The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

Over the last six months I have been reading the details as they unfold about Jeffrey Epstein.  Words like disgusting, revolting, perverted, debauched come to mind. It is nauseating and horrifying. But this entire phenomenon tells us a great deal about the rich and powerful in America—indeed in much of the world. For so many of these rich and powerful there is a façade that hides a depravity that is now being exposed.

The Economist correctly observes that “In what is supposed to be a meritocracy too many of the best and the brightest turn out to be motivated by flattery, vanity, cupidity, cruelty and lechery.  An unknown number of powerful men (and some women) trafficked and abused a much larger number of vulnerable women and girls.  Those victims urgently need justice.”

Lisa Miller provides some necessary background to Epstein: “Epstein had been convicted in a Florida court of sex crimes with minors in 2008. His method, reported in The New York Times at the time, had been to recruit girls as young as 14 to his home and persuade them to undress and massage him. Then he would force them to have sex and paid them cash. He was charged with sex crimes again in 2019, this time by the federal government, which accused him of trafficking underage girls in the early 2000s. If he committed crimes in the years between 2009 and his death in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting federal trial in 2019, he was not charged with them. But the Epstein files show that, during that decade, he was both rebuilding and curating his vast, elite social network, while also looking at plans for a new massage room on his private island of Little St. James and choosing marble for his massage room in New York.”

“At the same time, he was vetting young women from all over the world for their sexual attractiveness, ranking their attributes, soliciting sex and enlisting them into his service. ‘Very beautiful, fresh,’ one scout wrote to Epstein in 2011 of a 21-year-old woman, about 5 feet 8 inches tall. Nice girl, but almost no English at all,’ the same scout wrote of another, who was 22. That Epstein was a registered sex offender in New York and Florida was a matter of record. That he usually traveled with an entourage of ‘girls’—in his correspondence he also called them ‘assistants’ or ‘students”—was common knowledge. Richard Branson called this entourage Epstein’s ‘harem.’ ‘As long as you bring your harem!’ Branson wrote in 2013.”

Miller goes on: “What’s most shocking is that no one said anything. How is it that ‘the girls,’ as Epstein called them—their presence, their provenance, their role—failed to raise misgivings above the quietest whisper among the super-powerful men and women who dined at Epstein’s table? The list of boldface names availing themselves of Epstein’s hospitality is by now familiar. Elon Musk. Steve Bannon. Peter Attia. Guests like these exist within their own galaxies of assistants, advisers and hangers on. Is it possible that no one raised questions about Epstein’s treatment of women beyond a certain coy or coded admiration for what they saw as his extravagant taste? . . . The exclusivity had a multiplying effect. The more top notch the company, the more people wanted in. And Epstein had a lot to offer, West pointed out. ‘Soft power, opportunity, financial opportunity, social connection,’ she said—and, crucially, for the professors and university presidents knocking at his door, ‘money in a world where academics don’t have any.’ Some of ‘the girls’ saw Epstein as an opportunity, too. He sent them to Frédéric Fekkai for haircuts and referred them to plastic surgeons. . . He sent them to the doctor and seems to have paid for school—including, apparently, massage lessons. The gatherings, the properties, the amenities—all were designed to seduce and astonish.”

It has been nearly two months since the latest tranche of files related to deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein was released by the Justice Department, outlining years of correspondence and visual evidence connecting the convicted sex offender to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. The massive trove—totaling more than 3 million documents—has roiled Europe, leading to resignations and criminal inquiries, and drawn further scrutiny toward Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince and brother of King Charles III. Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in office. In the United States, however, professional exits and investigations of the individuals named in the files have not taken place on the same scale. Judges and lawmakers say that over decades, he abused, trafficked and molested scores of girls, many of whom have come forward in court and in other public forums. From the work of Maegan Vazquez and Sammy Westfall, in addition to Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and many others, here is a partial list of the powerful and rich:

• Peter Attia—Attia, a physician and longevity expert, faced scrutiny after the latest release of documents revealed his friendly and sometimes crude correspondence with Epstein.
• Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem—Bin Sulayem, an Emirati businessman, resigned from his role as chairman of DP World, one of the world’s largest logistics companies.
• Sarah Ferguson—Sarah’s Trust, the charity founded by Sarah Ferguson, a former duchess of York, shut down for the “foreseeable future” following the latest document release.
• Lawrence H. Summers—Larry Summers, a former Harvard University president who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, stepped back late last year from public commitments including teaching and resigning from the board of OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT.
• Thorbjørn Jagland—Jagland, a former secretary general of the Council of Europe and a former prime minister of Norway, was charged with “aggravated corruption” in connection with his ties to Epstein, said a spokesperson for Elden Law Firm, which represents Jagland.
• Brad Karp—Karp resigned as longtime chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison after a series of emails between him and Epstein became public, outlining his extensive relationship with the financier.
• Miroslav Laj?ák—Laj?ák, a former president of the U.N. General Assembly, resigned from his role as national security adviser to Slovakia’s prime minister over his communications with Epstein.
• Peter Mandelson—Mandelson, a former British ambassador to the United States, resigned from the Labour Party in early February and subsequently resigned from the House of Lords amid renewed scrutiny of his connection to Epstein. On Feb. 6, British police searched two properties linked to Mandelson as part of a misconduct investigation stemming from his ties to Epstein.
• Morgan McSweeney—McSweeney resigned from his role as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff amid mounting criticism over the appointment of Mandelson as British ambassador to the United States in December 2024, despite knowledge that Mandelson had a relationship with Epstein.
• George J. Mitchell—Mitchell, a former U.S. senator who represented Maine as a Democrat before serving as President Bill Clinton’s envoy to Northern Ireland, is mentioned more than 300 times in the latest Justice Department document drop.
• David A. Ross—Ross, an influential figure in the contemporary art world, resigned from his position as the chair of the master’s degree program in art practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York following revelations about his friendship with Epstein, first revealed by ARTnews.
• Kathy Ruemmler—Ruemmler, an Obama White House lawyer, is resigning from her role as the chief legal officer and general counsel of Goldman Sachs following months of reports about her friendly exchanges with Epstein.
• Steve Tisch—The National Football League said that it would review communications between Tisch, who co-owns the New York Giants, and Epstein following the latest document release.
• Casey Wasserman—Wasserman is selling his talent agency after the emergence of flirtatious correspondence between himself and Ghislaine Maxwell in the latest batch of files, according to a memo from Wasserman to his agency’s staff obtained by the Associated Press.

Russell Moore writes that “People have almost given up on bridging the divides in American life. Republicans and Democrats cannot pass any bipartisan legislation or even watch the same Super Bowl halftime shows. And yet throughout the last two decades of polarization, one figure seems to have discerned the code for bringing both sides of the culture war together. His name was Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein files have largely been redacted, with parts of them hidden from us, but we’ve seen enough to know that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell were two of the most corrupt and connected sex criminals in American history. Despite how much is still confusing, we can also see this: at least one important point, the most outlandish theories were right. There really is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses. And many of them were people building a following by telling others that there is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses . . .  Predators know one of the easiest ways to go unseen is to change the moral calculus. As long as we define virtue and vice by a set of political or cultural or “worldview” opinions rather than character and integrity and behavior, they can avert accountability forever . . . Some of the same people on the left who told us that the sexual revolution is about empowering women and girls and that the oppressed should be liberated suddenly lost their nerve when the predatory misogynist had their same politics—and a yacht. . . No man is an island, John Donne told us. But a whole culture can be an island, and that island is Epstein’s. We don’t have to live this way. We can choose another path. Our country hangs by a slender strand over an abyss. And it might just be that it did not hang itself.”

The Bible makes it clear that leaders are always called to a higher standard—and are ultimately accountable to God. The list of individuals associated with Epstein is astonishing. Who he was and what he did were not secrets. Despite his clear and evident debauchery, the powerful and the rich continued contact with him, visited his island, had dinner, emailed him and sometimes participated in his decadence. When it comes to leadership, Epstein is a metaphor for the moral state of our nation.

See Russell Moore “Jeffrey Epstein and the Myth of the Culture Wars” in Moore to the Point (11 February 2026); The Economist (14 February 2026), pp. 9, 48-49; Lisa Miller in the New York Times (21 February 2026); Maegan Vazquez and Sammy Westfall, “The Epstein files have brought a wave of resignations and investigations” in the Washington Post (19 February 2026).