The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2026

⏱️ 86 minutes

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Summary

At the end of January, Trump’s Justice Department released what it said was the last tranche of the Epstein files: millions of pages of emails and texts, F.B.I. documents and court records. Much was redacted and millions more pages have been withheld. There is a lot we want to know that remains unclear. But what has come into clear view is the role Epstein played as a broker of information, connections, wealth and women and girls for a slice of the global elite. This was the infrastructure of Epstein’s power — and it reveals much about the infrastructure of elite networks more generally. Anand Giridharadas is something of a sociologist of American elites. He’s the author of, among other books, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and the forthcoming “Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle and Belonging in an American City.” He also publishes the great newsletter The.Ink. Back in November, after the release of an earlier batch of Epstein files, Giridharadas wrote a great Times Opinion guest essay, taking a sociologist’s lens to the messages Epstein exchanged with his elite friends. So after the government released this latest, enormous tranche of materials, I wanted to talk to Giridharadas to help make sense of it. What do they reveal — about how Epstein operated in the world, the vulnerabilities he exploited and what that says about how power works in America today? Note: This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Kathryn Ruemmler announced she would be resigning from her role as chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails” by Anand Giridharadas “How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich” by David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre Book Recommendations: Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo Unpublished Work by Conchita Sarnoff Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The At the end of January, Trump's Department of Justice released what it said was the last tranche of Epstein files.
0:38.3	Millions of emails and texts, FBI documents and court records.
0:43.1	It's just huge dump of information.
0:46.0	Journalist investigators and the public are sifting through them as we speak.
0:50.8	What's amazing, though, is how much we just still don't know, or at least don't know yet.
0:55.3	Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, who before he joined the DOJ, was Trump's personal lawyer,
1:01.1	has said that investigators identified 6 million potentially responsive pages, but they released
1:06.4	only about 3.5 million pages to the public. So what's in the two and a half million
1:11.4	pages we haven't seen? Representatives Rocana and Thomas Massey, who co-sponsored the House
1:16.9	legislation that mandated the files release, have argued that the DOJ is engaged in a cover-up,
1:22.1	and is using redactions to protect powerful men who may have committed crimes.
1:26.6	Mr. Speaker, yesterday Congressman Massey and I went to the Department of Justice
1:32.1	to read the unredacted Epstein files.
1:35.3	We spent about two hours there, and we learned that 70 to 80 percent of the files are still
1:42.8	redacted.
1:51.0	In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason. So we are still far from the end of the story. We're still far from
1:57.3	knowing much of what we want to know inside the story. But what has come into clear view is the incredible breadth of Epstein's network, the huge range of people who relied on him, communicated with him, traded with him, and the role he played in this network, the role he played among the American elite elite as a broker of information, connections,
2:20.5	wealth, and ultimately human beings. This is what I think the files, along with a lot of amazing
2:27.0	reporting and courageous testimony, have at least begun to answer. Where Epstein's
2:32.3	mysterious power came from? Why so many famous and powerful
2:37.3	people from so many walks of life orbited around him, even after he's convicted in 2008 of soliciting
	...

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