The 3 layers of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at a March 15, 2005, event in New York City. | Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty

Key takeaways

The accusations that Epstein personally preyed on many underage girls and young women are very well documented.
The accusations that Epstein supplied victims to prominent men are more disputed; the government never charged this, and it isn’t clear why.
More elaborate theories about blackmail, a client list, intelligence agencies, and murdered are purely speculative and lack hard evidence.

Anticipation is rising for the potential release of the “Epstein files.”

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to approve the release of Justice Department case files related to the accused sex trafficker Tuesday, something even President Donald Trump belatedly said he supports (after months of opposing it).

But will the files corroborate any of the frenzied speculation about what exactly Jeffrey Epstein may have been up to and which powerful people might be implicated?

Or, will they simply feed further conspiracy theories without managing to prove anything?

To get a sense of what we might — and probably won’t — learn, it’s worth breaking down the various bits of the Epstein scandal into three different categories.

First, there’s what we know for sure about the scandal: Epstein recruited a vast number of young women and underage teenage girls and tried to convince or coerce them into sex acts.

Second, we enter the more contested realm of allegations. Most importantly: Did Epstein suggest or coerce girls to have sex with the many prominent friends who frequently socialized with him at his New York and Florida mansions and his private island? And, if so, which friends?

Third, there are even murkier and more speculative theories. Was Epstein taping or blackmailing these prominent men? Was he working on behalf of US or foreign intelligence agencies? Was his supposed suicide in fact a murder?

Many on the internet think these sound plausible and can point to various tidbits of information they argue point in these directions. But they remain essentially unsubstantiated — and likely always will.

The accusations that Epstein personally preyed on a vast number of victims are very well documented and corroborated

In court filings, government documents, and journalistic accounts, there is voluminous and well-documented evidence of Epstein’s modus operandi for preying on teen girls and young women between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s.

Typically, Epstein would have his companion Ghislaine Maxwell or another of his female associates scout for or recruit prospective victims. In New York, many were aspiring artists and models. In Florida, many were recruited from spas (including Mar-a-Lago), came from disadvantaged backgrounds, or were high school........

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