The Epstein Chronicles

Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly leveraged his access to Bill Clinton during the late 1990s to act as an unofficial, shadow lobbyist for Les Wexner, pressing for changes to U.S. trade policy that would directly benefit Wexner’s retail empire. Epstein used his proximity to Clinton—cultivated through donor circles, private meetings, and international trips—to raise concerns about tariffs, import restrictions, and manufacturing rules affecting apparel companies reliant on overseas production. According to reporting and later disclosures, Epstein framed these efforts as economic modernization and competitiveness, but in practice they aligned neatly with Wexner’s business interests, particularly his dependence on low-c...

Jean-Luc Brunel filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein in 2015, presenting himself not as a co-conspirator but as a victim of Epstein’s alleged manipulation and betrayal. Brunel claimed that Epstein deliberately destroyed his modeling business and personal reputation by steering law enforcement scrutiny, civil accusations, and public suspicion in his direction in order to shield himself. The suit argued that Epstein used Brunel as a convenient fall guy once his own criminal exposure became unavoidable, allowing Epstein to quietly sacrifice a longtime associate to preserve his own freedom and elite connections. Brunel alleged that Epstein had exercised financial leverage, co...

In the 2017 video deposition of Courtney E. Wild, taken as part of the civil case Epstein v. Rothstein in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, Wild testified under oath about her personal background, criminal history, and relevant circumstances before the court began substantive questions. The early portion of the deposition focuses on Wild’s identity and personal history, including her marriage, family situation, and her own past convictions, including a drug trafficking conviction for which she was serving a sentence at the Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida at the time of the deposition. Wild was sworn in and answered ba...

In the 2017 video deposition of Courtney E. Wild, taken as part of the civil case Epstein v. Rothstein in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, Wild testified under oath about her personal background, criminal history, and relevant circumstances before the court began substantive questions. The early portion of the deposition focuses on Wild’s identity and personal history, including her marriage, family situation, and her own past convictions, including a drug trafficking conviction for which she was serving a sentence at the Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida at the time of the deposition. Wild was sworn in and answered ba...

In the 2017 video deposition of Courtney E. Wild, taken as part of the civil case Epstein v. Rothstein in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, Wild testified under oath about her personal background, criminal history, and relevant circumstances before the court began substantive questions. The early portion of the deposition focuses on Wild’s identity and personal history, including her marriage, family situation, and her own past convictions, including a drug trafficking conviction for which she was serving a sentence at the Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida at the time of the deposition. Wild was sworn in and answered ba...

Netflix’s Scoop, a high-profile dramatic film about Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC Newsnight interview — the 2019 broadcast in which he attempted to explain his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — was announced and released to significant attention as it revisits a moment that helped derail his public life. The film, based on Sam McAlister’s memoir Scoops and starring roles by Gillian Anderson, Billie Piper, and Rufus Sewell, retells how BBC producers secured the interview and how that event unfolded on camera, showing the palace negotiations and Andrew’s statements that were widely panned and mocked. Scoop dropped on Netflix on A...

Jeffrey Epstein’s entanglement with Leon Black and Larry Summers runs through the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation and its flagship project, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), born out of the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis. Black, the billionaire Apollo founder, bankrolled INET with roughly $25 million and installed himself as its chief patron, while Summers — fresh off his controversial presidency at Harvard and a career bouncing between Wall Street and Washington — became one of its intellectual faces. Epstein, already a convicted sex offender by 2008, quietly emerged as a financial conduit and behind-the-scenes broker for INET and its affiliates, using donor...

Judge Jed Rakoff approved a $290 million settlement between JPMorgan Chase and Jeffrey Epstein's victims, emphasizing that the case sent a strong message to the financial industry about the responsibilities of banking institutions. The settlement, which did not require JPMorgan to admit liability, resolved claims that the bank ignored red flags to maintain Epstein as a client, benefiting from his illegal activities from 1998 to 2013.The approval came after a last-minute challenge from 16 state attorneys general who objected to a clause in the settlement that prevented future claims by any "sovereign or government" on behalf of the victims. They argued...

Judge Jed Rakoff approved a $290 million settlement between JPMorgan Chase and Jeffrey Epstein's victims, emphasizing that the case sent a strong message to the financial industry about the responsibilities of banking institutions. The settlement, which did not require JPMorgan to admit liability, resolved claims that the bank ignored red flags to maintain Epstein as a client, benefiting from his illegal activities from 1998 to 2013.The approval came after a last-minute challenge from 16 state attorneys general who objected to a clause in the settlement that prevented future claims by any "sovereign or government" on behalf of the victims. They argued...

Judge Jed Rakoff approved a $290 million settlement between JPMorgan Chase and Jeffrey Epstein's victims, emphasizing that the case sent a strong message to the financial industry about the responsibilities of banking institutions. The settlement, which did not require JPMorgan to admit liability, resolved claims that the bank ignored red flags to maintain Epstein as a client, benefiting from his illegal activities from 1998 to 2013.The approval came after a last-minute challenge from 16 state attorneys general who objected to a clause in the settlement that prevented future claims by any "sovereign or government" on behalf of the victims. They argued...

Ken Starr’s involvement on Jeffrey Epstein’s legal team marked a decisive turning point in how Epstein was treated by the justice system. As a former U.S. Solicitor General and a figure deeply embedded in elite legal and political circles, Ken Starr brought instant credibility and institutional weight to Epstein’s defense. His presence signaled to prosecutors that Epstein was not just another criminal defendant but someone backed by establishment power capable of applying pressure at the highest levels. Starr’s role was not merely symbolic. He was instrumental in shaping the posture of Epstein’s legal strategy, helping fr...

In December 2010, Prince Andrew was photographed taking a casual stroll through New York’s Central Park alongside Jeffrey Epstein—just days after Epstein had completed a 13-month jail sentence for soliciting sex from a minor. The image, captured by a paparazzo and later published globally, showed the Duke of York walking shoulder-to-shoulder with a convicted sex offender, deep in conversation. The timing of the meeting and the relaxed nature of their interaction sent shockwaves through Buckingham Palace and ignited a public firestorm, as it contradicted any attempt to downplay the depth of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein. Far from a mere s...

Dr. Melanie Walker is a trained neurosurgeon who, in the late 1990s, served as a science advisor to Jeffrey Epstein. She reportedly met Epstein in the early 1990s and, in 1998, while completing post-doctoral work at Caltech, accepted that role—helping him identify and connect with academics whose work he might fund, thus facilitating his access to elite intellectual circles. Despite her advisory connection, Walker has not been accused of any wrongdoing or involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities.In the 2000s, Walker transitioned into philanthropy and global development. She held significant roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Founda...

Prince Andrew’s latest attempt at image rehabilitation was widely seen as one of his most brazen moves yet: quietly positioning his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, as emotional intermediaries to plead his case to King Charles III. Rather than confront the consequences of his own conduct directly, Andrew reportedly leaned on familial sympathy, allowing his daughters to emphasize his supposed remorse, isolation, and mistreatment behind palace doors. The maneuver was viewed by many as a calculated effort to soften the King’s resolve by reframing Andrew not as a disgraced royal linked to Jeffrey Epstein, but as a woun...

In the 2017 video deposition of Courtney E. Wild, taken as part of the civil case Epstein v. Rothstein in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, Wild testified under oath about her personal background, criminal history, and relevant circumstances before the court began substantive questions. The early portion of the deposition focuses on Wild’s identity and personal history, including her marriage, family situation, and her own past convictions, including a drug trafficking conviction for which she was serving a sentence at the Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida at the time of the deposition. Wild was sworn in and answered ba...

In the 2017 video deposition of Courtney E. Wild, taken as part of the civil case Epstein v. Rothstein in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, Wild testified under oath about her personal background, criminal history, and relevant circumstances before the court began substantive questions. The early portion of the deposition focuses on Wild’s identity and personal history, including her marriage, family situation, and her own past convictions, including a drug trafficking conviction for which she was serving a sentence at the Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida at the time of the deposition. Wild was sworn in and answered ba...

Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to her own party voting to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt was less about principle and more about protecting power. Instead of defending the authority of Congress or the right of the Oversight Committee to enforce subpoenas, Pelosi reportedly scolded Democratic members for daring to treat the Clintons like any other witnesses. Her message was unmistakable: some people are simply too important to be subjected to the same rules as everyone else. By warning lawmakers that they should have waited and by dismissing the contempt vote as a mistake, Pelosi wasn’t defending procedure — she wa...

The Post editorial is not an argument, it is a tantrum disguised as analysis, built almost entirely out of contempt for the reader rather than engagement with the facts. Instead of explaining why the Epstein files should remain limited or why institutional handling has been sound, it opens by ridiculing curiosity itself, portraying transparency as hysteria and accountability as a nuisance. It repeatedly blames the public for prosecutors’ workload while carefully ignoring the far more damning question of why millions of pages of sensitive material were allowed to accumulate in secrecy for years without resolution. The piece weaponizes the word “cons...

Representative Anna Paulina Luna publicly accused Judge Paul Engelmayer of obstructing transparency in the Epstein files by denying requests for a special master and refusing to intervene in what she characterized as the Justice Department’s slow-walking of disclosures, framing the ruling as evidence of judicial complicity in protecting powerful interests. Luna claimed the court’s refusal to step in effectively gave the DOJ cover to continue delaying and heavily redacting materials required to be released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and she suggested that the judiciary was now part of a broader institutional effort to suppress damaging information. In p...

Alan Dershowitz’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has drawn sustained criticism because it went far beyond a routine attorney-client connection and placed one of the country’s most famous legal scholars directly inside the machinery that protected a serial sex trafficker. Dershowitz was a prominent member of Epstein’s legal team during the 2008 non-prosecution agreement, a deal that secretly dismantled a federal trafficking case, shielded unnamed co-conspirators, and denied victims their rights under federal law. He publicly defended Epstein as a misunderstood figure, vouched for his character, and helped craft legal strategies that minimized consequences and discredited accusers, even as mounti...