vault backup: 2026-10-26 20:16:55

10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jeffrey Epstein.md

@@ -30,8 +30,15 @@ relations:
   - type: employed_by
     with: "[[Dalton School]]"
     start: 1974
+    end: 1976
     role: "mathematics and physics teacher"
     fn: 1
+  - type: appointed
+    with: "[[Donald Barr]]"
+    reverse: true
+    start: 1974
+    role: "teacher of mathematics and physics; hire attributed to Barr by some accounts, left open by others"
+    fn: 170
   - type: director_of
     with: "[[Wexner Foundation]]"
     start: 1992
@@ -198,7 +205,7 @@ relations:
     end: 2002
     fn: 61
 created: 2026-06-18
-updated: 2026-10-09
+updated: 2026-10-26
 ---
 
 Jeffrey Epstein (January 20, 1953 to August 10, 2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender who, with his companion [[Ghislaine Maxwell]], ran a sex-trafficking operation that recruited and abused dozens of underage girls across his residences in [[Manhattan]], [[Palm Beach, Florida|Palm Beach]], [[New Mexico]], the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]], and [[Paris]]. He built a social and financial network that encompassed technology billionaires ([[Peter Thiel]], [[Bill Gates]], [[Elon Musk]], [[Reid Hoffman]], [[Mark Zuckerberg]]), heads of state and politicians ([[Bill Clinton]], [[Ehud Barak]], [[Prince Andrew]], [[Donald Trump]]), diplomats and intelligence officials ([[William Burns]], [[Vitaly Churkin]]), financiers and executives ([[Leslie Wexner]], [[Leon Black]], [[Tom Pritzker]], [[Howard Lutnick]]), and prominent scientists ([[Martin Nowak]], [[Marvin Minsky]], [[George Church]], [[Stephen Hawking]]) brokered through the literary agent [[John Brockman]]. The source of his fortune was never satisfactorily explained, his long association with [[Robert Maxwell|Robert Maxwell's]] daughter raised documented intelligence questions, and his death in federal custody in 2019 was ruled a suicide over disputes that have not been resolved.[^1][^2][^3]
@@ -207,8 +214,12 @@ Jeffrey Epstein (January 20, 1953 to August 10, 2019) was an American financier
 
 Epstein was born in [[Brooklyn]], New York, and raised in the Sea Gate and [[Coney Island]] area in a working-class Jewish family; his father worked for the [[New York City]] parks department. He attended Lafayette High School, then [[Cooper Union]] and the Courant Institute at [[New York University]], leaving both without a degree. In 1974 he was hired to teach mathematics and physics at the [[Dalton School]], the elite Upper East Side preparatory school, despite having no degree and no teaching credential. The headmaster during the period of his hiring was [[Donald Barr]], the novelist and educator who was the father of the future [[U.S. Attorney General]] [[William Barr]], whose [[Department of Justice]] would later oversee the federal case and the jail in which Epstein died. Accounts differ on whether Barr personally hired Epstein, since Barr resigned the headmastership in 1974.[^1][^4]
 
+Barr announced his resignation in February 1974, and the [[New York Times]] reported on February 20, 1974 that he would remain until June 7.[^168] [[Thomas Volscho]] reported in the [[Daily Beast]] on July 12, 2019 that the September 1974 issue of the Dalton student newspaper, *The Daltonian*, announced that Epstein had joined the mathematics department and would also teach physics, that Epstein later confirmed in a deposition that he taught there from 1974 to 1976, and that the school had lost four mathematics teachers before the 1974-75 year. [[Peter Branch]], interim headmaster from July 1, 1974, told Volscho that he did not recall hiring Epstein and was "relatively certain Barr or possibly the head of the Math Department hired Epstein because hiring decisions were typically made in the spring." Volscho added that the State Education Department reported no teaching license on file for Epstein, and that [[Edward Jay Epstein]] had claimed that investigators from [[Kroll]], hired by [[L Brands]], told him Epstein had faked his resume to get the Dalton job.[^169] The New York Times wrote on July 12, 2019 ([[Mike Baker]] and [[Amy Julia Harris]]) that the student newspaper reported in September 1974 that Epstein was starting as a math and physics teacher, and that "It is unclear whether Mr. Barr hired Mr. Epstein" after the February 1974 resignation announcement; it quoted Branch that Epstein "didn't come up to snuff" and was asked to leave.[^170] [[Marie Brenner]] wrote in *Vanity Fair* that Barr brought in "a group of gifted college dropouts, including one Jeffrey Epstein," and that William Barr "recently claimed he hadn't made the Dalton-Epstein connection until he read about it in the press."[^171] [[Calder McHugh]] wrote for [[Yahoo Finance]] on July 13, 2019 that Barr "hired Epstein to teach math and science," and placed Epstein at Dalton "in the early 1970s," with appearances in the yearbooks of 1975 and 1976.[^172] [[Wayne Madsen]] described Barr as "influential in hiring" Epstein.[^173]
+
 At Dalton, Epstein cultivated the parents of his students, and a connection there brought him to [[Bear Stearns]], the investment bank then led by [[Alan Greenberg]]. He joined in 1976, worked in the special products division advising wealthy clients on tax strategy, and rose to limited partner. The firm and Epstein gave varying accounts of the departure, which has been attributed to a Regulation D securities violation and to an internal inquiry. After leaving he ran a consulting company, [[International Assets Group]], out of his apartment in the Solo building on East 66th Street, and around 1988 he established [[J. Epstein & Co.]], which he said managed money exclusively for clients worth more than one billion dollars; in 2003 he said he had run it "for the last 15 years."[^1][^3][^5]
 
+The archive of the Dalton School holds a folder titled "Physics A, B, A-B, and Advanced Physics, Assignments, Epstein, 1975-1976" in its physics records.[^174] [[Snopes]] reported that Epstein began as a mathematics and physics teacher in September 1974, citing a New York Times review of the school's yearbooks, and that he was fired at the end of the 1975-76 school year; it quoted Branch telling the [[Miami Herald]] that Epstein "had not adequately grown as a new teacher to the standard of the school."[^175] In a 2009 deposition, as [[NPR]] reported in 2019, Epstein answered "No" when asked whether he had any "sexual contact" with female students he taught at Dalton, and invoked the Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendments when asked whether he had dated a former Dalton student.[^176]
+
 Epstein resigned from Bear Stearns on March 12, 1981, the day after [[Seagram]] announced its tender offer for [[St. Joe Minerals]]. The [[Securities and Exchange Commission]], investigating insider trading in St. Joe and told that Epstein had information about trading at Bear Stearns, took his testimony on April 1, 1981. He said management had fined him 2,500 dollars over a possible "Reg D" violation, a loan of about 20,000 dollars to his friend Warren Eisenstein to buy stock, together with "carelessness" over expenses, and that rumors had tied his exit to "an illicit affair with a secretary." Bear Stearns paid his bonus of about 100,000 dollars. [[James Cayne]] said Epstein "left Bear Stearns of his own volition"; a former Bear executive told Fox Business in 2019 that he "left at our invitation ... it was very serious stuff"; [[Steven Hoffenberg]] claimed Epstein told him he had been caught executing "illegal operations." The SEC brought no insider-trading charges against anyone at Bear Stearns in the St. Joe matter.[^5][^6]
 
 Epstein stayed a major Bear Stearns customer. His company [[Financial Trust Company]] stated in a 2009 verified complaint that "since 1981, Epstein has conducted hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions with Bear Stearns for his own, as well as his clients', accounts," with the firm's senior management. From at least 2000 to 2007 he chaired [[Liquid Funding]] Ltd., a [[Bermuda]] company partly owned by Bear Stearns that held mortgage-backed securities, a directorship disclosed in the [[Paradise Papers]]. Fox Business reported that he had about 60 million dollars in the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, which collapsed in June 2007. On August 6, 2007, according to the 2009 complaint, Cayne told Epstein to "hold tight" to Financial Trust's 120,000 Bear shares; Financial Trust sold the last 100,000 on March 17, 2008 at 3.41 dollars and sued Bear Stearns in the District Court of the Virgin Islands (Civil No. 2009/106).[^6][^7][^8]
@@ -223,9 +234,9 @@ After his release Hoffenberg publicly claimed that Epstein had been a co-archite
 
 ### Leslie Wexner and the Source of Wealth
 
-Leslie Wexner, the founder of [[The Limited]], [[L Brands]], [[Victoria's Secret]], and [[Bath & Body Works]], met Epstein in the mid-1980s and made him his money manager and confidant. In 1991 Wexner granted Epstein sweeping power of attorney, authority to borrow money, sign checks, buy and sell property, and hire and fire on his behalf. Epstein joined the board of the [[Wexner Foundation]] in 1992, in the seat of Wexner's mother, Bella Wexner. Wexner transferred to Epstein the use of, and eventually title to, the seven-story townhouse at [[9 East 71st Street]] in Manhattan, one of the largest private residences in the city, under a 1998 purchase agreement secured by a 10 million dollar note; in December 2011 the Epstein-owned Nine East 71st Street Corporation transferred the house to Maple, Inc., another Epstein entity. Wexner also co-founded the [[Mega Group]], a club of wealthy Jewish businessmen and philanthropists, with the Seagram heir [[Charles Bronfman]].[^3][^5][^11]
+Leslie Wexner, the founder of [[The Limited]], L Brands, [[Victoria's Secret]], and [[Bath & Body Works]], met Epstein in the mid-1980s and made him his money manager and confidant. In 1991 Wexner granted Epstein sweeping power of attorney, authority to borrow money, sign checks, buy and sell property, and hire and fire on his behalf. Epstein joined the board of the [[Wexner Foundation]] in 1992, in the seat of Wexner's mother, Bella Wexner. Wexner transferred to Epstein the use of, and eventually title to, the seven-story townhouse at [[9 East 71st Street]] in Manhattan, one of the largest private residences in the city, under a 1998 purchase agreement secured by a 10 million dollar note; in December 2011 the Epstein-owned Nine East 71st Street Corporation transferred the house to Maple, Inc., another Epstein entity. Wexner also co-founded the [[Mega Group]], a club of wealthy Jewish businessmen and philanthropists, with the Seagram heir [[Charles Bronfman]].[^3][^5][^11]
 
-Wexner cut ties with Epstein around 2007, and in 2019 he stated publicly that Epstein had "misappropriated vast sums" from him and his family, an amount reported as more than 46 million dollars, which Wexner said he had recovered. The mechanics of how a single client's fortune translated into Epstein's own remained opaque. A December 2025 [[New York Times]] investigation concluded that Epstein built his apparent wealth through "scams, theft and lies" rather than financial acumen, that his billionaire status was exaggerated, and that the Wexner relationship was central to whatever fortune he actually held. A May 2003 [[JPMorgan Chase|JPMorgan]] due-diligence report stated that Epstein, "through the trading of his accounts and that of Leslie Wexner," generated "one of the largest annual revenue flows of private clients in the private bank."[^3][^12]
+Wexner cut ties with Epstein around 2007, and in 2019 he stated publicly that Epstein had "misappropriated vast sums" from him and his family, an amount reported as more than 46 million dollars, which Wexner said he had recovered. The mechanics of how a single client's fortune translated into Epstein's own remained opaque. A December 2025 New York Times investigation concluded that Epstein built his apparent wealth through "scams, theft and lies" rather than financial acumen, that his billionaire status was exaggerated, and that the Wexner relationship was central to whatever fortune he actually held. A May 2003 [[JPMorgan Chase|JPMorgan]] due-diligence report stated that Epstein, "through the trading of his accounts and that of Leslie Wexner," generated "one of the largest annual revenue flows of private clients in the private bank."[^3][^12]
 
 An August 15, 2019 FBI Criminal Investigative Division document, released in 2026, listed eight people as co-conspirators, among them Wexner, [[Jean-Luc Brunel]] and [[Lesley Groff]]; the Justice Department removed the redaction of Wexner's name in February 2026 after Representative [[Thomas Massie]] raised it. A representative for Wexner said prosecutors told his lawyers in 2019 that he was "neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect." In Israel a March 1, 2026 criminal complaint asked police to investigate the Wexner Foundation's 2.3 million dollar payments to Ehud Barak, after a January 30, 2026 Justice Department release showed Epstein's lawyer [[Darren Indyke]] writing in December 2005 that he "was involved in the negotiation and execution" of Barak's contract.[^13][^14]
 
@@ -289,7 +300,7 @@ The civil settlements that followed were written into the criminal agreement. Ep
 
 ### The Agreement in Court and in Review
 
-The deal's leniency became the subject of the [[Miami Herald]] series "Perversion of Justice" by the reporter [[Julie K. Brown]] in 2018, which revived the case. In February 2019 Judge Marra ruled that prosecutors had violated the [[Crime Victims' Rights Act]] by hiding the agreement from victims. The Justice Department then recused the Southern District of Florida from the litigation and assigned the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia to defend it. On April 15, 2021 the en banc [[United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit]] denied Courtney Wild's mandamus petition, holding that the Act gives victims no freestanding pre-charge remedy while declining to decide whether the rights attach before charges; the Supreme Court denied certiorari on February 22, 2022.[^22][^52][^53]
+The deal's leniency became the subject of the Miami Herald series "Perversion of Justice" by the reporter [[Julie K. Brown]] in 2018, which revived the case. In February 2019 Judge Marra ruled that prosecutors had violated the [[Crime Victims' Rights Act]] by hiding the agreement from victims. The Justice Department then recused the Southern District of Florida from the litigation and assigned the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia to defend it. On April 15, 2021 the en banc [[United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit]] denied Courtney Wild's mandamus petition, holding that the Act gives victims no freestanding pre-charge remedy while declining to decide whether the rights attach before charges; the Supreme Court denied certiorari on February 22, 2022.[^22][^52][^53]
 
 The Office of Professional Responsibility had declined in May 2011 to investigate a claim by Professor [[Paul Cassell]] that "improper influences" produced the agreement, citing its policy of not investigating matters that "could have been addressed in the course of litigation, unless a court has made a specific finding of misconduct." It opened a review on February 6, 2019 after a December 3, 2018 letter from Senator [[Ben Sasse]]. Acosta, who had become U.S. Secretary of Labor under Donald Trump, resigned in July 2019. The office's November 2020 report found that Acosta had not committed professional misconduct and "did not find evidence that his decision was based on corruption or other impermissible considerations, such as Epstein's wealth, status, or associations," but concluded that resolving the case through the agreement "constitutes poor judgment," that "the NPA was a flawed mechanism," and that the government's conduct "gave victims and the public the misimpression that the government had colluded with Epstein's counsel to keep the NPA secret from the victims." It found that the supervisors other than Acosta had "left the USAO, were transitioning to other jobs, or were absent at critical junctures."[^37][^54]
 
@@ -612,3 +623,12 @@ The 2025 and 2026 releases produced resignations and removals without prosecutio
 [^165]: "Summers Resigns From OpenAI Board Amid Backlash Over Epstein Emails." *The Harvard Crimson,* November 19, 2025. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/11/19/summers-resigns-open-ai/ ; "Larry Summers banned for life from American Economic Association." Associated Press via *Fortune,* December 3, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/12/03/larry-summers-banned-for-life-from-american-economic-association
 [^166]: Chapman, Michelle. "Thomas Pritzker steps down from Hyatt board, saying he deeply regrets association with Epstein." Associated Press via *PBS NewsHour,* February 17, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/thomas-pritzker-steps-down-from-hyatt-board-saying-he-deeply-regrets-association-with-epstein
 [^167]: *CBS News,* February 2026, on Ruemmler's resignation as Goldman Sachs general counsel. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kathryn-ruemmler-resigning-from-goldman-sachs-epstein-files/
+[^168]: Maeroff, Gene I. "Barr Quits Dalton School Post, Charging Trustees' Interference." *The New York Times,* February 20, 1974, p. 41. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/20/archives/barr-quits-dalton-school-post-charging-trustees-interference.html
+[^169]: Volscho, Thomas. "Jeffrey Epstein Dodged Questions About Sex With His Dalton Prep School Students." *The Daily Beast,* July 12, 2019 (updated September 27, 2019). https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-dodged-questions-about-sex-with-his-dalton-prep-school-students
+[^170]: Baker, Mike, and Amy Julia Harris. "Jeffrey Epstein Taught at Dalton. His Behavior Was Noticed." *The New York Times,* July 12, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-dalton-teacher.html
+[^171]: Brenner, Marie. "'I Had No Problem Being Politically Different': Young William Barr Among the Manhattan Liberals." *Vanity Fair,* October 7, 2019. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/the-untold-tale-of-young-william-barr
+[^172]: McHugh, Calder. "Jeffrey Epstein's prep-school students remember their 'flamboyantly' dressed teacher." *Yahoo Finance,* July 13, 2019. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-dalton-school-math-teacher-yearbook-photos-125122535.html
+[^173]: Madsen, Wayne. "Daddy Dearest: the weirdness of Donald Barr, the father of Trump's mob lawyer Attorney General." *Wayne Madsen Report,* September 26, 2019. https://archive.org/details/Madsen190930
+[^174]: "Physics A, B, A-B, and Advanced Physics, Assignments, Epstein, 1975-1976," Box 047, The Dalton School Archives, Academic Affairs by Department: Science, Physics (2.4.9). https://daltonarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/2640
+[^175]: Snopes. "Did Bill Barr's Father 'Mentor' Jeffrey Epstein and Write a 'Bizarre' Novel?" https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-barr-jeffrey-epstein-book/
+[^176]: Schuknecht, Cat. "A Young Jeffrey Epstein Made An Impression On His High School Students." *NPR,* July 19, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/19/742725946/a-young-jeffrey-epstein-made-an-impression-on-his-high-school-students