Sanitizing this document would be wrong, so I’ll be blunt: The Epstein birthday book is full of contributions from wealthy and powerful people who appear fully aware of Epstein’s attraction to “girls.” In fact, they seem to celebrate it and, in some cases, allude winkingly to Epstein’s predatory lifestyle. There is, for example, a seven-page letter attributed to Nathan Myhrvold, a multimillionaire and former Microsoft executive who illustrated his thoughts with graphic photographs of wildlife sex. (Melissa Lukach, a spokesperson for Myhrvold, responded to my request for comment after publication and said that Myhrvold knew Epstein “from TED conferences and as a donor to basic scientific research. He regrets that he ever met him.”) Another man, listed in the “friends” section of the book, refers to Epstein as “you very dear boy,” before disturbingly recounting a night in London that “had you howling with laughter.” In the story, a man named Toto “reached down and pulled [redacted] skirt up to her panties and put his hand on her pussy,” he writes, noting, “The old man smiling sweetly leaned over stuffed his hand into her pants.” The letter also chronicles the “good times that we had together,” the pair “inspecting the Royal School girls dorms.”

Wexner, the retail billionaire, apparently wrote a short message that said, “I wanted to get you what you want … so here it is,” and then drew a pair of breasts. Stuart Pivar, a chemist and art collector, apparently wrote a poem to Epstein, part of which declares, “Jeffrey at half a century / with credentials plenipotentiary / though up to no good / whenever he could / has avoided the penitentiary.” Pivar told me in an email that he recalled Maxwell having invited him to contribute to the book even though he and Epstein “were no longer that close.” He also described Epstein as “vastly misunderstood” and a “teenophile” rather than a “pedophile.” (In 2019, Pivar called Epstein “profoundly sick” in an interview with Mother Jones and said he cut ties with Epstein once he heard from Maria Farmer about “a terrible thing, too terrible to utter, having to do with Jeffrey Epstein.”)

Joel Pashcow, a real-estate executive and Mar-a-Lago Club member, offered a drawing of Epstein giving a lollipop to a group of young girls in 1983, juxtaposed with another drawing of Epstein in 2003 being fellated and massaged by another gaggle of women. The implication is that Epstein has groomed them from an early age. Paschow did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But his most startling contribution is a photo of him holding a novelty check bearing what appears to be a doctored or rendered version of Trump’s signature. The photo appears alongside a handwritten note suggesting Epstein sold him a “fully depreciated” woman for $22,500. The New York Times reports that the check was a stunt meant as a joke about a woman in her 20s who dated both Trump and Epstein. But this is remarkable enough that it bears repeating: Inside the 50th-birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein—a man charged with sex trafficking—is a photo of a massive, novelty size check, seeming to reference the sale of a human being from one powerful man to another. The man whose supposed signature is on the check is the current president of the United States.
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So much of the potency of the Epstein conspiracy is that it speaks to a core feeling for many Americans that the alienation, stagnation, and fear they experience is all the result of a genuinely evil class of elites. The feeling is tied to distrust in institutions and to any person or thing that could potentially be labeled as part of a vague establishment. (And, as with many conspiracy theories, there is also a strong thread of anti-Semitism that emerges in many Epstein discussions.) The sexual deviancy of Epstein, just like the obsession among QAnon adherents with pedophilia, provides a moral framework for this hatred and disgust. It suggests that the people keeping you down are evil, doing sick things—and joking about it.The book is not the smoking-gun proof of the pedophile ring that many theorists were looking for, but it is proof of the conspiracy’s overarching worldview: There is a festering rot among at least one group of powerful elites with an abiding belief that their money and power make them invincible.