NYT Columnist Says Jeffrey Epstein “Seemed Unapologetic” About Sexually Abusing Underage Girls
Columnist James Stewart reported that Epstein wasn’t shy about discussing his “interest in young women.”
It’s been three days since Jeffrey Epstein reportedly committed suicide by hanging himself using a bedsheet in his jail cell. We are now learning more about what he told people in his final months.
New York Times columnist James Stewart penned a disturbing piece for the paper Monday about the last interview he did with Epstein a year ago. Stewart wanted to talk about rumors he’d heard that Epstein was advising Tesla’s Elon Musk. Musk’s reps deny Epstein advised him in any capacity.
Stewart did not discover information about Musk’s and Epstein’s alleged business relationship. Instead, Stewart said Epstein seemed interested in providing teasers about the influential, high-profile people who sought him out for money, influence, drugs, and access to young girls:
The overriding impression I took away from our roughly 90-minute conversation was that Mr. Epstein knew an astonishing number of rich, famous and powerful people, and had photos to prove it. He also claimed to know a great deal about these people, some of it potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.
[…]
During our conversation, Mr. Epstein made no secret of his own scandalous past — he’d pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from underage girls and was a registered sex offender — and acknowledged to me that he was a pariah in polite society. At the same time, he seemed unapologetic. His very notoriety, he said, was what made so many people willing to confide in him. Everyone, he suggested, has secrets and, he added, compared with his own, they seemed innocuous. People confided in him without feeling awkward or embarrassed, he claimed.
Stewart noted in his column that Epstein had agreed to do the August 2018 interview provided it be considered “on background.” This meant Stewart could use the information Epstein gave him as long as he didn’t tag Epstein’s name to it. Since Epstein is now deceased, Stewart says he “consider[s] that condition to have lapsed.”
A blonde woman in her late teens/early 20s who had “what sounded like an Eastern European accent” led Stewart to a greeting room. Stewart said Epstein then showed him a wall full of photographs:
Before we left the room he took me to a wall covered with framed photographs. He pointed to a full-length shot of a man in traditional Arab dress. “That’s M.B.S.,” he said, referring to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The crown prince had visited him many times, and they spoke often, Mr. Epstein said.
He led me to a large room at the rear of the house. There was an expansive table with about 20 chairs. Mr. Epstein took a seat at the head, and I sat to his left. He had a computer, a small blackboard and a phone to his right. He said he was doing some foreign-currency trading.
Behind him was a table covered with more photographs. I noticed one of Mr. Epstein with former President Bill Clinton, and another of him with the director Woody Allen. Displaying photos of celebrities who had been caught up in sex scandals of their own also struck me as odd.
Stewart reported that while Epstein was reluctant to share details about Elon Musk, he wasn’t shy about discussing his “interest in young women:”
If he was reticent about Tesla, [Epstein] was more at ease discussing his interest in young women. He said that criminalizing sex with teenage girls was a cultural aberration and that at times in history it was perfectly acceptable. He pointed out that homosexuality had long been considered a crime and was still punishable by death in some parts of the world.
Mr. Epstein then meandered into a discussion of other prominent names in technology circles. He said people in Silicon Valley had a reputation for being geeky workaholics, but that was far from the truth: They were hedonistic and regular users of recreational drugs. He said he’d witnessed prominent tech figures taking drugs and arranging for sex (Mr. Epstein stressed that he never drank or used drugs of any kind).
Stewart says in the weeks after the interview, Epstein contacted him several times to invite him out for dinner engagements, which Stewart declined. After several months, Stewart writes that Epstein indicated he was interested in having Stewart write his biography. Thinking Epstein was looking more for a confidante than a biographer, Stewart begged off, noting he was already working on another book.
The columnist concluded his piece by saying he now wonders what Epstein would have told him had he agreed to write the book.
Even knowing what we know about Epstein’s extensive rap sheet, that column was a lot to take in. It almost sounds like Epstein decided that he was going to do it his way in a tell-all of sorts instead of taking people down with him.
Unconfirmed rumors are now going around that Epstein might have kept a “meticulously detailed” diary as an “insurance policy” against the influential people in his circle.
Other Epstein news of note:
– A dozen FBI agents raided Epstein’s private Caribbean island on Monday in a public show of force. This action indicates that just because Epstein is dead doesn’t mean the feds will give up on obtaining justice for his victims.
– Doctors completed an autopsy of Epstein, but we may not know the results for some time. Per the Daily Beast:
The New York City medical examiner announced Sunday night that she has finished her autopsy of multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell from an apparent suicide, but the cause of his death “is pending further information,” a determination that is not uncommon.
Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson also noted that Epstein’s representatives have hired celebrity pathologist Michael Baden to conduct an independent autopsy and they were allowed to observe the autopsy. Baden, who served as the city’s chief medical examiner in the late 1970s, has made a career investigating high-profile deaths, including those of Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez. Baden also testified at the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and Phil Spector.
-Last but not least, Vanity Fair tries to unravel “the Mystery of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s Enabler.”
We’re sure to learn more about all the players involved in this sordid story in the weeks and months to come. Stay tuned.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. –-
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Comments
“Since Epstein is now deceased, Stewart says he “consider[s] that condition to have lapsed.””
Correction: Dead men DO tell tales.
Waiting a month after Epstein’s arrest to raid his island suggests that the FBI was giving someone time to remove evidence.
Perhaps that is why NYPD went along for the search. There has been significant conflict between NYPD and the FBI and DOJ on the subject of sex crime investigations.
Yea, when I first read that the FBI was *just now* raiding his island, my first thought was “WTF? So, all his friends got there first to remove all the evidence.” This whole thing feels like a lost of connected people pulling strings. To say that it has been mismanaged is a huge understatement.
Swamp creature Christopher Wray is still FBI director. Until he’s fired, the FBI is still in the swamp.
Every cop I know agrees that the purpose of the delay was to allow the clean up crew to get their job done. And the FBI is there as a double check to see that it was all removed.
I would also note, personally, I believe that pretty much every Democrat has no problem with underaged girls being sexually abused so long as they or their leaders are the ones doing the abusing.
Subotai Bahadur
A simpler explanation: The FBI is handling this investigation with the same rigor and sense of purpose as it did the Clinton email scandal.
It remains to be seen whether the authorities’ step up in using force to capture evidence is for the benefit of justice for the victims or protection for the guilty. MBS was a client? How many more like him are in Epstein’s journals? The wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, some would say people who control the world? Nothing is too brazen and bold to stop them. Maybe.
This has been so bizarre from square one that I am reserving judgment until people either start getting arrested or it becomes clear that nothing is going to come of it. They can start by temporarily shutting down MCC for being hopelessly corrupted. Everyone involved in guarding Epstein should be arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.
Uh-oh!
https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2019/08/14/virgin-islands-sen-evidence-epstein-estate-may-be-lost/
Wow, now that Epstein is dead (who really cares anyway), I could tell people that he’d contacted me to write his biography and who could say no?
Hey … #MeToo
Now we must worry you’ll commit Arkancide.
I’ve been reading that the court documents show that Epstein had no clients, and no recent income from his alleged investment advice business.
If this is true, the question of what services he did provide, and to whom, becomes paramount, unless his personal fortune was so great he was his only client.
Given his pattern of self-aggrandizement, I would hazard a guess that he did not have near as much money or influence as he pretended.
That would not eliminate the possibility that, over time, some of his income came from pimping and blackmail. He was subject to blackmail, too, and Alex Acosta lost his cabinet seat over it. Acosta said the FBI drove the previous sweetheart deal for Epstein, and other news had disclosed that Epstein did offer some sort of information or testimony to the Mueller team.
This would fit in very will with the sleazy behavior of James Comey from the FBI and his strained efforts to shelter Hillary Clinton.
If Epstein was involved in pimping and blackmail, we need to know for whom.
I don’t know how meticulous the research was, but this article seems relevant. https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2019/08/12/three-big-questions-about-jeffrey-epsteins-wealth/
Drone camera footage of the island shows that a computer was removed the last week in July, before the raid.
https://i.redd.it/2rjacz5f64g31.jpg
Image will probably disappear soon.
Does anyone really care what a NYT columnist says? I do my best to avoid anything from the Times. I do not believe they can be trusted.
” A dozen FBI agents raided Epstein’s private Caribbean island on Monday in a public show of force. This action indicates that just because Epstein is dead doesn’t mean the feds will give up on obtaining justice for his victims.”
Or it could be the FBI is destroying evidence implicating the Clintons, other swampers, celebrities, and Bigh Tech elite. They have a recent history of doing just that.
Uh-oh!
https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2019/08/14/virgin-islands-sen-evidence-epstein-estate-may-be-lost/
The columnist concluded his piece by saying he now wonders what Epstein would have told him had he agreed to write the book.
Could be pretty much anything . . . or, rather, anything The Columnist wanted to hear. Just offhand, I’d guess that Epstein led a very rich fantasy life, and was more than willing to share it. Not that his crimes weren’t real . . . some of them, at least. But Epstein’s claims about anything, to anybody, are intrinsically suspicious.
We still know nothing of substance about this case. Fantasies, suppositions, excuses, assumptions, and suspicions galore, but very little tangible info. We don’t even know that The Girls were victims in anything but a legal sense (by US law, at least). Some may have been collaborators (and yes, I can just hear the shrieks of outraged propriety at even the suggestion.) I’d guess that Epstein & Friends paid very handsomely for the services. That might have little to do with the crimes, but rather a lot to do with the investigations.
Hillary clinton’s bleached hard drives, Christopher Wray’s agents bleaching epstein’s island… Folks, the clean-up of the sewer-spill that is the obama presidency is not nearly done.
While Deep Plumber plunged Water Closet, there is hidden brown matter (and energy) that persists and sustains social progress.
Epstein “seemed unapologetic”.
Of course he did. People like him are never sorry for the terrible things they do. They’re just sorry they get caught.
Oh, and this: He said that criminalizing sex with teenage girls was a cultural aberration and that at times in history it was perfectly acceptable.
Yes, a couple hundred years ago, where and when young females weren’t afforded the same rights as males, and emotional maturity wasn’t recognized to be separate from physical maturity (if one can call a 12-13 year old girl “mature”). He must have been a misogynist as well as a pedophile.
And this: He pointed out that homosexuality had long been considered a crime and was still punishable by death in some parts of the world.
He’s an Islamophobe, too? Color me shocked.
#NoJudgment #NoLabels #PoliticalCongruence #SocialProgress They need to lose their Pro-Choice quasi-religion (“ethics”).
Should anyone be surprised that Epstein was unapologetic?
Epstein and his friends are “pedophiles” only because US law says that anyone under the age of 18 is a “child”. Yet, at the same time, our media-academia-ejjikahunal-political-legal comple says that teenagers should be encouraged to “explore” their sexuality. With 99.75% of the population heterosexual, is it any surprise that there will be teenaged girls ready to give themselves to a sugar daddy; and with most males prefering younger females, is it any surprise that there will me physically mature men willing to have sex with lolitas? Given the wretchedness of most “relationships”, is it any wonder that someone who is allowed to see himself or herself as a “victim” will decide to take vengeance on the trespasser through the legal system?
Given the drift of our culture, I am sure that before too long, we’ll see the teen-abusing priests coming out of the salmmer with lachrymose tales of how a puritan culture” destroyed the “beautiful thing” they had with the young boys, and the MSM will cluck sympathetically, hailing those men as “brave pioneers” who busted open the A-number 1-repressive institution.
Am I the only one who’s noticed that the sexual revolutions always seem to benefit a narrow spectrum of wealthy and/or powerful males, while leaving everyone else, well, “scr3w3d?” The elites need to protect their favorite sports!
I’m not happy about this, but I think it will happen.