The Secrets Edward Jay Epstein Told Me About Jeffrey Epstein
As MAGA World roars about the administration's denial that the late sex criminal kept a "client list," here's some reality behind what motivated one of this century's most notorious men.
Back in spring 2023, I interviewed the late investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein about his just-published memoir Assume Nothing: Encounters with Assassins, Spies, Presidents, and Would-Be Masters of the Universe. You can read the finished article here.
But a whole lot of great material remained on the cutting room floor. Now seems like an appropriate time to share a key chunk of it with you. I’ve put my emphases of the most important bits in bold if you’re in a hurry and would prefer to skim.
You had that really fascinating chapter on Jeffrey Epstein [no relation]. And you noted in that, that he had some photos of himself with the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. What do you think that's about? Do you think Epstein was significantly or meaningfully involved with those countries and the regions’ geo-politics in general? Or do you have any idea?
Yes, I had many conversations with Jeffrey Epstein about it. And he at one point, I would say 2013, could have been a year or a year later on for a while, was planning to move to Saudi Arabia.
Oh, wow.
He said he did. That's where the money is.
Jeffrey wasn't - he might have had his side interest in women or perversion - But his main interest was basically money. And he said he had planned to buy a house in Riyadh. And I don’t think he ever did it.
And he was interested in Morocco, because Morocco was one of a few countries in the world without an extradition treaty with the United States. And he was planning to buy a house there so he couldn’t be extradited. In fact, he was in the midst of that when he was arrested.
But getting back to when I went to his house, the walls were covered with pictures of MBS [Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, future king of Saudi Arabia, current prime minister, and de factor ruler today], and more important, MBZ [Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE] the picture of MBS’s were arms around Jeffrey’s shoulders.
Maybe these were photoshopped, they didn’t look photoshopped to me. And as a lot of people from the Middle East came over to Jeffrey’s house, I don't think he would have put fake pictures up because they would have noticed it. They also knew MBS.
Jeffrey thought—when I say thought, I say what he told me—Jeffrey told me that the important person was not MBS, with MBZ. He said MBZ had created MBS and ran his career through his own intelligence service, that he was the real power in the Gulf, Gulf Arabs. And Jeffrey said he was friends with him. He was also friends with... Now I forget his name. But he was the… I actually met him once… He was the head of the free port in the country of Djibouti. On the corner of Africa, he might have also been vice president, he was very powerful in the government of Djabutu, I can’t find his name.
But in any case, there was a free port in Djibouti, which he said the Arabs put their paintings and as well as homes and and that's where huge transactions were conducted, because they can move some paintings worth $100 million. Some Andy Warhols from one locker to another locker and there was no evidence that such a transaction happened.
And Jeffrey thought that he was going to do a huge business in helping the royal families of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates hide their money so if there were any revolutions or changes, regime changes, coups, coups or revolutions, they would have money hidden abroad, and that was his specialty.
When I first met Jeffrey, way, way back in 1987, he talked about Khashoggi. Adnan Khashoggi—not the person who was assassinated—who was a huge arms dealer and a huge factor was the Saudi royal family. And I didn't think that was true by the way, but he's told me he was basically hiding money for him. I doubted that was true.
Okay.
Because Jeffrey definitely also could lie as easy as tell the truth and often probably did lie. But, and that was a long time ago.
But yes, he saw when people came to his house, like Bill Gates and Microsoft, Leon Black of Apollo, Tom Hyatt, Bill Clinton, I mean, these where the people who were there, you ran into them waiting for Jeffrey. I mean, I ran into Leon Black there.
There were always pictures, both MBZ and MBS, you know, covering the walls as well as pictures of Bill Clinton. That's all I can recall offhand, in terms of the pictures, but there weren’t one, two or three, there were more like 15 of MBS snorkeling. Yeah, snorkeling with spear guns or spear fishing. And they were in bathing suit. Remember MBS was a relatively young man. And so this was 2013 or 14, I don’t know what year. It was 10 or 11 years ago. And so he was, you know, in his late 20s, or something like that.
And so Jeffrey, you know, he understood, I think, Jeffrey, because Jeffrey had a big, palatial home. When Jeffrey met the Sultan of Brunei—this was earlier, and this is a story told to me, not necessarily I witnessed—he met him with about 12 American financiers, he was not the principal person, he is one of the group that had gone over to try to get him to invest in various things, and everyone else was very respectful to the Sultan of Brunei.
And Jeffrey said, “how big is this palace? How big is your palace?” And the sultan said “I don’t know.” Then Jeffrey said, “I have the largest house in New York” and gave the square footage of his house. The other people at the conference were shocked. So Jeffrey saw himself as trying to bond with these people.
Now, as far as geo-politics went, I think Jeffrey had a pretty clear idea that the oil money that was flowing into these countries, made them—I’m talking about the Gulf—made them incredibly powerful in the world of finance as sovereign funds of a billion dollars that can invest in anything and not even notice... And so he thought more in terms of—and he also thought in terms of being stable. He believed that they were modernizing their country. And at least he thought that MBS was modernizing Saudi Arabia. And thus, it was safe for him to live there.
In fact, if he had moved to Saudi Arabia, he probably would never have been arrested. They probably never would have extradited him. Yeah. The fact that he was Jewish, and Saudis, well, you you know, Jared Kushner has done well in Saudi Arabia.
Yeah.
I mean, after all, they’re Semites and Jews are Semites.
So does everyone understand now what exactly Jeffrey Epstein was doing and how he became so absurdly wealthy? It’s not as mysterious or complicated as it might seem. He made his money by hiding the money of other billionaires through such methods as moving Andy Warhol paintings in storage lockers in Djibouti. That’s what he was really all about—the sex crimes seem to have been more of an extracurricular activity.
While I had initially wanted to just let the interview speak for itself, perhaps we should consider these insights from one of the 20th century’s most legendary investigative journalists in this context:
My sources tell me Elon knows what’s on that list. He knows who Trump is protecting—and who Trump is afraid of being exposed. And Trump knows that Elon knows.
The Epstein case isn’t just a scandal—it’s a tool. And the release (or disappearance) of certain names is a battlefield in a much bigger power war. A war between two billionaires who both want to control the future of this country.
What if the potential impact of the Epstein story goes much further than the domestic political battlefield of Democrats vs. Republicans, the context in which most far-right conspiracy theorists want to frame it?
What if some of these men who were so aligned with Jeffrey Epstein were ultra-wealthy Middle Eastern oligarchs, or even royals, who now have deep business ties entwined with the president through his son-in-law, Jared Kushner - perhaps golf-buddy-turned-amateur-diplomat Steve Witkoff, as well as probably a whole team of grifters, fraudsters, and assorted con artists orbiting Trump World?
How would the world change? What impact could such revelations leave on international politics, if it happened that a future king of the world’s most powerful Muslim nation appeared on the list? Who might benefit from such a turn of events and who might suffer catastrophic financial losses? Might anyone end up in jail or even assassinated to shut them up?
These are open questions for which I do not yet offer answers or speculations. What do you think?
Sound off in the comments, send us an email, or reach out on Substack Notes with your views on what has now become the full-fledged JFK Assassination conspiracy theory of the 21st century, with cover-up now entering the next, perhaps most amusing stage.
And BTW, if you’re eager to jump down that infamous rabbit hole next, then go ahead and start with this piece from more than two years ago in which I lay out my narrative of choice on who was really behind Kennedy's murder and why so many theories proliferate about it today:
