A month has passed since the release of three million documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein, and the stories keep coming. Today, video footage of Bill and Hillary Clinton testifying to US lawmakers about Epstein was released. Unsurprisingly, both deny misconduct.
But the reaction this weekend – at least according to a wholly unscientific survey of five friends – is “meh”. Most said they had Epstein fatigue. The message was: “We know he’s a bad guy. Why can’t we just move on?”
That’s understandable. A month in, the obvious stories have been published. What remains is more fragmented, harder to piece together – but arguably more important. In a way, the Epstein story may only just be beginning.
Take his money. Huge questions remain: not just how he made it, but what he did with it. Whom did he pay, and for what? Who was in his debt? Who looked the other way? Interestingly, the people pursuing these questions aren’t professional journalists at all.
A researcher called Randall Scott Taylor is one of a loose network of finance professionals, lawyers and internet sleuths digging into Epstein’s records. (Last week I wrote about another volunteer-built resource, JeffTube — and Jeff Mail.)
A few days ago, Taylor released what he describes as a “full audit” of Epstein’s financial records. He says he examined 10,964 transactions, including $1.61bn in wire transfers, $343m in bank statements and $7.6m in cash transactions. He then matched those transactions to individuals.
Taylor shares little about his background, though a cached version of his LinkedIn page identifies him as a finance director at NYC Health + Hospitals, with expertise in financial data engineering and analytics. I haven’t been able to independently verify all of his findings.
What I have checked appears accurate. With that caveat, here are some of his more striking claims:
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One of Epstein’s main trusts, Southern Financial LLC, took in $606.9m but transferred out only $194.7m, according to Department of Justice (DOJ) files. Taylor asks the obvious question: where is the rest?
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Another entity, Jeepers Inc, shows the opposite pattern. It received $18m but paid out $173.6m. The DOJ files offer no explanation for the discrepancy.
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Around $92.5m was directed to Ghislaine Maxwell across 176 payments – the “largest operator-to-key-person connection in the entire network”, according to Taylor. Some of that may have been Maxwell’s own money. But the extent of her financial entanglement with Epstein has received surprisingly little scrutiny.
These findings aren’t as lurid or easily packaged as an embarrassing email involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. But they point to a broader truth: the DOJ documents offer only a partial view of Epstein’s world. Significant questions remain unanswered.
With the easy headlines exhausted, it’s tempting to move on. That would suit Epstein’s enablers – banks, celebrities, wealth managers – just fine. A few prominent figures take the blame, some institutions pay fines, and business resumes as usual.
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Taylor argues that would be a mistake. His analysis suggests something simpler: there is still work to do.
“I’m a finance professional,” he writes. “I did this work pro bono because public records should be publicly understood. The numbers are here. The names are here. The gaps are here. What happens next is up to the people with subpoenas.”
Photograph courtesy US Department of Justice