this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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I have my issues with Brooks' article, but come on. Appearing in the same place/event as Jeffrey Epstein, by itself, means nothing.
They have multiple photographs of Brooks at the event and Epstein isn't in a single one. This is a nothingburger.
My guess is that many people who spent time around Epstein were probably not pedophiles. Maybe even the majority of them. His "day job" was a guy who knew all the powerful people and could introduce anybody to anybody else. If he had been a woman, we would have called him a socialite.
Some of the people were probably in his inner circle and participated in the child abuse. But, others were probably just using him as a way to meet royalty, or as a way to connect to VC money.
But, you know what? I'm ok if plutocrats who weren't actually pedophiles get caught up as collateral damage.
"I wasn't in the pedophile inner circle, I was just on the edges trying to curry favor so they'd let me join"
maybe isn't as great an excuse as it's made out to be
I imagine most of them didn't know that child sex abuse was going on. Even among the ultra rich, that's not seen as acceptable behaviour. Epstein was probably careful about who he let into the inner circle. They were probably fully vetted, and/or Epstein had compromat on them so they couldn't expose him without exposing themselves. The rest of them probably thought he liked women who were barely legal, but still legal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_child_prostitution_ring_allegations
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/prosecutors-detail-sex-abuse-allegations-against-dennis-hastert
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/14/more-than-300-pennsylvania-priests-committed-sexual-abuse-over-decades
Even setting aside Epstein, this abuse is fully rampant in the upper eschalons of American society.
And Brooks was going out with these guys, he was meeting their second and third and forth wives. He was writing long winded articles about Eastern Europe and the scandals of human trafficking, with the spin being a need for more US intervention to restore law and order in post-Soviet States.
Nothing in the info dumps we've received suggests Jeff was particularly discrete. He bragged about who he knew and slept with. Ghislaine bragged on his behalf. It was a selling point.
He had a plane christened The Lolita Express. Nothing about this screams subtlety