Donald Trump's Achilles Heel: The Epstein Curse Continues to Loom Large
SOURCE:Spiegel International
Reality is sometimes even more shocking than conspiracy theories - as demonstrated by the Jeffrey Epstein case. U.S. President Donald Trump wants it to go away, but his erstwhile friendship with the sexual predator continues to overshadow his presidency. And even his followers are demanding that he release the files.
The woman who Jeffrey Epstein threatened with a curse on her unborn children if he didn’t like what she wrote about him hasn’t forgotten that moment to this day.
"It was creepy,” Vicky Ward recalls, a svelte woman with radiant blonde hair and a British accent that has faded during her many years living in New York.
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 44/2025 (October 24th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.
He would bring in a witchdoctor, he told her. And he asked her in what hospital she was planning on giving birth.
Ward says Epstein warned her he could guarantee that her children wouldn’t be accepted into any school in Manhattan. And that her husband could lose his job.
Epstein called her almost every day, says Vicky Ward.
That was 23 years ago.
Ward, 56, is a journalist and the author of several bestsellers. She has been a senior reporter for CNN and has written for a number of big-name newspapers and magazines.
In fall 2002, she was commissioned by the magazine Vanity Fair to write a profile of Jeffrey Epstein. "At the time, he was a Gatsby-like character. Everybody was talking about him, but nobody knew who he really was,” says Ward. Just like in the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald about the secretive bachelor Jay Gatsby, who would throw lavish parties in his villa for the high society of New York.
Ward initially thought it would be a simple reporting project. Epstein lived in New York, she lived in New York. She would visit him for an interview, contact a few of his Wall Street associates and write the profile. Ward was expecting twins at the time and it was a high-risk pregnancy. She wasn’t allowed to fly, to exert herself or to get upset.
The "simple story,” Ward says, turned into a "nightmare.”
As Vicky Ward set out in fall 2002 to figure out who Jeffrey Epstein was, his fame was growing just as quickly as Ward’s belly.
In the only extensive article about him that had been published to date, New York Magazine referred to him as an "international moneyman of mystery.”
A friend of his was quoted in the piece as saying that Epstein is a "terrific guy” and a lot of fun. "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
That friend was Donald J. Trump.
At the time, Epstein had just returned from a trip to Africa with ex-President Bill Clinton, Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and supermodel Naomi Campbell in his Boeing 727 for an anti-AIDS campaign by the Clinton Global Initiative.
It was the moment in which Epstein first stepped out of the shadows and into the public spotlight.
Without ever leaving the darkness behind.
Jeffrey Epstein has now been dead for more than half a decade, but hauntingly he seems more alive than ever. The U.S. judiciary has been busy with Epstein and his crimes for more than 20 years – as have American politics.
His name has become shorthand for the fact that different rules apply to those who hold power. That wealth and influence feed off each other – and that those with both can ignore rules and the law.
That is partly due to the crimes that he committed. Epstein – this man with the reptilian eyes, thick hair and the perpetual tan common to those who have secured a spot on the sunny side of life – sexually abused underaged girls on a scale that can only be described as industrial. His method of recruiting girls resembled a snowball system, one which ultimately involved up to 1,000 victims. He had girls delivered the same way most people order takeout meals.
Jeffrey Epstein showed that a man who surrounds himself with presidents, princes and Nobel laureates has nothing to fear for a long, long time – no matter what he does.
The questions raised by this case continue to be explosive enough to shake America’s political sphere to the core.
Who knew about his sex ring? Who took part in it? Who helped cover it up? Who simply didn’t care because they wanted to maintain access to his circle and to his money?
The fact that the riddles surrounding his death continue to swirl is partly due to Donald Trump. The man who – reluctantly – promised during the campaign to publicly release the Epstein files. And the man who went back on his word.
Why? It is a question that has dogged the president for months. Why has he behaved so strangely? Might it be because he is mired more deeply into the case than initially thought? The Epstein case, at least for a time, drove a wedge between the president and elements of his base, which is otherwise so unconditionally faithful.
Thousands of pages of court documents on Epstein have already been made public, but not even close to all of them. And a number of the publicized documents have been heavily redacted. Furthermore, some of the audio and video material from days of interrogations remain locked away, along with flight manifests from Epstein’s trips.
New information does occasionally leak out. Recently, a number of pages from Epstein’s appointment schedule were publicized. Accordingly, the German-born billionaire Peter Thiel – an early Donald Trump supporter and patron of Vice President JD Vance – once joined him for lunch.
Bill Gates, the documents showed, went to parties with Epstein as late as 2014 and Elon Musk had also been planning on joining him on a trip to his island, sometimes referred to as "Orgy Island.” Musk immediately issued a denial.
Last week, a book written by Epstein’s most famous victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, was published. It contains a detailed description of how Epstein allegedly brought her to Prince Andrew as a 17-year-old. He denies it, but is now no longer allowed to use his royal title at the behest of his brother, King Charles III.
If there is one thing that all of America can agree on, it is the demand to make the Epstein files public. There is a bipartisan initiative from members of Congress aimed at forcing the Trump administration and the Justice Department to do so. Democrats and Trump followers are even cooperating on the issue. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed numerous prominent politicians to testify on the Epstein case, including both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
"It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world,” said the committee spokeswoman. "It is past time for Attorney General Bondi to release all the files now.”
It is unlikely that she will. When it comes to Donald Trump’s desires, the attorney general is more than happy to oblige. And when it comes to Epstein, the president has taken on a head-in-the-sand approach.
"Are you still talking about this guy? This creep?” Epstein, the president said not long ago, is a "Democrat hoax.” Nothing to see here.
"I was not a fan of his,” Trump said.
"Let’s not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Many take a different view.
According to a survey taken by Ipsos in July, almost 70 percent of respondents believe that the Trump administration is hiding something in the Epstein case.
Indeed, his reactions to the case in summer produced the biggest crisis he has yet endured in his second term. Trump fans are also not particularly fond of people who abuse children.
A work of protest art depicting U.S. President Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein on the National Mall in September.
Foto: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP
The issue has been smoldering ever since. It may occasionally be pushed into the background, such as by the uproar following the murder of Charlie Kirk, or by the ongoing government shutdown. But it never disappears completely.
Trump is the master of the "us against them” narrative – as long as he finds it useful. He even launched his political career with lies about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has, says the journalist Will Sommer, who has long focused on the origins of such conspiracy narratives, played a huge role in such theories establishing a mainstream foothold.
Consistent with that approach, Trump also sought to transform Jeffrey Epstein into the pedophile godfather of the liberal elite. Which pleased his supporters.
But now, his voters are wondering why the president has so quickly lost his interest in getting to the bottom of the story. "Us against them” no longer has such clear contours.
Contrary to his claims, the Epstein case was never about right against left, Democrats against Republicans. It was more about the rich and powerful against the rest of the world.
And who would ever deny that Donald Trump belongs to the powerful?
He is concerned that friends of his appear in the files, Trump told advisers, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. And he allegedly also voiced frustrations that people are once again talking about Epstein rather than about his government’s accomplishments.
Perhaps, he posited, the whole thing only exists to damage him?
Epstein continues to hang over Trump and his presidency like a dark rain cloud. And the rain within is radioactive.
During his state visit to the United Kingdom a few weeks ago, activists projected images of Epstein and Trump onto the wall of Windsor Castle. The British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, was dismissed because of his connection to Epstein. And then there is the newly surfaced congratulatory note for Epstein’s 50th birthday, bearing Trump’s signature, with references to shared "secrets,” along with a suggestive drawing of a naked woman – which Trump claims he never wrote.
In a video recorded on March 17, 2010, Epstein can be seen lounging in front of a camera in a leather armchair with microphone tucked into the collar of his gray polo shirt. A voice from off screen asks:
"Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?”
"What do you mean by personal relationships?”
"Have you socialized with him?”
"Yes, sir.”
"Yes?”
"Yes, sir.”
"Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?”
A photo of Trump and Epstein projected on the the walls of Windsor Castle during the president's state visit to the UK in September.
Foto: Phil Noble / REUTERS
Epstein, his chin in his hand, seems almost amused:
"Though I’d like to answer that question, at least today, I’m going to have to assert my 5th, 6th and 14th Amendment rights.”
Epstein lists the Constitutional amendments according to which nobody must incriminate themselves and everyone has a right to a fair trial.
To be clear: Donald Trump did not commit any crimes in connection with Jeffrey Epstein; he has never been the target of any investigation in this matter. There is nothing that implicates him in this regard. The fact that Trump was found liable in a civil case for sexual assault is a completely separate issue.
The two were friends until around 2004 – that much is known. It’s well documented with photos and videos.
Such as in a video showing the two of them right before a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. The lingerie brand would send its models down the catwalk nearly naked, often with angel wings and a bit of glitter – and Epstein liked to sit in the front row. As did Donald Trump. The video is from 1999, and Trump is already accompanied by Melania.
If Epstein developed a liking for a girl, no matter where, he would often pose as a model agent.
Another video from 1992 shows the two of them dancing and chatting in Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s property in Florida. Trump is wearing a bright pink tie; Epstein has on a denim shirt. The Snap song "Rhythm Is a Dancer” is playing.
Epstein was also a guest at Trump’s marriage to his second wife, Marla Maples.
All in all, it was a rather public friendship between two men, lasting around 15 years. Fodder for the gossip pages: Parties in Florida and New York, surrounded by models, cheerleaders and private airplanes.
The two men were similar in many ways, both making it all the way from the outer boroughs of New York to the high society of Manhattan.
Then, they had a falling-out, likely over a piece of real estate. Radio silence followed. That, at least, is Trump’s story, and there is nothing to contradict this account.
In July, Donald Trump sued Rupert Murdoch’s paper, the Wall Street Journal, for $10 billion in damages for its reporting on the Epstein case, claiming false statements, defamation and slander. When Trump is offended, he turns to the courts – just as he does when he wants to intimidate. The best defense, in his view, is a good offense.
At issue is an article focusing on a birthday book compiled for Epstein on the occasion of his 50th birthday on January 20, 2003 – which allegedly included a greeting from Trump.
Trump says it didn’t.
The problem is that the birthday book, along with the message congratulating Epstein for his 50th birthday, surfaced in early September.
Three calfskin-bound albums titled "The First 50 Years.” Curated by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, who by that point was likely just his partner in crime – literally. In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her complicity in Epstein’s criminal operation. To this day, she is the only person imprisoned in connection with Epstein.
The congratulations, which are said to be from Trump, look exactly as described by the Wall Street Journal.
The text is a presumably imagined dialogue between Epstein and the future president, in which they muse about there being "more to life than having everything.” The sentences are framed by the curves of a woman drawn in black felt-tip pen.
"We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” it says. And: "A pal is a wonderful thing.”
The entry, it must be said, is far from the most tasteless entry in the volumes, which is difficult to surpass in its repulsiveness.
The 238 pages are hard to stomach because one thing emerges with the utmost clarity: Epstein’s debauched sex life was an open secret to most of the well-wishers. The ruthlessness with which he lived it out is celebrated in the book. He is congratulated for it.
The billionaire Leon Black, for example, wrote an ode to Epstein referencing Ernest Hemingway’s "The Old Man and the Sea,” but instead of catching fish, Epstein is catching women: "Blonde, Red or Brunette.”
It was just revealed that Black transferred more than $150 million to Epstein over the course of many years. Epstein acted as a kind of financial manager for the Wall Street titan, who is one of the richest men in America. He also took care of Black’s private matters – for example, by shielding Black’s extramarital affairs and advising him on how allegations of rape or sexual harassment could be quietly dealt with: namely, with a lot of money. According to reporting by the New York Times, Black transferred several hundred thousand dollars to at least three women who were in contact with Jeffrey Epstein.
An enlarged copy of the greeting Donald Trump includes in the Birthday Book for Epstein's 50th birthday, shown here in the House Judiciary Committee.
Foto: Tom Williams / Sipa USA / picture alliance
Other examples include a friend – his name is redacted – addressing Epstein as "Degenerate One” and gushes that there’s only one problem: "So many girls, so little time.”
An emeritus Harvard professor had a "tit print” made – an imprint of a woman’s breast –which he then paints with watercolor and dedicates to Epstein.
Virtually all the contributions pay homage to a man whose sexual obsessions apparently were no secret to anyone.
Billionaires, Nobel laureates, top politicians – all were among those who sent in penned missives, drawings or photographs.
One cartoon-like drawing depicts Epstein first handing out balloons to children before then, in the next image, being massaged and sexually gratified 20 years later by these same children. One girl in the image is bending over him and has his initials on her butt cheeks.
Epstein’s Boeing is flying above the scene, named the "Lolita Express,” while his private island can be seen in the background, Little Saint James – or "Little Saint Jeff’s” in Epstein’s argot.
Epstein regularly flew to the island with his friends. And with his girls.
Trump once referred to the place as "Whore Island” and claimed that he had never been there – before adding baselessly: "and Bill Clinton went there supposedly.”
Clinton, too, congratulated Jeffrey Epstein in the birthday book, highlighting his "childlike curiosity” and his "drive to make a difference.”
A man named Nathan sent photos of wild animals with aroused genitals. He writes that the photos "seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words.”
Leslie Wexner, a textile billionaire from Ohio and a friend and client of Epstein’s, wrote in his congratulatory note: "Dear Jeffrey, I wanted to get you what you want … so here it is….”
Wexner then drew two bare breasts.
And the person who collected and collated all of the missives also included an entry of her own. With a simple Happy Birthday, Love, Ghislaine. Along with a naked image of herself in a pool in Epstein’s arms.
It is a document of bygone days when sex, the availability of woman – or girls, children – seemed to be something that could be obtained or ordered like a cold can of Coke on a hot summer day.
And yet: bygone days? The year 2003 really isn’t all that long ago.
Vicky Ward also makes an appearance in the book. Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s lawyer and former Harvard law professor, dedicates a page to her with a faked cover of "Vanity Unfair.”
Ward says that when she scrolled through the document, everything suddenly came back. That horrific January almost 23 years ago when Epstein was calling her almost daily and threatening her because of the profile she was writing. How he was trying to force her to write what he wanted. How her doctor advised her repeatedly to just drop the story. How her contractions started and she was rushed to the maternity ward. How she gave birth to her twins, several weeks premature, both of them too small and underweight. Both in serious danger.
Still today, Ward sometimes finds herself wondering if the premature birth of her sons was a consequence of the traumatic experience of reporting on Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell is the only person to be imprisoned thus far because of Epstein, sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking and other charges.
In early October, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her appeal petition.
Epstein was the creator of this insidious system of sexual exploitation; Maxwell was the executor. She procured girls for him by befriending them. She groomed them. And showed them how they, in turn, should recruit new girls.
It was a pyramid of abuse – with Epstein at the top and Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of British publisher Robert Maxwell, just below him.
For a time, they had been a couple, then she became his assistant.
Vicky Ward, the journalist who has never been able to let go of the Epstein case even after completing her portrait for Vanity Fair, has recorded a podcast series about Ghislaine Maxwell, whom she also knew personally, albeit briefly. In it, one of Maxwell's friends is asked why Epstein left Maxwell. The friend's only response is to laugh: Well, Ghislaine wasn't 18 anymore, the friend says.
Epstein and Maxwell at a party in 2005.
Foto: Joe Schildhorn / Patrick McMullan / Getty Images
Epstein had the money, but Ghislaine Maxwell, a daughter of the British upper class with an Oxford degree, had the connections. It was her network, and it reached into the British royal family – all the way to Prince Andrew, with whom she was close friends.
When asked about her by journalists while she was in pre-trial custody, Donald Trump commented: "I just wish her well, frankly.”
In summer, Maxwell was interviewed for nine hours by the deputy attorney general – a rather unusual event given that the interviewer, Todd Blanche, had previously represented Donald Trump as a lawyer.
"I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way," Maxwell unsurprisingly told Blanche, according to the audio tape, which was quickly released. "The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects."
Shortly after the interrogation, Maxwell was transferred from her previous prison to a lower security facility. Her conditions of detention are likely to be significantly more comfortable from now on.
On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Edward Epstein, 66 years old, was pronounced dead, exactly five weeks after his arrest.
According to the New York City medical examiner, he hanged himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan with an orange piece of fabric. Suicide.
And all the questions that accompanied his life, all of the strange circumstances, remain relevant after his death.
Why would a man kill himself, who many say had no suicidal tendencies, after barely more than a month in custody? Why were there multiple sheets in the cell, not just one as prescribed? Why was the surveillance camera footage incomplete? Why were the guards sleeping who were supposed to check his cell every half hour, especially after he had already been found shortly before with injuries to his neck? Why was his cellmate transferred immediately beforehand, leaving Epstein alone, even though he wasn't supposed to be?
Then-Attorney General Bill Barr spoke of "serious irregularities" in Epstein's supervision. Nevertheless, he said, it was still suicide.
Journalist Vicky Ward says she spoke with his lawyer shortly before Epstein's death. The lawyer, she says, had been optimistic about getting Epstein released quickly on the strength of an agreement negotiated in the wake of a 2007 proceeding stipulating that there would be no additional prosecution.
The upshot is that many people, and not just "Make America Great Again" supporters, believe that Epstein was murdered in his cell to protect prominent accomplices.
It is not a completely absurd point of view.
For more than 20 years, Jeffrey Epstein lived out his fantasies. The girls were 14 or 16, sometimes older. They came to him in his seven-story townhouse on the Upper East Side, where a sculpture of a bride clinging to a rope attached to the atrium’s ceiling. Dozens of framed, artificial eyeballs stared out from the walls.
They climbed the pink-carpeted stairs up to the upper floors.
Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre, who was a minor at the time. Ghislaine Maxwell is in the background.
Foto: United States District Court For The Southern District Of New York / AFP
Nude photos hung in the massage room. Large packages of lubricant – peach flavor, from the Joy Jelly brand – could be found in the bathrooms.
He would have the girls brought in from a middle school in Queens, for example, or, for his Palm Beach house, from local high schools.
Sometimes, he would just grope them. Sometimes, he would rape them.
Sometimes, he would fly with them to his private island in the Caribbean.
Sometimes, he would have flowers delivered to them following a theater performance at their school.
For her Vanity Fair profile of Epstein, the pregnant Vicky Ward visited Epstein in his home. His townhouse, she writes, is like an "imperious fantasy.” She quotes him as telling people that he lives in the residence because he knows he "could never live anywhere bigger” in New York. Five thousand square meters (51,000 square feet) for him alone. Single.
Who has just one private jet when they can have two, plus a helicopter? Why just a home in Palm Beach and a peninsula on the Gold Coast of Florida when you can have an entire island in the Caribbean? A ranch in New Mexico? An apartment in Paris?
Why would he be satisfied with just one orgasm a day when he can have girls delivered by the hour?
Climbing the social ladder, is that it? Megalomania? The feeling of being invincible?
Epstein’s office: wood-paneled walls, heavy curtains, a desk with neatly stacked art catalogs. Chagall, Michealangelo.
A taxidermied tiger lies on the colorful Persian rug.
It’s more a still life than it is a place to live.
Hidden on the ceilings, in the molding: surveillance cameras.
Part of Epstein's business model: silence. An apparent quid pro quo, where everyone knows what about the other must not be leaked to the outside – and vice versa. Whether it's about money. Or about sex.
According to the New York Times, there was also a first edition in green of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita.” In the novel published in 1955, Nabokov's alter ego, a middle-aged literature professor, falls in love with a 12-year-old girl whom he repeatedly rapes.
Vicky Ward wanted to interview Jeffrey Epstein for her profile, but he declined at first. "Let's play chess,” he says to her. "You be white. You get the first move.” Epstein's behavior, she wrote, was that of a man "who seems to feel he can win no matter what the advantage of the other side.”
"Epstein is charming,” Ward writes. "But he doesn’t let the charm slip into his eyes. They are steely and calculating.”
Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, Epstein came from a rather modest background. He was a good student, particularly in math.
He began seeking out proximity to powerful, wealthy men early on. He left college without a degree to teach at the Dalton School in New York, where Manhattan's elite send their more gifted children. There he tutored a boy who was the son of the future chairman of the investment bank Bear Stearns.
That is how Jeffrey Epstein became an investment banker.
He quickly became a junior partner at Bear Stearns, then left the bank abruptly. Allegedly, to become self-employed.
Others said it was insider trading. That he had been caught. He was questioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission but never charged.
He still received a bonus of $100,000 in the year of his departure.
Since then, nobody really seemed to know what Jeffrey Epstein did, where his money came from.
While other hedge fund managers would name their clients in the hopes of attracting more, there was a long period when only one man was known to be associated with Epstein: the billionaire Leslie Wexner from Ohio, a textile magnate who owned brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret.
There were whispers that he was involved in intelligence. The CIA. The Mossad. A web of rumors that still has not been cleared up to this day. Like so many others. What government would not like to be connected with a man who had access everywhere in the world, like Jeffrey Epstein had?
The sideboards and chests of drawers of his townhouse on the Upper East Side were covered with framed photos. Everywhere. Epstein with the Pope. Epstein with Bill Clinton. With Mick Jagger. With Elon Musk and Fidel Castro. With former Harvard president Larry Summers and with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
And a picture with Donald Trump, Melania at his side.
Donald Trump, Melania Knauss (before she and Trump were married), Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February, 2000.
Foto:
Davidoff Studios / Getty Images
There was also a dollar bill signed by Bill Gates, also framed. "I was wrong!" the Microsoft founder had written over George Washington's face. A bet between Gates and Epstein perhaps?
Years later, Melinda Gates said in an interview that her husband's connection to Epstein had been one reason for filing for divorce. By the time Gates first met Epstein in 2011, he was already a convicted sex offender.
She met the man once, Melinda Gates recounted. For her, Epstein was "evil personified." And she said: "I had nightmares about it afterwards."
Epstein was arrested for the first time in 2006, in Palm Beach.
Investigations against him had been ongoing since 2005, including for sexual intercourse with minors. The local police handed the case over to the FBI.
With the help of his lawyers – he had dozens working for him, and they were the best in the business – Jeffrey Epstein negotiated a plea deal that is still considered extraordinary by lawyers today because it granted such favorable terms to the accused. A man who, mind you, had been charged with serious sexual crimes.
He received 18 months in prison – and in exchange, Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution. One single minor.
Six days a week, Epstein had permission for "work leave,” meaning he only spent nights in prison. At seven in the morning, his chauffeur would pick him up and take him home, allegedly for work.
After 13 months, he was released early.
Additionally, there was a non-prosecution agreement, an arrangement that he would not be subject to further prosecution in other cases, either. There is a word for this kind of arrangement in America: A "sweetheart deal.”
The person who negotiated this plea deal with Epstein was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alexander Acosta. In 2017, he was appointed Secretary of Labor by Donald Trump.
"I’m not a sexual predator, I am an offender,” Epstein told the New York Post in 2011. "It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”
Many seemed to agree.
Epstein, now a registered sex offender, continued to live as before.
In January 2016, he celebrated his 63rd birthday at his home on the Upper East Side.
"You are like a closed book to many of them, but you know everything about everyone,” wrote former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack to Jeffrey Epstein for the occasion. He described Epstein as "a collector of people.”
Real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman wrote a kind of recipe for the host, a dish which, according to the New York Times, was supposed to reflect "the culture of the mansion" – a simple salad, Zuckerman wrote, plus whatever "would enhance Jeffrey's sexual performance."
And film director Woody Allen, a neighbor who often dropped by with his wife, remarked in a typewritten note how Manhattan's most sprawling private residence reminded him of "Castle Dracula,” complete with "young female vampires who service the place.”
Washinton, D.C., September 3, 2025.
Teresa Helm steps onto a small podium, behind her, the U.S. Capitol. She adjusts the microphone and says: "Good morning, I am a survivor of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein."
Helm is 45 years old, an attractive woman in a black dress. Her story resembles that of so many women who crossed paths with Epstein and Maxwell.
Helm was training to become a physical therapist when Ghislaine Maxwell asked her if she wanted to work for her. "I was systematically recruited to be abused," she says.
That was 23 years ago, but she remembers every detail.
Helm had flown from Florida, where she lives with her two children, to D.C. the day before the rally – with the goal of putting pressure on the government here in Washington in front of Congress together with other women who were abused by Epstein.
Their demand: Everything connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case must be made public.
The rally in Washington, D.C., included many victims of Jeffrey Epstein's vast web of sexual assault.
Foto: Phil McAuliffe / Polaris / laif
They are backed by a curious bipartisan alliance that has set up the event.
One of the alliance members is Thomas Massie, a devoutly religious Republican representative from Kentucky – and one of the few who hasn’t thrown his principles overboard for his president. Then there is the young Democrat Ro Khanna, a Californian who some believe has a bright political future ahead of him. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, the dazzling MAGA celebrity from Georgia whose pro-Trump credentials were long beyond suspicion. That, though, has recently changed – and Trump's handling of the Epstein affair is one of the reasons.
Trump’s own people are now participating in the alleged "Democrat hoax that never ends,” as the president himself has called it.
"The Washington establishment is asking the American public to believe something that is not believable,” Thomas Massie says on the lawn in front of the Capitol. "They’re asking you to believe that two individuals created hundreds of victims, and they acted alone.”
Next to him, a woman is holding a banner reading: "He's on the list."
"Your little girl isn't safe in Trump's world."
"Believe the victims, release the files."
Annie Farmer is also among those standing in front of the Capitol on this morning. Together with her older sister Maria, Farmer was the first Epstein victim to go to the police, and later to the FBI. But nothing happened. That was in 1996; Annie Farmer was 16 years old at the time. The Farmer sisters' testimony generated no response whatsoever.
In 2002, the two of them told journalist Vicky Ward about their experiences with Jeffrey Epstein and Ward included it in her Vanity Fair profile. There are two different versions of what happened next.
Ward says Epstein heaped pressure on the magazine's editor-in-chief at the time, Graydon Carter, and he had the passages about the sisters removed.
Carter, though, says the paragraph about the abuse the girls suffered was legally questionable. Epstein, he says, denied everything – and Carter believed him.
Perhaps the Epstein saga would have unfolded differently had the passage about what happened to Maria and Annie Farmer in the 1990s been published in Vanity Fair in 2003. Perhaps hundreds of girls would have been spared, maybe they could have been protected. Because the Jeffrey Epstein case is many things, and one of those things is an unprecedented failure of the judiciary, unfolding over the course of more than two decades.
On the podium in front of the Capitol, Teresa Helm now begins reading from her notes, describing how Maxwell drew her into Epstein's network. Her voice trembles slightly. After so many years, there is still so much anger.
She speaks of "the others who are complicit." And who still remain unpunished.
"Now is the time to sift through and get rid of the perpetrators and bad actors," Helm says.
The accomplices, the co-conspirators. But nobody here in front of the Capitol names names.
Fear of defamation lawsuits may be one reason for this, but Jeffrey Epstein also spread not just abuse but also guilt. His perfidious pyramid scheme led to girls recruiting other girls – and getting paid for it. It led to them exploiting themselves.
Some victims seem to hate the former friends or classmates who drew them into Epstein's network more than Epstein or Maxwell themselves, as witness testimonies demonstrate. Added to this are likely secret legal agreements. The perpetrators are rich; a lot of money is involved. The Epstein estate has paid out $170 million to the victims already.
A lawyer representing an Epstein victim speaks at the September 3, 2025 demonstration in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Foto: Lenin Nolly / action press
As Helm and the other women were telling their stories in front of the Capitol, Donald Trump was being asked about Epstein by reporters in the Oval Office. "I think it’s enough," he answered curtly.
Teresa Helm was not a typical Epstein victim. She was not young enough, not poor enough, not broken enough. Many were exactly that: poor and socially disadvantaged in some way. Girls who people would be less inclined to believe if they related what happened to them in the townhouse on New York’s Upper East Side or on the estate on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach. Girls whose families presented no danger.
In Florida, he found them in the trailer parks of West Palm Beach, a part of town that has nothing in common with the wealthy peninsula of Palm Beach aside from the bridge that connects them. In New York, he found them in outer boroughs like Queens. It was Ghislaine Maxwell, his faithful companion, who functioned as a scout. Maxwell told Helm she was looking for an assistant to travel around the world with her: A physical therapist in training would be perfect.
For the job interview, Maxwell flew her from Los Angeles to New York. A chauffeur met her at the airport and brought her to an apartment on the Upper East Side; a gift basket with cookies and fruit was waiting.
She spent the next day at Maxwell's home, massaging her until she fell asleep. Maxwell, Helm says, was friendly, funny and warm-hearted.
The day after that, Maxwell sent her to her "partner Jeffrey."
"Make sure you give Jeffrey what he wants," Maxwell told her, according to Helm's account. "Jeffrey always gets what he wants."
Epstein greeted her in the kitchen. Wearing a bathrobe.
It was a common scene, if you believe the more than 150 women who have thus far accused Epstein of sexually abusing them – many of whom were minors at the time in question.
Epstein, Helm recounts, brought her to his office on the upper floor. First, she massaged his feet, she says, and then he sexually assaulted her.
Helm left Epstein's house hastily. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Epstein called after her, she says. She took it as a threat.
If you ask Teresa Helm about the Epstein files, about what she expects from those responsible in politics and in the judiciary, she answers that she doesn’t know what "these files" mean, what is supposed to be in them. But, she says, she does know "that there has to be evidence supporting their network.”
"There are clearly lots of people complicit,” says Helm. "So where are those people? Who are those people?”
In the hopes of finding that out, Teresa Helm voted for Donald Trump in November 2024, believing he would uncover what others were keeping under wraps. Does she still cling to that hope today?
Yes, she says. She does continue to cling to this belief. To the hope that the truth will still come to light. And that accomplices and co-conspirators will finally be held accountable.
