A Convenient Death

by Alana Goodman

  Tax records reveal little about TerraMar’s activities, though they do show that Maxwell wasn’t able to raise enough funds to run the nonprofit without incurring debt.

  * * *

  —

  Ironically, in some ways it took Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 presidential election for Epstein to finally be brought to justice.

  In the years after Donald Trump won his presidential election in 2016, media exposés would chronicle vivid stories of rampant sexual abuse across America. Hollywood celebrities, business executives, and politicians would be embarrassed and brought down.18 It was called the #MeToo movement, and it exposed men who used status and power to dominate, and violate, women.

  The media wrote about a reckoning in American culture. The idea being that the behavior of old would no longer be tolerated. That imbalance of power, male dominance, and sexual assault were out. Respect for the victims and the right for their stories to be heard and believed were in.

  There were some clear outliers. Bill Clinton, who himself had been accused of sexual assault in the past, did not see his behavior reexamined amid our new enlightenment. The current president, Donald Trump, also had many of his own accusations; though Democrats tended to hold these charges against him, Republicans by and large gave him a pass.

  Epstein had ties to both. For Clinton, the two had struck up a friendship going back as far as the early 1990s, meeting at the White House on at least several occasions. That was only the beginning. As an ex-president, the friendship flourished, with Clinton joining Epstein on his private jet, sickeningly dubbed the Lolita Express, after Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita about a middle-aged man’s obsession and love of a twelve-year-old girl, for round-the-world jaunts.

  Trump, well before he ran for president as a Republican, attended events with Epstein in Palm Beach and Manhattan, where both had homes. Then a real estate mogul who had flirted with presidential politics with a half-assed third-party run in 1999, he appeared well aware of his acquaintance’s criminal proclivities. Trump would later claim to have banned his associate from Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort,19 for making unwelcome sexual advances, though The New York Times would report that the fallout was instead over business disagreements.20

  In fact, a clear line can be drawn from the 2016 election of Trump and the #MeToo movement, when the accusations levied against the president caused some in the media and the Democratic Party to reexamine their own relationship with sexual predators. And of course there’s a clear connection between the #MeToo movement and the reexamination of Jeffrey Epstein.

  The supposed financier had run afoul of the law before. In 2008, Epstein had pleaded guilty to procuring an underage girl for prostitution. His admission gave him tremendous leniency in sentencing, allowing him to work out a special thirteen-month custody arrangement that permitted him to leave state lockup daily to go to work.

  The prosecutor who granted such a sweet deal was none other than Alex Acosta, who would be nominated as secretary of the Department of Labor in February 2017 and confirmed by the full Senate in April of that year, with a bipartisan 60–38 vote. Acosta had reportedly claimed to the Trump administration when he was interviewing to be secretary of labor that he couldn’t bring down the hammer on Epstein because he was an asset to the intelligence community. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” Acosta revealed to the White House.21

  Acosta’s rise to such a high-profile cabinet-level job led at least one paper to look into the leniency of the original deal with the sexual predator. The explosive and infuriating investigation opened with an article in the Miami Herald with the damning headline “How a Future Trump Cabinet Member Gave a Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime.”22

  Acosta, the article alleged, had made the Epstein deal with a lawyer representing the predator, Jay Lefkowitz, a former George W. Bush administration official then working at the highly regarded Kirkland & Ellis law firm. The two lawyers met at unconventional locations—more appropriate for friends catching up than opposing counsels duking it out. The end result was a joke of a sentence, a plea agreement that wouldn’t disclose the number of accusers. More shocking still was that Epstein’s co-conspirators were granted immunity and the victims were prevented from even learning about the deal, the Herald reporting alleged.

  The series of stories, called “Perversion of Justice,” yanked the spotlight right back onto Epstein and his wealthy and powerful protectors. The renewed focus and subsequent fallout were nearly immediate. The lead journalist on the story, Julie K. Brown, had done impressive work tracking down victims and presented it in a captivating manner.

  Public outcry was swift and powerful. At a time when debates over inequality already dominated the public discourse, here was yet another example that there was one set of rules for the wealthy and privileged and another set for everyone else. And this time the wealthy villains weren’t just getting away with hiding their cash or profiting off someone else’s economic misfortune. Jeffrey Epstein was accused of some of the most disgusting offenses in the criminal code, and plenty of people helped him get away with it.

  This story even managed to transcend the traditional polarized boundaries of American outrage. The condemnation was bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans were furious. Law enforcement was reengaged, and finally the jig was up.

  Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, as he stepped off his private jet in Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. The charges were (again) horrific—sex trafficking of minors a decade and a half earlier. Prosecutors said the evidence was solid. They had also recovered what amounted to child pornography, nude snaps of his victims. Stories swirled, with public reports suggesting that the alleged human trafficking ring was huge, international, and beyond the scope of what anyone had ever imagined.

  More destructive to Americans’ trust in public institutions was all Epstein’s high-profile friends. If Trump had publicly acknowledged awareness of Epstein’s proclivity for having sex with girls “on the younger side”—that is, underage—didn’t that mean that his other elite pals had to know what was going on?

  It was not just Epstein who would feel the heat. A week after the arrest, on July 12, Acosta would resign amid outrage over his decade-old plea deal. “The work release was complete BS,” Acosta admitted in a press conference, a failed attempt to alleviate the mounting political pressure, two days before his resignation.23

  “We believe we proceeded appropriately,” he added. “We did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail.”

  * * *

  —

  After Epstein’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell practically disappeared. In the weeks following his death, there was a mad dash to find her. No one did.

  That is until she showed up in the New York Post in a seemingly staged photograph at an In-N-Out fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles.24 The paper claimed, “Maxwell, 57, the alleged madam to the multimillionaire pedophile, was scarfing down a burger, fries and shake al fresco at an In-N-Out Burger on Monday while reading ‘The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives,’ a nonfiction best-seller by journalist Ted Gup.”

  The book—and makeup-free photo of the usually glamorous Maxwell in a bluish-gray lightweight hoodie—would be a bit too pat. But regardless, that would be, as of this writing, the last time she was seen in public. Her name would be mentioned. She would, in the absence of Epstein, face civil legal actions, including a defamation lawsuit filed by Giuffre.

  “Well, I guess this is the last time I’ll be eating here!” she told a fellow diner. There were rumors she was hiding out with a boyfriend in New England or that she was sailing the high seas. But wherever she was, she couldn’t be found.

  Privately, she seemed somewhat relieved that Epstein was gone, her friend Laura Goldman told us.

  “You know, it may be for the best,” she said, according to Goldman’s accou
nt of a phone call they had shortly after Epstein died.

  On March 18, 2020, Ghislaine sued Epstein’s estate for legal and private security fees. In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Virgin Islands, she said Epstein had promised in 2004 that he would always support her financially. Meanwhile, many speculated that her old flame Bill Clinton was involved in Epstein’s death, perhaps because the Clintons feared he would reveal their secrets.

  Even President Donald Trump helped fan the flames. Hours after news broke, a Twitter user under the handle @w_terrence tweeted a message:25

  Died of SUICIDE on 24/7 SUICIDE WATCH ? Yeah right! How does that happen

  #JefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead

  I see #TrumpBodyCount trending but we know who did this!

  RT if you’re not Surprised

  #EpsteinSuicide #ClintonBodyCount #ClintonCrimeFamily

  The message, accompanied by a short video expounding on the theory, was retweeted by the president of the United States. Immediately the press pounced, complaining once again that Trump was quick to spread unverified, conspiratorial messages.

  But Trump, as per usual, refused to cave. “The retweet—which is what it was, just a retweet—was from somebody that’s a very respected conservative pundit, so I think that was fine,” Trump said days later. He did, however, claim to have “no idea” if in fact the Clintons were involved.

  “I know he was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times,” Trump told the press of Clinton and Epstein. “But when they checked the plane logs, Bill Clinton—who was a very good friend of Epstein—he was on the plane about 27 or 28 times. So why did he say four times?”

  The comment was a reference to Clinton’s apparently downplaying his association with Epstein.

  Trump, whose own relationship with Epstein reportedly deteriorated after the fellow Palm Beach resident made a pass at a young girl at his Mar-a-Lago club, further poured gas on the conspiracy.

  “The question you have to ask is, did Bill Clinton go to the island? Because Epstein had an island. That was not a good place, as I understand it, and I was never there,” Trump told the press. “So you have to ask, did Bill Clinton go to the island? That’s the question. If you find that out, you’re going to know a lot.”26

  Clinton’s own spokesman Angel Ureña responded to Trump’s tweet by calling for his removal. “Ridiculous, and of course not true—and Donald Trump knows it. Has he triggered the 25th Amendment yet?” he said on Twitter expressing outrage.27

  Ureña had previously told the press, “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”28

  13

  Epstein’s Secret

  The Wexner Connection

  During the interview Epstein told her to undress and actually assisted her to do so while saying, “Let me manhandle you for a second.”

  SANTA MONICA POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Undoubtedly, many in powerful positions are happy that their sexual peccadilloes are not being talked about in a court of law, splashed across tabloids, mocked incessantly on social media. Those would have been some of the consequences if Jeffrey Epstein had decided to seek retribution after his second arrest. But there’s another glaring mystery that has perplexed those observing the case: Where exactly did Epstein’s money come from?

  There has always been wild speculation about the sources of Epstein’s income. Did he blackmail the rich and famous, forcing countless exchanges of millions of dollars so that he would not release sex tapes of them getting it on with his harem of young girls? Did he simply charge a fee, so to speak, to traffic children for sexual abuse, racking up large sums of money from high-dollar clients around the world? Did he launder money for some of the world’s most hardened criminals and accumulate so much in commissions and fees that he too became über-wealthy?

  Or was his own purported business as a money manager to billionaires successful enough that eventually he was able to join their ranks?

  All of these are possibilities, of course. Or in the end it was some combination of all these schemes—plus more—that helped account for Epstein’s wealth.

  Here’s what we do know for sure: Epstein was said to be worth more than $500 million at the time of his death, yet despite all the press reports, despite all the scrutiny, only one single major client of Jeffrey Epstein has ever been confirmed. His name is Leslie Wexner, the multibillionaire founder of the clothing giant L Brands, owner of the clothier the Limited and the lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret, and one of Epstein’s first big clients.

  “He told me he had five clients, each worth over a billion dollars, and that he didn’t take clients worth less than a billion dollars,” said Dershowitz. “That he was very good at understanding the tax ramifications and that he would never handle my money or money for people like me because we were not rich enough.”

  The amount of money that is known that Epstein got from Wexner is alone enough to account for his $500 million final net worth upon his death. At least in theory.

  But to call Epstein solely a money manager is a mistake. “This idea that, that somehow there are clients out there that he did things for—you know, financial advisory services—that’s just a fiction; that’s just a cover story. In my view, he provided services, but they had nothing to do with financial services. He wasn’t qualified to provide financial services,” said one plugged-in former Wall Streeter in an interview.

  Laura Goldman, Maxwell’s friend, said she occasionally tried to talk to Epstein about investments when they saw each other at parties in the 1990s but found him to be cagey about his work.

  “He was rumored to be an excellent manager,” she said. “When you asked him questions, he didn’t really want to discuss it. I would always get the feeling, why doesn’t this person want to discuss this? My feeling, it was kind of odd.”

  Some, however, appreciated the financial advice he would sometimes pass down. “You know, he was a good guy, he did a hundred things for me,” a friend of his said in an interview. “He called me in the office in 2008 to say sell all your stock now. No one made him do that. And how he knew that the market was going to crash, I couldn’t tell you. But he sure as hell knew.”

  And yet Goldman, a former stockbroker, said she has never met anyone who traded with Epstein.

  “I went to Wharton in the go-go years, when Wall Street was where everything came from, and everybody I went to school with, not one person knew anybody who traded with Epstein,” she said. “How could that be?”

  Goldman suspects that Epstein was not doing much investing, but was actually parking money in various places to mitigate Wexner’s losses and liabilities.

  “I don’t think on any level he was a brilliant investor,” she said.

  But Epstein did have one remarkable ability that helped him sink his hooks firmly into Wexner’s life, according to Epstein’s former boss and convicted Ponzi scammer Steven Hoffenberg.

  “He could really interpret weaknesses,” said Hoffenberg. “He was the best seducer of people, the biggest manipulator I ever saw.”

  * * *

  —

  The relationship between Epstein and Wexner might have been the most important to Epstein’s life. It is likely responsible for his biggest financial windfall ever, paving the way for him to own some of the most luxurious properties in the world, as well as his own airplane.

  It is easy to imagine that Epstein would have been wealthy and successful without ever meeting Wexner, given his quick ascension from college dropout to Bear Stearns partner in 1980. But it is unlikely that he himself would ever have joined the ranks of the über-rich without Wexner’s assistance.

  “I first met Mr. Epstein in the mid-1980s, through friends who vouched for and recommended him as
a knowledgeable financial professional,” Wexner stated in 2019, trying to deflect criticism of his relations with Epstein by claiming unnamed others made the connection.1

  “Mr. Epstein represented that he had various well-known and respected individuals both as his financial clients and in his inner circle. Based on positive reports from several friends, and on my initial dealings with him, I believed I could trust him,” he added.

  Around the time they met, Wexner had several concerns that weighed heavily on him. He had lost a substantial portion of his net worth in the 1987 stock market crash and needed help with his investments. He was also building his own town outside Columbus, an ambitious project that let him fulfill his lifelong dream of being an architect but that was being hindered by numerous political and bureaucratic obstacles.

  Maybe most important, he was dating a woman—or, rather, letting her escort him when he had to attend public events—who was crazy about him and wanted to get married. The woman, who was from a tiny town in central Ohio, had converted to Judaism and changed her last name to “Cohen” in an effort to appease Wexner’s domineering mother. But Wexner was desperate to end the relationship with Ms. Cohen. The fashion mogul had fallen in love with someone else.

  Wexner’s love interest was a young lawyer named Abigail Koppel, a beautiful Georgia belle who was twenty-five years his junior. One friend of Wexner’s described her as the “perfect wife” for him. After decades of loneliness, Wexner had finally met his match in his midfifties. But Koppel also came from a “very traditional, conservative family,” according to the friend. Rumors about Wexner’s sexuality, which were rampant in Columbus for years, might not sit well.

  The billionaire dispatched his new friend Epstein to deliver the breakup news to Ms. Cohen—and, allegedly, a nondisclosure agreement. Bob Fitrakis, a reporter for the Columbus Free Press, recalled running into Wexner’s old flame at a party after the breakup.