The Big Questions About Jeffrey Epstein: What The Times Has Learned

July 15, 2026
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The Big Questions About Jeffrey Epstein: What The Times Has Learned

Few, if any, figures in recent history have caused as much legal, political, financial and reputational upheaval as Jeffrey Epstein. A convicted sex offender, Mr. Epstein was connected to many of the world’s richest and most influential people and institutions. He died in prison in 2019.

The public fascination with Mr. Epstein intensified after President Trump initially refused to release federal investigative records after pledging to do so. In late 2025 and early 2026, Congress and the Justice Department did release millions of pages of documents related to Mr. Epstein that have helped answer questions, though many mysteries remain.

The New York Times has been investigating Mr. Epstein’s finances, enablers and possible co-conspirators since his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019. Based on our continuing reporting, here is what we know.

The most recent revelations about Mr. Epstein include:

Andrew Farkas, a Harvard alumnus and donor, had a long, devoted friendship with Mr. Epstein that was laid bare in the Justice Department files. Since 2012, he has chaired the Hasty Pudding Institute of 1770, a student cultural organization separate from the university but housed in a classroom building named after Mr. Farkas’s late father. Now some students, faculty and alumni are circulating petitions calling on the institute and the university to cut ties with Mr. Farkas and also rename the building.

He grew up in an insular world, in Sea Gate, in Coney Island, which was then a mostly working- and middle-class Jewish refuge. The picture of his boyhood we found contains the fuzzy outlines of his future self: From a young age, Epstein preferred the protective company of a tight group of brainy boys and fixated on girls. Was a monster hiding in plain sight?

For the most in-depth investigation yet into his death, we consulted tens of thousands of pages of newly released documents, obtained Mr. Epstein’s own notes handwritten in jail — never before made public — and interviewed dozens of people related to the case. We found abundant evidence that for weeks before his death, Mr. Epstein had written about and discussed the idea of suicide and attempted it at least once, and possibly three times.

Students at a graduation ceremony for high schools in New York and New Jersey affiliated with Bard College repeatedly booed the college’s outgoing president, who announced his retirement in May after it was revealed he had a much closer relationship with Mr. Epstein than previously known.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, told a congressional committee in June that the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exploited information about his extramarital affairs “to pressure me to re-engage with him” after Mr. Gates had begun to sever ties with him.

Links to all of our coverage can be found here.

Mr. Epstein has been accused by prosecutors and victims of raping, abusing and trafficking girls and young women. It was a vast, yearslong operation that involved:

In the mid-2000s, federal and state authorities identified more than a dozen such teenage girls in Florida. In many cases, Mr. Epstein’s longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell recruited them under the pretense that they would be masseuses for a wealthy man at his mansion in Palm Beach.

Federal prosecutors later accused Mr. Epstein of abusing and trafficking dozens of girls at his townhouse in Manhattan, as well as in Palm Beach, from at least 2002 to 2005. He lured some by posing as a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret.

After he served time in a Florida jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor, Mr. Epstein appears to have shifted focus from underage victims to young women. He was often surrounded by aspiring models from Russia and Eastern Europe, some of whom later said they felt trapped under his control.

Some have accused several of those friends and associates of rape, though the men deny it.

They have accused him of raping or abusing them, including when they were girls — allegations that in some cases date to the early 1990s. At least one of those women, Virginia Giuffre, has died by suicide.

The federal government repeatedly missed opportunities to fully investigate or charge Mr. Epstein, until 2019. The missteps and lost opportunities included:

In 1996, Maria Farmer called the F.B.I. to tell the agency that Mr. Epstein had stolen nude photos of her underage sister. It ignored the tip for roughly a decade.

In 2005, the parents of a 14-year-old girl told the Palm Beach police that she had been paid to give a sexual massage to Mr. Epstein. That set off a state and federal investigation. While the authorities identified dozens of underage victims, the Justice Department — including the U.S. attorney for southern Florida at the time, Alexander Acosta — negotiated a deal: Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from just one minor.

The agreement also shielded any “potential co-conspirators,” including his female assistants, from prosecution. Though Mr. Epstein served his sentence in the county stockade, he was allowed to spend much of his jail time working from his office.

After being released early from his 18-month sentence, Mr. Epstein was welcomed back into elite society, attending parties, hosting dinners and continuing to do business with major financial institutions.

In the 2010s, a number of federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, investigated Mr. Epstein, but he wasn’t charged.

In 2016, lawyers for some of Mr. Epstein’s victims urged federal prosecutors in New York to investigate him for sex trafficking. The prosecutors chose not to.

It wasn’t until 2018, after the newspaper wrote a series about the 2008 deal in Florida, that federal prosecutors in New York opened a criminal investigation. It culminated in Mr. Epstein’s being charged with sex trafficking in July 2019.

Mr. Epstein amassed a nine-figure fortune through scams, fraud and the careful cultivation of billionaires and banks. His financial success involved:

Mr. Epstein’s first big break was landing a job at Bear Stearns in 1976. He eventually resigned after being caught improperly lending money to a client and violating rules around stock offerings, but he used the connections he forged there to jump-start his career as a financial trickster.

In the 1980s, Mr. Epstein, claiming to be a financial savant, engaged in a series of escalating scams.

In the late 1980s, a mutual acquaintance introduced him to Leslie Wexner, who ran the two retail companies. Mr. Wexner entrusted Mr. Epstein with full control over his finances before cutting ties with him around 2007. Mr. Wexner later said Mr. Epstein stole more than $100 million from him.

In 2012, Mr. Epstein began working for his longtime friend Leon Black, the co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management who said the money was for tax and estate planning work. Mr. Epstein also introduced Mr. Black to young women.

From the late 1990s through 2013, JPMorgan Chase, arguably the world’s most prestigious bank, serviced Mr. Epstein, despite employees’ concerns about his potential money laundering. In 2013, he switched to Deutsche Bank, which also ignored repeated red flags.

The combination of great wealth and a reputation for seeming to know everyone enabled Mr. Epstein to insinuate himself into the lives of important people in politics, business, the arts and academia. His strategy entailed:

As his fortune grew, Mr. Epstein made big donations to prestigious universities like Harvard and to individual scientists. The money led Nobel laureates and other leading intellectual figures to regularly socialize with and seek favor from him, and their presence helped grow his circle of influence.

Some of the doctors and others bent or broke the ethical rules of their profession, which allowed Mr. Epstein to offer perks to other acquaintances, like access to premier medical care, investment opportunities with hedge funds or a potential edge in school admissions.

Mr. Epstein’s vast Manhattan townhouse became the venue for regular dinner salons for an eclectic mix of artists, scientists, intellectuals, lawyers and businessmen. Visitors were greeted with photo arrays exhibiting Mr. Epstein’s ties to the ruling class.

One of his most valuable connections was to the former president. The relationship helped catapult Mr. Epstein into the public spotlight and secure his image as a whisperer to the rich and powerful.

Mr. Epstein also boasted extensive Wall Street connections to C.E.O.s (like James Cayne and Jes Staley); investment tycoons (like Glenn Dubin and Mr. Black); and powerful lawyers (like Brad Karp and Kathy Ruemmler; a secretive law firm that would later try, and fail, to fix Ms. Ruemmler’s image). He had a long friendship with Stephen Hanson, a New York City restaurant mogul who performed an array of tasks for Mr. Epstein, including arranging jobs, visas and entertainment for women. And he collected high-profile friends and associates overseas, including Prince Andrew, the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and top Norwegian politicians.

Mr. Epstein was friends with Mr. Trump long before he became president, and he developed a relationship with Mr. Clinton during his time in the White House. Those relationships involved:

The two men became good friends in the late 1980s, hanging out together at casinos, Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and other venues. A note and sexually suggestive drawing containing what appeared to be Mr. Trump’s signature was included in a 2003 book for Mr. Epstein’s birthday. Mr. Trump has denied writing the note.

Some of Mr. Epstein’s victims, including Ms. Giuffre, were recruited by Ms. Maxwell from Mr. Trump’s Florida club and residence, where Ms. Giuffre worked as a spa attendant. Mr. Trump said last year that he cut ties with Mr. Epstein in the early 2000s because he “stole” his female employees, although the relationship also deteriorated when the men fought over a piece of Florida real estate.

Shortly after Mr. Clinton was sworn in as president, Mr. Epstein made his first visit. Visitor logs show that he came back numerous times during Mr. Clinton’s first term, though it is unclear how often he met the president. In 1995, Mr. Clinton wrote a get-well-soon note to Mr. Epstein’s mother on a Post-it.

In 2002, after Mr. Clinton left the White House, Mr. Epstein flew him and others to several African countries. The trip was one of the first times that Mr. Epstein attracted significant media attention.

Mr. Epstein’s New York mansion showcased photos of him with each of them. When Mr. Trump became president, Mr. Epstein at times presented himself as someone who had inside knowledge about the administration, though it was most likely an act. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Clinton have said they knew nothing about Mr. Epstein’s criminal activity.

Behind the scenes, the Epstein crisis was paralyzing the Trump administration to a far greater extent than the public knew. In their public statements, Trump’s advisers were full of bravado, dismissing the crisis. In reality, it was consuming the highest ranks of the administration.

Mr. Epstein’s inner circle and the financiers and banks that enabled him faced allegations of wrongdoing. But U.S. prosecutors charged only one person other than Mr. Epstein. The legal trail included:

She is the only person other than Mr. Epstein to face criminal charges in the United States. In 2021, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Some Republicans have expressed support for the idea that President Trump would pardon her.

In the months after Mr. Epstein’s death, federal authorities investigated a number of Mr. Epstein’s former personal assistants, who were accused by some victims of participating in his sex-trafficking operation. Prosecutors considered charging at least one, but they ultimately opted not to, perhaps because she said she was also one of Mr. Epstein’s victims.

Federal prosecutors apparently didn’t interview or subpoena Mr. Wexner, Mr. Black and Mr. Epstein’s longtime accountant Richard Kahn and lawyer Darren Indyke. A federal document described Mr. Wexner as a co-conspirator, though his spokesman denied that the government ever considered him one.

Federal authorities interviewed women who accused Mr. Black and Mr. Staley, a former top JPMorgan executive, of sexual misconduct — allegations that both men deny. Prosecutors relayed those accusations to officials in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which did not bring charges.

As part of their investigations into Mr. Epstein, federal prosecutors subpoenaed the two banks that provided him with the greatest financial support, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank. The prosecutors appeared to have quickly decided against charging either institution with wrongdoing.

Police departments and prosecutors in some other countries recently have taken a more aggressive approach. In Britain, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and Peter Mandelson, a former top government official, have been arrested in connection with Epstein investigations. Neither has been charged.

We are tracking that fallout here.

Mr. Epstein spent 36 days at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City before he was found dead in his cell on Aug. 10, 2019. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. The circumstances around his death include:

Mr. Epstein was found unresponsive with a cloth tied around his neck in his cell two and a half weeks before his death. He denied trying to take his own life, but he was psychologically evaluated and placed on suicide watch for barely a day.

The cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, said the note was written by Mr. Epstein. It was sealed by a federal court for years. The Times successfully petitioned the court to unseal the note in May 2026. It has not been authenticated but bears similarities to known writings by Mr. Epstein.

As one of the highest-profile federal inmates, Mr. Epstein was supposed to be under close supervision and to have a cellmate. But he was left alone in a cell on the evening of Aug. 9, 2019. Other inmates reported to jail authorities that he was despondent.

Guards were supposed to make regular rounds to check on prisoners. But on Mr. Epstein’s last night, the two guards on duty in his area stayed by their desks. The guards were criminally charged, but the charges were withdrawn as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.

Mr. Epstein was found unconscious early on the morning of Aug. 10 with a strip of orange bedding cinched around his neck. He was soon pronounced dead, in what was later ruled a suicide.

From virtually the moment his death was announced, there have been doubts and unfounded speculation about the circumstances. His brother, Mark Epstein, is among those who don’t believe he killed himself. The Department of Justice re-examined the death in 2023 and found no evidence of a conspiracy or criminality.

The phrase usually refers to the millions of Epstein investigation documents that Congress directed the Justice Department to release. But there have been more. Over the years, all three branches of the U.S. government have released records, and media outlets, including The Times, have obtained documents through leaks or public records requests. The materials include:

In August 2019, a federal appeals court unsealed one of the first main caches of Epstein-related files, part of a defamation lawsuit brought against Ms. Maxwell by Ms. Giuffre, one of Mr. Epstein’s most outspoken victims. The files included depositions, photos, flight logs and other materials that gave the public a powerful glimpse into Mr. Epstein’s crimes and network. The morning after the files were unsealed, he was found dead in his jail cell.

The trove of documents dribbled into public view in 2023 during a court fight between the U.S. Virgin Islands and the bank. Those files showed the chummy relationships between Mr. Epstein and senior bank executives.

In 2025, The Times obtained thousands of Mr. Epstein’s photos and documents, which showed the inside of his Upper East Side mansion — including surveillance cameras in his bedroom area — and some of his correspondence with men like Woody Allen and Mr. Black.

Bloomberg News published several articles based on thousands of emails from Mr. Epstein’s Yahoo account. Those emails and others were later posted for public perusal on a site called Jmail.

After taking office in 2025, Mr. Trump backtracked on his earlier pledges to release the government’s files on Mr. Epstein. That led to a political uproar. Congress then passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the administration to release its files. In December and January, the Justice Department released millions of pages of records.

The Justice Department said it decided not to release many other records, because they would identify victims or could jeopardize ongoing federal investigations. Other documents appeared to simply be missing. That has stoked speculation about a possible coverup.

The Justice Department blacked out the names of some government lawyers or potential co-conspirators. It failed to protect victims’ names and included nude photos of potential victims. The Justice Department’s internal watchdog is now investigating whether the department’s disclosures followed the law.

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