The Woman Who Connected the Network: Lynn Forester de Rothschild and the Epstein Files

Among the thousands of pages released by the Department of Justice and the House Oversight Committee in the ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's criminal enterprise, one name has attracted relatively little mainstream scrutiny despite appearing at several critical junctions in the documented record. That name is Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

Forester de Rothschild, born July 2, 1954, in Bergen County, New Jersey, is an American-British businesswoman and chair of E.L. Rothschild LLC, a holding company that manages investments in The Economist Group, a leading independent wealth management firm, and various real estate and agricultural interests. She is the founder of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, a global initiative she launched in partnership with the Vatican and Pope Francis in 2021. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House, and she served on President Bill Clinton's National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council from 1993 to 1995.

What follows is a compilation of documented connections between Lynn Forester de Rothschild and the Epstein network, drawn from sworn testimony, court records, property documents, and verified reporting. No criminal charges have ever been filed against her, no civil suit has named her, and no allegations of direct wrongdoing have been established in a court of law.

The 1995 Letter

In the Clinton Presidential Library archives, there is a letter dated April 27, 1995, written by Lynn Forester to President Bill Clinton. In it, she mentions having discussed "Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization" during a brief exchange at a dinner at Senator Ted Kennedy's home, before moving on to the letter's main subject, which was affirmative action policy. At the time of the letter, Forester was serving on Clinton's National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council. The letter has been reproduced and confirmed by multiple investigators and journalists who have reviewed the Clinton digital archive.

According to the book A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein by Alana Goodman and Daniel Harper, one of Epstein's former lawyers stated that it was Lynn Forester who first introduced Epstein to Clinton directly.

The Townhouse at 116 East 65th Street

In 2000, Lynn Forester sold a Manhattan townhouse at 116 East 65th Street for $4.95 million. She had purchased the property in 1997 for $4.4 million. The buyer was a shell company incorporated by Darren Indyke, Jeffrey Epstein's personal attorney, registered at 457 Madison Avenue, the address of Epstein's business offices. Corporate records identified the entity as "116 East 65th St LLC c/o Epstein." Ghislaine Maxwell moved into the property shortly after the sale and lived there until 2015. When the property was ultimately sold in 2016, it went for $15 million. Prosecutors noted during Maxwell's trial that she never appeared to have had the independent financial resources to acquire the property herself.

The Apartment After Robert Maxwell's Death

Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell's father and a prominent media proprietor, drowned in November 1991 under circumstances that have never been fully explained. According to multiple published accounts, including those of analyst F. William Engdahl, Lynn Forester gave Ghislaine Maxwell the use of a Manhattan apartment in the period immediately following her father's death. This address later appeared in Epstein's black book. It should be noted that no criminal significance has been established by any court in relation to this apartment.

The Introduction of Alan Dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz, the prominent defense attorney who subsequently negotiated Epstein's widely criticized 2008 plea deal with then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, has publicly and repeatedly stated that Lynn Forester de Rothschild introduced him to Epstein. According to Dershowitz, she described Epstein to him as an "interesting autodidact" whom he would enjoy meeting. This introduction, Dershowitz has said in multiple interviews, took place at her estate on Martha's Vineyard in the 1990s. The 2008 plea deal resulted in a 13-month county jail sentence with work release for Epstein, a resolution widely regarded by legal scholars and victims' advocates as extraordinarily lenient given the severity of the charges.

The Introduction of Prince Andrew

On August 22, 2025, the Department of Justice released transcripts and audio recordings of a two-day interview conducted in July 2025 between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for sex trafficking. During that interview, Maxwell flatly denied having introduced Prince Andrew to Epstein, a claim she called "a flat untruth." She then stated that Lynn Forester de Rothschild had made the introduction at a house she had rented in Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket. The Telegraph reported that multiple friends of Maxwell had previously, in tabloid coverage, made the same claim: that the introduction had occurred at a party Lynn Forester de Rothschild organized in 1999 in the Hamptons in honor of her husband Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.

Prince Andrew stated in a 2019 BBC Newsnight interview that Ghislaine Maxwell had introduced him to Epstein. Either Prince Andrew's public account or Maxwell's sworn statement to the Deputy Attorney General is inaccurate. In both versions, Lynn Forester de Rothschild is implicated in the introduction.

Critics of the DOJ interview, including former U.S. District Attorney Joyce Vance, have noted that Maxwell, who is seeking clemency from the Trump administration, had clear incentives to deflect responsibility onto third parties during the interview.

The Introduction of Peter Mandelson

Wikipedia's entry on Lynn Forester de Rothschild, citing a sourced report, notes that it was at a house owned by the de Rothschilds on Martha's Vineyard that Peter Mandelson, the former British Cabinet minister and EU Trade Commissioner, was introduced to Epstein.

Deutsche Bank

Fortune magazine's detailed October 2025 investigation into Deutsche Bank's relationship with Epstein confirmed that the bank's connection to Epstein began in August 2013, when his former bank, JPMorgan Chase, began distancing itself from him due to reputational risk. The bank opened more than 40 accounts for Epstein between 2013 and 2018, processed millions in allegedly suspicious transactions, and was ultimately fined $150 million by the New York Department of Financial Services. It also agreed to pay $75 million in a class action settlement to Epstein's victims.

In July 2013, one month before Deutsche Bank accepted Epstein as a client, Lynn Forester de Rothschild was appointed to an advisory board at the bank tasked with expanding its U.S. clientele. Peter Mandelson was appointed to the same board at the same time. The relationship manager who facilitated Epstein's move to Deutsche Bank, Paul Morris, had previously managed Epstein's account at JPMorgan, according to NYDFS records.

It should be stated clearly that no court, regulatory body, or law enforcement agency has alleged that Lynn Forester de Rothschild played any role in Deutsche Bank's decision to accept Epstein as a client. The temporal proximity of her board appointment and Epstein's onboarding has been noted by multiple investigators, but temporal proximity is not evidence of causation or involvement.

The Flight Logs

Available flight records from the Epstein archive confirm that Lynn Forester appeared on at least one documented flight on September 25, 1998, flying from Teterboro Airport to Washington Dulles alongside Epstein. The original investigation by journalist Kait Justice, published in December 2025 on her Substack, claims the full record shows at least five separate flights in 1997 and 1998, including one on February 17, 1997, that allegedly also included her minor child and Ghislaine Maxwell. Some of those flight log pages were reportedly sealed and only unsealed in 2019.

The Teterboro Connection

Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on July 6, 2019, when he landed there on a private jet returning from Paris. Court documents have shown that Teterboro was the primary hub of Epstein's aviation operations, with pilot logs documenting approximately 730 flights through the airport between 1995 and 2013.

Various published accounts have alleged that Lynn Forester de Rothschild's family had aviation business connections at Teterboro Airport, with one source citing a company founded there by her father that eventually became Meridian Air Center. This specific lineage has not been independently confirmed by mainstream reporting to the degree of the other connections outlined in this article, and it deserves further scrutiny before being treated as established fact.

Connections to the Mega Group

The "Mega Group" was a private network of prominent American Jewish philanthropists and businesspeople whose existence was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in 1998. Its founding members included Les Wexner, who was Epstein's primary patron and had given him extraordinary financial powers of attorney, as well as Ronald Lauder, Charles Bronfman, and hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt.

In January 2024, John Schindler, a former NSA counterintelligence officer, publicly stated that the Mega Group "was viewed by Israeli intelligence officials as a vehicle for espionage and influence operations in the United States."

Lynn Forester de Rothschild has sat on the board of directors of Estée Lauder Companies since December 2000, alongside Ronald Lauder. She co-founded, with Matthew Bronfman, an investment advisory firm called Bronfman E.L. Rothschild LP. She has served on the advisory board of Genie Energy, whose board members have included Michael Steinhardt, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (accused by Virginia Giuffre of sexual abuse), and economist Larry Summers (who appeared in Epstein's flight logs). These board overlaps are documented. Their significance, if any, is a matter of ongoing investigative interest.

The Roy Cohn Thread

Lynn Forester's first husband was Andrew Stein, the Manhattan Borough President from 1983 to 1993. Andrew Stein's brother, James Finkelstein, married Cathy Frank, whose grandfather was Lewis Rosenstiel. Rosenstiel, the mob-connected liquor magnate, is alleged in multiple historical accounts, including a memoir by Roy Cohn's personal secretary and Norman Mailer's biography of Cohn, to have operated a sexual blackmail network involving underage boys alongside Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn was, of course, the mentor of Donald Trump and a central figure in New York political life for decades. This chain of connections places Lynn Forester two degrees from the alleged predecessor operation to Epstein's. It should be noted that these are historical allegations; Roy Cohn died in 1986 and Rosenstiel died in 1976. Neither was ever convicted of crimes related to these specific allegations.

What Has Been Established

Lynn Forester de Rothschild is documented to have: written a letter to President Clinton in 1995 mentioning Epstein by name; sold a Manhattan townhouse to an Epstein-incorporated LLC in 2000, where Ghislaine Maxwell subsequently lived; flown on Epstein's private aircraft on at least one confirmed occasion; been identified by Alan Dershowitz as the person who introduced him to Epstein; been identified by Ghislaine Maxwell in sworn DOJ testimony as the person who introduced Prince Andrew to Epstein; served on a Deutsche Bank advisory board in the same month Deutsche Bank accepted Epstein as a client; and shared board membership with prominent members of the Mega Group network. Her husband, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, appeared in Epstein's black book.

She has acknowledged knowing Epstein socially. A spokesperson has denied that Epstein provided her financial help during her divorce from Andrew Stein, which Epstein himself had claimed.

She has never been questioned under oath about any of these connections. No subpoena has been issued to her. No civil suit has named her. No law enforcement agency has publicly announced an investigation into her activities in relation to Epstein.

The House Oversight Committee, which has received thousands of pages from Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan, has not publicly announced any questions directed at her. Whether the committee's ongoing review will change that remains to be seen.

Sources

Clinton Presidential Library, Letter from Lynn Forester to President William J. Clinton, April 27, 1995, Archives reference EFTA00263107.

United States Department of Justice, Transcript of Interview of Ghislaine Maxwell, conducted by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Special Agent Spencer Horn, July 24–25, 2025, released August 22, 2025.

Fortune magazine, "Deutsche Bank and Jeffrey Epstein's Ghost," October 8, 2025.

New York Department of Financial Services, Consent Order, Deutsche Bank AG, July 7, 2020.

New York Times, "Jeffrey Epstein, Famed Scientist's Patron, Dies in Jail," August 10, 2019.

Wall Street Journal, "The 'Mega' Question: Is There a Top-Level Israeli Spy in the U.S.?," May 7, 1997.

Wall Street Journal, "Mega Meeting: A Secretive Network of Jewish Philanthropists Gathers to Discuss Ways to Help Their Cause," September 5, 1998.

The New Yorker, "Alan Dershowitz, Devil's Advocate," by Connie Bruck, July 29, 2019.

Goodman, Alana, and Daniel Harper. A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein. Regnery Publishing, 2021.

Wikipedia, "Lynn Forester de Rothschild," last updated April 2026, citing Harper's Bazaar, The Sunday Times, and BBC reporting.

ABC News, "Ghislaine Maxwell, in DOJ Meetings, Rejected Accuser's Claim of Sexual Encounter with Prince Andrew," August 23, 2025.

CBS News, "Ghislaine Maxwell's Interview on Epstein Case Released by DOJ," August 23, 2025.

The Telegraph, "The British Philanthropist Who 'Brought Epstein and Andrew Together,'" August 23, 2025.

Scottish Daily Express, "Ghislaine Maxwell: My Dark Truth About Andrew Windsor, Sarah Ferguson and Jeffrey Epstein," March 2026.

Justice, Kait. "The Woman Nobody Asks About Is the Person Connecting Every Thread of the Epstein Network," Substack, December 16, 2025.

Ikeda, Tatsu. "Epstein Files Phase 12: Lynn Forester de Rothschild, The Introducer," Substack, March 2026.

Nordic Times, "Epstein: 'I Represent the Rothschilds,'" February 6, 2026.

Engdahl, F. William. "The Dangerous Alliance of Rothschild and the Vatican of Francis," Journal-NEO, December 22, 2020.

Schindler, John R. Public statement on MEGA and Israeli intelligence, January 2024, as reported by multiple outlets.

InfluenceWatch, "Lynn Forester de Rothschild," last updated 2022.

EpsteinExposed.com, Flight log database entry for Lynn Forester de Rothschild, September 25, 1998.

Image: Vanity Fair

#fblifestyle

How The US Manipulates Public Opinion Through Sustained Propaganda

I grew up believing that the Native Americans, commonly referred to as Red Indians, were murderous terrorists who should be totally exterminated for America to have peace. I was manipulated into harboring such belief by repeated exposure to American movies of the late sixties and early seventies, popularly known as Western. Some people call it cowboy and Indian movies.

Those Hollywood movies portrayed the Red Indians as murderous villains terrorizing the Whites and disturbing their peace. In those days there was no internet to fact-check what was being fed into our subconsciousness to shape our emotions. We were unable to distinguish between perception and reality, so we swallowed everything fed to us hook, line and sinker.

It wasn't until I got into the university in the early eighties that my perception about the Red Indians totally changed. I became exposed to facts about America which revealed that the Red Indians were the true owners of the land and that the Caucasians were actually the invaders.

The early White population in America migrated from England looking for new frontiers. They were made up of religious migrants, farmers seeking land, merchants, political dissidents and convicted criminals who were deemed unfit to live in England.

These people invaded America from England and killed between ten and fifteen million Native Americans known as the Red Indians, in order to take over their land. The survivors were rounded up and crammed into concentration camps and treated like slaves in dehumanizing conditions. This is one of the worst form of cruelty and terrorism in human history. But the Hollywood movies will not tell you all these. They would rather consistently portray the Red Indians as savages and terrorists. This is sustained propaganda which targets our emotions and shapes our perception. But the reality is that the Caucasians from England who invaded America were the real murderous terrorists.

Sustained sophisticated propaganda is one of the most powerful weapons ever forged against the human mind. When repeated with discipline, wrapped in emotion, and amplified through fear, grievance, and false certainty, lies can slowly acquire the texture of truth. Under Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels demonstrated how relentless messaging could seduce ordinary people into accepting cruelty as duty and fiction as reality.

The power of propaganda lies not merely in deception, but in its ability to make the deceived defend their own manipulation with conviction. This is why the US has succeeded in brainwashing gullible people that the Iranian government is sponsoring terrorism. This is also why the US controlled media will lie that the Iranian government killed 40,000 of its own citizens and some people who have brains, but cannot think for themselves, will swallow it hook, line and sinker, and even help in propagating the falsehood.

For years, the US controlled media have been portraying Arabs as terrorists. Hollywood has also been producing movies depicting Muslims and Arabs as terrorists. They have succeeded in using those movies to target people's emotions by presenting fiction as reality. But they will never produce a movie depicting the US as a terrorist state, when in actual fact the US has been committing terror all over the world. Since the end of World War 2, the US has invaded over twenty countries and more people have been killed from unprovoked conflicts and wars initiated by the US, than by any other country. For instance, over a million people were killed as a result of the unwarranted US invasion of Iraq which was based entirely on Natanyahu's heinous lies.

Hollywood will also never produce a movie depicting Israel as a terrorist state, when in actual fact Israel started terrorism in the Middle East. The first terrorists groups in the Middle East were the Stern Gang led by Yitzhak Shamir, the Haganah led by David Ben-Gurion and the Irgun led by Menachem Begin. All these three terrorists leaders committed mass killings and terrible crimes against the British and Arabs in the Palestine. Ironically, all three of them went on to become the Prime Minister of Israel at different times.

Since a cease-fire was declared in Gaza on the 10th October 2025, Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians, without a single Israeli being killed. Most of the people killed are starved women and children looking for food. This is aside the unwarranted acrimonious blockage imposed on Gaza by Israel which has prevented food, water, drugs and other essentials from coming into Gaza. Yet, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) sponsored media will tell you that the Palestinians are the terrorists.

Isn't it ironic that the people being killed all the time are the terrorists, while the people doing the mass killings and starving vulnerable women and children with blockage are the saints? Even a ten year old will know that that isn't logical, but not people who have been brainwashed by propaganda.

All the evils being committed by Israel since the declaration of a cease-fire in Gaza qualifies as terrorism. But the US will NEVER utter a word against Israel, not even after traditional US allies like the Netherlands, France, Spain, Republic of Ireland and Italy have condemned Israel's actions in Gaza and called for stiffer actions against Israel, which has been repeatedly blocked by the US. Israel has violated more United Nations Resolution and more Geneva Conventions than any country on earth.

Through video evidence, five Israeli homosexual soldiers were indicted by an Israeli court for repeatedly sodomizing Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman detention facility in July 2024. Guess what happened to the soldiers? They were all freed and Benjamin Netanyahu praised the decision, stating that the country must support its "heroic fighters." Some Rabbis even praised the soldiers, saying the detainees are war prisoners and that the soldiers have a right to do whatever they like to them, including rape. There was no outrage from the US, even though the action was condemned by human rights groups all over the world.

When Nelson Mandela was fighting to free South Africa from the shackles of apartheid, just like the Palestinians are fighting Israeli occupation, he was branded a terrorist by the US and its Western allies. As a matter of fact, the African National Congress (ANC) was branded as a terrorist organization and Nelson Mandela spent 27yrs in prison for agitating to free his country from apartheid. When terrorism is viewed from the prism of the US and its allies, every Arab freedom fighter and black freedom fighter will be seen as terrorists.

According to Dele Farotimi, my friend of over forty years, classmate in the university and brother, "I live in a world where the terrorists are calling the terrorized the terrorists."

Like I always say, you can fact-check everything I have stated in this piece on the internet to ascertain or debunk their veracity. You can even choose to throw reason and logic to the wind and concoct falsehood to discredit this piece. It's your inalienable right. But please, do so politely. Don't come here to exhibit your lack of basic etiquette in public discourse.

Norman Finkelstein

 

Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress and dropped out of the California governor's race after multiple women accused him of sexual assault. And you know what? Democrats did the right thing. Unions pulled support. Party leaders called for him to go. He's gone.

That's exactly what happened with Al Franken in 2017. Democrats forced him out — some now say too quickly — but the point stands: the party held its own accountable.

Now ask yourself: how many Republicans demanded accountability when their own was credibly accused? Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, faced 88 criminal charges across four cases, and was credibly accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. The GOP's response? They made him president — twice.

Imagine a Republican Party that held the same standard Democrats do. Imagine what a different country we'd be living in right now.

Democrats aren't perfect. But they are the only party that actually enforces consequences — even when it's painful and even when it costs them. That's what accountability looks like. Where's yours, GOP?

*Buzzzz, every rotten to the core corporate "Repulicrat" was in on this. The sell out within the Party is designed to make the public THINK this is a two-party system when in fact it is only one party serving the Zionists and their corporations, and billionaires. The public accepts it along with the hypocrisy that sits in his rapacious, adjudicated rape and his felony convictions and obvious mental deterioration while Swalwell goes down just like Franken did and all is well as the S.N.A.F.U. gloriously laughs in the faces of a lazy public awaiting its nonexistent savior and hyenas at the t

 

"You may know the justification for having the Jewish state of Israel that goes something like this: 'we Jews have always lived there, we once had a kingdom there, no one else has had a kingdom there, we were exiled from there, and every year for at least 900 years we've been saying 'Next year in Jerusalem at Passover.'

"There are various problems with this: is this a rule for deciding territorial claims that just applies to Jews or is it universal? If it was universal then we might see Ireland, Wales and Cornwall talking up arms and invading England in order to set up the rightful Celtic State. You might be able to think of other examples, if that rule was applied all over the world.

"The continuous settlement argument is leaky too because it doesn't take long to figure out that there has been continuous settlement in the area for some other peoples too. Continuous settlement is not proof of exclusive settlement.

"Then there's the kingdom argument. This seems to be that if a people once had a kingdom in a place, they must be entitled to have a state now. Another dredge through history, brings up some problems here too. On this basis, the people living in what used to be Mercia could demand a new state of Mercia with Tamworth as a possible capital. What's more, why's an ancient kingdom so important? Other peoples created other forms of self-government - like city states. Are these in some way or another inferior?

"And so to 'Next year in Jerusalem'. I'm not sure why this is a legitimate claim for an ever-extending piece of land. There are many ways to wish to go to Jerusalem which don't involve putting up national borders round a stretch of land and calling it a Jewish state.

"But then we come to another problem that I see people grappling with. If the claim for the land is religious (because God promised it to us (via Abraham who was actually from what is now Iraq) and was 'won' through battle by Joshua) how come the right of return is through 'descent' and marriage? To live in Israel, you need as a minimum one Jewish grandparent, and/or a Jewish wife. As you might guess, it follows from this that some people who go to live in Israel aren't all that bothered about religion. You can in fact be an atheist, non-culturally Jewish person but if you've got the Jewish grandparent, you can live there, but you're doing so on the basis of an original religious reason. That seems contradictory to me.

"There is another problem with this 'descent' justification. It ties a people on the basis of their family origins to a piece of land. If this looks just a bit like the 'blood and soil' argument from 19th century European nationalist 'theory', then I would argue, yes indeed it does. Again, is that a basis for a nation state: blood and soil? As you know that was tried out very rigorously in the 1930s, and it didn't end well.

"And then the archaeologists and geneticists get to work. You can look this up, but the theme here is that middle eastern Jews (Mizrahis) - or at least some of them - show strong genetic links to the original inhabitants of the Levant going back 3000 years. If you're going to make an argument that genes give the right for statehood, this is encouraging. (I still think it's a blood and soil argument, which has strong and disastrous consequences for anyone deemed to be not of the blood.) However, there's another problem. Are there any other peoples who also have a strong genetic link to the Levant? Well, it turns out there are. Namely Palestinian Muslims and Christians - and Lebanese.

"Hmmm, this is a bit problematic for only one kind of blood and soil argument, because the blood and soil genetics has thrown up that both Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians and Lebanese are linked to this bit of territory.

"Those of us who think that's been the whole issue all along (ie that setting up an exclusively Jewish state was the problem not the solution) are not surprised to hear that there has of course been continuous settlement by at least two peoples - if not more, for thousands of years.

"But whoah, let's hold the phone there. Whether we take the biblical evidence or the archaeological evidence, of course there was a people and a civilisation before the Israelites arrived. This usually goes by the name of the Canaanites. And the geneticists claim that the Mizrahis and the Palestinians and Lebanese owe their genetic origins to the Canaanites.

"Oh but the Canaanities didn't have a kingdom. No, why should they? Instead, it seems as if they had city states. I don't know a lot about city states, though arguably I've once been to one - Andorra. Even so, as a model for a society, they don't sound too bad, so long as you could run your city state in a democratic way. (I don't suppose the ancient Canaanites did but bear with me.)

"Let's imagine a federation of democratic city states, (communes, if you will), in which the character of each city state could be determined by the people living in them, and the federation existed for mutual benefit (sharing electricity that sort of thing) and security, with plenty of room for diversity of culture, religion, and politics...it starts to sound OK to me. So much so that I think I'm going to start calling myself a Canaanist.

"Zionist folks often want to go back to origins. Well, I'll go further back. I'll go back to Canaan. In fact, what we need is a Canaan Liberation Front. The CLF. I say, Victory to the CLF! Victory to the CLF! What do we want? Canaan! When do want it? Now.

"Any objections to that?" --Michael Rosen

 

The photo below is Melania and Donald on March 12, 1999 at a New York Knicks game. Melania knows. Alex Acosta knows. The victims know. Palm Beach Police know. FBI knows. They all know.

HERE IS A TIMELINE:

1998 – Donald and Melania are introduced by Paolo Zampolli (who ran a Milan modeling agency, now works for Trump and did so as well in his previous administration) at the Kit Kat Club in New York, where Jeffrey Epstein is also in attendance.

2002 – Trump says Epstein is “fun” and “a terrific guy.”

November 2004 - Donald Trump bought Maison de L'Amitie for $41.35 million (at the same time he was filing bankruptcy for Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts) outbidding Jeffrey Epstein. Reportedly, losing the auction angered Epstein and led to the end of their relationship; for his part, Trump later said he banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club and called him a creep. (Trump sold Maison de L’Amitie to Russian Oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, in 2008 for $95M, without improvements.)

January 2005 – Donald and Melania are married. Zampolli and Epstein are in attendance.

March 2005 – Palm Beach Police open investigation into Epstein sexually abusing young girls. They found the abuse was going on as early as 2002.

September 2005 - Trump and Billy Bush were on a bus on their way to film an episode of Access Hollywood. In the video, Trump described his attempt to seduce a married woman and indicated he might start kissing a woman that he and Bush were about to meet. He added, "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."

July 2006 – Palm Beach County Grand Jury indicts Epstein on solicitation of prostitution. Palm Beach Police refer it to FBI because the local charge doesn't reflect "the totality of Epstein's conduct.”

July 2006 - Trump asks Stormy Daniels to join him for a meal. She did not want to accept the invitation but her publicist encouraged her to go. Melania Trump, was not at the tournament and had just given birth.

May 2007 – 60 more criminal counts against Epstein.

July 2007 – Epstein’s USAG Prosecutor was Alex Acosta, who later became Trump’s labor secretary, who offered to end the investigation of Epstein if he plead guilt to 2 local charges, register as a sex offender, and accept a prison term—which ended up being more like a resort with off campus working privileges—AND an NON-Prosecution Agreement. The sexual abuse of girls continues.

June 30, 2008 – Epstein pleads guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution of a minor under 18. Is sentenced to 18 months in a minimum security camp, being allowed to leave 12 hours per day.

July 7, 2008 – “Jane Doe” files a suit saying victims were not informed of the plea deal. In 2019, 11 years later, a judge ruled in their favor.

July 22, 2009 – Epstein is released after serving less than 13 months.

2010 – Epstein settles multiple civil law suits brought against him by his victims.

May 16, 2012 - Mary Kathleen Richardson Kennedy, wife of RFK Jr. (who was buddies with Epstein) and friend of Ghislaine is found dead—by hanging—after finding and reading her husband’s diary.

September 21, 2015 – Virginia Roberts Giuffre sues Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation after Maxwell called her a liar. (In 2021 Maxwell is found guilty and sentenced to 20 years.)

2016 - Melania needed a “cooling off period” after hearing, via media reports, of the president’s various scandals – including Stormy Daniels, the “Access Hollywood” tape, and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal.

And, she allegedly leveraged the time apart to negotiate better prenup terms, particularly as related to her son Barron and ensuring his financial legacy as part of the “Trump empire.”

May 2017 – Maxwell settles Giuffre’s lawsuit, which Epstein had repeatedly avoided testifying.

May 25, 2018 - Joseph Recarey, lead detective on Epstein’s sex trafficking case in Palm Beach, Florida is found dead “after a brief illness.”

October 13, 2018 - Melania appears in public to showcase her $39 jackets that reads on the back, “I really don’t care, do you?” during a trip to a migrant CHILD detention center.

November 28, 2018 – The Miami Herald publishes a series of investigative reports into Epstein and Alex Acosta’s role in the plea deal.

December 4, 2018 – A week after the Miam Herald reports, Epstein reaches a settlement in a defamation case with attorney Bradley Edwards, who represented victims who were children at the time.

July 6, 2019 – Federal Agents arrest Epstein. He is charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking with minors.

July 9, 2019 – Trump begins to publicly distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein. Trump said in an interview, “I was “not a fan” of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — but repeatedly refused to reveal what led to a “falling out” that he now claims to have had with the wealthy financier about 15 years ago.

Trump’s comments came a day after Epstein, 66, appeared in New York federal court to face new charges that he sexually abused dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, in his Manhattan and Florida mansions from 2002 to 2005.

Trump told reporters that he had known Epstein “like everyone in Palm Beach,” Florida.

“He was a fixture in Palm Beach,” Trump said of Epstein, who is also known for having been friends with former President Bill Clinton.

“I had a falling out a long time ago with him,” Trump said. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to him in 15 years.”

“I was not a fan of his,” Trump said.

Reporters asked Trump at least four times what caused the falling out, in particular if it stemmed from a criminal probe of Epstein in Florida in the mid-2000. But aides ushered them out of the Oval Office as Trump did not answer.

During the same photo opportunity, Trump said that he felt badly for his Labor secretary, Alex Acosta, who is facing increasing calls by Democrats to resign because of his role in a non-prosecution agreement that Epstein signed in 2008 with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, which Acosta headed at the time.

Trump said that Acosta has done an excellent job as Labor secretary, and said Acosta would not have been the only person responsible for the deal with Epstein.

At the time of that deal, Epstein was being investigated both by state and federal authorities for conduct that is now the basis for the new prosecution by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

July 12, 2019 – Acosta resigns as labor secretary, citing the Epstein case.

August 10, 2019 – Epstein is found dead, “hanged” in his cell.

August 27, 2019 - U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman holds a hearing on a motion to dismiss the indictment against Epstein. In a remarkable move, he also says the court will hear "the testimony of victims here today" — an offer taken up by many women that day, under their own names or as "Jane Doe."

Courtney Wild, who had helped start the first proceedings against Epstein in Florida more than 10 years earlier, is among those who step forward.

"Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused me for years, robbing me of my innocence and mental health," she said. "Jeffrey Epstein has done nothing but manipulate our justice system, where he has never been held accountable for his actions, even to this day."

December 2019 – Virginia Roberts Giuffre posts on Twitter:

'F.B.I. will kill me to protect the ultra rich and well connected. I am making it publicy (sic) known that in no way, shape or form am I sucidal (sic). I have made this known to my therapist and GP. If something happens to me- in the sake of my family do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quiteted (sic),'

February 19, 2022 - Jean Luc Brunel, Epstein, Epstein and Trump associate, who owned “modeling agencies” that fed girls as young as 12 to the sex trafficking scheme, was found dead, HUNG in his jail cell.

August 23, 2022 - Steven Hoffenberg, fraudster and Jeffrey Epstein mentor, found dead at least 7 days after his actual death.

May 9, 2023 - A New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of sexually abusing E Jean Carroll in a New York department store changing room in 1996.

January 2024 - New York unseals 2010 deposition of Nadia Marcinoka (often referred to as Epstein’s Sex Slave). Nadia went missing just afterward.

MAY 30, 2024 - Jury Finds Donald Trump Guilty of 34 Counts

June 10, 2024 – Trump is asked if he would declassify and release the Epstein Files. Trump responds, Yeah, yeah, I would.” However, his full answer wasn't shown until it played on Will Cain's radio show.

Trump went on to say in the exchange with Campos-Duffy: "I don't know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died. It'd be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn't happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I'd go a long way toward that one."

September 2024 – Trump pledges again to release the Epstein Files on Lex Fridman podcast.

March 13, 2025 - Trump’s spiritual advisor, Robert Morris (the lead pastor at Gateway Megachurch in Texas, steps down amid indictments of sexual abuse of children spanning back to the 1980s.

April 25, 2025 – Virginia Roberts Giuffre found dead in Australia.

July 7, 2025 – Trump: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”

July 16, 2025 - Maurene Comey, Prosecutor of Epstein’s case at Manhattan US Attorney’s Office, and former FBI Director James Comey’s daughter, is FIRED without given any reason.

July 21, 2025 - Roy Black, Epstein’s defense attorney who secured the 2008 plea deal, died of “an illness.”

July 22, 2025 – Epstein’s brother Mark tells CNN that his brother was “very close” with Donald Trump in the 1990s.

July 23, 2025 – White House communications director Steven Cheung said on CNN that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for “being a creep.”

July 28, 2025 - Trump told reporters at his golf property in Turnberry, Scotland, the reason for the rift was that Epstein “stole” young women who worked for his Mar-a-Lago spa in Palm Beach.

Trump didn’t specify a timeline for when it happened, but called it “such old history.” He said, “For years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein.”

“He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata,” Trump said.

July 29, 2025 - Trump elaborated on his remarks from the day before, acknowledging that Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre was among spa staffers he said Epstein had poached from him.

“I think (Giuffre) worked at the spa,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “He stole her.”

In 2009, under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 102,” Virginia Roberts Giuffre said Epstein’s convicted former girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, recruited her while she was a minor working at Mar-a-Lago to be the late sex offender’s masseuse. Giuffre’s family responded to Trump’s July 29 comments, saying his latest account raises questions about the president’s prior knowledge of Epstein’s criminal wrongdoing.

Giuffre spoke publicly in 2011 about her abuse, Axios reported.

Social Security records submitted to the court during Giuffre’s defamation case against Maxwell show that Giuffre was a locker room spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in summer 2000, two years before Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy.” The precise dates and duration of her employment at Mar-a-Lago remained unclear when the lawsuit settled in 2017, ABC News reported.

When PolitiFact asked the White House for clarification about when and why Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, Cheung said in an email, “taking employees is most definitely creepy.”

August 5, 2025 – House Oversight Committee subpoenas the Justice Department for Epstein Files.

August 6, 2025 – GLORIA ALLRED, representing Epstein Victims, ENTERS THE CHAT.

-- Girl Du Jour:

How, exactly, do people think this all ends? What’s the actual off-ramp here?

Take, for example, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, along with the layers of officials underneath them in the State Department and military chain of command obeying their orders. Assuming a future where political control flips, whether through elections or the eventual collapse of leadership, what will they do at that moment?

The underlying premise I assume a lot of Americans casually accept is that power will just transfer cleanly, and that’s that. But if we’re talking about individuals facing serious legal exposure, i.e., criminal investigations, potential indictments, charges of treason, and even the possibility of being expelled to The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity, then we’re no longer in the realm of polite and peaceful transitions of power. Instead, we’re talking about individuals facing severe personal risk, reputational and financial ruin, and potential prison time or worse.

So, do these individuals in that position, essentially backed into a corner, just step aside and trust the system to let them off the hook even though they are guilty as sin? Or no? And if so, do they try to negotiate protection or immunity? Do they leave public life entirely and try to stay out of reach of prosecutors, perhaps by fleeing the country? Or do they rely on personal loyalty within what remains of the regime in a myriad of agencies and institutions to shield them long enough that consequences never materialize, including through violence if necessary?

That’s also before getting to the assumption doing the most invisible work here: that a “flip” in political leadership actually means the system underneath it flips too. That the same agencies, departments, and enforcement bodies that may have been hollowed out, restructured, or simply packed top to bottom with Trump loyalists suddenly all just fall in line with new political leadership without hesitation or friction. That people whose positions, careers, or protection were tied directly to the previous criminal power structure just calmly accept replacement, new directives, or the inevitable criminal and civil investigations into their own conduct.

None of that will be automatic. It requires compliance across entire chains of command. It also assumes that orders from new political leadership are actually carried out, not ignored, slow-walked, reinterpreted, or undermined from within. It assumes that institutional loyalty to the Constitution or the law outweighs personal loyalty, fear, or self-preservation across thousands of decision points.

If that assumption doesn’t hold, if even parts of the current fascist machinery resist, stall, or even fracture, then the idea of a clean transition starts to look less like a given and more like a best-case scenario Americans are hoping for rather than something just guaranteed to happen.

I can’t help but conclude that the speed of Project 2025 was for this point precisely. The architects of all of this weren’t just aiming for quick policy wins; they were moving fast to gut and repopulate the administrative state, along with key layers of law enforcement and the military chain of command, before any meaningful resistance could organize, and in preparation for a flip in political leadership they know will happen that they can then just sideline and ignore.

Elections can come and go. But if the underlying machinery is staffed end to end with loyalists, then a formal transfer of political power doesn’t necessarily translate into real governmental control. New political leadership can issue orders all day long, and it won’t matter if the people responsible for actually carrying them out decide to just flat-out refuse.

If control over key institutions by this regime outlasts control over elected office, then the idea that elections alone will reset the system looks to be a lot more fragile than Americans want to admit, and I’m not sure if they are quite ready to confront what that means.