Jeffrey Epstein: The Blueprint for Power & Men

I did not care about the files at first. I told myself it was old news. I told myself there was nothing in them I had not already absorbed. I told myself this is simply the American story of powerful men and powerless girls. That casualness is my shame. Not the shock. The lack of it. Have I become so hardened that I no longer feel the impact of what these girls lived through.

Because here is the truth. Epstein was never the aberration. He was the blueprint. He was the American template for male entitlement disguised as philanthropy. A man who understood that if you surround your appetites with money and access and a certain kind of eccentric charm, the world will open the gate for you and hand you the keys.

These girls had no agency. None. They were not naïve. They were outmatched. They were chosen for their need and selected for their silence. Ghislaine Maxwell did not need brilliance. She needed instinct. She knew exactly what kind of girl could be shaped into compliance. Vulnerability was not an accident. It was the curriculum.

And look at her now. A cushioned prison. Softer rules. Craft tables and yoga mats. A place designed for nonviolent offenders, not for the woman who delivered girls to a predator. After months of demanding the files. After survivors begged to be heard and reporters fought through sealed records. After all that noise. She gets moved to a better prison. Donald Trump did it without any concern for optics. And he was right. Nothing happened. No outrage. No protest. No reckoning. She receives special meals. She has the head of the prison helping her with her emails. The distance between her life and the lives she damaged is the clearest proof of how power works in this country.

But she is not the center of this story. The men are. The men who moved easily through Epstein’s world. Former presidents. Philanthropists. Tech founders. Billionaires celebrated as visionaries. Bill Clinton flew with Epstein. Bill Gates met with him after his conviction. Donald Trump was photographed with him at parties he hosted. Their explanations wobble. Their proximity does not.

And let me stop on Clinton because his pattern is not separate from any of this. This is the same man who got a presidential library while Monica Lewinsky lost two decades of her life to shame that he engineered. She was brilliant. She was young. She was trapped in the gravitational pull of his power. I have apologized to her in my own mind more than once for ever seeing her as anything but another young woman overmatched by a man who knew exactly how much power he held. They exchanged gifts, including a book of poems, and when you look back at that now it reads like a record of the imbalance between them. A young woman offering feeling and admiration inside a structure where the older man always held the terms. Monica was older than the girls Epstein trafficked, but the imbalance is the same. And somehow Clinton still dines with the literati of America. That is the question we need to answer. How does a man who left such wreckage behind still sit comfortably at the cultural table.

And then there is Andrew. The man so publicly shamed by what he has done and what he cannot deny that he is not allowed to leave his own front door. He insists he never broke a sweat while the girl he posed with spent years repairing the damage men like him inflicted without consequence.

I am not interested in legal exposure. I am interested in the comfort these men felt in Epstein’s orbit. And perhaps still do. I am interested in what it says about a culture where the most powerful men on earth kept returning to a man who collected girls like currency. This is a story about power and men. It is a story about the insulation wrapped around male appetite. The excuses. The indulgence. The willingness to ignore behavior that would destroy the life of any girl it touched.

We are talking about four administrations. Two parties. A generation of men who either knew and stayed silent or never bothered to ask what Epstein provided besides introductions and private flights. If they did not know they should have known. If they did know the silence is its own crime.

This is the moment I turn the camera back on myself. Why did I look away. Why did so many of us. Maybe because if Epstein is not the monster but the reflection, then we have to admit how many powerful men rely on the same structure. How many benefit from the same protections. How many feel entitled to the same access. How many believe youth is not a boundary but a benefit.

I am no longer interested in the list of names in the files. I am interested in the culture that made the list possible. I am interested in the ease with which these men moved around a man who trafficked girls. I am interested in the girls who survived because they should never have needed to.

This is not going to fly anymore. Not because of morals. Not because of politics. But because once you see the structure you cannot unsee it. And once you admit that Epstein was not the exception but the design, the entire edifice begins to shake.

And maybe that is where we end for now. These American men who lived in Epstein’s orbit cannot be given the pass they have enjoyed for decades.

So let us start with one simple demand. Every single time any of these men come in front of a journalist, the first question must be about why they are in the Epstein files. Not their money. Not their foundations. Not their new ventures or their public service awards. They do not get to change the subject. They do not get to scrub their history with charity events or glowing profiles. They answer the question or the interview ends. What the hell is your name doing on that list? That is the only opening question any responsible journalist should ask.

More demands from my team. I want an answer from the Justice Department of all four administrations. Bush. Obama. Trump. Biden. I want to know why nothing was done with these files when they had them. I want to know why the same federal government that can prosecute a teenager for hacking a phone could not manage to bring the full weight of the law against a man who trafficked girls. I want to know why silence was the default for two decades. I want names. I want explanations. I want accountability for the inaction that allowed this to flourish. Merrick Garland. Yes, this means you too.

And the men? The hundreds of men? Let the rest of them join Andrew. Let King Charles put them together in some drafty castle where the only power left to them is the power to think about what they did. We have treated them as untouchable for too long. We have let them drift untouched through decades of privilege while the girls they harmed rebuilt themselves from rubble.

It is time to send them out of the orbit of power they still hold. We can do that. We have the power to do that. What the hell are we waiting for?