ANDREW ARREST
The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor in connection with the Epstein files reverberated around the world.
Even President Trump weighed in on
DT1: I think it's a shame. I think it's very sad. I think it's so bad for the royal family. It's a very, very sad to me.
There have basically been three kinds of responses from the people whose names have popped up in the three million documents that are part of the Epstein files.
"My interactions had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone. Anyway I only met him a couple of times."
"Poor judgement on my part but I didn’t do anything criminal."
"I unequivocally condemn all abuse of women and minors."
For the record, financier Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of sex crimes with minors in 2008. He was released on bail in 2009. He was charged with sex crimes again in 2018 and died in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019. His story wasn’t exactly hidden from public view. Many of those named in the files were corresponding with him long after it was public knowledge that he was a registered sex offender.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
The list as we all know now is like a who’s who of our times. Presidents. Ministers. Diplomats. Tech moguls. Business magnates. Macarthur geniuses. Nobel laureates. Scientists. Deans. Public intellectuals. Magicians. Even a wellness guru. Like Deepak Chopra which of course made news in India. India Today reports.
CHOPRA1: Speaker1: Chopra appears in Epstein's calendar at least a dozen times across 2016, 2017 and even in 2019. That was three months before Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking, the documents show.
Everyone has their explanation. Chopra has his.
CHOPRA2: Chopra has explained the relationship, saying Epstein was introduced to him as someone who could potentially fund research on the brain and consciousness. After the meeting, he shared he suffered from insomnia and expressed interest in learning meditation, which I taught him.
As an internet meme jokes the only people not mentioned in the files are those the current Trump administration rails against - drag queens, transgender athletes, librarians and Sesame Street characters.
Ellis Rubenstein, then president of the New York Academy of Sciences says the food on the island was “better than any we’ve had at the Ritz.” Peter Attia, longevity guru, tells Epstein enviously that the biggest problem in becoming friends with him is “the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul…”
What it really tells us is not that these people were fooled by a charming con man but that they also protected him. Silence was their price of admission into the exclusive club. And they were more than happy to pay it. The great lesson from the Epstein files is this. All of us, irrespective of ideology and principles, are susceptible to the temptation of being invited inside the gilded circle. We all want to feel special. We all want to be the people behind the velvet rope. There is almost something plaintive in the protestations of those who say they were never invited to Epstein’s private island.
What’s astonishing is not just how many people were seduced by Epstein to enter into his charmed circle but how few stories there are of people who recoiled when they found out what was going on. Noam Chomsky, infamously, advises Epstein to remain silent after he is accused of sex trafficking given the “hysteria that has developed about abuse of women.” This was all about managing the PR.
That’s why these pious protestations claiming respect for women ring rather hollow. Deepak Chopra now apologises for “poor judgement in tone.” That’s in reference to his messages to Epstein saying “Bring your girls” and “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.” Now he has issued a public statement- “My focus remains on supporting accountability, prevention, and efforts that protect and support survivors.” Sadly for Chopra the private emails sound far more genuine than the public statement.
Epstein is the epitome of the kind of man who says rules do not apply to him and those he invites onto his island. That is the real seduction. Politicians make the rules for the rest of us to live by. But they want to live on Epstein’s island where the rules don’t apply to them. And perhaps deep down so do the rest of us.
And even as we are shocked and aghast by the revelations coming out in the Epstein files, what really scares me is wondering if we had been invited onto that gilded island, how many of us would have had the willpower to refuse
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW