By comparison to the history-making events of
2020, the sordid saga of shadowy, uber-rich hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein,
whose sex-trafficking trial temporarily dominated the news cycle last year, now
seems foggily distant and even insignificant. His suspicious suicide while in
custody spawned conspiracy theories and internet memes, and then – just as suspiciously
– any highly-anticipated exposés of the rich and powerful who might have
cavorted with underage girls on Epstein’s infamous “Orgy Island” disappeared
into a black hole, and the news media went back to hating President Trump.
Now Netflix has premiered a four-part documentary series
titled Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, which raised expectations again that the
mystery man and his web of powerful acquaintances would be dragged into the cleansing
light of day. Based on the 2016 book Filthy Rich: The Billionaire’s
Sex Scandal – The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein by bestselling novelist James Patterson (journalists
John Connolly and Tim Malloy are credited as authors as well), the series instead
just drags viewers through the repellent Epstein’s mucky lifestyle but unfortunately
offers no new revelations or insights into the man or any of his hedonistic friends
in high places.
I was primarily curious to see how the
documentary would handle former President Bill Clinton’s role in the controversy,
partly because Epstein buddy Clinton is conspicuously absent from the series
trailer (see below), and partly because author Patterson, who appears in the
documentary himself, has at least a professional relationship with Clinton;
they have collaborated on two thriller novels. Hillary’s infamously predatory husband is indeed presented in the
documentary as being a friend of Epstein and as having flown on his private jet
over two dozen times, but all this was all common knowledge before the Netflix
series.
A former Epstein employee does claim in the
film that he saw Clinton on his boss’ private island, and one of Epstein’s
girls affirms that Bill was there but “I never saw him doing anything
improper.” Clinton spokesperson Angel
Urena has issued
a blanket denial of any insinuation that Bill ever participated in Epstein’s
pedophiliac shenanigans or even visited any of Epstein’s residences: “This was
a lie the first time it was told, and it isn’t true today, no matter how many
times it’s repeated.” Hillary unsurprisingly is neither seen nor heard
from in the series. That’s as far as the series delves into the Epstein-Clinton
connection.
Filthy Rich spends more time covering disgraced British Prince Andrew’s
involvement, including showing footage of his epic fail of a BBC interview in
which he claimed that he couldn’t possibly be the “profusely sweating” man
described by one of Epstein’s girls because he was suffering from a medical condition
at that time that didn’t allow him to sweat. He also claimed that he had no
recollection of that same girl, whom he was photographed hugging on Epstein’s
island. An employee at the island also asserts in the documentary that in 2004 he
saw the Prince getting frisky in a pool there with the same girl, who was topless.
This new salacious detail, however, is little more than an extra nail in the
coffin of Andrew’s public life.
Dershowitz was accused by Virginia Roberts
Giuffre of having had sex with her “multiple times” on Epstein’s private
island. She is one of half a dozen Epstein victims interviewed for the series,
women who were underage at the time and who ultimately went to law enforcement.
But they were powerless to damage the influential Epstein, who had the connections
and the money to shut down media exposés (such as a whitewashed Vanity
Fair profile) and to avoid police
investigations. Dershowitz vehemently denies
Giuffre’s account on-camera, and indeed, convincingly proved his innocence in a
lawsuit and then in a short book he wrote about it called Guilt by Association. In that book he speculated that Giuffre’s public
accusation was part of a scheme to buy her silence from privately-accused wealthy alleged abusers by threatening to do to them what she
had done to Dershowitz and to Al and Tipper Gore (both also not guilty): accuse
them publicly.
In the process, Dershowitz appears to
have demolished Giuffre’s credibility,
which tends to cast a shadow over at least her portion of the Netflix series,
in which she is the most prominently featured victim (she was also, at the
time, the same young girl at the center of the allegations against Prince
Andrew and who confirms she saw Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island.)
The final episode of the series focuses on how
the #MeToo movement and Epstein’s arrest empowered some of his victims to come
forward with their stories, only to be denied justice and closure when Epstein
presumably committed suicide in his jail cell. The series addresses the suspicious
circumstances of his death and presents details of an autopsy that concluded it
was more consistent with murder than suicide, but again – nothing conclusive or
new.
In the end, the Netflix series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich is an interesting-enough overview of his perverse
tale, but it unsatisfyingly avoids the revelations viewers hunger for about the
politicians, princes, and other notables in orbit around Epstein. Besides the
hundreds, and possibly thousands of girls whose lives were inestimably damaged by
Epstein and his alleged procurer girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell (who remains at large),
the real tragedy is that he was at the center of a sex-trafficking nexus for the
rich and powerful, and the trail leading to their exposure came to a dead end
in Epstein’s jail cell.
From FrontPage Mag, 6/3/20
