THE EPSTEIN DIARIES

How Jeffrey Epstein Conned His Way Into America’s Elite

The avarice of New York became, at Jeffrey Epstein’s house, a lifestyle—and a club.

Opinion

Jeffrey Epstein turned his interests, aspirations, and sense of himself into a lifestyle marketing scheme. He was an early “influencer,” in effect, although within the most exclusive of social networks. At 22, he submitted a fudged resume claiming he’d graduated from Cooper Union (he hadn’t) and got a job at the Dalton School. Through that connection he met and charmed a succession of influential men. The moral dubiousness of the social climber was undergoing a remarkable revision just as Epstein came into his own; it was a new world and a new word: “Networking.” One facet that distinguished Epstein was that he did not submit to the lingering middle-class convention of a private domestic life, so he could devote his full attention to social and sexual advancement. But a simpler explanation for his success goes to his wealth-whisperer abilities. He had gained the world by stripping himself of anyone who was not useful to him, or him to them. He was a whisperer to the rich, and their own attraction to this peculiar host and his unusual clubhouse, was, in the end, simply that there was no place else like it.

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