because MC2 paid for everything. Brunel set up a system where he took the vast majority of the young girls’ earnings, used it to fund his travel around the world while he scouted more girls, and then picked which ones to abuse and farm out to his friends. He did that for 30 years. There’s even a 60 Minutes piece — Diane Sawyer did it, I want to say around 1998, maybe early 2000s, possibly even earlier. It still exists; I’ll find the link. I did a video about some of this and included excerpts. She interviews Eileen Ford, who was still operational at the time. Ford had cut off certain men in Europe, saying, “I won’t send my girls to that man.”

Ellie: 1988.

Carly: 1988. We knew this was going on. It wasn’t even a secret. In that 60 Minutes piece, Eileen Ford’s girls were considered top-tier, so there was a special aura when they were sent to Europe. They even talk about how Brunel wouldn’t touch Eileen Ford’s girls, because he didn’t want to lose his access to them in Paris — at that point he was running Karin Model Management there. But other men in Europe had abused Ford’s girls, so she cut them off. Diane Sawyer asks Ford, “We’re hearing all these stories about Jean-Luc Brunel abusing girls. Why haven’t you cut him off? Why are you still sending him your girls?” And Ford says, “Oh, well, I haven’t heard anything.” The point is, it’s incredible how long people were reporting on this and nothing happened.

Ellie: It goes back to the idea that, even for people in the DOJ, the crime in their own minds isn’t the sex trafficking. They consider it normal — standard for New York, Paris, and Milan in the ‘80s and ‘90s. You think of someone like Jerry Seinfeld dating a girl in 11th grade. That was just a thing that happened in New York. I’ve heard people say it was “totally normal” for 13-year-old girls to be at clubs with older men — “that’s just a New York thing.” There’s so much validation they give themselves that this was normal. Same with child actors of the ‘90s and the abuses they suffered — everyone knew, but nobody did anything. So the idea that they’ve had this information the whole time isn’t shocking. It’s upsetting, but it’s because the people in charge were business people in these major cities, participating in a lot of this. They don’t want to dive into it because they knew about it and had no problem with it. They’re more worried about money laundering and trade secrets. They don’t care about this part, so they won’t investigate it. It’s up to us.

Carly: Totally, 100%. The lines get blurry — men wanting to be around beautiful women has been true since the beginning of time and probably always will be. But the line between that and this — they just blur it in their own minds, or they simply don’t care. They don’t see women as full people.

Ellie: They see them as entertainment, or a product. Most of these men had wives at home. They saw it as a thing you go do.

Carly: Someone mentioned Stephanie Seymour is a bit of a disturbed woman, that there may be accusations involving her and her son, that she struggled with drug addiction. Bear in mind — at 14, her partner was 49. This is someone groomed from a young age and victimized over and over in the industry she was in. That has a psychological effect.

Ellie: That’s not uncommon. I tell people to be soft about that. You see it in probably more than half of survivors — a record, a substance abuse issue, custody battles. They’re messy, but they’re messy as a result of trauma. When you’re traumatized early and for a long time, a lot of people stop maturing, especially if drugs are involved — the brain stops developing the minute you become addicted.

Carly: Arrested development.

Ellie: Yes. So I don’t hold them accountable for a lot of those bad choices, because they’ve been traumatized and then re-traumatized through this process. They don’t get to be like, “Okay, the trauma’s over, now I’m in therapy, now I’m healing.” They don’t get to heal, because it’s on rotation every day — they’re not believed, nothing’s investigated, the case doesn’t go away. They have to think about it every day, see it on the news, hear it from other people. They don’t get to get better.

Carly: And that’s so devastating for the whole process, because it lets the men point and say, “Oh, they’re crazy. I didn’t do that — see, they’re crazy.”

Ellie: Yes. A lot of the men were like, “I don’t even do drugs” — other than Brunel, who was apparently a big cokehead.

Carly: That’s the part that’s been mentioned — Brunel was apparently a major cocaine addict. The bookkeeper says openly that they all knew.

Ellie: “He walks in and his nose is bleeding, he’s got white powder everywhere. We just assumed what he was doing.”

Carly: And people in the chat are commenting on eating disorders — keeping the bodies small, keeping the women hungry, keeping them looking like children. All of that is part of the control mechanism.

Ellie: Those emails from Epstein where he’s telling people, “You’re not exercising. You promised in your contract you’d exercise this many days a week, and I know you’re only doing three or four.” And they reply, “I’m so sorry, I’ll exercise more, sir.” Totally under his thumb. He’d call women fat if they were 130 pounds. They had to be thin, childlike.

Carly: And you have Ghislaine joking about it in emails — “I’ve stopped eating because Epstein’s women need to be thin. I’m basically eating an apple a day.”

Carly: I wanted to circle back to the girl you mentioned — I don’t know her exact age; she may actually have been 18 or so, technically of age, though obviously we’re mostly talking about teenagers. She was booked for a job, flew there, was asked to go on the yacht, and refused. Because she refused, the client canceled. By the way, the whole yacht world is a subcategory of this where there’s a lot of abuse. You’re a model booked just to be pretty on a yacht, and now you’re in the middle of the ocean. In some cases your passport has been taken because you’re on the Mediterranean coast — often Eastern European girls — and now you’re on a boat without your passport, surrounded by men. It becomes dire very easily.

She’s almost certainly an outlier in having the fortitude to reject the client and say, “I’m going home.” The key was she still got paid, because she had a good relationship with Vasquez. The girl basically said, “If you don’t pay me, I’ll sue.” So Vasquez called the client and said, “If you don’t pay us, we’ll sue, because you signed this contract.” But what 15-year-old from Siberia, who may not even speak English, has the fortitude to say no? That’s why this industry has flown under the radar — the people who would bring the cases, the victims, are scared, they’re foreigners, they don’t know the system. Understandably, they’d rather stay quiet.

The top models we’ve talked about were of course being abused — but in today’s culture, nobody’s abusing Kendall Jenner or Gigi Hadid, whose parents are wealthy and on the Housewives. I’m not saying they haven’t dealt with things — who knows. But the point is, these men are very strategic about preying on vulnerable girls — girls without a support system, where the odds of them bringing a lawsuit on their own are very low.

Ellie: Right. I read an email the other day — it was redacted, so you don’t know the sender, but I think it’s a woman, because I rarely see emails from men with three or four exclamation points, unless it’s Steve Bannon. This person is looking for girls in Russia, and she says, “I found some. One is not very pageant-model, but they’re all poor, so I’m going to show you their pictures.” They were specifically looking for poor girls, because they knew the opportunity would sound like winning the lottery.

Carly: I sent you the email from someone I’ve talked about a lot — I can’t believe there hasn’t been more conversation about him — Ramsey Elkholy, the modeling agent. He was constantly bringing girls to Epstein. He funneled a lot of girls through MC2 and Next Model Management, and he’s connected to Daniel Syed and Brunel, though he was more Epstein’s guy. He’s explicit about bringing young girls to Epstein with no real expectation of modeling work — the modeling is a front. He’ll say, “This girl’s desperate for cash.” Here’s one: “I’m in Riga, Latvia” — he’s scouting — “Amazing girls, many blondes with great bodies. [Redacted] emailed me saying you killed her with your words. She is alone this last week in New York and has lost money on this trip. She is desperate for cash. I’ve been working on her. She agreed with me that posing in lingerie is part of her job, and she told me she would have no problem to do that with you, but she doesn’t have the courage to propose it herself.”

He goes on to describe how he’s working on this young girl, convincing her that posing for Epstein is part of her job. It’s not. “She’s confused, she’s desperate for cash.” He’s describing her — young, alone in this country — and explicitly describing the mechanisms he’s using to convince her to be sexual with Epstein on false pretenses. These people will take this line — you found that Brunel email where he says they’re “of breeding age,” 14, 15, “I don’t want to get in trouble for this.”

Ellie: Right — 14, 15. “I don’t want to get in trouble for this.”

Carly: You know these men feel this way. There are lots of people who feel this way about these girls —

Ellie: Alan Dershowitz.

Carly: And here’s what’s really wrong about it, what we were talking about: if she’s a child, then why do you have to lie to her? Why do you have to psychologically find angles and manipulate a 14-year-old into sleeping with you? If this is all consensual and normal, if she’s an adult ready to make a decision — you wouldn’t have to lie to these children. And in some of these emails you can see it outright.

Ellie: It’s the idea of hiding in plain sight — except they’re not even hiding. It’s just in plain sight. We have this information. This is probably one of many depositions like this in the files that we just haven’t gotten to yet — but they’ve had it the entire time and supposedly read everything, and nothing’s been done. You can still go to Facebook and find Jean-Luc Brunel’s page. It’s still active. He scrubbed the pictures — she describes how he had photos of himself and the girls — but the page is still there, with three friends left. One is Jeffrey Fuller, who ran MC2. One is a guy whose last name is Pink, who you’ll see in his emails in the DOJ files — everything John Leake sent, he sent to a guy named Pink. And a woman named Petra, who’s in all his emails too. These are all people who recruited for him and worked for the company, and his Facebook page is just sitting there. People still have access to contact these people listed in these depositions as trafficking underage girls, and they’re just on Facebook with their family pages, no big deal. Nobody’s looking for them.

Carly: Yeah. Someone said the person I was just talking about was Ramsey Elkholy, which is correct — Herman, thank you. He also has a Facebook page with pictures of models, just accessible.

Ellie: Nobody’s looking, even if you’re not hiding.

Carly: His Instagram was private. I requested him, and he accepted, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to reach out. I think he’ll block me the second I do.

Ellie: It’s like — yeah, I’ve had people accept me too, and you’re left thinking, okay, now what? How long do I wait before I say something, and what do I say so they don’t block me immediately?

Carly: I wanted to be able to see his page without being blocked, but the whole point is to see if he’ll maybe talk to me. I’ve said so much about him publicly that if he looks me up, he won’t talk to me. I should have done it before I was so open about all this.

Ellie: Well — great chatting with you, as always.

Carly: This was very cathartic for me. I’ve been in this stew for months without one person to talk to like this, so I’m really grateful for it.

Ellie: Before we talk about our Substacks — I’m trying to read the files at least two days a week. This is an extension of the Epstein-Trump Reading Room, where we read the files for a 24-hour filibuster. That’s now moving to DC — they’ll be right down the street from the DOJ, which is phenomenal. We also have the Reading Room book mobile, run by Miles Taylor and Xander Schultz, that’s going to be going around. The idea is to actually read the files and get them in front of people, because we know about the files — we don’t necessarily know what’s in them. This one was a huge surprise. So I’m going to read this entire file Friday night, with all the file numbers, so people can access it themselves in the DOJ files. This is a very big example of something that violates the Epstein Transparency Act, because the entire file is full of underage girls’ names. They don’t redact any of it — one name is redacted, I don’t know why. They list every other girl’s name from every country.

Carly: They’re like, “This is the spelling — get the precise spelling.”

Ellie: “This is the spelling of this girl’s first and last name.” It’s ridiculous. We’ll definitely have to notify the DOJ about it. When I read it, I’ll be redacting all those names for my own due diligence. But tell me about your Substack, Carly.

Carly: My Substack is Read Receipts On. My YouTube channel is my name, Carly P. Reilly. I’d love for you to follow or subscribe. And most of you probably already know Ellie — Ellie, tell us yours.

Ellie: I’m The Panicked Writer, here and on YouTube. Carly and I were led to one another because we both reported on Michael Wolff, and someone landed in her comments and connected us.

Carly: Like a thousand people landed in my comments. I posted about Michael Wolff, and that was the only kind of comment I was getting. First, there were people being defensive — “Did you deal with Ellie Leonard?” So you already have very defensive people in your world.

Ellie: Really? I was like, “No, I promise I didn’t.”

Carly: And there were plenty of people saying, “I hope you’ve connected with Ellie Leonard — you’re both talking about this.”

Ellie: I was just so excited somebody else knew. That’s a story where I keep saying, I need people to just know. I don’t care who’s telling it — I just need people to know, because this is someone who is still making money off these girls.

Carly: That’s a beautiful thing I appreciate about you — you’re really here for the mission. You’re not possessive about it.

Ellie: If you want to tell that story, please tell it.

Carly: We all have a common goal, so I appreciate that. So yes — go follow Ellie. And I said this last time: the best money you’ll spend today is becoming a paid subscriber to Ellie.

Ellie: No, no, no, no.

Carly: Just do it. I know you feel uncomfortable, but you need to make money — you can’t keep doing this for free.

Ellie: Thank you. Thanks, guys. We’re glad to see you, and we’ll probably be back next week to talk.

Carly: Yeah, we’re trying to do this weekly — finding different things we’re each working on and talking about.

Ellie: All right. Thanks, everyone. Have a good one. See you later. Bye, Carly.

Carly: Bye.

The report was sourced only to “someone familiar with the matter,” and it has not been picked up anywhere else. But let’s hope it’s true. Leon Black has long been one of the likeliest candidates for someone to whom Jeffrey Epstein trafficked women and girls and it’s not too late to get accountability.

The Leon Black story is genuinely hard to keep straight. There have been moments - when reading through the convoluted press coverage - where I’ve wondered if Black’s team has itself orchestrated this confusion.

There are public accusers and anonymous accusers. There are media accounts that contradict each other. There are social media threads that conflate one victim with another and overstate the record, while there are news outlets who understate it. Parsing through it all – how many accusers are there, what are the commonalities, what are their stories – is harder than it should be.

And underneath the accusations is the relationship itself: a two-decade entanglement between Black and Epstein that gives us an unusually clear window into how a certain class of American billionaire operates. The Black–Epstein record is, at its heart, a record of rich men helping each other stay rich by walking up to the line of the law (and crossing it) knowing their high-priced lawyers will get them out of it.

Below is an attempt to lay much of it out in advance of Black’s potential congressional appearance. I will tell you where I am editorializing and where the record speaks for itself.

What you’ll find here

• A bit about Black – and his careful reputation management

• The Epstein<>Black friendship – insider trading, a Moscow trip with Trump, a 50th-birthday poem

• The financial relationship – $158–$170 million paid between 2012 and 2017, and a near-total absence of paperwork

• The Illigitmate Services Epstein Performed for Black – coverups, trafficking(?), + Epstein’s federal government dealmaking

• The women + girls - what we know

• The U.S. Virgin Islands settlement – what $62.5 million bought

• The Wyden investigation — what the Senate Finance Committee has found

• Where this leaves us

A bit About Black

Leon Black is, without a doubt, one of the most significant people in Jeffrey Epstein’s life because it is from Black that Epstein extracted $170 million over the span of 5 years.

This money funded Epstein’s lifestyle, his properties, and – by extension – the sex trafficking operation those properties hosted.

Black himself is worth an estimated $13.8 billion. He founded Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm Bloomberg once called “the apex predator of Wall Street.”

Bloomberg called Black personally “the most feared man in the most aggressive realm of finance.”

Apollo has bought and sold some of the biggest consumer brands in America. At one point Apollo held a stake in Caesars Casinos, which I flag because Black used a Caesars in Vegas to host a 60th birthday trip for Epstein, and months prior a Vegas trip with Epstein, Black, and Woody Allen appears to have been planned.

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Black’s reputation problem

Leon Black cares about his reputation.

He was, until 2021, the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. He was (and still is) a major art collector who used art aggressively – often with specific, tactical advice from Epstein – to mitigate-bordering-on-evade taxes. But chairing MoMA is also the kind of role you take when you want your money to translate into cultural relevance; when you want to be a respected man, not just a rich one.

Then there’s a letter that Black submitted – still sealed but reported on by The Guardian – to Judge Jed Rakoff, who has overseen some of the Epstein victim cases. In it, Black describes the pain the accusations against him have caused him and his family. He wrote:

From childhood, my father, a former rabbi, taught me the importance of shem tov, the Hebrew word for a good name… Not since my father’s death 49 years ago have I felt such pain and seen such hurt inflicted on those I love.

Black has repeatedly stated that, in his world, reputation is everything and his hefty donations and board seats across many institutions (Asia Society, Lincoln Center, the Jewish Museum, Mount Sinai Hospital, Cardozo School of Law, and the Vail Valley Foundation) all point to a man pre-occupied with a kind of cultural status, as much as a do-good philanthropist.

The investigation that “exonerated” Black

In January 2021, Black’s firm Apollo released a report which they claim exonerated Black from any Epstein-related wrongdoing.

Apollo had commissioned the law firm Dechert LLP to investigate Black’s relationship with Epstein. The report concluded that while Black had paid Epstein $158 million over the years, Dechert had

“seen no evidence suggesting that Black ever compensated Epstein for any service other than Epstein’s legitimate advice on trust and estate planning, tax issues, issues relating to artwork, Black’s airplane, Black’s yacht, and other similar matters, philanthropic issues, and the operation of the Family Office.”

We will directly contest this finding in this piece.

But this is, of course, the report that Black, Apollo, and their respective spokespeople continue to cite any time Black’s affiliation with Epstein arises in the press.

I am not going to make many strong claims throughout this piece; I am going to lay out the facts and let people decide for themselves what happened. But I will tell you this: it is impossible to claim with credibility that the $158 million Black paid Epstein was entirely for legitimate services.

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The Friendship

According to Black, he met Epstein in 1996 through a mutual Wall Street friend, Elliott “Skip” Stein. Black describes it as a wholesome, New York neighborhood friendship: two rich guys who lived near each other and got breakfast, talked about philanthropy, estate planning, taxes, etc.

We don’t know as much about the early years of their relationship because it predates the email age. But two things we do know:

• In the mid-1990s, at the height of the Trump<>Epstein friendship, Black and Donald Trump took a trip to Moscow together. This appears to have coincided with Trump’s bankruptcy troubles.

• In 2003, Black was a signatory on Epstein’s 50th birthday book. He contributed a poem, writing “Wet dream and cauchemar, an architect’s wild spree.
  Moscow, Paris, Santa Fe, Alhambra East jamboree” and “Blonde, red, brunette, spread out geographically with this net of fish, just now the old man and the sea”

The first emails, and a possible insider-trading violation

The first emails we have between Black and Epstein begin in 2009, and they get off to an inauspicious start. One of the first exchanges in the record reads to me like illegal insider trading:

Hello, Leon. Jeffrey would like to know what he should do with the two million plus shares of Environmental Solutions Worldwide that FTC purchased in April of 2005. — Epstein’s assistant to Black’s assistant, 2009

FTC is Financial Trust Co., one of Epstein’s U.S. Virgin Islands entities. Leon’s assistant responds:

Leon said to hold them. Just got approval in all 50 states, including California. Orders are coming in.

Then immediately follows up:

Leon just said that actually approval hasn’t been announced yet, so you now have non-public information and should not trade, but you should know I continue to feel good about the company.

I am not a securities lawyer. But it strikes me that telling someone not to sell stock on the basis of material non-public information should be as illegal as telling them to buy or sell on that basis.

This gives us a valuable preview into that overarching world that Epstein and Leon largely inhabited: rich people helping other rich people stay rich by pushing the boundary of the law as far as it can go or violating it outright.

The Financial Relationship

The email record stays sparse between 2009 and 2012. Black isn’t much of an emailer and Epstein corresponds mostly with Black’s assistants, who appear to print his emails out to be read on paper.

But everything changes in 2012, as this is the year the relationship between Black and Epstein becomes explicitly financial, which is to say: Black starts paying Epstein millions upon millions of dollars.

The story Black tells about this is: in 2012, he had a problem with some of the trusts he had set up for his children. The way his finances were structured, the trusts were going to have to pay a lot of tax when they passed on. Black brought Epstein in to look at the documents, and Epstein – unlike all of the high-priced lawyers Black had previously hired – found a loophole that would save Black millions in taxes on these trusts.

This story might be true. Epstein did do legitimate work for his “clients,” including Black, and he did work on trust and estate planning for him.

But it is equally possible that Black has embellished this story somewhat in hindsight to justify everything that came after – including the nearly $200 million he paid out to Epstein.

Epstein’s contempt for Black’s team

What is unambiguous is that beginning in 2012, Epstein takes a far more active role in Black’s life, his businesses, and especially his family office. And one note recurs relentlessly: Epstein thinks (or tells Black he thinks) that Black’s team is highly incompetent.

I wrote you months ago that the quality of the people involved need to be upgraded.

Your family office needs a daddy. Children with good intentions are running around sniping, nitpicking with little direction.

Early on I told you I thought Tom remarkably careless. Eileen goofy and your art lawyer not well informed to say the least.

I continue to be amazed how you, Barry, and Brad share very strong detailed views without ever having one day of true experience and relying on Jocelyn and Tom’s pronouncements. I will review with you the ugly facts on the phone.

For five years you had the kind but very goofy Eileen as the sole manager of your massive accounting, legal, investments, reporting, and trusts. When I first told you in no uncertain terms that I firmly believed she was incompetent, you admonished me for speaking out of both sides of my mouth. With regard to Brad, there has never been both sides. I have consistently maintained since day one that he was highly unsuited for the job.

[Leon’s] office is sloppy and amateurish

This pattern isn’t unique in Epstein’s life. Epstein pulls a version of this with several wealthy friends: long emails accusing the other person of having an incompetent team, positioning Epstein as central and indispensable, while simultaneously claiming he doesn’t really want to be involved in their business at all, but is doing it out of friendship.

His consistent blend of friendship guilt while purporting his own business genius is at the heart of his ability to manipulate and extract.

The Plane Saga

One example of this - and the closest thing I’ve found to comedic relief in the Epstein files - is the sheer volume of emails between Epstein and Black’s team about Black buying a new plane:

“WHY ARE YOU FLYING A 15 year old plane, !”

Epstein writes, setting off a chain of hundreds of emails about Leon getting a new private jet.

Black even retains the services of a consultant to advise on the purchase and Epstein – naturally – is less than impressed:

Leon, your consultant does not understand big jets.

Epstein writes to Black after Epstein fought with the consultant (and won).

The business relationship was never papered

What is genuinely incredible across these emails, is that throughout the five-plus years that Epstein is doing work for Black, they codify their business relationship on paper just one time.

According to the Dechert report: In February 2013, Black signed an agreement with Epstein’s Southern Trust Company for $23.5 million for “services deemed appropriate by Epstein and Mr. Black in connection with estate planning matters in respect of Mr. Black’s assets and estate.” That is the entire description of the work. No dollar figures broken out by service. No deliverables. The underlying document does not appear to have been publicly released.

A few months later, in May 2013, Epstein drafted a second agreement – this one for $56.5 million, payable in five installments. Neither he nor Black appear to have ever signed it, though the unsigned document is publicly available.

So there is precisely one signed contract, one unsigned draft, and then nothing on paper at all for four-plus years and roughly $135 million in payments.

This is especially incredible because Epstein, despite receiving $170 million, is forever insistent – in long, ranting screeds – that he is not being paid nearly what he deserves. And Black – the most feared man in the most aggressive realm of finance – never has a lawyer put pen to paper to codify the business relationship with his friend who is perennially berating him for underpayment.

Of course, what the lack of paperwork allowed for is ambiguity. Particularly, ambiguity about exactly what Black was paying Epstein for. And that ambiguity is the entire ballgame. It is at the heart of why the Dechert LLP exoneration is bullshit.

There is little I won’t do for you, or at least try to do as a friend, and a great deal that I have already done (both known and some things that will need to remain unknown). -Epstein to Black, 2014

It is impossible to claim that Epstein was paid for “legitimate financial services” when it is abundantly clear that during the time Epstein worked for Black, he performed both legitimate and illegitimate services.

The Illegitimate Services

If you take nothing else from this piece, take this: Epstein was doing real tax and estate work for Black, but he was also doing very off-the-books work for Black and because the relationship was never properly papered, it is impossible for Black to credibly claim he was paying for only one and not the other.

Guzel Ganieva accused Black of rape, Epstein tried to cover it up

Guzel Ganieva is a Russian model. She met Leon Black at a Women’s Day event in New York in March 2008, when she was 23 and Black was 57.

Black’s lawyers say the two had a long-time consensual relationship; Ganieva says it was coercive from the start and violent throughout.

In 2021, Ganieva sued Black, alleging that he had inflicted violent, non-consensual sex acts on her for years and explicitly raped her in 2014.

Then, she says, he had pressured her – a year later in 2015 – into signing a Release and Confidentiality Agreement for which Black paid her £2 million for a UK visa and committed to paying her $100,000 a month for 15 years.

He DID, in fact, pay her $9.5 million over six years before she broke the NDA and went public in March 2021 at which point the payments stopped.

Ganieva has pointed out that she gave up over $10 million in payments in order to get her day in court and go public particularly, she says, to reveal Black’s sadistic nature.

Among the documents released by DOJ is a 2018 message from someone who appears to be Ganieva to Black:

Leon, you sexually harassed me, sex trafficked me, raped me, and eventually blacklisted me. I don’t know for how much longer it will take me on my own to process the pain you caused me and my family. The least thing you can do is give me that document that I was forced to sign under duress and wasn’t able to read before signing. Unfortunately, I am still tied to you. — October 2018, DOJ document release

And critically, Ganieva’s story intersects with Epstein in two central ways.

1. Ganieva says Black tried to traffic her to Epstein

Ganieva alleges that in October 2008, the same year she met Black, Black offered to take her to lunch.

Instead, he drove her to Teterboro Airport, flew her private to Palm Beach, and brought her to Jeffrey Epstein’s home.

Crucially, Epstein was, at the time, on work release from his 2008 sweetheart plea deal, serving his sentence at his Palm Beach residence during the day and at the local jail at night. Ganieva says there was a sheriff out front of the house at Palm Beach.

According to Ganieva, Sarah Kellen – Epstein’s longtime assistant – met her at the home and later threatened: “Something may happen to you” if Ganieva did not go along with Epstein and Black’s advances.

During the flight to Palm Beach, Ganieva alleges Black threatened to plant drugs on her if she didn’t comply – a threat that, for a Russian immigrant, carried obvious deportation consequences.

Ganieva says she refused to engage sexually with Epstein and Black flew her back to New York the same day, visibly angry.

Her complaint adds that during their relationship, Black told her Epstein flew “very young girls” aboard his private plane, that Epstein “takes care of the little girls” and was “doing a great job with it,” and that by 2014 – six years after the original Palm Beach trip, the same year she alleges Black raped her – Black told her: “You are too old for Epstein. He likes them young.”

2. Epstein personally worked to silence Ganieva for Black

Whatever happened, it is indisputable that by 2015, Black and people around him - including, perhaps, most prominently Epstein - were working very hard to intimidate and silence Ganieva.

In July 2015, Epstein emailed Sergei Belyakov, a Russian official, on Black’s behalf.

Epstein: How are you? I need a favor. There is a Russian girl from Moscow. She is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessmen in New York. It is very bad for business for everyone involved. She arrived in New York Saturday of last week and is staying at [the Four Seasons]. Suggestions?

Belyakov: I’m fine. Give me a few days to get information about her.

Epstein: I very much appreciate it. Hope your summer is filled with fun.

Belyakov, later: Hi, Jeffrey. Tomorrow I’m meeting with a guy who knows her / about her. If you have any details about the case you have mentioned, it could help.

Epstein: Text you tomorrow.

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We don’t know exactly what came from this exchange, but it appears that Epstein did not get particularly useful dirt to use against Ganieva.

Because instead he resorted to advising Black to threaten Ganieva merely with the fact that they had spoken to a “friend in the FSB.”

Epstein sent the following email to himself in what was almost certainly a draft message he was writing FOR Black to send to Ganieva:

I’ve decided to help you. However, I am very disappointed by the fact that you felt it necessary to threaten me.

I think you should apologize to me. You and I have been together a long time, so I know you must have been quite upset to do such an outrageous thing.

You should also know that I felt it necessary to contact some friends in the FSB and, though I did not give them your name, they explained to me in no uncertain terms that, especially now, when Russia is trying to bring in outside investors, as you know the economy sucks and desperately needs investment, a person who would attempt to blackmail a U.S. businessman would, in the 21st century, become what they termed “vrag naroda,” which in the 20th century they translated for me as “enemy of the people,” and would be dealt with extremely harshly, as it threatened the economy of the country.

So I expect never, ever to hear a threat from you again.

That being said, I think $50k per month for the next two years, and helping you get a visa, is very generous.

If you decide to stay in Moscow, it’s okay with me.

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There are several instances in the files where Epstein sends an email to himself and disproportionately it occurs when Epstein has drafted a message one someone else’ behalf. (We see this in the dynamic with Boris Nikolic and Bill Gates, for example.)

But Epstein wasn’t done.

In communications with Black’s attorney (the Epstein-file regular, Brad Karp), Epstein also recommended having Ganieva surveilled (which they did) and then attempts to extract transcripts from a secretly-recorded conversation with her.

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Some of the contents from the transcripts of these secret recordings have been reported on by Bloomberg, and in some ways, they help Black’s claim that he did not coerce Ganieva into signing an NDA: he and Ganieva appear to be negotiating about how much Black will pay her for her silence and there is explicit acknowledgment that they had a relationship for years.

However, its worth noting

1. the transcript comes from the surveillance team that Black and Epstein hired

2. I don’t feel the snippets shared by Bloomberg paint a full picture of the contents of the conversation

For example, Bloomberg notes that she says “I gave you seven years of my life.” But the full transcript says this:

I gave you seven years of my life. You were a very difficult person, you were abusive, and it was really, it was very difficult for me to be with you but I was there for you. And now after all of that, my reputation is ruined. My reputation is not 12 million to me. My reputation costs me more, and my future and my son's future.

A note on media dereliction

I am constantly confounded by the irresponsibility with which the media covers incredibly sensitive cases, like Ganieva’s.

In 2023, a New York judge dismissed Ganieva’s defamation case against Leon Black on the basis that Ganieva couldn’t bring the suit since she had signed the NDA and then subsequently accepted $9.5 million in payments from Black.

Media outlets covering this news – and The New York Post, most egregiously – framed this information such that most readers would have the impression that Black had been exonerated of the rape claim.

Of course, he wasn’t at all.

Dismissal of a defamation lawsuit on procedural grounds has ZERO BEARING on whether Black raped Ganieva.

This kind of damaging reporting recurs throughout this story.

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And after all of this (the threatening emails, the surveillance, etc), Epstein was handsomely paid. In 2015, Black paid Epstein $30 million across several payments made in October and December of that year.

Now, Epstein does appear to have done legitimate tax work for Black in 2015, but in an email from 2018, Epstein explicitly acknowledges that such legitimate tax work was put on hold so that he could dedicate “daily” work to handling Black’s rape accuser:

FYI, two months later we were dealing on a daily basis with Guzel issues, and the transaction was put on the back burner.

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This is Epstein openly saying that in 2015 – a year in which Black paid Epstein $30 million – Epstein had stepped away from the ~legitimate~ tax work he was doing (“the transaction”) for Black to put “daily” focus on digging up dirt on Ganieva.

Epstein pulls more strings inside the federal government to “keep Black safe”

Then there’s the story of Anna, identified as an Eastern European model in subsequent reporting, who met Black through Epstein. She has not accused Black of rape (at least not publicly), but Black paid her over $3 million across several years.

In 2017, those payments appeared to have triggered an IRS audit of Black and his business.

Once again, Epstein stepped in: irritated, controlling, and apparently capable, as always, of pulling strings in the federal government. In August 2017 he wrote to Black:

Anna’s situation is emblematic of my warnings and advice that it appears still continues to go unheeded. I have repeatedly told you that these girls all want to show how clever they are. They come from countries where taxes are rarely paid, and on top of that, they have no experience with real rules, money, or business. They often push the envelope beyond the pale, unfortunately usually ending up getting the principal in serious trouble, sometimes by design. I assume not in this case, though she would not be unhappy to see [Black’s wife, Debra] find out about it.

Epstein closed the email with the line that matters most:

As of now, I do not have an easy, timely solution to even propose re: A[nna]. A needle has to be carefully threaded between ugly alternatives. There are many considerations. Putting the toothpaste back in the tube — unlikely. Most of the solutions, not for email.

Most of the solutions, not for email.

Whatever those solutions were, it appears that one of them worked.

Eight months after that August 2017 email to Black, Epstein again emailed Black’s attorney Brad Karp:

Issues are simple. One: he has been kept safe to date only as a result of my maniacal devotion to friends. The Anna interview was canceled after it was on the official request.

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In short, the IRS had scheduled an official interview with Anna as part of their audit of Black’s payments to her and their suspicion that it was part of a tax fraud. Epstein, however, got the interview cancelled, in a manner that appears to be “not [fit] for [writing in an] email.”

In 2017, this same year, Black paid Epstein $8 million.

Black didn’t pay Epstein directly for trafficking women + girls, but he paid Epstein despite likely knowing that women and girls were being trafficked

This, then, brings us to the final accusation against Black.

There is not evidence to suggest that Leon Black paid Epstein directly for access to young women and girls.

Epstein and Ghislaine have been accused of trafficking both women and girls to Black starting as early as the early 2000s which is at least 10 years before Epstein was ever paid by Black (as far as we know).

However, that does not mean that the two phenomena can be cleanly separated.

There is at least one accusation of attempted trafficking from Epstein to Black that took place in 2011/2012, which coincides with a timeframe in which Black was paying Black.

But in general, a more accurate summary of the situation is likely that Epstein provided women and girls to Black as a way to ingratiate himself with the business titan, rather than for direct payments.

Epstein repeatedly referenced the “unique friendship” he shared with Black – one he, of course, managed to monetize and benefitted from broadly.

The young women and girls in his orbit were an essential part of the strategy that ultimately allowed Epstein to extract millions of dollars from Black in the mid 2000s.

And the stories that these women and girls have told about Leon Black are particularly harrowing and hard to read, so be warned.

Let’s go through them:

Cheri Pierson

Cheri came forward publicly in November 2022 when she filed a lawsuit against Black under New York’s Adult Survivors Act lookback window.

Her account is: in 1999 she was a single mother in New Jersey, working as a receptionist, and in significant credit-card debt. A Ukrainian colleague told her about a rich man who liked to help women financially.

Soon she received a call from a woman named Ghislaine Maxwell urging her to come meet Epstein. She did. Epstein paid her $300 for a 20-minute “bikini massage,” and over the following months she gave him several more at $300 each. Epstein pressured her for sex acts, which she refused.

Then, in 2002, Epstein began talking to her about a powerful, wealthy man who could help her start a skincare line. She said he wouldn’t tell her the man’s name because the man was married and it would be up to him to disclose it. In the spring of 2002 she went to the townhouse and met Leon Black. Black took her to a third-floor massage suite and, she alleges, raped her.

The detail in her complaint that has drawn the most attention is also the hardest to read: she alleges that Black bit her violently during the assault, causing her to bleed and causing excruciating pain. (This detail will recur.)

Pierson alleged Black later called her – though she never gave him her number – and met her at the St. Regis in New York, where he handed her an envelope with $5,000 in cash, which he framed as help with her debt. She describes it as a test. She also alleges that Epstein implied to her that there had been a camera in the bathroom off the massage room and that he had “seen” her – a clear surveillance threat.

The case was dismissed with prejudice in February 2024 and no details about why have been released.

Victim Three

Victim three has not come forward publicly, but the details of her case mean she must be distinct from both Cheri Pierson and Guzel Ganieva. She appears in FBI notes from a federal interview, where she described being directed by Epstein to give Black a massage, that Black then initiated sexual contact during the massage, and that she ran out of the room.

This account is significant because the same woman, in the same FBI interview, also alleged that Jes Staley – Epstein’s longtime private banker at JPMorgan, currently named in his own pile of Epstein-related litigation – raped her during a massage at the same townhouse.

Her encounter with Black is dated to 2011 or 2012, which could theoretically place her within a time frame in which Black was actively paying Epstein.

Jane Doe

Jane Doe alleges she was 16 years old when Black raped her, making this the first underage allegation to surface in a lawsuit. She sued Black in the Southern District of New York in July 2023.

Doe says she is autistic, was adopted, and was uniquely vulnerable. She alleges that in late spring or early summer 2002 – the same window as Pierson’s allegation – she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to Black at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. Like Pierson, she says Black bit her.

Doe also alleges much more: that between 2001 and 2004 she was forced to have sex with 25 different men, that she was videotaped at a hotel during an incident involving six men, that she was forced to be with three of them.

Doe has produced handwritten journals that she says she kept between the ages of 16 and 19. One passage reads: “the fat fuck bit me,” referring to Black, with her noting she got blood on Jeffrey’s carpet. If real, this is extraordinarily compelling evidence. It’s veracity has not been confirmed, however. A judge in SDNY ordered a forensic examination of the ink to date the journals but the results were inconclusive.

Internal notes from a 2023 call between the Manhattan DA’s office and the FBI document the DA’s assessment that they “do not doubt her allegations against JE [Jeffrey Epstein] and LB [Leon Black],” but add that “they have not found any independent corroboration.”

And this is where things get tricky.

Because I think it is entirely possible that Jane Doe’s core allegations (that she was raped by Leon Black) are true. But there are also genuine credibility questions that have been raised about Jane Doe, and they have been raised by attorneys on her own side.

• Doe was initially awarded $2.5 million from an Epstein survivors’ fund. That amount was reduced to $200,000 by Judge Rakoff over concerns she may have been defrauding the fund.

• Brad Edwards – the attorney who represents many Epstein victims, including in the JPMorgan and Epstein-estate class actions – has, according to Guardian reporting, said that key elements of Doe’s story cannot be true. He cross-examined her in a private court session during the fund inquiry.

• Her own lawyer, Jeanne Christensen – who represented and consulted with Ganieva and Pierson – has since dropped Jane Doe as a client.

• Christensen (the lawyer) and Doe were sanctioned by Judge Jessica Clarke (who is overseeing Doe’s case) for deleting one of Doe’s social media accounts and for fabricating three of eleven sonogram photographs included in journals that Doe says she kept between the ages of 16 and 19.

That is a meaningful pile of credibility problems.

And yet – and this is important – Judge Clarke also ruled that her case against Black can proceed.

“The crux of this action is whether defendant Leon Black raped and assaulted plaintiff,” Judge Clarke wrote.

“None of the lies and fabrications substantively bear on this central issue.”

And this, of course, is important.

Because once again, media stories have covered this in a way that could leave one with the impression that Leon Black has already been exonerated of rape which is not the case.

Three Women/Girls and a Biting Ritual

The recurring claim that Black is violent is one of the most important to understand.

Here is an email from August 2021 between attorney Jeanne Christensen and federal officials.

Around 9:30 this morning, I received a call from a woman who now lives in [redacted] who told me she wanted to speak to me. She said that Leon Black raped her violently years ago and has never told anyone about it other than a friend. The woman this morning basically told me about the same biting ritual and that she could not breathe. She was in so much pain. It is too abnormal to make up. She does not know my client. This person is [blank] and says it happened in 2001 at Epstein’s townhouse. She gave massages there and Black was one of them. She said she never had sex with Epstein.

Christensen adds, pointedly: “There is nothing publicly out there about the details of his specific sex acts with our client. There’s no way she could know.”

Christensen is saying that she has spoken to two individual women - who did not know each other and could not have known the details of each other’s stories - both alleging the same kind of specific violence by Black as he raped them.

The evidence suggests these two women were Guzel Ganieva and Cheri Pierson, though it is possible Christensen is referencing yet another victim who has not publicly come forward.

This remains compelling evidence against Black, in my view:

A private email to federal officials by an attorney saying that two women – independent of each other, and independent of Jane Doe, who also made a biting claim – described the same specific, violent biting assault.

The U.S. Virgin Islands Settlement

It is, for me, impossible to believe that after all the time they spent together, all the public reporting of Epstein’s crimes, and the allegations against Black himself that Black did not know that Epstein was a predator and sex trafficker and yet he paid him $170 million regardless.

A critical question then becomes: in addition to the litigation brought by individual women, could Leon Black be charged federally as a co-conspirator or in some other way as an enabler to Epstein’s sex trafficking operation?

And, in fact, this is exactly what the Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands started to do before settling with Black for $62.5 million.

In January 2021, then-USVI Attorney General, Denise George – who would later be removed from her position when she continued to pursue Epstein co-conspirators – subpoena’ed Black as part of the USVI’s investigation into Epstein’s trafficking operation on Little St. James. The subpoena demanded all of Black’s communications with Epstein and his associates going back to 1998, plus records of his trips to the island.

How much of this Black actually produced before settling the case is unclear.

The case the AG’s office was building, however, was clear: it would argue that the $158–$170 million Black paid Epstein had helped fund the trafficking operation. The USVI noted explicitly, in legal filings, that

“Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations in the Virgin Islands.”

In January 2023, Black settled with the USVI for $62.5 million, with $15 million of that earmarked for counseling and mental-health services on the islands. The agreement explicitly states it cannot be used as evidence of wrongdoing – meaning a US federal case, for example, could not introduce it. But the rest of us, in the court of public opinion, are free to make our own assessment of what it means.

Where This Leaves Us

As mentioned at the top, Black is reportedly testifying before the House Oversight Committee on June 26th. If this is a public hearing, it will give us an opportunity to hear Black discuss his relationship with Epstein under oath. We can compare his public statements to the private record we are now privy to.

But there are other ways to get accountability, if one believes Black is guilty. Here is a summary of what has happened to Black, so far, as a result of his Epstein friendship and what is still active:

• Black was forced to step down from the Apollo board and from his MoMA chairmanship.

• Jane Doe’s lawsuit is proceeding. I have flagged my reservations about the case, but I will be watching it closely to see what additional information comes out

• The Senate Finance Committee, led by Ron Wyden, continues to investigate Black. Wyden’s particular angle of approach is tax fraud: the argument is that the $170 million Black paid Epstein was not in fact for “legitimate financial services” in the amounts claimed, but were effectively gifts on which Black therefore owes substantial tax.

I will continue to follow this story as it evolves and welcome any reader insights or feedback.

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This was originally a video report I published to YouTube. It has 460,000 views, and counting. You can check it out here.

“I Represent the Rothschilds”

What Epstein actually meant when he told Peter Thiel that line – and how three generations of Rothschilds shaped Epstein’s career.

The Rothschild family is one of the most speculated about, talked about families in the world. And for good reason. They are unbelievably wealthy. They have been unbelievably wealthy for centuries. And members of the family have been at the center of many important world events — perhaps most famously as prominent early Zionists, incredibly influential in the creation of the state of Israel.

This is, of course, catnip for social media, which will speculate wildly and endlessly about the Rothschilds’ continued influence in global affairs. The recent revelation that “the Rothschilds” and Epstein were close has only served as more fuel for this fire:

Epstein told Peter Thiel: “I represent the Rothschilds.”

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Now, on the flip side, many media outlets have actually under-reported the relationship between Epstein and the Rothschilds. A recent Telegraph article, for example, takes pains to stress that Ariane de Rothschild — currently the head of the Edmond de Rothschild bank — has previously understated the depth of her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. But the article fails to mention that on top of that, Ariane de Rothschild and her bank paid Jeffrey Epstein $25 million in 2015. And that many members of the Rothschild family have been at the center of some of the most important and influential relationships in Epstein’s life and career.

Given the respective power of both Epstein and the Rothschilds, this is an interesting history to probe (and I’m probing everybody in the Epstein files so this is next on the list). Let’s get into it.

Who the Rothschilds Are (Briefly)

The Rothschilds are a German banking family whose roots go back centuries. They ultimately set up very prominent banks in five major European capitals. Many of those branches and family lineages died off over time – and not just because of all the inbreeding they did, like so many of their brethren in the elite circles of the 1700s and 1800s – it was also due to regular European wars.

This left the two most prominent branches of the family as the British branch and the French branch. The French branch ultimately went on to start the Edmond de Rothschild Group, which was headed up by Benjamin de Rothschild until 2015, when he stepped down due to a drug addiction. Power passed to his wife, Ariane de Rothschild, who is arguably the most important player in our story.

But she’s not where this story starts.

The First Thread: Elie de Rothschild and Les Wexner

This story starts in the 1980s, when Epstein began doing work for Les Wexner — arguably the most influential person in Epstein’s life. Wexner was Epstein’s largest benefactor (followed closely by Leon Black), and perhaps the person who changed the trajectory of his career more than anyone else. It is from Wexner that Epstein managed to extract $200 million in payments (some of it possibly stolen), plus a whole plethora of real estate assets.

Wexner has claimed his relationship with Epstein started when he received a recommendation, a reference, from Elie de Rothschild — who was in his sixties or seventies at the time — claiming Epstein had done work for the Rothschild family.

This would have been in the early-to-mid 1980s. Epstein was in his late 20s and had been a banker at Bear Stearns, a job from which he was fired.

But by the mid 1980s he was working with a British arms dealer named Douglas Leese and was, perhaps, involved in Middle Eastern weapons trading, the Iran-Contra scandal, and working for or alongside American and Israeli intelligence agencies. I cover the evidence for this here, without overdramatizing it.

Regardless, there remains a very real question around what work Epstein would have done or would be doing for the Rothschilds at this point in his life (failed banker in his late 20s…).

The Second Thread: Edmond de Rothschild and the Mysterious Debt

Then there’s Edmond de Rothschild. What’s fascinating about Edmond, who was the father to Benjamin de Rothschild (the former head of Edmond de Rothschild bank who stepped down due to drug addiction) and the father-in-law to Ariane, is that I can find virtually no reporting, no accounting at all of a relationship between Epstein and Edmond de Rothschild. It’s made more complicated by the fact that Edmond de Rothschild is also the name of the bank he started, the group now run by Ariane. So Googling about the relationship between the men is difficult as you are wading through a LOT of information about Epstein and the bank…

Regardless, I can find nothing about a relationship between the two.

And yet, early on, when Epstein was first… let’s say “collecting” Ariane de Rothschild in 2013, he emails her very clearly to say he doesn’t want anything from her. He has no financial interest in her. (He’ll ultimately extract $25 million from her... He’s very good at what he does… but we’ll get there.) He simply wants to be her friend, because:

He owes a debt to Edmond.

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(The “Edmonde” he mentions here is, almost certainly, Edmond de Rothschild, with his first name misspelled as Epstein so often did.)

So this is… interesting. What is a debt so large that a person would spend years advising someone (Ariane) about how to structure her business, how to do deals, how to navigate legal challenges with other branches of her family, while expecting nothing in return?

It could also be the case that Epstein was lying to Ariane; telling her that he owed a debt to her father-in-law as a manipulation tactic. He may have wanted to preemptively ward off any suspicion de Rothschild might have had about his motives by telling her I owe a debt to your father-in-law, that’s why I’m doing this.

The Third Thread: Lynn Forester de Rothschild

The next Rothschild who matters here is Lynn de Rothschild — Lynn Forester, originally — who appeared to have a very close relationship with Epstein in the 1990s, which she has, like everyone, tried to distance herself from.

But consider these facts:

Ghislaine Maxwell (take her word however you want) said in her interview with Todd Blanche, the then Deputy Attorney General of the United States, last year:

There were other people that Epstein would assist. I know that he helped Lynn Forester, who became Lynn de Rothschild. She’ll deny it, and she has — but she, she can’t. I have no idea what he did for her. I know he helped her financially. Her husband was the controller of New York.

Lynn de Rothschild has, in fact, denied this.

But Ghislaine isn’t the only one citing the closeness of their relationship. Alan Dershowitz — the incredibly controversial Harvard law professor who ultimately defended Jeffrey Epstein during his 2008 sweetheart plea deal (the one in which the real depth of Epstein’s sex trafficking was completely swept under the rug), Dershowitz says he met Epstein in the 1990s through his friend Lady Rothschild (Lynn de Rothschild).

Moreover, the New York Times reports that Epstein’s first known connection to Microsoft dates to 1996, when there was a gala thrown there and Lynn Forester, now Lynn de Rothschild, brought Mr. Epstein as her guest.

The Microsoft-Epstein relationship became a pivotal and important one for Epstein through the years. There’s the Bill Gates connection, of course. But it wasn’t just Gates. Steve Sinofsky, who ran Microsoft Windows, became a close confidant and pawn as part of Epstein’s world. Microsoft, more than almost any other company, was one Epstein was able to very thoroughly penetrate to his benefit.

And the origin of that relationship traces back to Lynn Forester, who would become Lady de Rothschild.

So if you’re keeping track at home: we now have Rothschilds who played some role in introducing Epstein to Les Wexner (his largest benefactor), Alan Dershowitz (his attorney), and Microsoft (his largest corporate connection, I’d argue). And that’s all before we get to the fact that Epstein himself claimed he owed a large debt to Edmond de Rothschild — the relationship about which we know almost nothing.

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Ariane

Which brings us to Ariane de Rothschild — the relationship about which we know the most because, unlike the others, it began in the email age.

Epstein and Ariane met in 2013. They were introduced by Terje Rød-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat, and Olivier Colom, a former French diplomat and advisor to ex President, Nicolas Sarkozy, of France.

And immediately, in the emails, you can see Epstein senses opportunity. Epstein puts in a lot of work — again, for which he’s not being paid — cultivating a relationship with de Rothschild: making her feel good, safe, and valued.

A couple months after Epstein + de Rothschild met, Colom emailed Epstein:

Colom: What did you do to Ariane…?

Epstein: listened

Colom: She loved it. And you put your finger on things that matter to her.

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And this, it turns out, is a perfect distillation of what Epstein did brilliantly well: He listened - really listened - and then used what he heard to get what he wanted.

He figured what Ariane cared about, what mattered to her, where her pain points were, and he started to help to solve them (or at least give her the impression he was helping to solve them)

Because here’s a really important point that gets lost: Epstein gave these people actual advice.

The notion that Epstein’s fortune was gained entirely illegitimately is at least partly untrue.

Now whether or not he gave good advice? I’m not well placed to judge.

What I can say, is that he was masterful at making his targets (and by that I mean “clients” and “friends”) feel that he cared deeply about them. He tended to them with detailed precision.

Within the first month of meeting Epstein, de Rothschild mentioned her neck hurt in an email. A couple days later, Epstein emailed her: “How’s the neck?”

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He also sent her detailed thoughts on how she might restructure the Edmond de Rothschild bank; telling her he was putting a lot of thought into different strategies she could use. “Let’s get on the phone,” was a common refrain. In fact, most of their 6,000+ emails are about coordinating phone calls.

Their relationship also grew deeply personal. de Rothschild’s husband, Benjamin, was a drug addict (he has since passed away) and he was running the bank until she took it over in 2015 – a process Epstein was around for at every step.

“You never have to hide from me,” Epstein told her, as she opened up about how bad her marital situation was becoming.

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Reading through their emails, it is not hard to understand how Epstein wove his way so deeply into de Rothschild’s life. At every turn, he presents himself as a comforting partner and confidant who - unlike, I imagine, most of the other people in her life - wasn’t looking for anything from her in return…

Until He WAS Looking for Something from Her

In 2014–2015, the DOJ started to sniff around Edmond de Rothschild bank — along with a number of other foreign banks, Swiss banks in particular — for their role in helping wealthy Americans hide assets in Swiss accounts, evading taxes and money laundering.

And when Edmond de Rothschild became one of the banks in the DOJ’s crosshairs, Ariane de Rothschild – who would, during the same time period as the DOJ investigation, end up taking over as CEO of the bank – immediately turned to Epstein for help. Epstein, in turn, introduced Ariane to Kathryn Ruemmler, who had just stepped down from her post as White House Chief Counsel to President Obama.

Back to 2014–2015. Epstein introduced de Rothschild to recently departed Obama White House Chief Counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, and the timeline here becomes very important:

• Ruemmler stepped down from her post as White House Chief Counsel in June 2014.

• Epstein introduced her to Ariane de Rothschild in September 2014.

• Throughout 2015, Edmond de Rothschild bank was in active negotiations with the American DOJ to settle the allegation that they helped wealthy Americans hide assets from US authorities.

• A final settlement / deal between the DOJ and Edmond de Rothschild bank was announced in December 2015.

• The settlement / deal profited Epstein $25 million.

• The settlement / deal profited Ruemmler millions of dollars. It appears she split $10 million with another lawyer, though its not clear exactly what that split was.

Now: There are so many issues with this!!

Let’s start with Ruemmler.

The Ruemmler Statute

(*not its real name! It’s 18 U.S. Code § 207)

There’s a statute in the US criminal code that imposes a two-year restriction on former very senior executive branch personnel from “making communications to, or appearances before,” certain kinds of other government officials.

The point of this statute is to prevent corruption, to prevent very senior members of the executive branch from leaving office and immediately doing a bunch of shady things (like, say, helping foreign nationals fight the government with the knowledge they gained as deep insiders in the government).

One of the signatories to the deal between Edmond de Rothschild bank and the DOJ, which Kathryn Ruemmler helped to negotiate for Edmond de Rothschild, is Caroline Ciraolo, an Assistant Attorney General and exactly the kind of “schedule executive” that “very senior members” of the executive branch are supposed to be barred from making communications to, or appearances before with for two years after leaving their positions in the white house.

The agreement between Edmond de Rothschild bank and the DOJ, signed in 2015 by both Kathryn Ruemmler and Caroline Ciraolo.

And this raises a number of questions, most fundamental of which is: did Kathryn Ruemmler violate 18 U.S. Code § 207 when she worked on behalf of Ariane de Rothschild and Edmond de Rothschild bank against the US DOJ starting in 2014 and continuing throughout all of 2015?

The answer appears to be “no” but for reasons that are not altogether comforting.

One of the qualifications to be considered “very senior” in the executive branch – thereby disqualifying you from certain work for 2 years after you leave office – is if your salary at the White House was at or above $181,500 a year.

This chart is from 2014. The fact that it says “for CY 2012” in one place under “Very Senior Employees” is a typo, as the Very Senior Employee threshold pay in 2012 was actually $179,700, not $181,500. You can see that everywhere else “CY 2014” is correctly written.

Ruemmler, as White House Chief Counsel — the most senior lawyer to the President of the United States — was making $172,200 a year.

Roughly $9,000 under the threshold.

What’s crazy about this is she was one of the highest paid people in the executive branch, and the most senior lawyer to the president. If that is not “very senior,” what is?

If I were to conspirize about anything, it would be that the salaries were set specifically with the intention of evading this kind of rule (18 U.S. Code § 207) — to allow these people to leave office and immediately go into the private sector and make their $10 million representing a foreign bank and a foreign national against the DOJ, so the foreign bank gets less of a slap on the wrist for helping rich Americans evade taxes, all while doing it alongside a convicted sex offender.

I don’t know that that’s what happened. But I do know that it absolutely feels like the spirit of 18 U.S. Code § 207 was violated when Kathryn Ruemmler worked with Ariane de Rothschild negotiating against the DOJ.

And it was done alongside Jeffrey Epstein.

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The $25 Million Payday

And so this becomes the second thread in this deal that is worth pulling on. Because — I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again — the 2008 plea deal Epstein got was so shady, with so many lies embedded in it, that I do not blame every individual who corresponded with Epstein after 2008. He convincingly lied to many people about what the reality of that situation was, and the legal record did not show the full reality at the time.

So I don’t entirely blame de Rothschild for continuing to have a social, even advisory relationship, with somebody she believed was creating a lot of value for her.

I do, however, feel it is entirely inappropriate that she allowed the bank — her bank — to pay this convicted sex offender $25 million. Especially when you look at how the payment was structured.

In July 2015, Epstein emailed Ruemmler:

i went through with ariane. fee issues. complicated. no free cash. what do you think of the following: ariane pays southern trust (my co). based on final settlement with DOJ. payment between 150-20 = 5 million, 100-150 = 10 million, under 100 = 25 million. do you see any legal issues?

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According to this, if the final settlement with the DOJ was under $100 million, Epstein stood to make a maximum amount of money: $25 million.

And, that’s exactly what he got. The final settlement with the DOJ, in December 2015, was $45 million, well under that $100 million threshold.

And Epstein got his big pay day.

What’s interesting, however, is that just a few months ago, a story came out in Le Monde about the relationship between Ariane de Rothschild and Epstein. Le Monde’s reporter interviewed a senior member of the Edmond de Rothschild group who was there at the time of the DOJ settlement:

The US authorities wanted $80 million. Then, thanks to Kathryn Ruemmler, the bill was cut in half. After that, Epstein became much more prominent in the group. Everything seemed more or less subject to his strategic thinking.

This is a very interesting revelation for several reasons.

One, it reinforces the centrality of Epstein + Ruemmler in creating benefit for a foreign bank against the DOJ.

It also, if true, means that even DOJ’s starting point in the negotiation – $80 million – was already below the $100M threshold at which Epstein would have received his maximum payout. So Epstein had structured an elaborate, tiered deal, which might have been nothing more smoke and mirrors: he was guaranteed his big payout regardless.

And because of a court proceeding that made much of this public, we can see the $25 million flowing into Epstein’s coffers.

The Ehud Barak Email

So Epstein ultimately got exactly what I imagine he wanted out of a relationship with somebody like Ariane de Rothschild. He was able to extract financially, but he was also able to bask in the social glow that his affiliation with the Rothschilds (“I represent the Rothschilds”) got him.

Which brings us back to Peter Thiel and that email.

In 2013, Epstein emailed Ehud Barak, a former Israeli Prime Minister and former Minister of Defense, and a very close friend to Epstein.

Epstein: my thoughts were confirmed , when it was said to me , if Ehud wants to make serious money, he will have to build a relationship with me. take time so that we can truly understand one another . I just listened.

Barak: Who said it?

Epstein: Rothschild

Barak: I’m ready. But I need your advise re HOW? ( ladies is your forte). EB

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Now… you want to talk about fodder for the conspiracy theorists. The idea that a Rothschild told Epstein to tell a former Prime Minister of Israel that if he wants to “make serious money,” he has to go through her… ? I could get 20,000 likes on that Tweet if I positioned it correctly.

But I don’t want to do simply the shock-value version of this. I want to be more thoughtful and diligent than that. And the truth is, we don’t know the context in which this was said. Maybe Ehud was trying to do business with European banks specifically.

What we DO know, however, is that Barak seemed to take this advice to heart. A couple years after this email, Barak was heavily invested in and on the board of a start-up called Reporty (now named Carbyne) — an Israeli technology company building software for police and emergency responders — and he sought an investment from Ariane de Rothschild, which Epstein was helping to facilitate.

At the same time, Epstein (who also invested in Reporty, through Barak) was discussing the company with Peter Thiel and searching for investment from Thiel’s venture fund Valar.

It was around this same time that Epstein wrote his: “I represent the Rothschilds” email.

Where I Land on Everything

When it comes to Epstein’s claim to Thiel, specifically, I interpret it largely as an attempt at short-hand, hyperbolic credentialing by Epstein to try and “collect” Thiel for himself.

The “Rothschilds” are not, in fact, one monolithic unit, as evidenced by the fact that Epstein was at different points helping Ariane de Rothschild in legal and business battles against both other members of the Rothschild family (largely members of the British Rothschilds) and her husband, Benjamin, who is a Rothschild by birth (unlike Ariane who is a Rothschild through marriage).

This alone means that a claim to “represent the Rothschilds” is fairly ridiculous.

At the same time, it is irrefutable that Epstein had meaningful involvement with and benefitted tremendously from Rothschilds for no less than 40 years.

That is a remarkably consequential relationship to have had with members of one family, given how little information we as the public really have about Epstein’s work for the family in the 1980s and the debt he may have owed them since.

One of the things I’ve been intermittently doing is ranking every person in the Epstein files on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how guilty I think they are.

When I initially made the video version of this report, I gave Ariane herself a 4, on the basis that I saw nothing in the emails that led me to feel she could or should have known about the sex trafficking (that is not the case for many other people, of course, where even the emails we have clearly seem to hint at entirely inappropriate behavior).

And while I largely stand by that assessment - de Rothschild is a mother to four daughters and Epstein was savvy enough to not want to present a predatory version of himself to de Rothschild – I have slightly revised my assessment based on how often de Rothschild visited Epstein’s homes in New York and Paris, where I imagine she had to have seen the many naked images of young women/girls and, even, the young women and girls themselves.

Also since I made my video report, Edmond de Rothschild bank was raided by French police as part of an investigation into a French diplomat named Fabrice Aida and the bank put out a statement saying that it was “monitoring the situation” after Epstein and de Rothschild’s emails were revealed.

If you’re new here: I’m working through the most important people in Epstein’s orbit one by one. Subscribe if you want the rest of the series delivered as I publish them.

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