The Speech That History Will Remember as the Breakpoint in the Trump-Epstein-Russia Scandal

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse did not just raise questions. He assembled a pattern that becomes harder to dismiss each day.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Ten days ago, I argued that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s March 5 Senate floor speech had the potential to break the dam in the Trump-Epstein-Russia story. At the time, the importance of the speech was not that it produced one magical revelation. Its force came from something else. It gathered fragments that American political culture has spent years teaching the public to keep separate.

Now, ten days later, that judgment looks even stronger.

Whitehouse’s office is explicitly framing the address as a viral 48-minute Senate floor speech laying out a timeline of documented connections among Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Russia. By March 10, his office said the speech had already drawn more than 2.2 million views on his YouTube channel, with millions more from clips circulating across other platforms. That matters, not because virality proves truth, but because reach changes political possibility. Once enough people see the same pattern at once, the old strategy of confusion begins to weaken.

That strategy has long been one of the central protective mechanisms of impunity in this country. Not a simple denial. Not even simple lying. Fragmentation.

One set of facts is treated as gossip. Another is waved away as old news. Another is buried in procedural language. Another is dismissed as partisan obsession. The public is trained to encounter each piece separately, then scolded for noticing when the same names, networks, handlers, fixers, and evasions keep surfacing in the same political weather. That is how democratic decay survives in plain sight. Not by concealing every fact, but by preventing the whole from coming into focus.

Whitehouse’s speech challenged that arrangement directly.

According to the official speech posting, his argument moved through the long shadow of the Mueller report, Bill Barr’s role in muting its public meaning, Trump’s repeated posture toward Russian interests, and the significance of Epstein within that wider map. The speech was later posted in full under the title “Trump/Russia, Trump/Epstein, Epstein/Russia,” making unmistakable the connective frame Whitehouse wanted the public to see.

This is why the speech may prove to be more than a moment of strong rhetoric. It may be remembered as a breakpoint.

A breakpoint is not the same thing as a revelation. A revelation introduces information. A breakpoint changes how existing information is understood. It is the point at which scattered scandals stop functioning as disconnected episodes and begin to read as one architecture. That is what gave the speech its force then, and that is what gives it even more force now.

What Whitehouse did on the Senate floor was not to offer closure. He offered synthesis.

And synthesis is dangerous to power.

It is dangerous because once the public begins seeing pattern instead of noise, the terms of debate start to shift. What could once be dismissed as coincidence becomes a field of inquiry. What could once be contained as rumor becomes a matter of structure. Power depends heavily on citizens remaining overwhelmed, exhausted, and unsure whether they are allowed to trust their own perception. Fragmentation is not just a media habit. It is a political technology.

Whitehouse’s speech worked against that technology.

It said, in effect, look at these threads together. Look at the repeated overlap. Look at the circumstantial architecture. Look at what has been normalized, compartmentalized, and strategically blurred. You do not need to claim omniscience to recognize a pattern becoming visible. You only need enough honesty to stop pretending the fragments have nothing to do with one another.

That is why this speech still matters ten days later, perhaps more than it did on day one. A viral moment usually fades. A true breakpoint keeps deepening after the moment has passed. It keeps clarifying rather than evaporating. It continues to reorganize perception.

Will this become one of those moments? That depends on whether the public, the press, and political institutions are willing to resist their familiar habits of amnesia. It depends on whether people will follow the pattern where it leads rather than retreat into the narcotic refuge of learned helplessness. It depends on whether the speech is treated as an isolated provocation or as a serious act of public pattern recognition.

History often becomes clear only in retrospect. A speech lands. A threshold is crossed. A narrative hardens. Only later do people realize they were watching a hinge moment. Not because all the facts were new, many were not, but because the public suddenly became able to hold them together.

That is what may be happening here.

This speech did not create the Trump-Epstein-Russia story. It did something more consequential. It arranged the story in a way that ordinary citizens could see. It challenged the cultural machinery that keeps corruption diffuse enough to survive. It made the whole more legible than those in power would prefer.

And once a pattern becomes legible in public, it becomes harder to bury again.

If that process continues, then Sheldon Whitehouse’s Senate speech may indeed be remembered not simply as a forceful address, but as the breakpoint, the moment the Trump-Epstein-Russia scandal stopped looking like scattered fragments and started looking like a structure the public could no longer ignore.

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Full transcript of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s March 5, 2026 Senate floor speech follows below. The official transcript was posted by Whitehouse’s office on March 9, 2026, and his office described the remarks as a 48-minute floor speech delivered on March 5…

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on Thursday delivered a 48-minute speech on the Senate floor laying out a timeline of documented connections between President Donald Trump, deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Russia. The speech, which cites many dozens of news articles published over decades and emails released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, has been viewed a total of more than 2.2 million times on the Senator’s YouTube channel, and clips of the speech have racked up millions more views on other platforms and accounts.

Whitehouse, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened with an overview of former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr’s scheme to obscure the message of the Mueller report and downplay the beneficial relationship between President Trump and Russia. Whitehouse detailed ten actions President Trump has taken during his current term that advantage Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, often at the expense of American interests.

“It doesn’t make sense that the President of the United States, who insists – insists – on being dominant in essentially every relationship, is so submissive to one person, and that one person is Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin,” said Whitehouse. “So, what is it about Trump and Russia? And could it have something to do with Trump’s close friendship with deceased pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein?”

From there, Whitehouse traced Epstein’s shady early career track and the formation of his close friendship with now-President Trump in the 1980’s as they chased the same women and unscrupulously sought to grow their wealth. Whitehouse went on to describe Epstein’s many connections with Russia, including through regular contacts with Russian nationals that had Kremlin and intelligence ties, the trafficking of women and girls from Russia and Eastern Europe, and a massive number of suspicious wire transfers that totaled over $1 billion from just one of the banks he used. Whitehouse stressed that we don’t know what all these connections mean.

“What we do know is that a significant number of powerful men – our current President, some of his cabinet secretaries, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others – were very mixed up with Epstein at different times. And Epstein seems to have been very mixed up with Russia,” said Whitehouse. “We also know that there is a coverup afoot at the Department of Justice. The MAGA Department of Justice is trying to shield Trump from something in the Epstein files. We know that documents in the files about President Trump that should be released have not been released. The missing files, first discovered by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger, are alleged to detail claims by an Epstein accuser who said she was also sexually assaulted by President Trump when she was a young teenager.”

“As a lawyer, I know that you can prove cases with circumstantial evidence. You don’t always need the smoking gun,” continued Whitehouse, a former Rhode Island Attorney General and U.S. Attorney. “Here, we have links with Russia, girls from Russia, money from Russia, people from Russia, deals and transactions with Russia, contacts with people with Russian intelligence, news reports exploring contacts with Russia, and an official investigation from the government of Poland into an Epstein-Russia connection.”

Whitehouse submitted a lengthy bibliography of his sources for the Senate record at the close of the speech.

The full speech is below and video is available here.

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It was the spring of 2019. Public and media interest in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russia’s election interference operation reached a fever pitch. There had been a steady drip, drip, drip of reporting on the Trump team’s cozy and peculiar relationship with Russia since his surprise election victory in 2016.

Ahead of the Mueller report’s release, Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr issued a letter to Congress purporting to summarize the report’s findings. The letter declared that Russia and the Trump campaign did not collude to steal the election.

The press, ravenous for any news of the long-anticipated Mueller report’s conclusion, largely accepted Attorney General Barr’s narrow, carefully worded conclusion, and – not yet having access to the full report – blasted the Attorney General’s summary around the world. Trump himself declared, “NO COLLUSION!” He said he had been cleared of the Russia “hoax” – a term he reserves only to describe things that are true, like climate change.

Frustrated, Mueller wrote to Barr that the Attorney General’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation. But by the time the dense, voluminous Mueller report was issued the month after Barr’s letter, its message had been obscured. The Mueller report actually concluded that the Trump campaign knew of and welcomed Russian interference, and expected to benefit from it. That conclusion was later echoed and reinforced by an investigation led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio’s Senate Intelligence Committee – a bipartisan report.

But Barr’s scheme largely worked. Many in the media and in the Democratic Party seemed to internalize that the Russia speculation had perhaps gotten out of control, and that perhaps we had been wrong to believe there was a troubling connection between Trump and Russia after all. But were we?

Let’s take a look at a sampling of what Trump has done for Russia just lately, and usually at the expense of American interests. There are many, but here’s a top 10:

1. After Trump and Vice President Vance theatrically chastised the heroic Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in front of tv cameras in the Oval Office last year, Trump paused our weapons shipments to Ukraine.

2. In July, during the worst Russian bombing campaign of the war until that point, Trump paused an already-funded weapons shipment for Ukraine, including the Patriot interceptors that protect civilians from Putin’s savage attacks.

3. Also that month, Trump’s Treasury Department stopped imposing new sanctions and closing sanctions loopholes, effectively allowing dummy corporations to send funds, chips, and military equipment to Russia.

4. Leaked phone calls show that White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev have worked together closely behind the scenes on a peace deal favorable to Russia.

5. Last summer, Trump rolled out the presidential red carpet for the Russian dictator on American soil, with a summit in Alaska that yielded, unsurprisingly, no gains toward ending the war in Ukraine.

6. Trump’s Vice President traveled to the Munich Security Conference last year to parrot anti-Western talking points pushed by right-wing groups that Putin has long funded and used to create political strife in Europe.

7. Trump installed Russia apologist Tulsi Gabbard as his Director of National Intelligence, much to the glee of Russian state media.

8. Upon the confirmation of Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice shuttered its anti-kleptocracy work that had successfully targeted Putin’s Russian oligarchs.

9. Late last year, Trump unveiled a new so-called “National Security Strategy,” which abandoned traditional alliances in Europe and favored a transactional foreign policy that the Kremlin praised as “largely consistent” with Moscow’s vision and desires.

10. The Trump administration is even paving the way for Russia’s return to global sports competition, ending its isolation in those arenas in the wake of the hostile Ukraine invasion and state-backed systemic doping programs.

That’s a top ten, but the list goes on.

If Trump were purposefully doing Russia’s bidding, it is hard to see what he would be doing differently. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world. Russia is a weak, corrupt regime. My old friend Senator John McCain used to say that Russia is a gas station, run by gangsters, with an army. It doesn’t make sense that the President of the United States, who insists – insists – on being dominant in essentially every relationship, is so submissive to one person, and that one person is Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin.

So, what is it about Trump and Russia? And could it have something to do with Trump’s close friendship with deceased pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein? Much about Epstein remains unknown, but the survivors who have come forward and the millions of emails released through the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act have shed some light on the operation of the late financier’s global pedophile ring. And over and over, it touches Russia.

When recently asked by a reporter about the Epstein files, Trump said in part: “It’s just a Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.” Again, “hoax.” The word he uses for when something is true. But the most telling part is that Trump’s mind, asked about Epstein, immediately went to Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia.

I should start by pointing out that Epstein’s ties to foreign intelligence may never be fully known. It’s a murky world. He had links to officials in the United States, Russian and Israeli governments, and many others. But it’s worth looking at those ties to Russia, a nation so hostile to the United States.

Epstein’s career began in the mid 1970’s at the prestigious Dalton School in New York City where, despite dropping out of college, twenty-one-year-old Jeffrey Epstein was given a position teaching high school mathematics to the children of some of New York’s wealthiest families. Perhaps of note, the outgoing headmaster at the time of Epstein’s hire was Donald Barr – father of future Attorney General Bill Barr and a former intelligence officer during World War II. The elder Barr was known for making unconventional hires at Dalton.

After a couple of years, Epstein was able to leverage the elite connections he made at Dalton to a job at Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, where he rose quickly through the company. After getting caught fabricating his resume, using the company credit card on expensive gifts for his girlfriend, and ultimately, providing privileged stock information to a girlfriend, among other unscrupulous behaviors, he called it quits and started his own financial firm. Those early scams were just the start.

Shortly thereafter, Epstein fell in with a wealthy man named Douglas Leese, a British defense contractor with connections in the arms industry and the British government. During this period, Epstein would tell people he was a “bounty hunter” who tracked down hidden money. According to Steven Hoffenberg, a former business mentor of Epstein’s who went to prison for a massive Ponzi scheme that he later said Epstein designed, Leese introduced Epstein to Robert Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell, who became Epstein’s girlfriend and sex trafficking accomplice after her father’s death, was Robert’s favorite daughter and he involved her deeply in his work.

An opportunist in pursuit of wealth, the Czechoslovak-born Robert Maxwell had complex, shifting ties to British, Soviet, and Israeli intelligence. Initially bankrolled by MI-6, he accepted secret payments from the KGB through his Soviet-friendly publishing company and was the rare individual who traversed both sides of the Iron Curtain. In 1992, the British newspaper The Sunday Express wrote that a secret document signed by the head of the KGB months before Maxwell’s death at sea showed that he was a political and intelligence asset for the Soviet Union. The newspaper claimed that the document indicated Soviet leadership had instructed the KGB to protect Maxwell’s reputation and business activities. Maxwell’s UK Foreign Office file, released more than a decade after his death, described him as a “a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.”

Journalist Vicky Ward wrote the following in Rolling Stone in 2021:

“Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he’d worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s ‘debt’ issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under very strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath that he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees.)

“Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as ‘national security issues,’ which he says involved ‘blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.’

“Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.” End quote.

Epstein’s strategies for making money and working intelligence contacts seem to have some similarities to Robert Maxwell’s. For the record, Epstein – a profligate liar – once told Ward that he never met Robert Maxwell or Leese.

Also at some point in the 1980’s, Epstein struck up a friendship with a fellow brash New York businessman by the name of Donald Trump. Author Michael Wolff has said of Trump and Epstein, “They shared everything. They shared their airplanes. They shared women between them. They shared constantly business and financial advice.” There are many photos of the two men together on the New York and Palm Beach party circuits throughout the 1990’s. Trump now-famously said in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Alan Dershowitz told The New York Times in 2019 that, “In those days, if you didn’t know Trump and you didn’t know Epstein, you were a nobody.” Dershowitz is the well-known lawyer who served both on Epstein’s defense team when he was charged with having sex with minors back in 2006 and on Trump’s impeachment defense team in 2020.

The President of Trump’s Atlantic City Trump Plaza Hotel in the late 1980’s said he saw Trump and Epstein together so frequently that he believed Epstein was Trump’s “best friend.” The same man described an incident where Trump brought Epstein and a 19-year-old girl to the casino gaming floor.

Epstein once took a model to Trump Tower, where she says Trump groped her while laughing with Epstein. She remarked that it seemed like a “a twisted game” between the two men.

One survivor says Epstein summoned her to his offices late one night. Trump soon arrived, and according to the New York Times, “[she] recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs. Then Mr. Epstein entered the room, and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump: ‘No, no. She’s not here for you.’” After the men left the room, she said she overheard Trump commenting that he thought she was 16 years old.

In 1992, Trump hosted a “calendar girls competition” at Mar-a-Lago for dozens of young women. The event organizer was appalled to learn that Trump and Epstein would be the only men present. A private showing.

During Maxwell’s trial, one of Epstein’s victims said he took her to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was fourteen.

Maxwell recruited 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre from the spa at Mar-a-Lago. Giuffre was abused by Epstein and trafficked to other men in his orbit. Trump said in 2025, “I think [Giuffre] worked at the spa. He [Epstein] stole her.”

In 1997, the UK tabloid The Daily Mirror – formerly owned by Robert Maxwell – claimed that Trump was dating a 20-year-old British model, and that Ghislaine Maxwell had introduced them at a party. The tabloid notes, “(Trump) met [the model] at a party in Manhattan. Several American millionaires already had their eyes on [the model]. But she was there with Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who has introduced several of her attractive friends to the property developer.” According to the Mirror, “after their meeting, Trump flew Madam Maxwell and the model south to the sunshine state, where they enjoyed a happy weekend together. When they returned to New York, [the model] was installed in one of Donald’s many apartments there.”

In an interview with BBC Newsnight, the model stated, “Ghislaine Maxwell did introduce me to him [Trump] and she introduced me to him with a clear message of my being with him in the same way that she had trafficked me and brought me to Jeffrey Epstein.” She also said, “I can only speak for myself, and this is in no way to negate any other experiences that anyone else might have had with him, but, at no time did President Trump behave with any impropriety with me.”

The same woman accused Epstein of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager in a 2019 interview with NBC. From NBC: “The abuse, […] spanned several years and locales. In addition to the estate on his private island, [she] said Epstein preyed on her at his homes in New York and Paris.”

According to Craig Unger’s book American Kompromat:

“Trump was often the center of Maxwell’s attention, and women who entered Trump’s orbit sometimes ended up being associated with both Trump and Epstein, spending part of their time living in a Trump Tower condo and part in Florida, at Mar-a-Lago or one of Epstein’s homes.

“Among them was Russian model and beauty-pageant contestant […], whose journey from the world of beauty pageants and modeling to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and Epstein’s island retreat is highly suggestive in terms of how Epstein and his associates began manipulating young women.

“In the early ’90s, before coming to the United States, [the woman] had placed well in a number of beauty pageants—coming in second in Miss Russia 1993 and winning the 1994 Miss Baltic Sea title later that year. In 1995 she left Moscow, spent six weeks learning English in St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia), and was profiled in The Tampa Tribune as ‘reigning Miss Russia.’ And before long, she met Donald Trump. “Notwithstanding the fact that Trump was still married to his second wife, Marla Maples, [the woman] moved into a 30th-floor condo in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

“There, according to an item in the New York Post, her lavish accommodations were taken care of ‘courtesy of an unidentified sugar daddy.’

“[…] she spent time with both Trump and Epstein. Flight logs released by a federal judge in New York in 2019 showed that in February 1999, [the woman], then 27, flew on board Epstein’s Gulfstream, the so-called Lolita Express, with Maxwell and Prince Andrew, from Epstein’s Little St. James (a.k.a. ‘Pedophile Island’) back to Florida.”

In recent years, Trump has tried to distance himself from his former friend, the monstrous pedophile who is believed to have abused at least one thousand women and girls. It is worth taking a look at the how the friendship between Trump and Epstein allegedly soured. There are varying accounts as to whether Trump ever banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago over his recruitment of spa workers from the resort.

But we know the falling out was at least in part related to a bidding war between Trump and Epstein over a Palm Beach mansion in 2004. Trump won and purchased the property for $41.3 million. Just four years later and after modest renovations, Trump sold the mansion to billionaire Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. At the time, it was reported to be the most expensive residential property sale in United States history. Pretty stellar investment for Mr. Trump. The oligarch, for his part, after paying the $95 million, never even moved in.

That brings us back to Russia.

Epstein claimed to have given at least some insight on Trump to the Russians. Epstein met on many occasions with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s representative to the United Nations from 2006 until Churkin’s death in 2017. Epstein wrote in an email, “Churkin was great. He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.”

Epstein wrote in 2018 to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was then head of the Council of Europe: “I think you might suggest to putin, that lavrov, can get insight on talking to me.” That appears to be a reference to Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. The email was sent prior to the Helsinki summit between Trump and Putin.

In another email to Jagland, Epstein wrote that he wanted to help Putin and Russia “reinvent the financial system.” A 2017 FBI report based on a confidential human source claims that Epstein was “President Vladimir Putin’s wealth manager.” Epstein tried several times to meet with Putin, often via Jagland, although it is unclear if any such meeting took place. But Putin is named almost 1,000 times in the latest tranche of documents, and there are almost 10,000 references to Moscow.

Epstein roped many Russian and Eastern European girls and women into his trafficking operation. The New York Magazine profile of Epstein published all the way back in 2002 reads: “Indeed, at a party at Maxwell’s house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew.” In Ward’s 2003 profile of Epstein, a guest described a “cocktail party thrown by Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended, which was filled, she says, with young Russian models.”

In a 2010 email, Epstein suggested a young woman as a dinner companion to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, assuring him that she was “Russian, beautiful and trustworthy.” The Daily Beast recently reported on an alleged classified U.S. intelligence document claiming that, “Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (AMW) was drawn into Moscow’s orbit thanks to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which the Kremlin allegedly used as a route into the British establishment.”

In another 2010 email to a person whose name has been redacted, Epstein wrote: “Tomorrow I’m organising a dinner for some new Russian girls … see you at 10.” He received an email from a redacted sender in 2012 that read: “I have 2 Russian girls for you to meet, one 21, another 24.”

A message left for Epstein by one of his employees in 2005 claims that French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel had found a “teacher” who could give Epstein “free lessons.” “He has a teacher for you to teach how to speak Russian. She is two times eight years old. Not blond.” Two times eight years old.

According to American Kompromat: “In addition to whatever legitimate careers Brunel may have fostered, as a ‘model scout’ he also allegedly hired ‘scouters’ to identify, procure, and transport underage girls, many 15 years of age and under, hire them to give ‘massages’” and traffic them. Brunel was found hanged in his French jail cell in 2022 after being arrested on rape and sex trafficking charges.

Bill Gates has said he had affairs with two Russian women, which Epstein later discovered.

Somewhere along the way, Epstein struck up a relationship with Sergei Belyakov, Russia’s former deputy minister of economic development and a graduate of the FSB – Russian intelligence – academy. Epstein introduced him to contacts like Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who would go on to give $10 million to the super PAC that helped elect now-Vice President JD Vance to the Senate in 2022.

In 2015, Epstein warned Belyakov that “a Russian girl from Moscow … is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful biznessmen [sic] in New York.” It was, Epstein said, “bad for business for everyone involved.” Belyakov responded back with information about the woman who he said worked in the “sex and escort” business. The FSB academy graduate said he would meet with someone who knows her.

The following year, Belyakov told Epstein that he had a new position at the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the Russian sovereign wealth fund, headed by current Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev – the same guy who was caught in those friendly leaked phone calls with Steve Witkoff that I mentioned.

Masha Drokova, a former spokesperson for Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth movement, was in regular touch with Epstein in the last couple of years before his death in prison, ostensibly helping Epstein with his public relations. According to the Washington Post, she was “the subject of the 2011 documentary ‘Putin’s Kiss,’ whose title refers to a widely publicized awards ceremony in which she received a medal from Putin and spontaneously kissed him on the cheek.” In a 2017 email, Drokova asked Epstein to connect her with “adequate Russian oligarchs.” The Post reported in 2022 that her fundraising pitches highlighted her ties to wealthy Russians, although Drokova denied writing those emails and said she did not receive Russian funding. Epstein advised Drokova as she launched her Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and she introduced Epstein to the contacts she had made in the tech world.

In one emailed interaction in 2017, Drokova, after claiming to meet billionaire Jeff Bezos, tells Epstein she is “trying to understand what she is not understanding about him.” Epstein writes back that Bezos is “smart, fun, and visionary. He is a very nice person. Probalty [sic] the best in the valley among the Bs.”

The files also indicate that Epstein had dealings with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who the Treasury Department has identified as a money launderer for Putin. Deripaska also cultivated a friendship with Peter Mandelson, a senior figure in Britain’s Labour Party. It appears that Mandelson tried to use Deripaska’s contacts to acquire a last-minute Russian visa for Epstein in 2010. Correspondence also shows Epstein’s assistant trying to set up a meeting for Epstein and Deripaska in Moscow or Paris.

There’s also audio of Epstein advising then-Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak to have dinner with Putin to line up work after he leaves government.

There is at least one itinerary for a lengthy trip across Russia, and photos of Epstein and Ghislaine in what is believed to be Russia, including with people who appear to be Russian soldiers. Umar Dzhabrailov, a former Russian senator who committed suicide in recent days, described Maxwell as “a soulmate.” Epstein had a series of Russian visas between 2011 and his death in 2019.

Epstein’s crimes left a long money trail, and that trail winds back to Russia. Ranking Member of the Finance Committee Ron Wyden has doggedly sought the truth about Epstein’s transactions with Russian banks and eastern European entities. One Suspicious Activity Report filed by JP Morgan Chase after Epstein’s death shows that between 2003 and 2019, Epstein conducted 4,725 wire transactions totaling over $1 billion. And that’s just one bank. Epstein used multiple banks.

According to JP Morgan Chase, the wire activity was flagged for being “consistent with […] alleged sex trafficking of minors” and for involving “the high risk jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.” CNN notes that two accounts included in the Suspicious Activity Report were linked to now-sanctioned Russian banks Alfa Bank and Sberbank. Also named in the Suspicious Activity Reports: Maxwell, associated entities like Brunel’s MC2 Model Management, and various women and girls.

Let’s go back to the journalist Vicky Ward:

“[…] sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to […] compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

“[…] And once he got out of jail, in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans.

“He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

“He was known in the intelligence world as a ‘hyper-fixer,’ somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.”

Epstein was known for his parties, which he insisted on hosting in his various mansions where he could completely control the environment. Many of Epstein’s victims have said they believe they were recorded. Virginia Giuffre wrote in her posthumous memoir that Epstein had a “huge library of videotapes” and a room in his New York home where monitors displayed real-time surveillance footage from his properties. “He explicitly talked about using me and what I’d been forced to do with certain men as a form of blackmail, so these men would owe him favors,” she wrote.

Another survivor said Epstein once walked her through his mansion, pointing out pin-sized cameras. He boasted that they were in every room.

According to Epstein’s emails, in 2014 he directed a staffer to procure hidden cameras, which were installed in tissue boxes. The New York Times obtained photos of the interior of Epstein’s New York mansion, which show a camera installed near the ceiling of the master bedroom and another along the molding of an adjoining room. The Times also spotted cameras near a suite of bathrooms on the same floor as Epstein’s bedroom. When police searched his Palm Beach home in 2005, they “located two covert (hidden) cameras.” Both cameras were located inside clocks, one by a desk and the other in the garage. It’s worth noting that Epstein often seemed to get tipped off in advance as to when the Palm Beach Police would be dropping by.

Epstein is said to have once told an ex-girlfriend, “I collect people, I own people, I can damage people.”

The disgraced financier Hoffenberg allegedly claimed to the National Enquirer in a final account before his death that, “Wherever Epstein was entertaining he [and Ghislaine] were taping.” That report was only released last summer, as Hoffenberg had asked the Enquirer not to publish his comments until three years after his death.

According to The Daily Beast, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, is once said to have claimed Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that the decision to let him off easy in 2008 was made above his “pay grade.”

The Prime Minister of Poland, a country that has extensive experience with Russian intelligence operations, has opened an investigation into potential links between Epstein and Russian intelligence. Prime Minister Tusk said, “More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services.”

According to alleged anonymous intelligence sources published in the British tabloid The Daily Mail last month, some believe “Jeffrey Epstein was running ‘the world’s largest honeytrap operation’ on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates.”

I want to stress that we don’t have the answers. Epstein was an inveterate liar and criminal who often sought to exaggerate his power and influence, and the files need to be viewed through that lens. He could have been working with an intelligence agency, or several intelligence agencies. He could have just been what the Russians call a “useful idiot.” We may never know.

What we do know is that a significant number of powerful men – our current President, some of his cabinet secretaries, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others – were very mixed up with Epstein at different times. And Epstein seems to have been very mixed up with Russia.

We also know that there is a coverup afoot at the Department of Justice. The MAGA Department of Justice is trying to shield Trump from something in the Epstein files. We know that documents in the files about President Trump that should be released have not been released. The missing files, first discovered by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger, are alleged to detail claims by an Epstein accuser who said she was also sexually assaulted by President Trump when she was a young teenager.

One of the great forces that Washington runs on is normalcy bias. It’s often in the interest of the bureaucratic establishment to look skeptically towards outlandish or extreme stories, because in most cases, the truth is more ordinary than what may first appear. What I’ve done here today is lay out the facts as documented by the many brave survivors, who have come forward, at great personal risk, as well as by the many journalists who have tried, and continue to try, to get to the truth.

As a lawyer, I know that you can prove cases with circumstantial evidence. You don’t always need the smoking gun.

Here, we have links with Russia, girls from Russia, money from Russia, people from Russia, deals and transactions with Russia, contacts with people with Russian intelligence, news reports exploring contacts with Russia, and an official investigation from the government of Poland into an Epstein-Russia connection.

Sometimes, with a little imagination, you have the chance to see what’s right in front of your face.