Today, Explained - The Epstein fallout

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Millions of new documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation have been released, and it doesn't look good for the world's rich and powerful. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez-Cruzado and Ariana Aspuru, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Jeffrey Epstein posing with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 1997. Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Department of Justice has released more than 3 million documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. And honestly, they're kind of a mess. It's not just 3 million documents. It's 3 million documents that have no rhyme or reason, right? There's no context. They're messy. They're full of typos. They're duplicates.

But they also shed new light on how some of the world's richest and most powerful people use that power. Epstein, in an exchange with Elon Musk, discusses sending his helicopter to take him to his In these messages from 2013, the convicted sex offender connecting New York Giants co-owner, Steve Tisch, with various women. Emails also show Trump Cabinet Secretary Howard Lutnik coordinating a visit in the Caribbean in 2012. It's not clear if the meetings happened. So, will there be any actual fallout? That's coming up on Today, explained from Vox.

A Tim's donut and coffee is the original collab. And now any classic donut is a dollar when you buy any size original or dark roast coffee. Get a deal on the iconic duo with a tin dollar donut plus tax at participating restaurants for limited time. Terms apply. See app for details. It's time for Tims. Megan Rapino here. This week on a touch more. Gotham F.C.'s Rose Lavelle joins us to talk about FIFA's very first Champions Cup,

her incredible year of wins, and some of her greatest pranks of all time. Unfortunately, on yours truly. Plus, with the WMBA's CBA negotiation still stalled, I got to ask the question. Is it time to worry? Check out the latest episode of It's Touchmore, wherever you get your podcast, and on YouTube. This is Today Explained. Hi, I'm Madeline Berg. I am a correspondent at Business Insider covering wealth and power.

Okay, Maddie, broadly, what have we learned from this latest document dump? Right. I think that so far, I guess, the overarching thing I've really taken away is it's a really rare look about how rich and powerful, mainly men communicate. How the network works, how they do favors for each other, how, you know, oh, can you help my daughter get into college? How can you connect me to this person, how that network is so tight and that world is so small. People know each other. People do favors. and people talk about women in a way that is really scary.

That's kind of the overarching theme I've taken away and is how permissive this rich and powerful class has been or was to Epstein. Additionally, there have been revelations about figures. Some of them like Elon Musk have really said openly, I have cut ties with Epstein. I didn't know him. I never went to the island, but we're seeing in this. He was emailing Epstein asking for an invite.

the island to go to a wild party. You've got mail. What day slash night will be the wildest party on your island? You've got mail. We'll be in the BVI-S-St. Bart's area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit? We're seeing Howard Lutnik. He said he cut ties with Epstein in 2005,

but their emails, which indicate he was planning a trip and seemingly went to Epstein's island in 2012. My wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't going because he's gross. And so we're seeing a lot of these rich and powerful people have more connections with Epstein than we thought. And we're already seeing the fallout for that.

In real time, we're seeing Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss, the law firm, stepped down overnight as chairman. and he's still working as a lawyer there. He was revealed to have emailed Epstein many, many times. He seemed to give him confidential information about a client. He asked him for a favor to help his son intern with Woody Allen. We're seeing... Oh, yes. There's a lot of Woody Allen Epstein overlap in this...

Just going through some of his scheduling. It's like, oh, dinner with Woody tonight, lunch with Woody, coffee with Woody. He actually helped Woody Allen's daughter, one of them, get into Bard. it seems like. So again, there's so much overlap in terms of who you think of as kind of creepy men. In addition to American businessman, we've seen more powerful elites from around the world be named in these files. Right. Can you share some of them and how they're connected with Epstein?

Yeah. So Prince Andrew, we've known he's connected to Epstein or former prince. The artist formerly known as Prince Andrew has been connected to Epstein for years. He had the most extraordinary ability to bring extraordinary people together. And that's the bit that I remember is going to the dinner parties where you would meet academics, politicians, people from the United Nations. I mean, it was a cosmopolitan group of what I would describe as U.S. eminence. There's in these emails evidence of seeming, it seems like sex trafficking. It seems like him asking Epstein to be set up with women.

Additionally, we're seeing Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew's ex-wife, speaking to Epstein on a very friendly, in a very friendly way. Same with the Crown Princess of Norway. And this is all, by the way, after 2008 when he was convicted of prostitution with a minor. So it's after that. And same with most of these communications for what it's worth. We're also seeing Peter Mendelsohn. He was the former British ambassador to the U.S. He resigned from his position in the House of Lords,

and we're seeing fallout for that. Kier Starmor, the Prime Minister of the UK, is under fire at the moment because apparently he knew about some of Peter Mendelsohn's ties to Epstein when he was named ambassador. I want to say this. I am sorry. Sorry for what was done to you.

Sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson's lies and appointed him. So we're going to continue to see this fallout around the world. Yeah, how is this being received in the UK? Do you know? Yeah, the Labor Party there is really not happy with Kirstarmer. I think that they're, you know, I think the Prince Andrew thing was so disgusting to a lot of people in the UK. And I think that reverberated for a really long time. And we're now seeing

Starmer under a lot of heat. And I mean, there calls for him to resign. I don't know if that will happen. But it's definitely not going away over there. We've seen more repercussions to foreign leaders than to Americans. Why do you think that is? You know, I think that a lot of the leaders in America that we're really, the names that are jumping out to us are business leaders. They're in the private sector. And in that, I mean, they're going to be, we're kind of going to see how that plays out, right? We saw with Brad Carp, we're seeing the NFL is investigating not formally, but it's looking into Steve Tisch, the owner of the Giants. We're going to really kind of see how the pieces fall as we learn more and more. I also think that the, you know, the repercussions wise,

the whole point of the document dump is not to find new evidence for people to go under fire. It's for the Department of Justice to prove everything it did that we did not leave any stone unturned. We looked into everybody. We thought about prosecuting these people. We went down those rabbit holes. We couldn't find enough to criminally prosecute them other than Gleine Maxwell and Epstein. So, you know, I think that this is the DOJ saying we did everything we could. We couldn't find enough criminal.

it might be creepy, it might be sleazy, it might be gross, it might be unethical, but there wasn't enough criminal goods in this to prosecute. I wonder, you know, it feels like holding these two things as one's like, not enough to prosecute a crime, but it is very creepy and bad. I guess what do consequences look like? If they're not charging them, does that mean they're not guilty? Like, where do we go from here? Yeah, I think it's kind of, a lot of it is up to the public, right?

feel like now it's up to the public to if we're not okay with something that we read in this, whether it's from a politician or a business leader, to really to push back and to say, this is not okay. We want this leader out. We want out of government, out of their business, whatever it is. It's kind of up to the court of public opinion now. That said, we are going to see some of these people testifying in front of Congress later this month. The Clintons are going to testify. Les Wexner, who was, you know, was listed in a draft. document by the DOJ as a co-conspirator, a potential co-conspirator of Epstein. So we are going to see these people questioned by the government. We might get more answers and we might then, it won't be

criminal charges necessarily, but we might get repercussions from the public. And there might be more consequences in that way. You have to remember these documents are such a mess that a lot of them are really hard to understand. There's so many just everyday emails mixed in with really incriminating emails. So we kind of, we need that explanation. And I, and I think that everybody hopes that these, when these people testify, we're going to get more of an understanding of what actually happened. There are also files that the DOJ didn't release. There are 200,000 documents that the government said it will not release. We don't know what's in those. We may never know what's in those, but there could be things in there that eventually do get revealed.

And there also, I don't think any news organization has been able to go through all three million documents, no matter how many, how much manpower they've devoted to this. So, you know, we're going to continue to get revelation after revelation. What should the public take away from all of this, this whole thing? Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to understand how the very, very, very, very, very wealthy, the very, very powerful, interact with each other, how they speak about women, how they use each other. People are using Epstein, Epstein's using other people. And also how many people can't be taken at their word, right? So many people denied having a connection to Epstein or

visiting his island or talking to him after his conviction in 2008. But they were lying. And I think it's really important that we hold people to account and we don't take their word at face value. And also, I mean, one thing that really I found interesting is how much these people put into writing. It was almost like they believed they were above the law or above repercussion. And not everybody, obviously, but some very rich and powerful people think they're immune to consequences. And it's really up to the public now that this is out there. What consequences they face. Madeline Berg is a correspondent at Business Insider.

She covers wealth and power. Up next, how a journalist who's covered Epstein from the start is reading these files. This week on Net Worthen Chill, I'm talking about what happens after you've mastered the basics. How to build wealth that actually lasts for generations. With the top 1% holding nearly a third of the nation's wealth and 98% of them being men, breaking into generational wealth isn't just about getting rich. It's about changing who gets to stay rich. Plus, I'm explaining the great wealth transfer, $124 trillion about to change.

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You can go to bombus.com slash explained and use code explained for 20% off your first purchase. That's BOMBAS.com slash explain code explained at checkout. This is today explained. Vicki Ward is a best-selling author and investigative reporter. She first encountered Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s. She was a reporter for Vanity Fair and was writing a piece about how this man got all this money when she stumbled upon some even more disturbing information. Now, 20 years later, her name has popped up in the Epstein files,

but kind of in a good way? Well, you mean because he's trashing me. He's trashing me. He sends my boss at the time, Graydon Carter, then the editor of Vanity Fair, a note trashing me and my reporting, and he says it's defamatory, and he writes me.

along long, long facts, which I remember receiving, telling me what a dreadful journalist I am. And both of these missives are on the topic of Annie and Maria Farmer, two sisters who I'd spoken to back then on the record, and who had told me about the abuse they had suffered at the hands. in Maria's case at the hands of both, Jeffrey and Gillesne Maxwell. Annie Farmer was more focused on Gellon Maxwell at the time, but she also had a horrible experience with Jeffrey. Annie had been underage at the time of the abuse.

And they were very brave. They were on the record. I didn't find any other. girls, women at the time. They were the only two, and I didn't back then have a sense of the scale of this operation that we now know to be horrendously enormous. But I did have them, and yet Epstein's threats to my boss, compounded by the fact

he visited the Vanity Fair offices at the time behind my back were enough to get the pharmacist's cut from the article which was a truly terrible, terrible, terrible thing to happen because what it meant was that I had inadvertently exposed them

to Jeffrey and Gilles. I think Gellon then went on to make Maria Farmer's life horrendous, terrified, threatened her. And we hadn't provided the protection that printing their allegations

would have given them. It also meant that it wasn't until well over a year later that the FBI phoned me because somebody must have told them that I'd you know, spoken to the farmers. And as we know, the FBI investigation took a long time.

But ultimately, in 2008, it did wind up with the ridiculously cushy plea deal and the non-prosecution agreement that Jeffrey Epstein struck in Florida. But meanwhile, hundreds of other girls, children, went on to be abused and trafficked by Jeffrey Epsi and Engelaine Maxwell. So what happened back in 2000, that was the fall of 2002, when I was reporting this piece, unfortunately, is a really tragic, tragic mistake. I wonder what it's like for you as a person who,

started reporting this, you know, back in 2002, to see this story become so huge for it to be like a household name and for people to wonder what's in the files. What has that evolution been like for you to see? Well, mixed, to be honest. I'm not an Epstein victim, but he did make my life hell. And, you know, in the first few years, to be honest, I was glad, I never really wanted to hear his name again. I had a complicated pregnancy when I was dealing with him. And the irony is that, you know, I'd been assigned to actually profile him because my boss thought it would be easy for me. He lived in New York. I lived in New York. I wouldn't have to get on a plane. I'd done some financial journalism before this.

You know, I know how to sort of, I know I understand money and wealth management and things like that. And so nobody expected that this man would turn on me and start threatening me and threatening my unborn children and tell me that he knew or where I'd be giving birth and telling me you'd get my husband fired. You know, some of the threats were stupid, but some of them were. really horrible. And I did end up going into labour much too soon.

And I did then have my two babies who, you know, weighed two pounds and two and a half pounds, you know, in the hospital, we had to ask for security for them for two months because I really was terrified that Jeffrey Epstein would be coming to harm them. And so after all of that, to be honest, I wanted to forget about Jeffrey Epstein. I wanted to sort of normalize the whole thing in my mind. But then the years ticked on and I began to realize that it wasn't just the farmers, that the scale of this thing was potentially enormous.

And I did feel, to be honest, that the, the ice. idea of Jeffrey Epstein walking into the office of my boss, Graydon Carter, behind my back. It was during the fact-checking process. I'd by that time been put on bed rest. And for me to have been cut out of the loop of the decision-making on the piece, I did feel that smacked of the good old boys club, boys protecting boys. Graydon Carter was a bachelor at the time. You know, he was running around, dating all sorts of people. and the whole thing made me sick to my stomach and angry, frankly, really, really angry. And I think, you know, now, what do I feel?

I feel that it's very important that these victim survivors get justice. But even so, even so, what's happened? botched. The survivors, I know, Annie Farmers, you know, spoken out, all the documents are still not out there. You know, some of the people mentioned in the files come across worse than others. Yeah. What does it mean just for your name to pop up in the Epstein files? Nothing. I mean, you know, particularly in the way that my name comes up, I'm thrilled. I'm absolutely thrilled. I think Julie Brown's pretty thrilled that, you know, he sends emails around viewing her as a problem. And he clearly viewed John Connolly, who was a friend of mine, another great investigative journalist,

who co-authored a book with my co-authored James Patterson. They clearly viewed him as a problem too. So that's, you know, people, I think that's not a problem. I think that it's absurd. Some of the redactions make no sense. there's a woman Melanie Walker who's a person of great global influence who was an Epstein protege

who paid for her to go through college she became a neuroscientist and she ended up going out with Prince Andrew and she ended up being the partner of Steve Sinovsky who was Bill Gates's number two at Microsoft

and she ended up on the board of the World Bank she's a pretty influential person who is intensely loyal to Jeffrey Epstein. And I noticed that her names have been redacted, and it seems absurd to me as to why that would be. What questions do you still have about the case? Well, I still want to understand the money. I'm not sure I'm ever going to get an answer to that.

Because without the money, there would have been no sex crimes. There's no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein went around abusing teenagers before he had hundreds of millions of dollars and before he was able to hide essentially behind the walls of his enormous mansion and on his private island. And I think there's probably a lot of financial criminality. I mean, what did he do? He wasn't trading in the markets.

He was using inside information as we now know. by the Mandelson Exchange to make a buck, but he was also putting people's money offshore and hiding it. And the problem with that is that prosecutors tend not to like to spend taxpayer money chasing things they think they may not be able to get. And hidden money is hard to find.

And Epstein knew what he was doing. And, you know, for me, that is the big frustration, I think. If the public is going to take something real from these latest files, what should it be? Well, unfortunately, I think that there's a two-tier system that exists in this country and that it's one rule for the Uber rich and one. improve for everybody else. Vicki Ward, investigative reporter, and New York Times best-selling author.

Today's show was produced by Dustin DeSoto, edited by Amina Alsatty, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez Crusado, with help from Ariana Aspuru, and engineered by Patrick Boyd. I'm John Glyn Hill. This is Today Explained.