When CNN’s chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, questioned US President Donald Trump about the Epstein files this week, she received a response familiar to female journalists who dare to ask the US president about his infamous former friend.
“You are the worst reporter,” Trump spat. “CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know, she’s a young woman – I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth. You’re a very dishonest organisation, and they should be ashamed of you.”
The instant partisan reaction was that it was another example of Trump’s sensitivity to all things Epstein; more evidence of his complicity in the scandal of the century. But what he also revealed in his sprays at Collins and others (who could forget “Quiet, piggy”) is a hostility to inquisitions from women – especially on uncomfortable topics.
That is the overriding story of the Epstein files. They may not have delivered the names of alleged Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirators or a verifiable indictment of the sitting president of the United States. But across their millions of pages, spanning continents and industries and the political spectrum, they unveiled a litany of wealthy, smart, powerful men who were apparently unbothered by the exploitation of women and girls, and who seemed to revel in rejecting the norms of a world that was changing around them.
“I’ve watched the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public,” celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky wrote to Epstein in early 2019, shortly after the Miami Herald published a year-long investigation into the former Palm Beach resident, spurring renewed interest in the case.
Chomsky, who is now 97, lamented “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder”. Epstein would be arrested five months later on sex-trafficking charges.
The financier, who made his fortune managing money for billionaires such as former Victoria’s Secret chief executive Les Wexner, seemed bemused by the #MeToo movement as it gobbled up the reputations of many friends. But he was mostly interested in how it might improve his stocks by contrast.
“With all these guys getting busted for harassment, i have moved slightly up on the repuation ladder and have been asked everday for advice [sic],” Epstein wrote to Japanese entrepreneur Joi Ito in 2017. A couple of years later, Ito would be forced out of MIT, Harvard and several other organisations because of his ties to Epstein.
In 2016, photographer and artist Andres Serrano told Epstein he was so disgusted by the outrage over Trump’s infamous “grab them by the pussy” remarks that he might vote for Trump out of sympathy. Later, Serrano took Epstein’s last-known portrait.
“Pussy is, indeed, low carb,” wrote celebrity doctor and health guru Peter Attia to Epstein in 2015. “Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.”
Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, who represented actor Amber Heard and activist Julian Assange in their high-profile legal battles, says the Epstein files open a window into a world where mistreatment and denigration of women were accepted by men.
“What it shows is the complete disregard that these powerful men had for the abuse of women, which shows how normalised violence against women is,” she says. “That none of these men spoke up to protect these women is unacceptable – and that many continued their association with him despite knowing what he had done.”
In her 2024 book How Many More Women? with Keio Yoshida, Robinson wrote about how Epstein’s defamation threats and his use of non-disclosure agreements stymied attempts by journalists to expose his crimes – many years before the Miami Herald investigation and Epstein’s subsequent arrest.
Epstein’s victims Maria and Annie Farmer spoke on the record to Vanity Fair as early as 2002, but the magazine never ran the story, ostensibly for legal reasons – although the journalist, Vicky Ward, later blamed legendary Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter for spiking it under Epstein’s influence. He has rejected this.
“In the more recent material released, there are more references to potential defamation claims and non-disclosure agreements,” Robinson says.
“I think it’s important that people recognise not only did all these powerful men stick together and protect him by their refusal to speak out about what they knew and what they saw, but then defamation laws and NDAs were used as powerful tools by Epstein to silence the victims and to prevent the public understanding the extent of the abuse. That went on for years.”
Robinson is also outraged that the US Department of Justice published personal information on some Epstein survivors, despite promises it would not do so. The department later took down thousands of documents, saying the inclusion of victims’ data was inadvertent and a result of the huge number of files involved. But Robinson says that’s not good enough.
“The materials released by the DoJ included naked photographs of women. We absolutely ought to be protecting the victims from having their identities and personal information shared in this way,” she says.
“Governments have an obligation to protect victims of sexual assault and their identities. They had sufficient time to protect alleged perpetrators – why did they not have time to protect the women? I do not accept that explanation for one second.”
As far as the Trump administration is concerned, the Epstein saga is now effectively over. The Department of Justice says it has released all the files it can. Trump told CNN’S Collins that it was “really time for the country to get on to something else”, now that, in his view, there was nothing in the documents about him.
But the story will roll on. Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is due to give a deposition to Congress on Monday, US time, although her lawyers have suggested she will plead the Fifth Amendment, which gives people the right not to testify against themselves. Former US president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton are also set to give depositions to Congress later this month; Hillary on Friday (AEDT) called for public hearings in front of the cameras.
Parsing the political fallout in the US is difficult. In Britain, heads have already rolled: former ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson was sacked in September following earlier revelations, and he is now the subject of a criminal investigation.
The scandal is even engulfing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who appointed Mandelson in December 2024 despite public knowledge that the former Labour minister had at least some relationship with Epstein, even if the extent was obscured.
There have been recriminations for some of Epstein’s American friends. Larry Summers, a former US Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, resigned from the board of OpenAI and other high-profile positions and took leave from Harvard University after the extent of his friendship with Epstein was revealed. Tech entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Elon Musk have also been forced to explain their association with Epstein.
And yet, there has been relatively little scrutiny of Trump’s commerce secretary and billionaire friend Howard Lutnick, who made arrangements to visit Epstein’s island in 2012 and invited Epstein to an event in 2015, the documents show. He previously claimed he had severed ties with the “gross” Epstein around 2005. Reached by The New York Times this week, Lutnick said: “I spent zero time with him,” and then reportedly hung up the phone.
Being named in the Epstein files or associating with Epstein is not an indication of wrongdoing.
Ian Reifowitz, a professor of history at the State University of New York, says there is a double standard for how Trump’s associates and opponents are treated.
“If you work for Trump or you’re in Trump’s orbit, it doesn’t matter. He can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it,” Reifowitz says, quoting Trump’s infamous claim about his own unaccountability. “If Trump is happy with you, you’ve got a job. And the other people whose lives are impacted, those are not people who depend on Trump’s favour. In the UK, there’s more of a single standard.”
Reifowitz says this double standard is now so normalised in the US that it changes how the Epstein revelations are reported and received. There is no longer an expectation that accusations will be answered properly, or that revelations will have consequences. And that means they will be pursued less fervently and with less follow-up.
“I think back to the coverage of Hillary’s emails. It was breathless,” he says.
“When there’s a single huge story in the past, there’s a relentless focus. Here’s the story. Here’s the reaction to the story. Is more going to come out? Will there be a resignation? What changes will this story effect for the person involved?
“But you don’t have steps two through five, or two through 12 now. Trump says, ‘I don’t care’, and then there is no impact. And he knows how to change the cycle the next day. We’re taking Greenland. Or we’re putting tariffs on India.”
Ultimately, says Reifowitz: “If a person has done 500 things that should have ended his career, then who cares about the 501st?”
That is not to say there will be no political consequences for the president and his party. Trump is named thousands of times in the Epstein files, including some highly salacious but utterly uncorroborated accusations from people who called an FBI tip line before the 2020 election. Reifowitz says Trump can be damaged just by association – the files reinforce the idea that Trump was part of the “Epstein class” of wealthy, powerful people who live lives entirely separated from middle America.
“It’s possible to overstate the impact of the Epstein files. I don’t think this particular release has anything new that hurts Trump directly … it just doesn’t look good for him,” Reifowitz says.
Trump and the Republicans are taking a battering in public opinion polls. Just this week, Democrats had a big, unexpected win in a Texas special election that again sent a chill up GOP spines ahead of November’s midterms.
Reifowitz says it’s difficult to know whether to attribute any of this to Epstein, given the plethora of domestic policy concerns including the cost of living and overreach on immigration. But he believes the Epstein scandal is weakening Trump’s position among the MAGA base.
“I think they have a sense for when somebody is being hypocritical on something they think is important,” he says. “He promised something on Epstein, and he talked about a culture of corruption. So, if it seems like he’s acting just like the people who were corrupt and were in office before, then I think that can dampen enthusiasm. And dampening enthusiasm can show up on election day.
“It’s not like he’s going to resign from shame. That’s not in the cards. The impact is not going to be that he’s removed from office.
“The impact is going to be that his party loses elections. That’s where the price comes.”
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