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From Brooklyn math prodigy to infamous financier, we're examining the disturbing rise and fall of Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing revelations from his unsealed files. Join us as we trace his journey from teaching at the Dalton School to his mysterious fortune, multiple investigations, controversial plea deals, and ultimate demise. How did a man without credentials infiltrate the highest echelons of power and wealth?
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00:00Many thought he'd take his secrets with him.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're unpacking the timeline of Jeffrey Epstein's rise,
00:07crimes, and downfall culminating in the release of the so-called Epstein files.
00:11And now with the files being unsealed and new DOJ memos hitting headlines,
00:15we're breaking down how decades of secrecy have shaped the fight for accountability.
00:19Monica, let's start with you. Some of Trump's top Justice Department officials now say they
00:23want federal prosecutors to speak to convicted Epstein co-conspirator Glenn Maxwell. So what
00:29is behind this move?
00:32Would you wear your right hand, please?
00:33Yes.
00:34Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about to give away the truth, the whole truth,
00:36and nothing but the truth to help you get?
00:38Yes, I do.
00:42Could you please give us your name?
00:44Jeffrey Epstein.
00:45Jeffrey Epstein was born January 20, 1953 in Brooklyn and raised in Seagate, a gated community
00:51at the western tip of Coney Island. The boy affectionately nicknamed Epi by his peers excelled
00:56in math and piano, skipped grades and attended the Interlochen music program. He later took
01:01courses at Cooper Union and NYU's Courant Institute but left before receiving a degree.
01:05Those facts matter. The credential gap contrasts sharply with the elite rooms he'd soon enter.
01:10His early narrative, talent, ambition, and restlessness foreshadows the sinister leaps
01:14to come, where social access, not diplomas, would prove decisive.
01:18I was always very good at mathematics. It's a poor idea.
01:21It was solved with puzzles. It's a strange feeling when you get the right answer to a puzzle.
01:28He never graduated from college. However, he was able, because of his intelligence, to find work
01:35at the Dalton School on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
01:39In 1974, Epstein became a physics-slash-math teacher at Manhattan's elite Dalton School,
01:44despite lacking a completed college degree. Through Dalton, he met Alan Ace Greenberg of
01:48investment services firm Bear Stearns, a connection that pried open Wall Street's door.
01:53So, he thought the best place for me to start would be on a foreign American stock exchange,
01:57and then later move up to the trading desk and learn from all different areas of the firm,
02:02according to the March and Department. He was amazing.
02:05The Dalton period reads less like a teaching stint than a launch pad, from classroom to boardroom
02:10via proximity to privilege.
02:11Dalton is a private school on the Upper East Side that's historically been associated with the
02:16tippity-top of the 1%.
02:18Jeffrey Epstein was my math teacher for the two years he was at Dalton.
02:22He had that thick Brooklyn accent. He was so personable and so charismatic,
02:26and he found what I think was a brilliant way to meet rich people, which is through their children.
02:31This is the first clear pivot from raw aptitude to leveraged access, an early case study in how
02:36elite institutions can bestow social capital that shoots down the need for formal credentials.
02:41Here's a guy who was smart, charming, cunning. He knew how to read people and get what he needed
02:49from them. In 1980, Epstein even appears in Cosmo magazine as a Bachelor of the Month,
02:55and he's described as a financial strategist who talks only to people who make over a million a year.
03:00Epstein joined Bear Stearns in the late 1970s and, by 1980, was a limited partner. In 1988,
03:06he founded Jay Epstein and a company, claiming to advise ultra-wealthy clients.
03:10The public record, however, shows striking concentration. His most consequential patron
03:15was Leslie Wexner, who granted Epstein's sweeping power of attorney in 1991,
03:19a relationship that helped explain the Jets, Mansions, and outsized aura.
03:23I just want to say, one thing that's very clear, when people say, you know,
03:27please share names. There are names that are very well known, like that of Les Wexner,
03:31who everyone knows supplied an enormous amount of Epstein's financial wealth and allowed this
03:38operation to happen. So it's, I think, confusing to many of us why there have not been more
03:42ramifications for him.
03:44Even allies later alleged vast sums went missing. Others questioned his fee structure and client list.
03:50To this day, the mechanics of his wealth, fees, leverage, and access remain unusually hard to follow
03:55for a man who so publicly flaunted his extravagant lifestyle.
03:58This boat captain, Guy Dahm, ferried Epstein to and from the island.
04:03There was a time I took Jeffrey Epstein's party of four out here to the island,
04:08and it's basically a woman about his age and a couple of girls that looked like they were 13,
04:1314, maybe 15 years old sisters, and I dropped them off. Didn't think anything of it.
04:20Epstein acquired Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1998 for roughly $8 million.
04:24Over the next two decades, the island became central to survivor accounts and law enforcement
04:28narratives about abuse, with later unsealed records and reports cementing its notoriety.
04:33And that's where he has his complex where he lives, which is his official residence as well.
04:39And that these young girls and women were subject to sexual assault, sexual exploitation,
04:47through coercion, false imprisonment.
04:50A crass but painfully accurate nickname captured what prosecutors and witnesses described,
04:55a secluded hub where isolation, staff control, and air travel logistics enabled exploitation,
05:00allegedly by some of society's richest, most powerful elites.
05:03The island's subsequent sale with neighboring Great St. James underscored how real estate assets
05:07were enmeshed in legal claims and estate settlements long after Epstein's death.
05:11The island is now owned by a billionaire investor who bought it two years ago for $60 million.
05:17He reportedly plans to turn it into a luxury 25-room resort, which explains the presence of all those workers.
05:24A temple that Epstein built at the top of the island has been boarded up and painted over.
05:29In 2005, Palm Beach police began investigating tips about underage girls being brought to Epstein's mansion for massages.
05:36Detectives documented a pattern.
05:38Recruitment, cash payments, coercion, and referrals of friends.
05:40The local state attorney's office moved toward a single solicitation charge,
05:44prompting outrage inside law enforcement.
05:47Do you agree that you exchange money for sexual gratification with at least 50 girls at your Palm Beach mansion?
05:55At the present time, my attorneys have counseled me that cannot provide answers to any questions relevant to this lawsuit.
06:01Survivors' persistence and investigative spade work exposed a network far larger than initial charging decisions suggested.
06:07This is the inflection point where private whispers became sworn statements and search warrants.
06:12And yet the system's first real test of will yielded only partial traction, foreshadowing the controversial compromises to come.
06:18The girls that were involved in this, they really could not have been more separated and different from the world of Palm Beach.
06:26They're living in trailer park homes.
06:27Some of them had probably never even been to the island.
06:31The targets, the victims, were as vulnerable as you could possibly be.
06:38A 2006 Palm Beach grand jury returned just two charges, despite police recommending multiple felonies.
06:43Investigators then turned to the FBI, which built a broader interstate case suggesting dozens of underage victims and organized facilitation.
06:50Even as federal leverage grew, Epstein's legal team negotiated aggressively.
06:55The original case involved a very limited search warrant or set of search warrants and didn't take as much investigatory material it should have seized.
07:02If I were the FBI director then, it wouldn't have happened.
07:05The search warrants were limited to small time periods to include 2002 to 2005 and 1997 to 2001.
07:11Years later, internal DOJ reviews and court rulings would spotlight serious governmental missteps in victims' rights issues tied to this phase.
07:19The takeaway is stark.
07:20By 2007, federal authorities had the outlines of a trafficking enterprise, yet the outcome would not reflect the investigation's scope.
07:27Mr. Acosta allowed Epstein to enter in 2008 to a plea and non-prosecution agreement,
07:32which then the courts issued mandates and protective orders legally prohibiting anyone from ever seeing that material ever again without the permission of the court.
07:41The non-prosecution agreements also barred future prosecutions for those involved at that time of those individuals.
07:48In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida State Court to solicitation charges, including a minor,
07:54and served just short of 13 months with liberal work release privileges.
07:58Are you released from jail at some time? Do you have to report back to jail on a daily basis?
08:03Yes, I report back to jail at 8 p.m.
08:06Every single day?
08:08Yes, sir.
08:09And is it seven days a week that you're out on work release?
08:12No, sir.
08:13How many days a week are you out on work release?
08:16Six.
08:16Secretly, a federal non-prosecution agreement, or NPA, immunized potential co-conspirators and was not disclosed to victims,
08:23a violation a federal judge later flagged under the Crime Victims' Rights Act.
08:27Though efforts to unwind the deal ultimately ran out of steam, the NPA became the emblem of institutional failure,
08:33elite defense power, prosecutorial deference, and a justice system that protected the well-connected while sidelining survivors.
08:39Its consequences reverberated into every subsequent proceeding.
08:43Little about the agreement had come to light until this month.
08:47A few weeks ago, the government opposed two of Epstein's victims.
08:50Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 allege federal prosecutors entered into an agreement without their knowledge,
08:56and then covered it up until just days before Epstein entered his plea in court.
09:01In July 2019, Epstein was arrested by the FBI and NYPD upon returning to New York from France.
09:07He was charged with trafficking and conspiracy, alleging conduct from 2002 to 2005 in the states of New York and Florida
09:14with a structured recruitment pipeline and payments to victims and recruiters.
09:18Bail was denied.
09:18His mansion on East 71st Street was raided early Sunday morning as agents hauled out multiple bags of evidence from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
09:28We're told the 66-year-old registered sex offender had just landed at Teterboro Airport on Saturday,
09:34returning home from France when he was arrested.
09:37The case reframed prior failures.
09:39Federal prosecutors now spotlighted scale, intent, and interstate patterns that the 2008 resolution had obscured.
09:45For survivors, it was long-deferred validation that their accounts described as system, not isolated incidents,
09:51and that the federal court would finally hear the evidence in full.
09:54There's been a severe miscarriage of justice, a delay in accountability,
09:58and we've all come together beautifully and tragically, which feels healing and devastating all at the same time,
10:09to speak out and to be fueled by each other's voices in a way that I don't know that we've had the opportunity to in the past.
10:19Just over a month later, Epstein was found unresponsive in his MCC New York cell.
10:24The NYC medical examiner ruled that he died by his own hand.
10:27The DOJ inspector general later detailed cascading failures, staffing shortages, unperformed rounds, falsified logs, and a missing cellmate,
10:35all while a high-risk detainee had recently been on heightened monitoring.
10:39Prosecutors say Tova Noel and Michael Thomas repeatedly failed to conduct mandated 30-minute inmate checks
10:46on the disgraced millionaire who was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges,
10:50allegedly browsing the internet, looking at furniture and motorcycles,
10:55and even sleeping at their desks just 15 feet away from Epstein's cell instead of making rounds.
11:02The watchdog found no evidence of foul play, but nevertheless documented negligence and misconduct that shredded public trust.
11:08The outcome erased the prospect of a full federal trial record and shifted accountability onto co-conspirators and institutions.
11:14The 26-year-old was supposed to face trial beginning in June 2020 for sex trafficking and abusing dozens of teenage girls.
11:22Authorities are promising that the potential for justice for those victims does not die with Epstein.
11:27Epstein's closest associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested in 2020, convicted in 2021,
11:33and in June of 2022 received 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking-related crimes.
11:38Prosecutors argued she recruited and groomed young girls, normalized abuse, and helped maintain Epstein's supply chain.
11:44The sentence, upheld on appeal, became a proxy for Epstein's trial that never was.
11:49Vivid testimony, corroborating records, and survivor impact statements that formalized the enterprise in the eyes of the court.
11:55It also heightened pressure to unseal more records tied to their operations.
11:58So you do have the deputy attorney general saying that he was directed by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to schedule this meeting,
12:05and we're getting confirmation from Ghislaine Maxwell's own attorney.
12:10And you see there that comment from Todd Blanche.
12:13He writes, no one is above the law and no lead is off limits.
12:17But again, it's really unclear what kind of a lead there could be here.
12:20After Maxwell's conviction, Judge Loretta Preska began unsealing tranches in Giuffre v. Maxwell,
12:26with major releases in January 2024.
12:29Depositions, exhibits, and name references contextualized to the civil case, though not an official client list.
12:35The disclosures amplified survivor narratives and clarified who appeared where and why,
12:39while redactions protected victims' identities.
12:41More than 150 Jane and John Doe's witnesses and associates like Bill Clinton.
12:47He's not accused of wrongdoing, but in the court documents, an alleged victim was asked about the former president.
12:55Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Bill Clinton?
12:58He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.
13:02Parallel reporting collated thousands of pages, giving the public its first coherent view beyond rumor.
13:07Even so, significant materials, grand jury records, full digital evidence, and investigative work product
13:13remain sealed or outside the civil docket.
13:15Prince Andrew is also named in the unsealed documents.
13:19Epstein instructed Jane Doe No. 3 that she was to give the prince whatever he demanded.
13:25This has been a better kept secret than, you know, than nuclear launch codes.
13:45In July of 2025, the DOJ and FBI released a memo summarized in their comprehensive review.
13:51No credible evidence of a client list, no corroborated blackmail program,
13:55and no basis to revisit the official determination of Epstein's manner of death.
13:59The memo also warned that further broad releases would be constrained by privacy laws and ongoing matters.
14:04The judge said that in this case, he did not find compelling reason to make this information public.
14:09And in fact, he found compelling reasons against doing so, principally potential injuries to some of the victims in this case.
14:17Coverage emphasized that only a partial batch of records had been disclosed and that key categories remain sealed,
14:23sustaining bipartisan pressure for transparency in Congress and beyond.
14:26The controversy shifted from what exists to what the public is allowed to see.
14:30The judge also noted that, again, this was not an investigative grand jury.
14:34This was a one day of testimony from a single FBI agent summing up what they found in that investigation
14:41and presenting it to a grand jury for indictment.
14:43So a lot of the questions people thought might be answered in these transcripts probably aren't answered.
14:48But in any event, we're not going to see them, at least for now,
14:51because this judge is blocking the Justice Department's attempts to get them released.
14:55The Epstein saga didn't end with his death or with Ghislaine Maxwell's sentencing.
14:59Each new document released from depositions to DOJ memos adds more fuel to the debate over who knew what
15:05and how much justice remains hidden behind redactions.
15:08The Epstein files are more than records.
15:10They're a reminder of how institutions bend, break, or look away when the powerful are involved.
15:16You've seen most of the files.
15:19Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself?
15:25Himself. There is no credible information.
15:29None. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals.
15:35And the information we have, again, is limited.
15:37So the answer is no one?
15:39Which part of Jeffrey Epstein's story shocked you the most?
15:42Is there anything we missed? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
15:45Step 2
15:46Right.
15:46.
15:47.
16:08.
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