Personal life of Jeffrey Epstein

The financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein cultivated an elite social circle of prominent individuals from across Western high society. He was acquaintances or friends with public figures including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Ehud Barak, Mohammed bin Salman, Richard Branson, Leon Black; former Prince Andrew, Duke of York; Bill Gates; Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway; and many others. The Epstein files, a collection of documents which has been partially released as part of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, provide a public glimpse into the vast network he had cultivated over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Epstein had a decades-long association with socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who dated him for an extend period and recruited young girls for him, leading to her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking and child sexual abuse. Epstein's other romantic partners included Eva Andersson-Dubin, Sarah Kellen and Karyna Shuliak.

Epstein had high self-regard and became socially well-connected because he was skilled at human relations. He said: "I saw lots of people doing lots of hard work, and hard work didn't translate into success either. It wasn't what you knew or how hard you worked. In fact, the people who were doing construction on Telegraph Avenue at that time, you know, coming in at seven o'clock in the morning and spending 12 hours working, they looked like they still were neither happy nor successful, so it was not, you know, and what I learned from [my job at the] Dalton [School], lots of it in fact, turns out to not necessarily be who you are but who you came in contact with."