Deception and Dependency: Inside the Latest Epstein Files

Summary

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The Daily – “Deception and Dependency: Inside the Latest Epstein Files”

Date: February 10, 2026
Hosts: Michael Barbaro, with reporters Deborah Kamen, Nick Confessore, and Matt Goldstein

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the largest-ever release of Jeffrey Epstein-related government documents—over 3 million pages—detailing his network, manipulations, and enduring relationships with members of the global elite, long after his conviction as a sex offender. The episode explores new revelations about how Epstein exploited, manipulated, and ensnared both his victims and the world’s most powerful men, and how the information upends years of public denials. It also discusses the nature of elite complicity and reckoning now facing many individuals and institutions tied to Epstein.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. The Scope and Chaos of the Documents Release

Timestamps: 00:37–05:47

• Unprecedented Volume: Over 3 million pages—largest single release yet. Includes emails, photos, videos, and financial records (03:17).
• Chaotic Rollout: Delayed over a month, with critical privacy failures: unredacted names of victims, nude imagery requiring redaction (03:17–04:00, Deborah Kamen).
• Temporal Range: Documents span from the initial 2005 Florida investigation through Epstein’s 2019 arrest—covering the period when he was a known, registered sex offender (04:47–05:32, Matt Goldstein).
• Vast Workload: “If we had 50 reporters reading 500 documents a day, it would take us four months to get through all the documents.” (04:10, Nick Confessore)
• Not Just Criminal Evidence: Many documents not directly tied to investigations but instead reflect the totality of Epstein’s interactions, his virtual Rolodex, and private communications.

2. Epstein’s Manipulation and Control of Women

Timestamps: 06:18–11:52

• Pipeline of Vulnerability: After release from jail, Epstein resumes and expands the recruitment of young women, largely from Eastern Europe and Russia. He offers them housing, basic needs, opportunities, connections, and monetary support in exchange for sex and dependency. Women are incentivized or emotionally blackmailed to recruit others (06:18–07:39, Nick Confessore).
• Exploitation Example: A woman confronts Epstein over unfulfilled promises, expressing that she’s been used and isolated:

  “You promised me to organize appointment…You promised me to introduce the photographer...words stayed words, right?”
  (08:31, paraphrased from Nick Confessore).

• DARVO Tactics: Epstein commonly turns the blame back on his victims, portraying himself as the aggrieved party (08:30–09:33, Nick Confessore).
• Long-Lasting Psychological Harm: Even after being discarded, women continue to reach out to Epstein, often greeted by cold, objectifying demands:

  “Send nudes...not sexy enough.”
  (10:06–10:17, Matt Goldstein)

• Age Dynamics: Post-prison, Epstein’s “pipeline” involved older (18–19) yet still highly vulnerable women, circumventing further legal liability but exploiting similar power imbalances (11:08–11:52, Deborah Kamen).

3. The Elite’s Willing Enmeshment—Dependency and Denial

Timestamps: 12:07–17:36

• The Circle of Power: Epstein both collects and connects powerful individuals, earning their vulnerabilities and using their desire for access as “networking currency” (12:32–13:23, Deborah Kamen).
• Examples of Intimacy & Vulnerability:
  • Deepak Chopra writing with existential questions to Epstein (13:26)
  • Prince Andrew sharing frustrations about royal life and sounding “like a high school boy with a crush” over meeting women (13:26–14:36, Deborah Kamen).
• Epstein’s Appeal: He’s a "bad boy friend," providing a space where powerful men can unburden themselves outside ordinary constraints (15:08–15:43, Matt Goldstein).
• Dual Manipulation: He is both “connector” and “con man,” leveraging women to attract powerful men—and vice versa (15:48–16:34, Nick Confessore).
• Guest List Example: Proposed 2010 Yom Kippur dinner included Mort Zuckerman, Leon Black, Tom Ford, Vera Wang, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and others—demonstrating his social reach (16:36–17:36).

4. The Myth and Reality of Blackmail & Compromat

Timestamps: 17:48–21:28

• No Direct Evidence of Blackmail: “There’s no real evidence that he was blackmailing people,” but he cultivates and references secrets, subtly reminding powerful associates of things he “knows” (18:07–18:39, Matt Goldstein).
• Threatening Memos: Epstein often drafts, and sometimes sends, messages alluding to damaging secrets:

  “The illicit trysts that I know about...we don’t want Melinda to know about these things.” (Sent to Bill Gates - 18:39) “Les, we did gang stuff for 15 years...we don’t want Abigail to find out.” (Sent to Les Wexner - 19:50)

• Power of Suggestion: “His power was in its possibility...I don’t think it was enough to sort of suggest it.” (20:36–20:40, Matt Goldstein; 20:59–21:00, Michael Barbaro)

5. Public Lies and Documented Truth

Timestamps: 23:41–31:27

• Elite Denial Overturned: The files directly contradict years of denials from prominent figures about the depth and continuity of their contacts with Epstein (24:00–24:59, Nick Confessore).
• Examples:
  • Elon Musk: Claimed he “refused” to visit Epstein’s island; evidence shows him eager to attend as early as 2012—“What? Day, night, will be the wildest party on your island.” (24:56)
  • Howard Lutnick (Commerce Secretary): Denied being in social or business settings post-2005; found investing in a private company with Epstein and visiting his island after that date (25:48–26:09).
  • Andrew Farkas (NY real estate mogul): Concealed a deep friendship and business partnership (ownership of the marina adjacent to Epstein’s island); as evidence emerges, Farkas shifts from denying to expressing regret (26:32–28:32, Deborah Kamen).
• Email is Forever:

  “When these people were communicating, they clearly never thought these communications would see the light of day.” (28:45, Deborah Kamen)

6. Nature and Degree of Accountability

Timestamps: 28:53–31:27

• Mixed Consequences: Some lose jobs (e.g., law firm chairman Brad Karp); others (notably in tech like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel) face little more than public embarrassment (29:16–31:03, Nick Confessore, Matt Goldstein).
• Vast Differences Across Borders: Far greater fallout for elites in the UK/Europe (e.g., Prince Andrew loses titles, home, reputation) than in the US, where even degrees of separation from Epstein are career-ending (29:59–31:03, Deborah Kamen).

7. What the Files Do—and Don’t—Reveal about Trump and the Clintons

Timestamps: 31:27–34:59

• Trump: No new bombshells. The documents mostly postdate Trump and Epstein’s friendship, which was built on “shared interest in women and sexual conquest” (33:38, Nick Confessore).

  “They were wingmen at parties and pageants...Trump once groped Epstein’s girlfriend in front of him as if it was a game.” (32:29–33:27, Nick Confessore)

• Clintons:
  • Little about Hillary Clinton.
  • Bill Clinton’s post-presidency activities with Ghislaine Maxwell and alleged trips involving Epstein, though no evidence of criminal wrongdoing—more so, a pattern of "bad judgment" (34:06–34:32, Matt Goldstein).

8. The Systemic Failure and Public Reckoning

Timestamps: 34:59–38:21

• Elite Complicity: “Money buys anything—it buys your way out of any trouble...a man who was convicted...remained the toast of the town in Manhattan for years.” (35:54, Nick Confessore)
• Dehumanization of Victims: Elites rationalized Epstein’s crimes by viewing victims as disposable:

  “They were basically disposable people they didn’t care about.” (37:05, Matt Goldstein)

• Profound Hypocrisy: Many elites associated with Epstein publicly espoused progressive, “enlightened” views on women—or publicly condemned sexual abuse—while tolerating or enabling Epstein (37:23, Matt Goldstein).
• Epstein’s Mastery:

  “Elite people...were played by Jeffrey Epstein...he became this puppet master just holding all of them on a string...they really felt for so long that they were infallible.” (37:23, Deborah Kamen)

• Reckoning: Even if there’s limited legal accountability, there’s public accountability as the private communications and vulnerabilities of the wealthy and powerful are finally exposed (37:57–38:00, Deborah Kamen).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the impossibility of comprehension:

  “If we had 50 reporters reading 500 documents a day, it would take us four months to get through all the documents.”
  —Nick Confessore, 04:10

• On DARVO manipulation:

  “There’s a phenomenon called DARVO in psychology and abusive psychology, where the abuser sort of reverses the psychology and makes himself the victim and his victim the aggressor. And that’s what he does here [with the women].”
  —Nick Confessore, 08:33

• On blackmail myth and its reality:

  “He would remind them in messages, like, always be your best friend. I’ll never tell anything bad about you to anyone.”
  —Matt Goldstein, 18:39

• On elite accountability and emails:

  “Email is forever. And the proof here, it’s undeniable. When these people were communicating, they clearly never thought these communications would see the light of day.”
  —Deborah Kamen, 28:45

• On how the elite viewed victims:

  “Why his crimes didn’t matter? Because these women didn’t matter, right? These girls, they were girls that didn’t matter. They were basically disposable people that they didn’t care about.”
  —Matt Goldstein and Deborah Kamen, 37:02–37:05

• On the global elite’s insulation:

  “These documents are an X-ray of the global elite: how it’s interconnected, how it’s isolated, how money buys anything...”
  —Nick Confessore, 35:54

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:37 – The document dump's scale and chaos
• 06:18 – Epstein’s exploitation of women and pipeline of abuse
• 12:32 – How Epstein ensnared the powerful; intimacy and dependency
• 18:07 – The myth and mechanics of blackmail/kompromat
• 23:41 – The files as a record of lies and denials among the elite
• 29:59 – Differences in accountability: U.S. vs. UK, tech world, and law
• 31:38 – What the documents show about Trump, the Clintons
• 34:59 – The elite’s systemic disregard and the rising public reckoning

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Closing Thoughts

The episode reveals the extent of Epstein’s manipulation—not just of victims but of the world’s most powerful people—exposing their vulnerabilities, complicities, and the hypocrisy at the core of elite society. Even as direct legal consequences remain inconsistent and partial, the scale and detail of the files are inciting an unprecedented storm of public reckoning and, for the first time, meaningful (if uneven) accountability.

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Transcript

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[Deborah Kamen]

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[Michael Barbaro]

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the Daily.

[Nick Confessore]

Another Epstein files dump today. And not just a dump. It was a blizzard of files.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

More than 3 million pages are now being posted to the Justice Department website.

[Michael Barbaro]

The latest code government release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the single largest release so far, has revealed the depth and intensity of his relationship with the global elite long after he became a sex offender.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Some of the names mentioned in the files dumped today, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steve Bannon.

[Nick Confessore]

Peter Mandelson, a former senior power broker for the governing British Labour Party and an ex ambassador to the US Exposing.

[Michael Barbaro]

Intimate communications with the world's most powerful business leaders.

[Advertisement Voice]

Dr. Peter Attia, the celebrity longevity influencer, appears in the files more than 1700 times. In 2015, Attia wrote, the biggest problem with becoming friends with you, the life you lead is so outrageous and yet I cannot tell a soul.

[Michael Barbaro]

Top government officials, prestigious academics and renowned experts. Some of the people.

[Nick Confessore]

Noam Chomsky. That was like the deal breaker for me. Noam Chomsky, Deepak. Deepak Chopra.

[Michael Barbaro]

And in many cases, contradicting years of their careful denials about their closeness to Epstein.

[Nick Confessore]

This is not the end of the Epstein case. This is just maybe the end of the beginning. But this is actually going to drag on for years as people sort through the documents and connect the dots.

[Michael Barbaro]

Today, as the fallout from the new documents ricochets across the globe, I gathered three of my colleagues, Deborah Kamen, Nick Confessori and Matt Goldstein, to talk through what they found. It's Tuesday, february ten.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Deborah, Nick, Matt, thank you to the three of you for being here.

[Deborah Kamen]

Thanks for having us.

[Matt Goldstein]

Thank you.

[Nick Confessore]

Good to be here.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

All three of you have spent the past week or so reading through hundreds, maybe even thousands of emails from the latest release of Epstein documents. And I want us to begin a conversation with the release itself. The scope of what the government has published, why it's published it now, and what's different about these documents from what was released in the previous batches? So Deborah, can you just start right there?

[Deborah Kamen]

Yeah. I mean, the thing that's most noteworthy about this document release is its sheer size. We're talking about more than 3 million pages of documents. There's also a lot of photos, a lot of videos. In tandem with its size is the amount of chaos that came with this rollout. The release itself was more than a month after the government's self imposed deadline. And there were a lot of things that went wrong with this release. There were a lot of unredacted names of victims that never should have made it into the public, and they did. There were images of women in the nude that the New York Times found and flagged the Justice Department that then had to be pulled back. So in addition to the fact that it's just so much material to comb through in that combing, there's been a lot of things that never should have been found.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

And, Nick, 3 million pages strongly suggests that we are just beginning to wrap our heads and our arms around what's here.

[Nick Confessore]

Absolutely. I mean, look, if we had 50 reporters reading 500 documents a day, and it would take us four months to get through all the documents.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Wow.

[Nick Confessore]

And that's just to read them, to make sense of them is actually a lot of work because you have to cross reference who's being referred to. You can sometimes figure out who's been redacted by looking at other emails with similar information. It's a lot of work, but I think we'll be seeing the fruits of this exposure, all this information, for months.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Matt, what time period do these 3 million pages cover, and where does that time period line up with our overall understanding of the Epstein story and his criminality?

[Matt Goldstein]

It lines up in theory, going back to the initial investigation in Florida in 2005 and then all the way through 2019. But what's important is what you're seeing here is not just things that were directly related to the investigation. It's anything that on his computer. So when they grabbed his computers and his servers, that's why you're seeing a lot of emails and financial records that wouldn't be directly related to the investigation, but they're related to his life.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

So we should think of these documents as capturing the point at which Jeffrey Epstein is absolutely an established public figure and one whose behavior is acknowledged to be very problematic.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah, yeah. Anything after 2009, when he's already pled guilty in Florida and he's had to register as a sex offender. Anyone who's coming into contact with him, they may not know all the details, but they know they're dealing with a registered sex offender.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Gotcha. Okay. That is helpful context. I want to explain to listeners. We asked the three of you in preparation for this conversation to think about themes that you identified in the documents that you've gone through and to bring us examples that illustrate those themes. And so I want to turn to that now, Nick, in terms of the themes, let's start with you and the most important people in this story, the women, the victims of Epstein's behavior and the system that he created.

[Nick Confessore]

I think for a lot of readers and listeners, the women have been somewhat invisible, Right, because they're victims of sexual trafficking or abuse. In many cases, we don't often see them in their own words. And what we see in these documents is his correspondence with many of the women he was trying to bring into his orbit. As soon as he got out of jail in 2009, and possibly before, he was basically building or expanding a virtual harem, a pipeline of young women in their late teens and early 20s who were mostly from eastern Europe and Russia. He had scouts roving around these places to find him women. And every time he found the women, he would ask them to find him more women. And so you might ask, okay, so why do these women comply? The answer is that he had money and influence, and they usually had none. He bought them plane tickets. He provided them apartments. He offered to pay for college or dental school. He sent them to doctors or plastic surgeons. And most of all, he dangled a sense of opportunity and security. He had a place for them to stay. He had people for them to meet. He would make introductions to modeling agencies or producers or Richmond. And we can see in these emails these varying levels of comfort on the part of the women. Some of them seem to take the arrangement at face value. They're trading sex for money or security or opportunity.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Well, now, give us an example that demonstrates Epstein's exploitation of these women's circumstances.

[Nick Confessore]

So here we have an example. I'm not gonna name her here on the air, but she's a woman who has a relationship with him that goes some ways back. And in October 2011, we are seeing sort of an end point in their relationship. She's had it with him. She's had it because, according to her, she realizes she isn't really his girlfriend. In this email, she's saying she spends all her time with him. She doesn't communicate with anybody else. She doesn't see her friends or go on vacations. She dresses like he tells her to. She styles her hair like he tells her to. She has sex with him when he wants, massages when he wants, but she's not getting what she thought she was promised in return. And she's furious and she feels betrayed.

[Michael Barbaro]

She's saying, I'm fed up with it.

[Nick Confessore]

I'm fed up. I've been used. You promised me to organize appointment. This is probably an Eastern European or Russian with a doctor. You promised me to introduce the photographer to some people, from Victoria's Secret to some celebrity. Words stayed words, right? She's calling him on his promises and how does he respond? There's a phenomenon called darvo in psychology and abusive psychology, where the abuser sort of reverses the psychology and makes himself the victim and his victim the aggressor. And that's what he does here. He says, I am and I have been a friend. I sent you to Moscow, but you cannot lie to me. And you lied to me. You lied to me again, so I will never help you ever again.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

So in this one email, we really see how Epstein controls these women and their lives. Incentivizes them with promises that he's gonna deliver something in order to extract what he's getting in return. And then it seems in some sense doesn't really deliver it. And then when he's held to account, turns things around on them.

[Nick Confessore]

That's right. He makes himself into the victim. And we see this repeatedly in these emails. I've seen similar exchanges throughout the emails.

[Matt Goldstein]

And along with that, Nick, you often find part of the abuse is that it goes on for many years after the women are even sort of essentially discarded by Epstein. And because they're so broken down and felt they had to depend on him, they will try to come back. And you'll see emails where these women will say, I want to come back. And his first response will be, send nudes. I mean, it's this curt kind of response.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Send nudes.

[Matt Goldstein]

Right. Over and over again. And then sometimes they'll send something and it'll say, not sexy enough. It's so dismissive of these women as basically purely being objects for him.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Matt, the question that always comes up, and I think because Nick just described this dynamic with women, it's the right.

[Michael Barbaro]

Time to ask it, is do these.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

New documents shed any light on the question of whether or not Jeffrey Epstein ran a pedophilic ring that trafficked underage girls to those around him?

[Matt Goldstein]

In short, the answer is no. Basically, the 14 and 15 and 16 year old girls that we've heard about were largely recruited for him. There's nothing that's come up to really indicate that those same girls were being trafficked at the time to any other men. And prosecutors took a look at that in 2019 when he was arrested. And they basically ruled that out. And it's even in a memo that's contained in this latest batch of documents where they said what they looked at and what they did not find was evidence of the pedophile ring.

[Nick Confessore]

But what's important to understand, again, the first time he went to jail in the mid late 2000s, it's on charges that he is soliciting underage girls to get massages. And when he gets out of jail, he appears to change tactics. He seems to decide he's going to be more careful about the law. What we see is a form of trafficking after he gets out of prison that relies mostly on women who were a bit older, 18 and 19 year old women from Eastern Europe than the victims we know about from before he died.

[Deborah Kamen]

I mean, they were a bit older, but they were still equally vulnerable in a different way, with a different legal definition. And that's what these emails are so stunning. The vulnerability and the neediness and the disparity in power is very, very clear.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Deborah, I want to stay with you for a minute. What lots of people who look at these emails end up seeing is behavior that on paper would seem to make Jeffrey Epstein toxic. That's on top of the fact that he's already been extra toxic.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yes.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

For the way he treated underage women. And yet he's kind of a magnet for the most powerful people in the world. We see that time and time again in this latest batch of documents. You told us that these new emails end up illustrating how and why these powerful people are drawn closer to him, even as he becomes a more toxic figure. So can you walk us through that?

[Deborah Kamen]

Yeah, sure. I mean, one of the things that's so stunning about Jeffrey Epstein as a character is the way that he collected power, he collected influence, he curated it in his life. And he created access to these spaces for other powerful, influential people. And he traded access as like this networking currency. And something that really became apparent to me in this latest document dump, because there are so many emails, is the intense vulnerability and intimacy that people really fall into when they're communicating with him. Jeffrey Epstein was a person that they could open up to, they could bare their soul to in some ways. And that in itself is extremely seductive. It's really stunning when you read these emails to see these people whose names are so recognizable and they're people who have so much power and so much money, be so vulnerable and human.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Give us some examples of that from these documents.

[Deborah Kamen]

Yeah, so I was reading a couple. There was One from the guru Deepak Chopra. And he and Jeffrey Epstein were trading these really intense questions. And Deepak said to Jeffrey Epstein, how can I be sure that I'm eternal? I mean, he's literally asking him the question about the meaning of life. There were a couple from the former Prince Andrew whose entire life and career and reputation has been brought down by his association with Jeffrey Epstein, where he opens up about the restraints of royal life and how difficult it can be to be a royal. And the person that he's opening up to is not his therapist. It's not a family member. It's Jeffrey Epstein. In another email, Jeffrey Epstein is arranging for Prince Andrew, or the former Prince Andrew, to meet a woman. And he tells him that she's 26, Russian, clever, beautiful, trustworthy. And he responds, and he sounds kind of like a high school boy with a crush. He says, what have you told her about me? And have you given her my email? And there's just so much raw vulnerability in that response. And it becomes very clear that this, too, was part of Jeffrey Epstein's power. The way that he hooked people in and made them feel safe enough to show their most intimate parts to him.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

How do you make sense of that? I mean, what specifically is it about the way Epstein operates that prompts these powerful men, and to some degree, women to be this vulnerable in his midst and especially in these communications?

[Deborah Kamen]

I mean, it's a great question. And maybe Matt and Nick also have a response, because it's definitely not his responses in the emails.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Why not?

[Deborah Kamen]

Well, what's staggering is in many of these emails, people are unburdening their souls, and Jeffrey Epstein's response are four or five words riddled with typos, and that's it.

[Matt Goldstein]

He also sort of plays the role of the bad boy friend for a lot of these men that they can say things that they can't say in polite company, things that they can't say to their friends, that they can't say to their wives, to their partners. It's things that they would never say to their. They would not want to be heard saying for whatever reason. Since Epstein has held himself out as this guy who's like, I go against all the rules, and he invites them into their world, and that's why they feel they can open up and say a lot of these things that they would never say otherwise.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

He's providing an escape and a kind of amoral space in which to escape to.

[Nick Confessore]

That's right. He's a con man who has a harem, and he's playing these two things off of each other. The women are bringing in these middle aged men who are powerful in their own spheres. They're powerful in Hollywood or high finance.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Or the Royal family.

[Nick Confessore]

Or the royal family. But he has girls, as he calls them. He has women everywhere he goes. He's surrounded by 19 year old blondes and he's using the powerful people to bring in the women. Right. He's saying, I can connect you. So he's a connector and a con man and an abuser all at once. Just an example of his network. So there's one email. It's a proposed guest list for a Yom Kippur dinner in 2010, the year after he gets out of prison.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Right here. Again, the timeline's important.

[Nick Confessore]

Now this is only his proposed guest list. I could not find documents that confirm who actually attended, but this is who he sought to invite.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

This is at his home, at his.

[Nick Confessore]

Home in the Upper east side in his famous fabulous mansion. And we know that in general he got folks over who he wanted to over the course of his life. So here we have Mort Zuckerman, the publisher and developer. The billionaire is Leon Black and Lem Blavatnik. Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. The designers, Tom Ford and Vera Wang. Charlie Rose and Harvey Weinstein.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Men who in the future will be accused of sexual misconduct.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Nick Confessore]

Julian Schnabel, the artist. Tommy Motolo, the record producer.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Wow.

[Nick Confessore]

And the list is 40 people long. So he could bring these people in a room and then take pictures with them. And remember in his Upper east side townhouse, on that credenza, pictures of him with all these famous people. And so if you are an 18 year old Russian model and come to his house and you walk past that credenza, you see Donald Trump, Mohammed bin Salman, Woody Allen, Bill Clinton.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Wow.

[Nick Confessore]

You see all these famous people in grip and grins with your host and you think he's powerful, he can help me. And you might also think he's powerful, he can hurt me if I step out of line.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Matt, I want to pick up on something Nick just said about the power that Epstein seemingly held over these powerful people. This is a concept that you have been looking at specifically the way he signaled to people in these documents that he had something on them.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah. So one of the, what I call the myths of Epstein is that he had a blackmail operation too. There's no real evidence of that, that he was blackmailing people, but for better or worse, let's call it Kompromat. And it was Basically, that he took the things that people were telling them. And also from the work he was doing for some of them, he would claim their secrets. And his whole modus operandi was to sort of, at some point, maybe someone was not doing what he wanted them.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

To do or paying him what he wanted.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah, right. Not paying him what he wanted or threatening to stop seeing him. He would remind them in messages, like, always be your best friend. I'll never tell anything bad about you to anyone. He also had this weird thing where he wrote a lot of memos to himself. We don't know how much of this was actually always delivered to the recipient, but there's one to Bill Gates where he talks about that. The illicit trysts that I know about. And also, we don't want Melinda to know about these things. Gates, ex wife. You know, there's messages about Leon Black, who was one of his big benefactors in the later years.

[Michael Barbaro]

Billionaire businessman.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah. He talks about how maybe Leon should get a divorce. And then also Les Wexner, who was head of Victoria's Secret at the time, who basically is where Epstein had gotten most of his money. Wexner famously cut him off in 2007 after he's going to jail. Epstein sort of never really got over that because he. I think there was a very long relationship there. And there's this letter we found. We're not sure again, if it was actually ever sent. He says, les, we did gang stuff for 15 years.

[Michael Barbaro]

Gang stuff.

[Matt Goldstein]

Gang stuff. Not clear what it means. Is it sexual? Is it something else? And then goes, well, we know we don't want Abigail, your wife, to find out about. Wow.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

So he's reinforcing in these messages the friendship, but in a way that says very clearly, I could become your foe. And we both know I've got the.

[Michael Barbaro]

Goods to hurt you.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

A final question about this. This is to all three of you. Do we know if Epstein ever delivered on those implied threats? I'm gonna let your wife know. And did he. I'm gonna report you to the irs. Cause I know you're a potential tax fraud. Did he ever follow through?

[Deborah Kamen]

I don't think we do now.

[Matt Goldstein]

I don't think we do. I mean, clearly, at times, he conveyed it to the people he was. He was saying it to, but did he go beyond that?

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

His power was in its possibility. Yeah.

[Matt Goldstein]

I don't think it was enough to sort of suggest it.

[Deborah Kamen]

And obviously, these people were aware of what was had on them. But that's one of the challenges with these emails. You can't really see what came before or what came after. And that's one of the challenges of reporting on it. You have to read what's in front of you and make sure you're not inferring too much. But also, we're still trying to put together the pieces as to how all these line up and what the chronology is and what the end result was. It's really difficult to tell.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Right. This is what it means to be sifting through 3 million documents. We won't know until we get the next one.

[Deborah Kamen]

And I really think we still are very much at the beginning, even though it's been over a week since we got these documents.

[Nick Confessore]

And just remember what we see here are his emails and some texts, a few recordings of phone calls. For the most part, we are only seeing a sliver of his communication with all these people and we can't see what he said one on one in a private room.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Right.

[Nick Confessore]

Or on the telephone most of the time.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Okay, well, when we come back after a break, we're going to turn to what these documents are exposing about the very provable lies that people are telling about their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and when it ended. We'll be right back.

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[Deborah Kamen]

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[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Deborah Matt and Nick, I want to turn to the unusual way in which this set of Epstein documents has proven people very publicly to have been dishonest. Nick, you have been focused on this question. In particular, can you tell us what you found?

[Nick Confessore]

Well, it's hard to find anyone who will ever have admitted that they were close friends with him and liked him. What we instead have found over the years is that all these influential people for whom we knew some fragment of their connection with Epstein would always say, I never liked him. I cut off contact. I knew him through business. I knew him through a friend, always minimizing their connection with him. And then, all of a sudden, 3 million documents come out, and we can see the truth of their closeness. For all these people, I'll give you an example. Elon Musk. As recently as last September, Elon Musk didn't just deny visiting Epstein's island. He framed his decision as an act of principle. He said, Epstein, quote, tried to get me to his island, and I refused all caps. But back in 2012, these documents show he seemed eager to go. And he wrote to Epstein, what? Day, night, will be the wildest party on your island.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Wow. That is beyond a direct contradiction.

[Nick Confessore]

Exactly. Here's one more. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, told a similar narrative on a podcast again last year.

[Matt Goldstein]

Massage table in the middle of your house.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

How often you have a massage?

[Matt Goldstein]

And he says, every day. And then he, like, gets, like, weirdly close to me.

[Deborah Kamen]

Oh.

[Matt Goldstein]

And he says, and the right kind of massage.

[Nick Confessore]

Lutnick described being so revolted by a mid-2000s visit to Epstein's Manhattan mansion, my.

[Matt Goldstein]

Wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person.

[Nick Confessore]

He even claimed I was never in the room for him socially, for business, or even philanthropy.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

So publicly claiming 2005 and on nothing.

[Nick Confessore]

Yeah, except we see in the documents, seven years later, he invests in a privately held company with Epstein.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Wow.

[Nick Confessore]

And he appears to visit Epstein's famous private island. We can see them making travel plans that year for Lutnick and his family to visit the island. The island on which this guy now is famous for abusing young women.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Right.

[Nick Confessore]

And then after the date of the planned visit, we see an email from an Epstein assistant forwarding a message to Lutnick, from Epstein, nice seeing you.

[Deborah Kamen]

And we're not just talking emails where they shared niceties. We're talking about, as Nick said, a business deal. Business deals have paper trails. There must have been some sort of calculation in all of these people's heads, as these Documents started trickling out that they thought, I can just keep denying it and I won't get caught. I mean, that to me, is what's so stunning about all the evidence in these documents. It was always there on paper. Another good example is this billionaire New York real estate mogul Andrew Farkas, who I've been tracking really carefully.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Not a household name, but a very big deal.

[Deborah Kamen]

Yes, exactly. Not a household name, but a very influential billionaire in New York who's also a very powerful political donor. He's been a huge backer of Andrew Cuomo. He's friends with Donald Trump. He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein for over a decade. And they were business partners. And he actually went, it appears, to conceal the fact that they were business partners. He ended up co owning a Marina in St. Thomas. The closest marina to Jeffrey Epstein's private island.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

The one Lutnick visited.

[Deborah Kamen]

Yes, exactly. And the closest way to get there on a smaller boat is from this marina, American Yacht harbor, the two of them owned together.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

What does Farkas publicly say about the relationship and what's the truth?

[Deborah Kamen]

Well, how far back do you want to go? He never said a word about it. That the fact that they were co owners, it only came out because someone had a deposition in 2018 and Jeffrey Epstein's name came out. And after he died in prison, what Farkas said was what a lot of powerful men have said. I didn't really know the guy. We were just business partners. Our relationship never went further than that. And with each document reveal, we've started to see the curtain peel back a bit more. And with this final reveal, it's undeniable they were very, very good friends. Andrew Farkas opened up to Jeffrey Epstein about his fears of loneliness when his marriage was ending, about his struggles with the fact that his father was dying, about things that you really only share with a very, very close personal friend. And in addition, not only were they in business in the marina, he was suggesting other business ventures many years after Jeffrey Epstein's conviction in Florida. And what I found particularly interesting in my reporting is the first time I contacted Andrew Farkas about this, he denied it. And each denial got a little more qualified until finally with this last story that I did just yesterday, all he said was, I regret my association with him and actually finally stopped denying it because the evidence, it's simply too clear. They were very good friends and the business relationship was only a byproduct, not the other way around.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

What's remarkable about what you're describing is how many people believed that the Statements they issued, these boilerplate statements they issued years ago about what they didn't know and that they weren't close to Epstein, that these documents are just obliterating those statements.

[Deborah Kamen]

And email is forever. And the proof here, it's undeniable. When these people were communicating, they clearly never thought these communications would see the light of day.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Right. And yet accountability has been one of the most distinctive features of the fallout from this latest set of documents. And we're just seeing high powered person after high powered person, not just being forced to account for how they misled the public about Epstein, but in some cases they're losing their jobs.

[Nick Confessore]

I would say some. Michael. Right, so Brad Karp, the head of Paul Weiss, he lost his job when it became clear that he was much closer to Epstein.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Big, big, prestigious law firm.

[Nick Confessore]

But then you take someone like Kathy Ruemmler, who's the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs. She has also revealed to have been much closer to Epstein than her past comments have suggested. She's still in her job. What we see is that in certain institutions there's more accountability than in others. Howard Lutnick seems in no danger of losing his job as Commerce Secretary at the moment. We see that in European countries there is a lot more fallout and a lot more damage to men who have been revealed to have been very close with Epstein.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Talk about that.

[Nick Confessore]

Deborah.

[Deborah Kamen]

Yeah, I mean, the difference in accountability and the sense of the smear that this would give you if you were attached to it, when you look at just the US versus the United Kingdom, for example, is absolutely staggering. I mean, you start with Prince Andrew, who is no longer Prince Andrew, he's now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor because he's not.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Even living in his home.

[Deborah Kamen]

No, literally, he's lost his title, he's lost his home, he's lost his reputation. I think it's very fair to say he's lost almost everything as a result of his deep relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that it's been shown through documentation and testimony that he abused women as part of his relationship with him. But now we also see that the Prime Minister of the UK may very much possibly lose his job as a result. And many high powered people around him have been fired or forced to step down. Some because they were close with Jeffrey Epstein and some simply because they were involved in putting people in power who were close to Jeffrey Epstein. So we're talking about a domino effect where it's just degrees of separation. And that alone is enough in the UK to make people toxic. That is not what we're seeing in the US in certain sectors.

[Matt Goldstein]

Certain sectors, the tech world is one where we've seen almost zero accountability. I mean, there's been some public shaming of people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk and maybe Peter Thiel, but there's been no ramifications for them in any real world. And quite frankly, these are, if you want to talk about sheer power, the most powerful people in the world based on the value of how much money they have, and they've had no accountability.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

We haven't talked about an incredibly important figure in all this, and that's President Trump. What do we learn about him from these documents that we didn't already know?

[Nick Confessore]

Well, to answer your question, Michael, it is important to keep in mind some chronology here for the listeners. Right? Trump and Epstein were very close friends in the late 80s and the 1990s, and a couple of years into the 2000s, Epstein thought he was Trump's closest friend. These documents, though, come from after they had their falling out in the mid 2000s. So they aren't friends anymore. The mentions we have of Trump in these files really come in three categories. It's either Epstein talking about Trump with somebody else, often criticizing him, witnesses in the Epstein investigation who are mentioning Trump, and we'll come back to that. And then tips that came into the FBI in 2019, for example, regarding Epstein, that also had some mention of Trump. And those tips are uncorroborated for the most part. I think if email had been in wide use in the 1990s, and if Trump was a guy who used email, which he's not, we might know a lot more about their friendship. But let's also remember, we already know quite a bit about their friendship for the better part of two decades. They were very close, and their friendship was based almost entirely on a shared interest in women and sexual conquest. That's what they did together. They chased women. They talked about sex, about women's bodies, about who they had slept with. They bragged they were wingmen at parties and pageants. At Mar a Lago in Manhattan, in Atlantic City, Trump once groped Epstein's girlfriend in front of him as if it was a game. And Epstein introduced Trump to at least some of the women who would later accuse Epstein of abusing them. Now, we don't have any knowledge that Trump was implicated in any of Epstein's criminal activities, but we know all these other facts, right, about their overlap and their friendship.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

So the fact that there's not a ton of new insight from these documents doesn't change and in many people's minds diminish what we already knew about the death of their relationship?

[Nick Confessore]

I don't think so.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

The Clintons are at this very moment preparing to testify before Congress about Jeffrey Epstein. And Bill Clinton's association with him is reasonably well known. I don't know if the three of you have spent a lot of time looking into the Clinton dynamics in these documents, but to the degree you have, what do you know?

[Matt Goldstein]

Well, in terms of Hillary, there's not a lot there. And the fact of her being called to testify is mainly just because she's Hillary Clinton.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Right.

[Matt Goldstein]

And the Republicans have always been fascinated with Hillary Clinton. There's no doubt with President Clinton. There's evidence now that Ghislaine had a bigger role in helping this at Ghislaine Maxwell setting up the Clinton Global Initiative.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

This is the President's marquee public philanthropic.

[Nick Confessore]

Initiative after the presidency. It was what he did for his job after he left office.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Fascinating that Ghislaine Maxwell was central to establishing it.

[Matt Goldstein]

Yeah, I mean, basically with Epstein and Clinton, it was like going on these trips. There was a famous trip to South Africa where they went and they took people. And we know there have been reports, so there were young women on the plane. There's no evidence of anything, any kind of sexual wrongdoing, anything criminally improper. It's more again, what we see with so many times of this bad judgment of hanging out with someone who you've been warned about is someone you should avoid.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Got it. Well, I think that's where I'd like to end this conversation. Because here we are talking about former presidents, current and former CEOs, billionaires, ambassadors, law firm chairmans, and they're communicating with Jeffrey Epstein. They're reliant on him, they're advising him, they're sharing intimacies, Deborah, as you said, with him. And in seeing all of this laid bare, even in these early stages of getting through 3 million documents, you can see how much, and check me if you think I'm wrong here. The conspiracy theories that we heard about for years and years and years and that were dismissed as pair brained, they were scratching at something really real about the way that elites behave when they don't think any of us are looking.

[Nick Confessore]

I mean, these documents are an X ray of the global elite. How it's interconnected, how it's isolated, how money buys anything, it buys your way out of any trouble, it buys your way out of almost any scandal. A man who was convicted of soliciting a Girl remained the toast of the town in Manhattan for years until he was arrested again. It was no obstacle to socializing to movie premieres, to invitations to fancy events, or to the intimacy that Deborah and Matt have been talking about with these powerful people. It did not give them any apparent qualms that he was this person.

[Matt Goldstein]

And can I add to that, that what you see here also is, I think, elite society at the end of the day. While they knew he was a registered sex offender and they were aware that he had pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor girl. And that's a key part of what they knew, right? It was easy for them to discard these young girls as basically they were just prostitutes. If it wasn't Epstein, it would have been somebo why his crimes didn't matter.

[Deborah Kamen]

Because of who the crimes were perpetrated against.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Because these women didn't matter, right?

[Matt Goldstein]

These girls, they were girls. They were girls that didn't matter. They were basically disposable people that they didn't care about. And the irony is, a lot of these elites are people who we would call progressives and having very liberal views and supposedly enlightened views on women. And it really shows a real level of hypocrisy.

[Deborah Kamen]

It's also a really interesting look at how these elite people, these extremely powerful people, were played by Jeffrey Epstein. The way that he became this puppet master. Just holding all of them on a string, he was able to dangle the things that they wanted most in life. Not just sex, but also all the things they opened up to him about. And they really felt for so long that they were infallible. And for some of them, there may never be real accountability, but there is some sort of accountability that's happening right now because there's a public reckoning. We are reading their intimate thoughts in the New York Times. We are publishing photographs that they never thought would see the light of day.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

We're publishing them speaking in vulgar terms.

[Deborah Kamen]

Yes. These are things they never thought would be aired. They never believed in a million years that this would reach the public. They didn't think they were people who could be touched. But there is a paper trail, and now we have it, and they have fallen into that, and it is a reckoning of a sort.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Well, Deborah, Matt, Nick, thank you guys very much.

[Nick Confessore]

Thank you.

[Deborah Kamen]

Thank you for having us.

[Matt Goldstein]

Ms. Maxwell, did you and Jeffrey Epstein attempt to surround yourselves with influential individuals to curry favor and shield yourselves from potential scrutiny?

[Deborah Kamen]

I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to silence.

[Michael Barbaro]

On Monday afternoon, Epstein's longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a federal prison sentence on sex trafficking charges, refused to answer questions during a deposition before Congress. Instead, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination in response to every question. Meanwhile.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

Well, that was an interesting experience.

[Michael Barbaro]

A few hours later, the two congressmen who have led the efforts to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein form files, Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Ro Khanna of California were given a chance to review unredacted copies of the latest Epstein files.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

We went in there for two hours. There's millions of files, right? And in a couple of hours we found six men whose names have been redacted who are implicated in the way that the files are presented.

[Michael Barbaro]

Booth lawmakers criticized the Department of Justice for redacting the names of six associates of Epstein who they said appeared to have engaged in criminal conduct. One of them, according to Massie, is a high ranking official in a foreign government. We'll be right back.

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We all have moments when we could have done better. Like cutting your own hair. Yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen. So now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Coulda done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help.

[Deborah Kamen]

When you need it.

[Advertisement Voice]

Learn [e-mail] A biotech firm scaled AI responsibly. A retailer reclaimed hours lost to manual work. An automaker now spots safety issues faster. While these organizations are vastly different, what they have in common sets them apart. They all worked with Deloitte to help them integrate AI and drive impact for their businesses. Because Deloitte focuses on building what works, not just implementing what's new. The right teams, the right services and solutions. That is how Deloitte's clients stand out. Deloitte Together makes progress. This podcast is supported by GoodRx. This heart health Month. Show your heart you care with GoodRx. GoodRx now offers 30 popular heart meds for under $30 plus. Get expert advice on managing high cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes. Simply compare prescription prices to find discounts of up to 80%. GoodRx is not insurance, but even if you have Insurance or Medicare, GoodRx may beat your copay. Stay smart about your heart. Go to goodrx.com thedaily here's what else.

[Michael Barbaro]

You need to know today and as.

[Deborah Kamen]

A doctor, your message to people about the measles vaccine.

[Matt Goldstein]

Take the vaccine, please.

[Nick Confessore]

We have a solution for our problem.

[Michael Barbaro]

A top U.S. health official is urging Americans to get vaccinated against the measles, issuing one of the strongest endorsements yet from the Trump administration. Asked by CNN about the measles outbreak that is raging In South Carolina, Dr. Mehmet Oz was far more forceful in calling for vaccination than the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A longtime skeptic of vaccines.

[Deborah Kamen]

And we believe our mom is still out there. We need your help.

[Michael Barbaro]

On Monday, the Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie issued a plea for the public's help in finding her 84 year old mother, Nancy Guthrie, whose disappearance over a week ago is being investigated as a kidnapping.

[Advertisement Voice]

No matter where you are, even if.

[Deborah Kamen]

You'Re far from Tucson, if you see anything, you hear anything, if there's anything at all that seems strange to you that you report to law enforcement, we are at an hour of desperation.

[Michael Barbaro]

Local police say that blood found on Nancy Guthrie's front porch was hers and that a doorbell camera at her home had been disconnected and removed. But so far, police say they have few leads about her location. Today's episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Michael Simon Johnson and Shannon Lynn. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg and Rachel Quester, contains music by Chelsea D. Daniel and Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily I'm Michael Balboro.

[Michael Barbaro (Host)]

See you tomorrow.

[Advertisement Voice]

We all have moments when we could have done better. Like cutting your own hair. Yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Coulda done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education and human help.

[Deborah Kamen]

When you need it.

[Advertisement Voice]

Learn [e-mail].