Like a lot of women, I do vaguely care about the latest political implosion of Peter Mandelson – but I think we’re all massively more obsessed with the fact that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men trying to help a known ex-con minimise and wave away his underage sex crimes. Amirite, ladies? Sure, I’m crying my eyes out about some Gordon Brown adviser having his asset-sale memo forwarded in 2009 … but at the same time I’m a whole lot more concerned about the actual Sex Bilderberg. Which, even now, our eyes seem to keep being conveniently dragged away from. Can we refocus?
We are, naturally, talking about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Since the latest lot dropped, I’ve been collating the emails from extremely famous men who actively sought to help the since-deceased underage sex trafficker trivialise his crimes in the years after his jail release in 2009. Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Mandelson, Andrew (obviously) – all of these men offer strategic advice, or media training, or chummy solidarity. Or, in the case of Chomsky, all of the above plus a drive-by on the notion of female victimhood. According to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist in February 2019, months after the Miami Herald had run an explosive series of articles laying out the scale of Epstein’s serial underage sexual abuse and the perversion of justice that covered it up, Chomsky sneered at “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women”. Wow. Never mind Manufacturing Consent – have a read of Not Giving A Shit About Consent. I thought Chomsky cared about power and exploitative elites? Still, nice photo of him laughing it up with Steve Bannon.
Let’s move on to Richard Branson. Here is Britain’s Best Loved Businessman TM in 2013, opening by saying to Epstein: “would love to see you. As long as you bring your harem!” (“Virgin Group has clarified that ‘harem’ referred to three adult members of Epstein’s team and stated Branson would not have used the term or had contact if he knew the full facts.” More on the full facts he should have been abreast of shortly.) Then it’s on to helping Jeffrey downplay his sex crimes, three years after he’s finished doing time for them. “I think if Bill Gates was willing to say that you’ve been a brilliant adviser to him, that you slipped up many years ago by sleeping with a 17½-year-old woman … ” – his sentence was for soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14, Richard, but go on – “… and have done nothing that’s against the law since, and yes, as a single man you seem to have a penchant for women. But there’s nothing wrong with that.” Thanks, Sir Nice Guy!
You know, almost every time I’ve ever written about Richard Branson over the years, he or one of his lackeys has written in to the Guardian to whine about it, and often got the letter printed. This time, I’m actively begging him to get in touch. Come on, Richard – write in and tell us why you didn’t bother Googling why your friend with the best lawyers out there still got an 18-month prison sentence, and had, at the time of that email, settled many widely reported civil lawsuits brought against him by victims? I’ll save you a space on the letters page.
There are so many big hitters in Epstein’s circle that we could be hours off the wholly absent Jeff Bezos starting a hashtag: #notallbillionaires. These days, the thing about Epstein’s many, many powerful friends is that if they ever break cover about their appearance in the files – and how terrifyingly quiet they’re all being – they tend to say they had no idea about his crimes. And yet, if one of your friends or my friends went to jail for a year, even if they told us it was a big old mistake/little local difficulty, we’d Google what it was all about – right? So imagine being as worldly as Richard Branson/Elon Musk/Peter Mandelson/Steve Bannon/Bill Gates and thinking that a billionaire with billionaires’ lawyers in the malleable US justice system ends up in jail in Florida because of some fit-up. Do me a favour. All those men know the world doesn’t work like that – and didn’t in this case, with Epstein gifted an incredibly controversial secret plea deal.
The only person I can believe was too stupid to have used a search engine was Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. But then I think he knew what had gone on in “other ways”. There isn’t space today for the further exposure in the latest document dump of Andrew’s naked lies about cutting ties with Epstein. The fact is – they all knew what Epstein went to prison for. They overlooked it. As evidenced by their continued association with him, it wasn’t remotely a big deal to them.
The other chilling part is imagining how these guys talked if this was the kind of thing they were willing to commit to email. “Send me a number to call,” Epstein says to film producer and New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch at one point in an exchange about “working girls”: “I don’t like records of these conversations.” We know Bill Gates was very close to Epstein, but doesn’t seem (thus far in the file dumps) to have committed that camaraderie to email. Maybe he too thought it wiser to talk on the phone.
In unrelated news, Ghislaine Maxwell will appear before Congress next week, where perhaps she’ll expand on her recent claim that four co-conspirators and 25 men made “secret settlements” related to the Epstein case, but were not indicted.
But so many silences remain deafening. It’s like JD Vance, vice-president for shitposting, said in 2021: “Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring? And then that guy died mysteriously in a jail? And now we just don’t talk about it.” He was on the warpath back then. “If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve?” Hmm. As a journalist who has been asking questions on this case for at least 11 years: who’s not talking about it now, JD? Though obviously not involved himself, Vance is in a position to illuminate much more than has been illuminated. So draw your own conclusion as to what purpose he is serving.
They all sell out women in the end. So yet again, it’s being left to the victims. Twenty of the Epstein survivors recently released a statement saying that information about them was included in the latest file release, “while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected”. That is the dark heart of this – yet even now we’re looking the wrong way. I keep hearing frantic commentary about what this means for Keir Starmer, for Fergie, for Mandelson’s peerage, whatever. How about the biggest and grimmest question of all: what it means for women and girls to be able to clearly see that we live in a world where so many of the richest and most powerful men alive are just not bothered
enough by their exploitation. Or worse.
