Even after financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein served a 13-month jail sentence (well, he slept in jail for 13 months, anyway) and a year under house arrest for his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from victims as young as 14, Hollywood’s elite never shunned the billionaire. Epstein, who now faces up to 45 years in prison for sex trafficking minors, was treated in celebrity circles as if he’d never committed a crime, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
In 2010, film publicist and NYC power broker Peggy Siegal reportedly organized a dinner party for Prince Andrew at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. In attendance were Katie Couric, Charlie Rose, Woody Allen, Chelsea Handler, and George Stephanopoulos. Epstein was also on Siegal’s arm at the March 2016 premiere of Warner Brothers’ Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. When one studio exec was asked what a convicted sex offender was doing at the party, he declined to comment.
And as Epstein pal Harvey Weinstein was being drummed out of public life in the wake of the #MeToo movement in 2017, Epstein was living it up at the Gotham Awards that November.
In 2014, Epstein’s assistant and alleged co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell—who was accused of recruiting some of Epstein’s young victims, and of taking part in their abuse—posed for pictures at the Vanity Fair Oscar party with editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. Carter, meanwhile, is said by writer Vicky Ward to have been protecting Epstein for more than a decade.
Ward claims that Carter gutted her 2003 profile of Epstein by cutting out on-the-record accusations that he assaulted two sisters, one of them just 16 at the time. Carter has countered that he didn’t “have confidence” in Ward’s journalism.
In 2015, Gawker published a copy of Epstein’s address book, which contained contacts for a slew of celebrities, politicos, and fellow high-profile wealthy people.
Investigators reportedly found a trove of pornographic photos of young-looking women inside a safe in Epstein’s Manhattan mansion; he was arrested on Saturday.
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