“Putin was Playing Chess While the Rest of the World was Playing Checkers”

Three weeks ago, I discussed the situation in Ukraine with Lev Parnas. Parnas, remember, is the Ukrainian-American businessman who, with Russian-born businessman Igor Fruman, worked with Rudy Giuliani to achieve a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine for the Trump administration, essentially to try to target the Bidens. Parnas and Fruman’s efforts were stopped when, on October 9, 2019, both men were arrested and charged with federal campaign finance violations. Parnas subsequently blew the whistle on much of the clandestine operation around the time Congress held impeachment hearings over the matter.

The last time I spoke with him, Parnas told me he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was posturing and would not invade Ukraine.

Now, Parnas explains why the picture has changed. I spoke to him hours after Putin, in a rambling speech, declared two Ukrainian states—Donetsk and Luhansk—to be “independent” despite parts being under Ukrainian control, and President Joe Biden consequently announced the “first tranche” of sanctions including full blocking sanctions on two significant Russian financial institutions (which collectively hold over $80 billion in assets) and on five Russian elites and their family members.

Read our conversation on my Substack.

Jean-Luc Brunel’s Suicide Shuts One of the Main Doors to Unraveling the Mysteries of Jeffrey Epstein

With the apparent prison suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel—the owner of the model agency MC2 and a business associate of Jeffrey Epstein—early Saturday, one of the main doors to unraveling the mysteries that still surround Epstein, two and half years after Epstein’s own controversial suicide, just closed.

Just as many people hoped, in vain, that Epstein’s former girlfriend and now convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell might speak up, Brunel was seen as someone who would, potentially, have a lot of answers.

Now that that door’s been closed—in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of Epstein’s own death— the number of people under pressure to talk is dwindling.

Prince Andrew Settles to Keep Giuffre Case Out of the Courts

As I wrote last week, I have bounced a lot of the legal activity around the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell off of former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida-turned-litigator David S. Weinstein, who has been a wise sounding board. I asked him about today’s news that Prince Andrew has settled with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who had accused him of sexual abuse when she was a minor. In just weeks, Andrew was scheduled to give a deposition.

Read my conversation with Weinstein, condensed for clarity, on my Substack.

The Last Word on the New Yorker and Isaac Chotiner

This is the last time, I hope, I refer to the misleading article that Isaac Chotiner wrote in the New Yorker about my reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell over the last twenty years.

What I want to point out is that, strangely, if you bother to read Chotiner’s article closely, it shows that—amid a whole lot of opinionated, fact-less nonsense about my integrity—the answer to the central question of who buried Maria and Annie Farmer’s allegations of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse back in 2002, and then again in 2011, is…drumroll…Graydon Carter.

I’m giving you the facts about what happened during the reporting of this because I am entitled to defend myself and my reputation when it’s under attack. I hope you will read it. https://vickyward.substack.com/p/the-last-word-on-the-new-yorker-and

What the New Yorker Got Wrong

Around New Years, following the verdict in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, New Yorker staff writer Isaac Chotiner reached out to me. He asked if I would do an interview with him about my coverage over twenty years of Maxwell and Jeffery Epstein, starting with my 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein.

I paused.

On the one hand, I became a journalist because I believe in truth-telling.

On the other hand, I was concerned that Conde Nast—the parent company of the New Yorker—is also the owner of Vanity Fair. The same lawyers who were responsible for vetting my 2003 Vanity Fair article are still at Conde Nast. Is this the right venue to explore what really happened back then with Graydon Carter, one of the most influential—and highly paid—editors in the firm’s history?

It turns out, I was right to be doubtful. The piece has landed and it quickly abandons any attempt at exploring how Vanity Fair buried my 2003 reporting on Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of the Farmer sisters in favor of smearing my reputation as a journalist.

The backstory is that, in 2002, I was assigned by Vanity Fair what I thought would be a straightforward story—to find out where Jeffrey Epstein’s money came from. But very quickly, things started to get complicated. I had been the first journalist to talk with two women—sisters Maria and Annie Farmer—who had on-the-record sexual abuse allegations against Epstein. I put those allegations into the story. They were ultimately removed shortly before the piece went to press. In 2015, I wrote an article in the Daily Beast in which, with cooperation from Annie Farmer, I finally got the Farmer sisters’ allegations published.

The events of what happened leading up to the removal of the Farmers’ allegations from the Vanity Fair story are a large part of what the New Yorker story gets wrong.

Carter’s and Vanity Fair’s explanations for what happened have changed over time. At the time of the original 2003 piece, Carter told me he believed Epstein (Carter said, on tape, that he was a “trusting person” because he was Canadian) and that Epstein was clearly “very sensitive” about the women. My line editor at the time told me they felt the piece read better as a business piece. In more recent years, Carter has claimed that I didn’t have the reporting to back up the Farmers’ allegations and that my reporting didn’t meet the “legal threshold” for Vanity Fair. (I disagree. I had Maria and Annie Farmer and their mother all on the record, using their names. I had artist Eric Fischl on the record, too, and businessman David Schafer. Maria had spoken to them all contemporaneously, and then Annie had confided in her mother and sister. They were terrified that Epstein—with his money and power and connections—would rip into their credibility. And, sure enough, that’s exactly what he did.) Carter’s response to my 2015 allegations was that “Epstein denied the charges at the time and since the claims were unsubstantiated and no criminal investigation had been initiated, we decided not to include them in what was a financial story.” He’s gone on now to tell the New Yorker, “My staff, to a person, did not trust her.” (And yet I worked for Vanity Fair for a decade after this. That—and the rest of my record—speaks for itself.) Carter also, according to Chotiner, has suddenly “suggested that he had not been involved in decision-making about the article.”

At no point in the process did anyone at Vanity Fair say to me that I didn’t have the reporting. If anyone had ever said that to me, I would have asked them what they needed in order to meet that standard and then I would’ve gone out and gotten it. (A point I made to Chotiner that, apparently, he felt was moot).

What I do know is that, after I’d filed a draft, Epstein went into Carter’s Vanity Fair office and had a meeting—the content of which was never discussed with me. (If he asked Carter about that, Chotiner didn’t bother to put Carter’s response in the piece. I guess what happens in the offices of senior male executives at Conde Nast is off-limits to a New Yorker staff writer.) But a few weeks following that—a period of time during which my records show that Epstein and Carter continued to communicate—the Farmers and their allegations were cut out of the article.

Given Carter’s shifting story, that mysterious meeting, and the New Yorker piece’s inaccuracies and mischaracterizations, I’ve decided to share lengthy excerpts from the transcripts of my conversations with Jeffrey Epstein and with Graydon Carter himself so that you can read them for yourself and judge what you think actually happened at Vanity Fair back then.

To be clear: I supplied Chotiner with these time-stamped transcripts of conversations I had of conversations with Epstein, and of conversations with Carter. I also supplied Chotiner with emails that have their time and date clearly marked. But I began to suspect during the fact-checking process that Chotiner didn’t appreciate my transparency about the fallibility of memories from 20 years ago. I may not have immediately recalled things he asked me (especially when phoning me up at 10pm, as he did during reporting), but I have all the “receipts” supporting my story. I have kept my transcripts and emails for years, and I was able to go back and painstakingly reconstruct the timeline—to the point that, when Chotiner shared said timeline with Carter, Carter realized he had gotten his own story wrong and is quoted in the piece as saying, “Well, this is my mistake, then. Remember, this was almost 20 years ago.”

That’s precisely why the actual documentation is so important.

For the full story—including those Epstein and Carter transcripts—read my Substack: “What The New Yorker Got Wrong.”

‘Everybody’s Absolutely Horrified’: High Society Is Bracing Itself for Ghislaine Maxwell’s Trial

When she walked into court on Monday morning for the penultimate pre-trial conference before she faces what will amount to the fight of her life, Ghislaine Maxwell looked just like she did 10 years ago. In fact, she looked better.

Thick black glossy hair. A black turtleneck sweater. Grey slacks. A bottle of Poland Spring in her hand. No cuffs anywhere. A smile, even, as she talked and shared a laugh with her lawyers, who were clearly fond of her. One brushed back her hair, another rubbed her back and shoulder, a gesture of sympathy.

It was a moment that caught me off guard and took me back in time. It reminded me of precisely why Maxwell had once had so many friends. Her vast number of acquaintances may not have all been people she was close with, because her lifestyle was so peripatetic — she was always traveling somewhere or other. Nonetheless, she drew people to her because she was funny, she was witty, she was extraordinarily charming… and, as I was reminded in that courtroom, also supremely confident.

Ghislaine Maxwell, as just about everyone knows, currently stands charged of helping the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein traffic and sexually abuse four women, three of whom were underage, as well as lying in a civil suit. (One of the more chilling sentences in the indictment reads: “Maxwell’s presence during minor victims’ interactions with Epstein, including interactions where the minor victim was undressed or that involved sex acts with Epstein, helped put the victims at ease because an adult woman was present.”) Opening arguments are scheduled for Nov. 29. She has denied all charges.

Given the horrific nature of the allegations, it’s not surprising that on Monday — unlike 10 years ago, when she was hosting dinners at her New York townhouse, proselytizing about her efforts to preserve the oceans through her philanthropy — I didn’t see a single “friend” of hers in court. (The only supporter I saw in attendance was her sister, Isabel.)

I knew Maxwell slightly because I am part of the ex-pat British community in New York, so I ran into her from time to time over the years. And I know a good number of her friends. Or former friends, I should say. So, what are they saying amongst each other as she heads to trial?

In the past year, I noticed something as I was reporting Chasing Ghislaine, an ID special (which premieres Nov. 22 on discovery+) and an Audible podcast of the same name: Hardly any of the people who went to drinks at her house or to dinners for Prince Andrew — many of them members of the British upper classes or American plutocracy — wanted to talk about Maxwell on the record. Many of them professed that they were horrified, disgusted at the allegations she is charged with.

One person who went to dinners that included Maxwell, Epstein, and Prince Andrew told me: “I can’t remember the last time I heard anybody say, ‘Poor Ghislaine, she should be allowed to say her story.’ I think everybody’s absolutely horrified, everybody’s embarrassed that somebody in our broader circle of us could have been behaving in such a terrible way.”

But, as I reached out again in the past week to her former friends, there were those — probably more than you think — who still wonder if she is really the monster she’s been pictured as in the media. Some wonder if she may yet prevail before a jury.

Reading this, you may be shocked. I know I was.

But, as I dug further, I began to see the complexity at play: There is questioning, voiced privately among a few people who used to have dinner with her, whether the government can prove its case. Partly that’s because the allegations are from so long ago, the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, but it’s also because these people still cannot see the Hyde in the Jekyll-and-Hyde that Maxwell allegedly is — or was. Jekyll, it turns out, was very dazzling.

People who heard rumors back in the early 1990s about Maxwell “finding girls for Epstein” say that they just do not believe that the Maxwell they knew, who liked designer clothes and expensive restaurants, would have been skulking around school-gates, as has been described in the civil litigation. They just can’t imagine the visual. (That charge is not actually in the government indictment, but one imagines it could come up in court.) “I don’t believe, and nobody that’s ever met her believes that she sat in a car recruiting school-age girls. No. Nobody believes that,” one person said to me.

“The idea that Ghislaine was the sort of person who’d be bothered to visit working class areas to pick up vulnerable girls doesn’t gel with the person I knew and worked for,” says a person who worked in Epstein’s Palm Beach home. “Ghislaine had far too high regard for herself. She’d have had time for shopping on Worth Avenue, yes, not wandering around West Palm [where many of Epstein’s Florida victims lived]. That would have been beneath her.”

A question that always comes up in speculation about the trial is who will she name as also being involved. More than one person has asked me, “Who should be afraid?”

The answer to that largely depends on whether Maxwell decides to take the stand in her own defense, ordinarily a tactic of last resort but a possibility in this case, according to a couple of legal experts. The answer is that if she takes the stand, she can say anything and name anyone as long as Judge Alison Nathan deems it relevant to her defense.

That gets to the main criticism I’ve heard about the trial, which is: Why is Maxwell alone facing charges for a scheme that was a socio-economic pyramid involving many others? Even David Boies, the attorney who represents several Epstein victims (though only one, Annie Farmer, is involved in Maxwell’s trial), told me earlier this year he knows that Epstein’s schemes involved far more people – both men and women – than just Maxwell. “I think it would be a miscarriage of justice if the other co-conspirators were not called to account,” he told me, saying he expected more indictments. Yet, so far, that has not happened.

One of the Epstein survivors who is not a government witness and who asked not be named told me she believes that Maxwell should be held accountable, but she also thinks that it’s unfair that others — including Lesley Groff, Epstein’s long-time assistant and who was one of four Epstein employees named in a non-prosecution agreement signed by Epstein in 2008 — are not on trial. This survivor never met Maxwell during the period she visited with Epstein, but, she says, she met Groff several times and Groff sometimes scheduled meetings between her and Epstein. Groff’s lawyer, Michael Bachner, told me that Groff was simply a business associate who had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. “Prosecutors have indicated in multiple conversations with me that, based on the evidence they have so far uncovered during the course of their lengthy investigation, they do not intend to bring criminal charges against Lesley Groff,” he says.

Bachner also says that, as far as he is aware, Groff will not be a government witness at Maxwell’s trial.

But it seems clear from court papers that other former Epstein employees will be government witnesses, and it’s precisely this sort of perceived cherry-picking that leaves a handful of people privately wondering if the legal process has now gotten weighted to an unfair extreme against one person who was not the mastermind criminal at the heart of what was a vast global enterprise.

That person, no one disputes, was Jeffrey Epstein.

A lawyer who has been in negotiations with Epstein’s estate on behalf of some survivors told me that one rumor going around is that Epstein changed his will the day before he died in jail in August 2019, reportedly a suicide, because he learned Maxwell was cooperating against him as he faced the charges of sex trafficking and abuse of minors. He took her out of the will is the scuttlebutt, according to my source. (Epstein’s lawyer Reid Weingarten says he does not know if this is true, but he doubts it).

But if Epstein did in fact deliberately kill himself, knowing Maxwell would wind up being his substitute in court, that narrative plays into what Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine’s brother, has been saying on TV: that his sister has been put on trial not for her crimes, but for Epstein’s. (This is a line Maxwell’s defense will take, judging by pre-trial filings).

Most people I spoke to think that no one is really listening to Ian. But a handful, including one person who knew Epstein and got financial advice from him for over 20 years, disagree: “Essentially we are about to watch the trial of Jeffrey Epstein — only Ghislaine is taking his place. This is about him. He’s dead so she’s got pay the price he should have, for justice to be perceived to have been done.”

This person adds: “And, by the way, I didn’t even like her.”

Vicky Ward is the host of Chasing Ghislaine, an Audible podcast and docuseries premiering on discovery+ on Nov. 22 and ID on Dec. 3.

What Was the Real Relationship Between Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates?

As the world now knows, one of the more surprising names to have popped up around Jeffrey Epstein is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

It’s been widely reported that Gates had flown on Epstein’s plane at least once, and visited his home multiple times — but the depth of their relationship is not fully known, and more details are emerging. The media is rife with speculation that one cause of Gates’ recent divorce from his wife Melinda was his relationship with Epstein.

When asked about how they met, a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation told me that many people encouraged Gates to meet with Epstein, suggesting that Epstein would help bring funds into the software entrepreneur’s famed philanthropic organization.

In 2019, Gates was quoted as saying, at the New York Times DealBook conference, “I made a mistake in judgment in that I thought those discussions would lead literally to billions of dollars going to global health. Turned out that was a bad judgment, that was a mirage.” He also admitted, “I gave him some benefit by the association.” 

So, here’s what I know from my reporting that takes this story further. 

In Bill Gates’ case, one conduit to him was a protégé of Epstein’s: Her name is Melanie S. Walker. 

Walker is a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon who became a top adviser to Gates at his Foundation and after that, became a senior adviser at the World Bank. The Gates Foundation placed her at the international financial institution in a somewhat-common arrangement called a secondment. What that means is the Foundation paid her salary — even though she was working for the World Bank. 

She found herself in such echelons in an intriguing way: Walker came from a working class family in Texas; as she reached adulthood, she was beautiful and bright. Having finished her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas, she was on a sightseeing trip to New York in 1992. She was having tea in the main dining room of the Plaza Hotel when Jeffrey Epstein approached, because, says a source with knowledge, he thought she was attractive. With him was Donald Trump, who was busy shaking hands with people in the room. (Trump was then the Plaza’s owner.) Trump also introduced himself to Walker.

Epstein then became a mentor to Walker. Walker told the Times that Epstein offered her a modeling opportunity — but the person familiar says Epstein told her not to go into modeling, and he encouraged her to finish medical school, which she did. 

From 1992 to 2000, the time period when she went to medical school in Texas, records show that she listed an address in a New York apartment building that Epstein owned. This was a place she could use for occasional meetings in New York, according to the person familiar with her. But, this person says, she didn’t live there.

According to a source with knowledge, in 1998, while she was pursuing a post-doctoral study at Cal Tech, Epstein hired her as his “Science Advisor.” She would later tell people who then spoke to me, that she felt a deep gratitude toward Epstein, both for his advice and for the job.

A source who was friendly with Epstein then recalls her role as providing Epstein with introductions to interesting faculty members at Cal Tech and elsewhere — people whose work he might be interested in funding. This person recalls meeting her at a dinner at Epstein’s house in New York. Her relationship with Epstein seemed only professional to this observer.

Around the same time, she and Prince Andrew became close friends. But not through Epstein, at least according to a source with knowledge. The story goes, according to that source, that Walker received a spare ticket to a Broadway show from a different friend and sat next to Prince Andrew.

In the early 2000s, she found herself in Seattle, and for the first time, the orbit of Bill Gates — this was after she moved in with an executive at Microsoft. His name is Steven Sinofsky. According to an eyewitness, Sinofsky brought Walker to Microsoft events, and at a company barbecue, she met the Microsoft founder. 

In 2006, she was hired by the Gates Foundation, partly so she would stay in Seattle along with Sinofsky, says a person familiar. A separate source says during this time Walker talked highly about Epstein. 

Meanwhile, two other people close to Gates and to Walker — the physician Boris Nikolic and the scientist Nathan Myhrvold — had also met Epstein and also talked up Epsein to Gates, says this source. In 2010 Gates announced the Giving Pledge: a commitment by the world’s richest individuals and families to give away the majority of their wealth – and he wanted to connect with as many of these types of people as possible.

At this time some of the people at the Gates Foundation had gotten the impression from Epstein that he was a billionaire and therefore a potential contributor to the Giving Pledge and that his time in prison in 2009 was mostly undeserved. Epstein had told them that he simply caught a bad rap for an experience with women who had lied about their age.

Sources say Nikolic was impressed with Epstein’s ideas for fundraising, as was Gates, who met Epstein in early 2011 at a dinner, according to the New York Times. Sources say Gates wasn’t aware that Epstein did not have the sort of money he claimed to have, until much later. 

Gates and Epstein worked together on a global health fund. Everything went well — until, according to the New York Times’ description of a pitch document, Epstein asked a cut of any donations that he had helped facilitate from high-net-worth individuals. Gates and the people around him never finalized the plans because, according to someone with knowledge, once the lawyers looked at it, all sorts of warning bells went off. This may have been a factor in Gates ultimately dropping Epstein. 

But, Epstein apparently wasn’t so easy to shake off. Sources describe him like a mollusk at elite global philanthropic gatherings — to which he wasn’t invited.

Nikolic would subsequently run into Epstein a few times a year — either at Davos World Economic Forum, which Epstein wouldn’t attend but rented a chalet nearby; or at Ted conferences, where he was also wouldn’t enter, but where Epstein, regardless, set up camp; or at Harvard, where Nikolic worked. The encounters, according to the source, were brief and pleasant. 

Nothing materialized from his outreach to Gates; sources say Epstein made a final “fuck you” to Gates two days before he died. At this moment, he appointed Nikolic as a substitute executor of his will. Nikolic says he had had no meaningful contact with Epstein for years — so, the move could have been designed to shine a light on the Gates/Epstein relationship, with the full knowledge that it could be extraordinarily damaging to Gates’ reputation. I reached out to Nikolic who told me in an email exchange he had fainted at his mother’s wake when heard of his appointment and that “it was absolutely a retaliatory move”. 

He added: “Over the past few years, we have all learned that Epstein was a master deceiver. I now see that his philanthropic proposals were designed to ingratiate himself with my colleagues and me in an attempt to further his own social and financial ambitions. When he failed to achieve his goals, he started to retaliate.” Nikolic sought legal advice and declined his executor duties. 

Walker, meanwhile, has got on with her work as a neurosurgeon, and Gates, as we know, has gotten divorced. But the story serves as a warning perhaps that one should assume that the world of philanthropy is every bit as susceptible to high-flying power-plays as the for-profit world — and that a determined crook like Jeffrey Epstein can get a lot of undeserved credibility by associating with distinguished people on the inside.

Vicky Ward is the host of  Chasing Ghislaine, an Audible Original podcast, executive-produced by James Patterson, released on July 15th.

Jeffrey Epstein stalks his shadowy network of plutocrats from the grave

It’s almost two years since the alleged paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, months before he was due to face trial on charges of trafficking and abusing scores of minors.

His victims, understandably, have said that his untimely death robbed them of justice — which they now hope will be served in the forthcoming trial of Epstein’s alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. (She has denied all charges). But Epstein remains the subject of intense media curiosity, not just because of Maxwell, but also because of his extraordinary, destructive reach into the international plutocracy.

In the manner of a standing pack of cards collapsing from a gentle push, the list of billionaires who have paid a reputational price for their association with Epstein grows, as it confounds.

Some of the names are now widely known: the former retail king Les Wexner who has stepped off the board of L Brands, the company he founded; the founder of Apollo Global Management, Leon Black, who has also stepped down as CEO, after an outside review described how he paid Epstein fees of nearly $160m for tax advice and lent him $30m; the hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, who faced an allegation in a civil deposition by an alleged Epstein victim, also stepped down from his firm. (All three men have denied any wrongdoing). More recently, it’s been reported that the world’s greatest philanthropist Bill Gates was divorced by his wife Melinda, in part because of his meetings with Epstein.

That Epstein was able to infiltrate such a group raises a fundamental question: what did Epstein, a college dropout who spent only five years at the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns, offer that was so apparently irresistible?

The answer lies in the complexity of power and how it can manifest itself. In the last decade of his life, in an effort to rehabilitate his image, given that he was a registered sex-offender, Epstein curated elite, predominantly male salons.

I have been investigating Epstein for nearly two decades. According to my recent reporting Epstein claimed to some of his select guests that he could get them to whoever they needed — quietly. For example he knew Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — and if you doubted this, the Crown Prince’s photograph was hanging on the wall. He said he could get you to Vladimir Putin and to any number of prominent Israelis. He had friends in high places in developing Africa, France, Britain, the Middle East, Japan, and China.

And yet all this convening was done either on offshore islands, or in private rooms, on private trips, or in private planes — in short he was like a private concierge at the world’s most elite male club. Whether or not he really could deliver on everything he promised remains debatable. But astonishingly, given the sophistication of his audience, his followers seem to have believed him.

One example: over a tea meeting held around 2014 in Epstein’s mansion, Epstein bragged to the journalist Edward Jay Epstein (no relation) that his financial clients included an assortment of African dictators. He also said that he was effectively in control of the deepwater port of Djibouti.

Ed was sceptical: but mid-conversation a butler announced the arrival of Black. “Let Leon wait,” Epstein said. It was 15 minutes, according to Ed, before Epstein wrapped up, leading the veteran journalist to wonder if his host might actually be credible.

We know that Epstein invited Bill Gates to dinner at his New York home in 2011. He also invited the economist Larry Summers and the then JPMorgan banker, Jes Staley. According to someone familiar with Epstein’s thinking, the grouping was a deliberate effort to legitimise Epstein to Gates, whose spokesperson has said he made an “error in judgment” and that Epstein’s “ideas related to philanthropy gave Epstein an undeserved platform”.

Wexner has also said that he was completely deceived by Epstein’s extraordinary “cunning”. According to the retailer, Epstein stole $46m from him. Significantly, Wexner waited until after Epstein’s death to mention the theft publicly.

This is important because one of the vulnerabilities of the 0.001 per cent that Epstein keenly understood — and manipulated — was the power of social humiliation. He told me in 2002 that he’d discovered in the 1980s, when he was working as a self-described bounty hunter, that “when rich people lose money, they don’t want to go to the authorities, they just want it back.”

What he didn’t tell me was how enormously beneficial this insight was to him personally. Over the years, a number of extremely wealthy people or leaders of institutions have told me they or their families had been cheated by Epstein but they remain far too embarrassed to go on the record about it.

All this murky activity speaks to a truth most powerful people won’t readily admit: that while we may think the western world is run via an obvious chain of command, through boardrooms and politicians, this is not the only way that influence works.

There is a whole other socio-economic system at play in the shadows; and billionaires who are now under attack by Epstein, even from the grave, appear to have wanted access to it badly enough to pay a very high price.

Vicky Ward is the host and co-producer with James Patterson of the podcast ‘Chasing Ghislaine.’

Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?

Back in 2002, when I was reporting on Jeffrey Epstein’s finances for Vanity Fair magazine, he was not a household name. During that time, I paid a visit to the Federal Medical Center, Devens in Devens, Massachusetts to meet with an inmate, one Steven Hoffenberg.

We sat in a little room off a recreation area, Hoffenberg dressed in the requisite orange jumpsuit, while I, several months pregnant with twins, was dressed per prison requirements: as shapelessly as possible.

It was an absolutely intriguing meeting.

Hoffenberg was serving 18 years in prison for committing a $450 million Ponzi scheme. In the 1980s he’d been running Towers Financial, a debt collection and re-insurance business, and had worked alongside Epstein, who was a paid consultant. Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had plans to turn Towers into a global colossus – through illegal means.

But Hoffenberg was so transfixed by Epstein and his ideas that he had even paid the rent for Epstein’s office space. (Now he says he was “stupid” and greedy for doing so).

Hoffenberg told me with a sad grin that he represented a problem for Epstein because while they were working together, Epstein had confided in him as to how, exactly, he made a career out of conning people and institutions – not least because the idea was that they’d do it together.

Hoffenberg said that Epstein had a term for the perfect execution of the grift. He called it “playing the box,” which meant that he ensured that even if his crime was uncovered, the victim would be unable to do anything about it, either because of social embarrassment or because the money was tucked away in a place they couldn’t either find it or get it.

(What Hoffenberg had failed to realize, he told me, is that Epstein would con him. Epstein would take $100 million of Towers money, move it offshore and meanwhile cooperate with U.S. prosecutors against Hoffenberg, who was unable to do anything about this because he’d pled guilty, which meant there was no trial – and therefore no discovery.)

I can’t prove all of Hoffenberg’s claims – but some of them are accurate.

I have discovered, for example, that Epstein certainly did secretly co-operate against Hoffenberg and gave at least three interviews to prosecutors, and that had the case ever gone to trial, a source with knowledge says it would have likely turned out far worse for Epstein than for Hoffenberg.

Hoffenberg also knew something else Epstein wanted hidden, according to Hoffenberg: he claimed that Epstein moved in intelligence circles

The Hoffenberg/Epstein relationship was not something Epstein, then pitching himself to Vanity Fair as a money-manager extraordinaire for billionaires only, had volunteered to me.

So when I gingerly raised Hoffenberg to Epstein, and mentioned I had documentation showing that the two were linked, the financier turned really nasty.

He maintained he hardly knew Hoffenberg, he’d just consulted briefly on a couple of deals, that he’d not been involved in any prosecution of Hoffenberg and that if I wrote any different, things would turn out badly for me. Here is exactly what he said:

“If there’s any implication of wrong doing, I will take legal action against you personally. I’m telling you so you understand. I will be as harsh as I possibly can personally … not for the magazine, but you, because I had this discussion with you. This relationship is with you…. you shouldn’t risk your future for a job.”

Now, Epstein’s “sensitivity” regarding Hoffenberg was equal to his sensitivity on what he called “the girls”.

He went berserk if you mentioned either subject.

In hindsight one has to wonder if Hoffenberg presented an equally big problem as “the girls” would. Hoffenberg told me that in the 1980s, after Epstein left Bear Sterns in ignominious circumstances, Epstein was trained in moving money off-shore and that a mentor of Epstein’s was someone Hoffenberg knew: a British defense contractor, who died in 2011, named Douglas Leese.

Hoffenberg claimed that Leese was an arms dealer. (Leese’s son Julian says that is not true). But the UK parliamentary record does mention Leese in reference to the El Yammamah arms deal of the early 1980s.

I remember distinctly that in our first meeting Hoffenberg told me that Leese was pivotal in understanding Jeffrey’s MO, because Leese had introduced him not only to aristocratic Europeans (who Epstein subsequently fleeced) but to all sorts of people in the arms business – including the late Turkish-born businessman Adnan Kashoggi – and, allegedly, the late media mogul Robert Maxwell.

Back in 2002 I didn’t pay much attention to this.

This was because Epstein breezily threw me off.

First Epstein told me he’d never met Robert Maxwell. And I asked him twice if he knew Douglas Leese, whom I had never heard of, and Epstein said no. The second time, he elaborated:

“Douglas Leese … I think he was the father of somebody I knew … I think his son was friendly with Ferranti, that’s where that whole crowd comes in that you asked me about a long time ago. I think his name was Nicholas … it was sort of that 66th(?) Street building, I think they might have all lived there.”

So, I forgot about Douglas Leese. And I didn’t bother to pursue the notion Epstein had known Maxwell.

But all these years later, Leese’s name popped up again in my new reporting for a podcast and a documentary series about Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who is currently awaiting trials on charges of helping Epstein in his alleged sex-trafficking operations of minors. (She has denied all charges).

First I found a lawsuit filed by Leese in Florida which he asserted he “was involved with various highly confidential business enterprises including business in the United States, some of which involved governmentally- involved or other highly confidential business projects.”

Second, a source who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of what was discussed told me that Jeffrey had invited the source to join him and Leese on a private-jet trip to the Pentagon in 1981.

Even Leese’s own son Julian told me that his father was a mentor of sorts to Epstein in the 1980s and was totally shocked that Epstein would have pretended not to know him.

So why Epstein’s silence on Leese?

And was his denial about knowing Robert Maxwell equally meaningless?

What about the spy stuff?

Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he had worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under vey strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees).

Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”

So here’s where it gets tricky.

Four separate sources told me – on the record — that Jeffrey’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.

Some of these sources are more reliable than others. But the gist of the claims that you will be able to hear and, ultimately watch in a three hour documentary series, is that Robert Maxwell, who was himself a conduit between the Israelis and other governments during his life time, introduced Epstein to Israeli leaders, who then allegedly used Epstein as the equivalent of an old-fashioned Russian “sleeper,” someone who could be useful in an “influence campaign.”

The sources who range from former arms dealers, to former spies – and also Steve Hoffenberg suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to go one step further and compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

All of this is completely unprovable. And people close to Robert Maxwell say it sounds ridiculous.

But here’s what’s odd.

First, Epstein did visit Israel in 2008, with a view to moving there permanently and avoid his jail time in 2009 for the state charges he was convicted of. On his return, he told the Russian model Kira Diktyar that he’d changed his mind and decided to face the music. (He didn’t mention he’d avoided a far more serious federal investigation, thanks to a cushy non-prosecution agreement).

And once he got out of jail, in the last ten years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and of course the Americans.

He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

He told one person, the journalist Edward J. Epstein that he knew the owner of the deep-water port of Djibouti on the horn of Africa, a smuggler’s paradise, so well that he was basically in charge of it.

Now according to my sources in the intelligence world, this is hyperbole – but also not completely ridiculous. His name was mentioned as a middleman in both Africa and the Middle East. He was known in the intelligence world as a “hyper-fixer” somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.

Usually these people are very silent about what they do.

And yet Epstein was not silent. He had a photo of the Saudi crown prince, MBS on the wall, and photos of Bill Gates and all the VIPS who flocked to his salons.

It’s not wholly surprising therefore that the same sources who say they know he was some sort of intelligence asset say that he became a liability – which is why, possibly, he lost any “protection’ and was arrested.

A handful of people I interviewed, including former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, maintain that this is exactly what happened to Robert Maxwell, which is why, they say, Maxwell was killed. His financial problems were about to make him vulnerable. (His death was officially said to be because of heart attack).

Who knows what to make of all this?

But, when I think back to 2002 when I first met Steve Hoffenberg, I do remember asking him why he thought that Epstein, normally reclusive, had raised his head above the parapet and attracted media attention by flying Bill Clinton to Africa.

Hoffenberg had smiled.

“He can’t help himself. He broke his own rule,” Hoffenberg said. “He always said he knew the only way he could get away with everything he did was to stay under the radar, but now he’s gone and blown it.”

Vicky Ward is the host of the Audible Original podcast Chasing Ghislaine, which premieres on July 15th.

How Jeffrey Epstein Used Philanthropy to Worm His Way Into Powerful Circles

As the world now knows, one of the more surprising names to have popped up around Jeffrey Epstein is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It’s been reported that Gates flew on Epstein’s plane at least once and visited his home on several occasions. More recently, the media has been rife with speculation that one of the causes of Gates’s divorce from his wife Melinda was his relationship with Epstein. But the depth of their friendship is not fully known.

When I asked a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation how the two men met, I was told that many people encouraged Gates to meet with Epstein, suggesting that he could bring enormous resources to critical health initiatives.

Gates touched on the subject himself at a New York Times Dealbook conference in 2019. “I made a mistake in judgment in that I thought those discussions would lead literally to billions of dollars going to global health. Turned out that was a bad judgment, that was a mirage,” he said, adding, “I gave him some benefit by the association.”

One of the questions that I hear repeatedly is: How on earth could someone like Gates ever have been exposed to Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted as a sex offender. (Epstein was prosecuted on state charges of soliciting a prostitute and a minor in 2008.)

Difficult as this is to swallow, what I learned talking to people who worked with or around the financier is that part of Epstein’s genius (I hate to use that word, but it’s appropriate) was manipulation. In particular, he had a unique ability to use philanthropy as a tool to worm his way into circles where he otherwise might not have been invited.

Over and over again Epstein found a human conduit—usually a scientist or researcher—whom he would manipulate into helping him gain entrance to a world, that under any other circumstances, would or should be closed to him. This of course is the dark side of philanthropy, the part that few people want to talk about, but, talk to enough of the scientists who got to know Epstein and they will tell you, it is its Achilles heel.

To hear about the people Epstein used to gain access, tune into Chasing Ghislaine starting on July 15.