Epstein Files Shows How the Elites Move

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

04 Feb 2026

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Jeffrey Epstein, Jes Staley and Jamie Dimon © FT montage/Bloomberg

The importance of the Epstein files cannot be underestimated. They provide a view not just of scandal and sex trafficking but of international ruling class corruption.

The late Jeffrey Epstein was the subject of news for many years before his 2019 death and is still a newsmaker today owing to his years long relation with Donald Trump who is now in his second term in the presidency. The multi-millionaire financier had a tangled web of financial and political relationships with powerful people all over the world. Perhaps he was best known for the sex trafficking he used to compromise powerful people, but it seems that this activity, which is commonly known, was as it were, his side hustle.

Epstein moved in the highest circles of the world’s political and financial elite. He did far more than act as pimp for the powerful as he worked on behalf of Israel, UK politicians, and international corporate interests. His partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, now languishes in a federal prison, but she began her life as a member of the upper echelon of the British elite. Her father was Robert Maxwell, a Jewish, Czech-born newspaper magnate who was an ardent and active zionist. After Maxwell died from a fall from his yacht in 1991, he was buried in Israel with the then-prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, in attendance.

The Department of Justice's release of more than 3 million pages of files, including photos and emails, is a treasure trove of information for Epstein watchers. The contents of these files confirm much of what was already known about him but add previously unknown details about his wealth and his political activities. Placing so much emphasis on sex scandals has covered up activities that are equally devastating in what they disclose about how the ruling classes rule.

Epstein evaded justice for years but finally died in a New York City jail in 2019. The cause of death was ruled a suicide but there were always doubts about that finding. Such questions are logical where people like him are concerned. Epstein was worth an estimated $578 million and was a friend of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and a former prince of Britain’s royal family who is no longer a prince, now just plain Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, owing to the need to keep a family distance from scandal.

Epstein was Jewish, but as documents now tell us, he was also a believer in Jewish supremacy who worked with officials in allegedly democratic nations on behalf of the international ruling class and zionists. Epstein’s ties to Israel are well known to anyone who has been following this story, but his attitudes about people who aren’t Jews, “goyim,” as he often wrote in his emails, is a new revelation. “This is the way the jew make money... and made a fortune in the past ten years, selling short the shipping futures, let the goyim deal in the real world,” is just one of the missives found among Epstein’s emails. When a Hollywood publicist asked if an event would be “100% Jew night,” he replied, “No, goyim in abundance-JPMorgan execs, brilliant WASPs.”

Any discussion of the topic of Jewish financial and political power is usually off limits, a sure means of being labeled anti-semitic. But the damning tranche of files and Epstein’s own words give a space for reporting what is documented.

What has been missing is a deeper dive into the web of relationships with prominent people such as corporate leaders, the Israeli government, and international financiers like Epstein himself. The emphasis on sex trafficking and sexual assaults of minors has quite rightly garnered great attention, but there are many more things we should know about Epstein and what his relationships tell us about how the world actually works.

In the UK, Peter Mandelson was forced to step down from the House of Lords and from the Labour Party because of revelations that he leaked official government information to Epstein about a plan to bailout that government during the 2008 market crash. Mandelson and his husband also received money directly from Epstein.

Mandelson is not just any prominent person. He was formerly the UK ambassador to the United States, a former member of parliament, and a leader among New Labour – that is to say, that wing of the party which purged the left and undermined Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Mandelson has been a mover and shaker for many years, and his relations with Epstein are just one indicator of how the world works, even in countries that claim to be democracies operating on behalf of their people. It was clear that Corbyn would never be allowed to become prime minister. Powerful people, even those ostensibly in the same party, engaged in behind-the-scenes machinations and collusion with the media to ensure that even a little bit of liberal reform would be off the table.

In 2010, Mandelson emailed Epstein that he had convinced the then-prime minister Gordon Brown to resign after failing to form a coalition government. “Finally got him to go today.” Brown resigned the very next day, and the conservative Tories were back in power. The supposedly left wing Labor party was actually and still is controlled by unprincipled people for whom the labels of left and right are meaningless.

Epstein also played a role in the 1993 Oslo process, which so devastated Palestine. A Norwegian married diplomatic couple, Mona Juul and Terje Roed Larsen, played a lead role in the Oslo Accords and were also on Epstein’s payroll. Larsen received a personal $130,000 loan from Epstein and had to step down from his post as president of the International Peace Institute after it was disclosed that the organization received $650,000 in donations from Epstein. Juul and Larsen’s children were reportedly left $10 million in Epstein’s will. As former UN official Craig Mokhiber says, “I can’t prove that Israel has corrupted UN political officials working on Palestine, but I know that Larsen and his successors as UN envoys (UNSCO) all consistently prioritized Israel regime sensibilities over international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.” There was definitely great embarrassment in Oslo, Norway, where documents chronicling the process disappeared from official archives. Roed Larsen admitted to keeping a private stash but refused to return them to the state.

An Epstein associate advocated that he involve himself in the looting of Libya after the 2011 NATO regime change plot. The $80 billion in frozen assets were the target. “I have been speaking to the law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker . . . to go after the money on a contingency basis . . . But it would be to our advantage to pay them on an hourly basis and initially go after the low-hanging fruit, which would enable us to keep more of the money. I also have friends, formally with MI6 and Mossad, willing to help identify stolen assets and get them recovered.” Epstein did not demur his response, only stating that “Libyans now are legit… there will be many claims on that money.”

The list of misdeeds and insider wrongdoing is a long one, and there are still millions more files that have yet to be released, and the latest tranche was heavily redacted. The full extent of criminality is still unknown.

Epstein provides a useful window into the high echelons of wealth and power. It is useful that the public gets a glimpse of how little influence they actually have. While we are exhorted to vote at every opportunity, the Epsteins of the world are determining what does and does not happen. They work with intelligence assets, law firms, political parties, and the media to do their dirty work, and the people of the world be damned. If not for his sexual abuse and Donald Trump’s regretted pledge to release the files, we would not have such clear evidence of the corruption that runs the world.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.