Jeffrey Epstein, sexual predator and child abuser, became a very rich man as a financial advisor to the rich and famous. When he died awaiting trial, he was allegedly worth $600 million. His estate paid off claims to more than 100 women whom he had abused.
Due to his notoriety and his many powerful friends, he continues to be a fascinating figure. The Wall Street Journal somehow obtained his daily diaries and has written several stories about his interactions with his important friends.
This one was published a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal:
On Monday, Sept. 8, 2014, Jeffrey Epstein had a full calendar. He was scheduled to meet that day with Bill Gates, Thomas Pritzker, Leon Black and Mortimer Zuckerman, four of the richest men in the country, according to schedules and emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Epstein also planned meetings that day with a former top White House lawyer, a college president and a philanthropic adviser, three of the dozens of meetings the Journal reported he had with each of them.
Six years earlier, in 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, and he subsequently registered as a sex offender. He was arrested again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, and died that year in jail awaiting trial.
Mr. Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has said they discussed philanthropy, and it was a mistake to meet with Epstein. Mr. Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, who has said previously he met for tax and estate advice, declined to comment. The other two men haven’t previously discussed their meetings with Epstein and didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mr. Pritzker is chairman of Hyatt Hotels and Mr. Zuckerman is a real-estate investor and media owner.
That Monday featured appointments at two luxury hotels in midtown Manhattan—the Park Hyatt and Four Seasons. Epstein was also scheduled to host several visitors at his sprawling townhouse near Central Park.
Epstein’s driver picked him up in the morning and brought him to meet the Microsoft mogul and Hyatt hotel heir at the Park Hyatt hotel near Central Park.
Epstein had met with each of them before. In 2011, Epstein was discussing a multibillion-dollar charitable fund with JPMorgan Chase executives and wrote in emails to them that he could involve Mr. Gates and Mr. Pritzker.
On this day, Mr. Gates was scheduled to spend several hours with Epstein, accompanying him to various meetings. Mr. Gates runs, with his ex-wife, one of the world’s biggest philanthropies.
“As Bill has said many times before, it was a mistake to have ever met with him and he deeply regrets it,” said a spokeswoman for Mr. Gates.
Mr. Pritzker, part of a wealthy and politically connected Chicago family, was a frequent guest at Epstein’s townhouse, according to the documents.
Mr. Pritzker and Hyatt representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment about the scheduled meetings.
The schedule called for Epstein and Mr. Gates to head two blocks along 57th Street to the skyscraper that houses the offices of Apollo Global Management.
Epstein had been scheduled to meet with its co-founder Mr. Black the day before, and the two men were slated to meet again three days later, the documents show.
Mr. Black had more than 100 meetings scheduled with Epstein from 2013 to 2017. They typically met at Epstein’s townhouse and occasionally at Mr. Black’s office, the documents show.
The billionaire stepped down as Apollo’s CEO in March 2021. An Apollo review found he paid Epstein $158 million for estate planning and tax work.
Mr. Black declined to comment about the scheduled meetings. Apollo has said Epstein was working for Mr. Black, not Apollo.
Epstein and Mr. Gates were next scheduled to head to Epstein’s townhouse to meet with Mr. Zuckerman, the owner of U.S. News & World Report.
At the time of the meeting, Mr. Zuckerman also owned the Daily News and was executive chairman of Boston Properties, a big owner of office buildings.
Mr. Zuckerman was scheduled to meet Epstein more than a dozen times over the years. On some occasions, the two men planned to meet at Mr. Zuckerman’s office or home, which was near Epstein’s townhouse, the documents show.
One night in January 2014, Epstein waited past 11 p.m. to meet with Mr. Zuckerman, who was scheduled to visit his townhouse at 10:30 p.m., the documents show.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Zuckerman had no comment on the scheduled meetings.
The Four Seasons, a luxury-hotel chain in which Mr. Gates’s investment firm holds a stake, was the next scheduled stop. There, Epstein introduced Mr. Gates to Kathryn Ruemmler, who until earlier that year had served as President Obama’s top White House lawyer.
Over the next few years, Epstein often had appointments with Ms. Ruemmler, who was a partner at Latham & Watkins at the time and is now general counsel at Goldman Sachs.
Ms. Ruemmler had a professional relationship with Epstein and many of their meetings were about a mutual client, a Goldman Sachs spokesman said. “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Ruemmler said.
The spokeswoman for Mr. Gates said Epstein never worked for Mr. Gates. A spokeswoman for Latham & Watkins said Epstein wasn’t a client of the firm.
Epstein returned to his Upper East Side townhouse in the afternoon, the schedule shows. One of the largest private homes in Manhattan, the townhouse was originally built for a Macy’s heir.
At 4:30 p.m., Epstein was scheduled to meet with Ramsey Elkholy, a musician and anthropologist. Mr. Elkholy had several other meetings with Epstein over the years.
Mr. Elkholy said one of Epstein’s girlfriends had introduced them, and that he occasionally went to Epstein for financial and book publishing advice. “When I heard about everything that happened, I was sick to my stomach,” he said.
“In hindsight, I realize that Jeffrey was a very good con man,” Mr. Elkholy said. “He could give the impression that he was helping you when in fact he was mostly B.S.-ing.”
The next person on Epstein’s calendar, Leon Botstein, was running late that day. The longtime president of Bard College was arriving at LaGuardia Airport and planned to head straight to the townhouse, the documents show.
Mr. Botstein said he first visited Epstein’s townhouse in 2012 to thank him for $75,000 in unsolicited donations for Bard’s high schools, then visited again over several years in an attempt to get more. He also invited Epstein to events at the college.
Mr. Botstein said fundraising for the school was his responsibility, and that he met just as frequently with other potential donors.
“It was a humiliating experience to deal with him, but I cannot afford to put my pride before my obligation to raise money for the causes I’m responsible for,” Mr. Botstein said.
“It looked like he was someone who was convicted and served his time,” Mr. Botstein said. “That turned out to be corrupt, but we didn’t know that.”
The last meeting scheduled for the day was with Barnaby Marsh, a philanthropic adviser to wealthy families. At the time, Mr. Marsh was an executive at the John Templeton Foundation, which donates to various science and research groups. He had roughly two dozen meetings with Epstein.
Mr. Marsh said he often went to Epstein’s townhouse for gatherings because it was full of academics and wealthy people who discussed philanthropy ideas. “So many of these billionaires knew him,” Mr. Marsh said. “And he would sit in the corner, just kind of watching.”
Mr. Marsh said Epstein openly discussed his jail time. Mr. Marsh said, however, that he never saw evidence Epstein made significant donations. “He was a lot of talk, but he never did anything.”
That is just one day in Epstein’s calendar. He was scheduled to meet regularly with some of those same people, and infrequently with others. Here is a look at how often they appeared in Epstein’s schedule in the year before and the year after that day:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane: Third (short) paragraph, journal rather than journsl. And thanks for this post.
Thanks, Mark. Fixed.
It is unsurprising to know that billionaires live in a bubble in which they meet with other well-connected, wealthy people, and they are close to the levers of power. That is why our economy works so well for the ultra-wealthy. They dictate the policies in exchange for campaign and other tax deductible donations. It would be so much better for the other 99% if billionaires paid their fair share of taxes, but that is unlikely within our current system, particular since the debt ceiling deal cuts the IRS staff once again. If billionaires paid more in taxes, we could afford some of the social safety nets available in the Scandinavian countries. Instead, we are heading into austerity as the bilateral agreement on the debt ceiling is a give away to the wealthy, the military and oil and gas. It is another bonus to the wealthy as funds would be transferred from the poor and working class to the super-rich.
RT,
If only working people who vote Republican understood that the party fights for billionaires, not them.
Why are we still talking about this pedophile? Because famous people met with him? Really?
Enough with this WSJ exercise in morbid voyeurism.
It’s not “an exercise in morbid voyeurism.” It’s barely about Epstein; rather, it is about the ultra-rich people who were aware of his reputation but took meetings with him anyway. It is a depressing commentary on the power structure today, and much more sinister than mere voyeurism.
And it’s perhaps the 1,793,899th such story I’ve seen.
This year.
Morals take a backseat to money.
This is about Bill Gates and the Billionaire Boys Club.
Sure it is.
It seems blackmail was part of Epstein’s business strategy. Epstein learned about an extra-marital affair Gates had with a Russian bridge player years earlier. When Gates didn’t contribute money to one of Epstein’s philanthropy schemes, he turned to extortion. https://apple.news/AgyLPV-GrT1igcNtKKmfTrA
The balls on Epstein. Gates has an affair with a woman. Epstein reaches out to the woman and pays her school tuition. Then Epstein reaches out to Gates and asks him to reimburse him for the tuition costs, effectively signaling blackmail.
FLERP, can’t have been a big bill for Bill.
It “seems”? Per WSJ (paywalled, so did not read). it “appeared”?
It “seems” to me that WSJ can’t cough up a factual statement yea or nay. It “appears” that WSJ “could” “possibly” “seem” to have no journalistic integrity.
It “could be” that the news side has wandered over to the already abysmal editorial side.
But hey, I can’t “swear” to it. Just “puttin’ it out there”.
The WSJ: “Lying to the American people since Whitewater!”
Kinda catchy slogan, doncha think?
When Epstein was arrested AGAIN in July of 2019 for the sex trafficking of minors, it was widely reported in the media that
a. he was fabulously wealthy and owned palatial estates around the globe;
b. he had no obvious sources of the income that purchased and maintained these estates;
c. he had previously been arrested for the same behavior–for multiple counts of sex trafficking of minors–and had been let off with “punishment” that involved a short period of his being supervised but free to go to his office and to have “conjugal visits”;
c. he was constantly being visited by wealthy and powerful politicians, business people, and academics; and
c. each of his estates was extensively wired with closed circuit television and still cameras linked to central server rooms/control centers/observation posts.
So, where are all the photos and videos?
You are supposed to believe that they have miraculously disappeared. Poof.
Or perhaps there never were any, that, miraculously, the extensive surveillance systems in place at his palatial homes paid for with money that came from no obvious source weren’t used for anything. Isn’t every person’s home as wired as a diplomatic hotel in Stalin’s Russia?
And, equally miraculously, at a time when press reports were saying that he knew too much about too many important people, and after he survived one attempt to kill him while he was in jail awaiting trial, the U.S. penal system couldn’t keep him alive and he conveniently, for all those whom he surveilled–a long, long, long, long list of people who were among the richest and most powerful in the world–killed himself.
For a couple years afterward, brisk sales were made in the United States of Christmas tree ornaments featuring Epstein’s photograph and the statement “This ornament didn’t hang itself.”
Oh, nothing going on here, folks. It couldn’t possibly be the case that what you are experiencing here is a glimpse into thorough-going corruption of major institutions in the United States at the highest levels.
The penal system couldn’t keep Epstein alive long enough for him to go to trial, even though a) an attempt was made on his life while he was in jail awaiting trial, and b) social media in the U.S. and around the world was filled with statements from people saying that he would never be allowed to live until his trial because of what he knew about the wealthy and powerful.
In jail, two prison guards were assigned to watch Epstein. They had some excuse about why they were distracted when he killed himself.
cx: as Putin’s Russia
“I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” Acosta told his interviewers in the Trump transition team before Trump, who used to hang with Epstein, made Acosta, who had cut the sweetheart penalty deal for Epstein the first time around, Secretary of Labor.
The most bizarre of Epstein’s associations was with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky said Epstein advised him how to handle a money problem, but he has no explanation as to why he would meet with someone with such a bad reputation.
Gates expressed regret, but he did not apologize. He does not admit wrongdoing. Decades of molesting public education and never saying he was sorry after his failures have proven that.
Gates never admits error. He moves in to the next thing.