Why the rich and powerful couldn't say no to Epstein

It was one of the big set-pieces in Washington in 2019.

All eyes were on Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who was testifying to a US House of Representatives committee about his former boss.

A Democratic member of the committee, Stacey Plaskett, was preparing to question Cohen and was seen on camera texting someone on her phone.

This week, the public found out the identity of the other person in that exchange - the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Emails made public by his estate under a subpoena show he was encouraging her to ask about a Trump Organization employee. After Plaskett did so, Epstein texted her back: "Good Work."

The extent of his influence

In hindsight, the incident has struck a chord with many, who say it highlights the extent of the late financier's influence on America's elite.

Plaskett, representative for the US Virgin Islands, has denied she was seeking Epstein's advice, saying she was texting many people that day, including Epstein, who was one of her constituents.

As a former lawyer, she says, she learned to seek information from all sources - even people she didn't like.

"I am disgusted by Epstein's deviant behaviour. I strongly support his victims and admire their courage. I have long believed and supported that the entire Epstein files be released," she told the BBC.

She says their exchange occurred before his arrest for sexual trafficking. But it was well after his conviction for soliciting prostitution in 2008.

His private island in the US territory had also been mentioned in a damning investigation by the Miami Herald just a year before as being one of the places he sexually abused several underage girls.

Just six months after her exchange with Epstein, the disgraced financier would be dead in his prison cell - a result of suicide, according to a medical examiner.

His death, and the conspiracies that swirled around it, would trigger a reckoning that has caused ripples in Washington and Wall Street, and has taken down some of his former friends.

Their exchange was just one of many in the latest trove of over 20,000 pages of personal documents, which demonstrated again Epstein's ability to maintain elite social circles even after his criminal conviction and the Herald expose.

How and why these relationships survived while other friends cut him off tells us as much about the dynamics of social circles at the very top of US society as they do about Epstein's influence.

"He was a diabolical monster, but at the same time he was brilliant in a sense that he was able to maintain this incredible network of some of the world's most powerful individuals," said Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

"He had a certain charisma attached to himself that put him in a position where people turned to him."

'He would use information that he gained'

Epstein considered himself a "people collector" who made connections for transactional purposes, Mr Levine said.

"He would use information that he gained... with the intention, at the end of the day, that he was going to bank either favours from them, finances from them, or in a darker sense, I think, blackmail from some of these individuals."

The relationship between Epstein and Lord Peter Mandelson has come under particular scrutiny in the UK, with the latter ultimately being sacked as the UK's ambassador to the US in September.

• Mandelson still in contact with Epstein in 2016, emails show

Documents released by Congress show Lord Mandelson maintained contact with the paedophile until late 2016, which was before the Herald expose but after his conviction.

In one email from November 2015, Epstein tells him after his birthday: "63 years old. You made it."

Lord Mandelson replies less than 90 minutes later, saying: "Just. I have decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the US."

He has strenuously denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes or wrongdoing, and has expressed regret over their continued communications with him.

Epstein's eclectic circle of scholars, entrepreneurs and politicians

The documents released by Epstein's estate reveal his eclectic social circle of distinguished scholars, business titans and politicians.

Mr Levine said it was not a stretch to say that some of Epstein's more casual acquaintances may not have known about his abuse, or were impressed enough by his influential connections to overlook it.

"People forget things," he said. "His credentials among power brokers were extremely high, and I think a lot of individuals probably just dismissed the conviction against him."

Others may have been simply dazzled by his wealth, journalists and those who knew him have suggested.

"A jail sentence doesn't matter anymore," David Patrick Columbia, the founder of New York Social Diary, told the Daily Beast newsite in 2011, after Epstein's first conviction. "The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty."

A former US treasury secretary turned Harvard University president, Larry Summers, asked Epstein for romantic advice, including in an exchange in November 2018 - the same month the Herald investigation was published - in which he seemed to forward an email from a woman to Epstein to ask about how he should respond.

Epstein replied: "She's already beginning to sound needy :) nice."

Summers' interactions with his former confidant came back to haunt him last week, leading him to announce he was stepping back from public commitments and stopping teaching at Harvard.

"I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognise the pain they have caused," Summers said.

Epstein also reportedly used his money skills to help famed linguist Noam Chomsky, with whom he exchanged several messages over the years and invited to stay at his homes.

The flattery went both ways. In an undated letter of support included in the trove of emails, Chomsky raved about Epstein, saying the two had held "many long and often in-depth discussions".

The 96-year-old previously told the Wall Street Journal that Epstein had helped him move money between accounts without "one penny from Epstein".

"I knew him and we met occasionally," he said. "What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to US laws and norms, that yields a clean slate."

He did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Chomsky was one of Epstein's famous financial clients, many of whom Epstein helped to save billions of dollars, Mr Levine said.

He was able to do so because he "understood tax code and finances to some degree better than maybe the most highly paid people on Wall Street", Mr Levine said.

The ones who cut ties

Throughout the 23,000 pages of Epstein's documents, one man's name appears more than perhaps any other.

Trump did not send or receive any of the messages, having cut ties with Epstein.

In 2002, Trump described Epstein as a "terrific guy". Epstein would later remark: "I was Donald's closest friend for 10 years."

But the relationship soured. Trump has said they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested. By 2008, Trump was saying that he had not been "a fan of his".

Trump has denied any knowledge of Epstein's sex trafficking. The White House has also said Trump kicked Epstein out of his club "decades ago for being a creep to his female employees".

Mr Levine said there were many people whose messages with Epstein after his convictions will leave them embarrassed, though that did not suggest they participated in any of his crimes.

"Each and every one of course regrets the day they communicated with Jeffrey Epstein or spent time with him," he said. "It is one of the most unbelievable stories of our time - power, privilege, predation."

But there was at least one person who said he immediately understood that Epstein was "gross".

Howard Lutnick, the president's commerce secretary, was a next-door neighbour of Epstein's for 10 years. He told the New York Post's podcast that his first encounter with Epstein was his last.

Shortly after Lutnick moved into his property on the Upper East side in 2005, he says Epstein gave Lutnick and his wife a tour of his large residence.

In Epstein's dining room, after seeing a massage table surrounded by candles, Lutnick asked him how often he used it.

"He says: 'Every day.' And then he gets, like, weirdly close to me, and he says: 'And the right kind of massage'."

Lutnick said he and his wife exchanged glances, excused themselves and left.

"I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again."

More on this story

• What we know about new Epstein emails that mention Trump

• Epstein saga reveals Republican rifts - and the power of Trump's base

• Trump signs bill ordering US justice department to release Epstein files

byVaclav Urich

in

November 28, 2025

Why the rich and powerful couldn't say no to Epstein

It was one of the big set-pieces in Washington in 2019. All eyes were on Donald Trump's former lawye...

Read More

Pope visits Istanbul's Blue Mosque at start of day of meetings with Turkey's religious leaders

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) —Pope Leo XIVvisited Istanbul's Blue Mosque on Saturday at the start of an intense day of meetings and liturgies with Turkey's religious leaders and a Mass for the country's tiny Catholic community.

The head of Turkey's Diyanet religious affairs directorate showed Leo the soaring tiled dome of the mosque and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns, as Leo nodded in understanding.

The Vatican had said Leo would observe a "brief minute of silent prayer" there, but it wasn't clear if he had. The imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray but the pope declined.

Speaking to reporters after the visit, Tunca said he had told the pope that the mosque was "Allah's house."

"It's not my house, not your house, (it's the) house of Allah," he said. He said he told Leo: "'If you want, you can worship here,' I said. But he said, 'That's OK.'"

"He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased," he said.

Leo was following in the footsteps of hisrecent predecessors,who all made high-profile visits to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, as it is officially known, in a gesture of respect to Turkey's Muslim majority. Leo removed his shoes and walked through the carpeted mosque in his white socks.

Past popes have also visited the nearby Hagia Sophia landmark, once one of the most important historic cathedrals in Christianity and a United Nations-designated world heritage site.

But Leo left that visit off his itinerary on his first trip as pope. In July 2020, Turkeyconverted Hagia Sophiafrom a museum back into a mosque, a move that drew widespread international criticism, including from the Vatican.

After the mosque visit, Leo held a private meeting with Turkey's Christian leaders at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem. In the afternoon, he was expected to pray with the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew, at the patriarchal church of Saint George.

He will end the day with a Catholic Mass in Istanbul's Volkswagen Arena for the country's Catholic community, who number 33,000 in a country of more than 85 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslim.

Leo had prayed with these Christian leaders on Friday in Iznik, at the site of the A.D. 325 Council of Nicaea, the highlight of his trip. The occasion was to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the council, theunprecedented meetingof bishops that produced the creed, or statement of faith, that is still recited by millions of Christians today.

Standing over the ruins of the site, the men recited the creed. Leo urged them "to overcome the scandal of the divisions that unfortunately still exist and to nurture the desire for unity."

Such unity, he said, was of particular importance at a time "marked by many tragic signs, in which people are subjected to countless threats to their very dignity."

The Nicaea gathering took place at a time when the Eastern and Western churches were still united. They split in the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope, and then in other splintering divisions. But even today, Catholic, Orthodox and most historic Protestant groups accept theNicaean Creed, making it a point of agreement and the most widely accepted creed in Christendom.

As a result, celebrating its origins at the site of its creation with the spiritual leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox churches and other Christian representatives marked a historic moment in the centuries-old quest to reunite all Christians.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP'scollaborationwith The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

byVaclav Urich

in

November 28, 2025

Pope visits Istanbul's Blue Mosque at start of day of meetings with Turkey's religious leaders

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) —Pope Leo XIVvisited Istanbul's Blue Mosque on Saturday at the start of an intense day of meeti...

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An archaeologist is racing to preserve Sudan's heritage as war threatens to erase its cultural past

PARIS (AP) — In a dimly lit office in a corner of the French National Institute for Art History, Sudanese archaeologist Shadia Abdrabo studies a photograph of pottery made in her country around 7,000 B.C. She carefully types a description of the Neolithic artifact into a spreadsheet.

As the war between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) rages on, the curator from Sudan's National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM) is on a yearlong research grant in France with one mission: to build an online database of the African nation's archaeological sites, museum collections and historical archives.

Soon after the war inSudanstarted, in April 2023, museums were looted and destroyed. It's unclear what exactly went missing, but Abdrabo says her task is to find out — and time is of the essence.

"We have to work fast to secure our collections. We've already lost two museums and we don't want to lose more," Abdrabo told The Associated Press.

She says two regional museums in El Geneina and Nyala were almost completely destroyed, while in Khartoum, the National Museum — which held an estimated 100,000 objects before the war — wasransacked by militiaswho posted videos online of their fighters inside the storeroom.

The National Museum had pieces dating back to prehistoric times, including from the Kerma Kingdom and the Napatan era when Kushite kings ruled the region as well as from the Meroitic civilization that built Sudan's pyramids. Other galleries displayed later Christian and Islamic objects.

Among its most valuable items were mummies dating back to 2,500 B.C., some of the oldest and most archaeologically significant in the world as well as royal Kushite treasures.

'Entire archives vanished'

UNESCOraised the alarmon reports of plundering saying the "threat to culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level."

"My heart was broken, you know? It's not just objects that we lost. We lost research, we lost studies, we lost many things," Abdrabo said.

Last month, hundreds ofpeople were left deadand more than 80,000 others forced into displacement after the capture of North Darfur's capital, El Fasher, by the RSF. For Abdrabo the work is deeply personal.

"I'm from Nubia, from the north, an area filled with monuments, archaeological sites and ancient life," she said. The region was home to some of the world's earliest kingdoms that rivaled ancient Egypt in power and wealth.

She was working at the national museum in the capital Khartoum when the war started.

"We thought it would finish soon … but then life started getting really difficult: not just the bombing, but there was no electricity, no water," she said. With her three sisters, she fled north — first to Atbara, then to Abri, and eventually to Port Sudan.

During that time, Abdrabo and her NCAM colleagues worked tirelessly to try and protect Sudan's 11 museums and sites — some designated with UNESCO World Heritage status — moving pieces to safe rooms and secret locations.

But efforts to protect Sudan's art were too slow, said Ali Nour, a Sudanese cultural heritage advocate.

"While applications were being drafted, sites were being emptied. While risk assessments were reviewed, entire archives vanished," Nour wrote in an article for the U.K.-based International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

Urgent recovery efforts

UNESCO said it carried out inventories, trained police and customs officers to recognize stolen antiquities, while appealing to collectors "to refrain from acquiring or taking part in the import, export or transfer of ownership of cultural property from Sudan."

But, unlike similar cultural emergencies that followed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, "Sudan has not benefited from strong media coverage denouncing the degradation and plundering of its cultural heritage,'' according to researcher Meryam Amarir. ''This lack of visibility has reduced the international response."

Ancient Sudan was connected, through trade and military activity, with Egypt, the Mediterranean world and Mesopotamia, and was the source of much of the gold available in the region, according to Geoff Emberling of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.

"If we're interested in these ancient cultures, then we have to be interested in Sudan," said Emberling, who is involved with the recently establishedSudan Cultural Emergency Recovery Fund.

The task force, requested by NCAM, aims to unite institutions, scholars, and donors around the urgent recovery efforts of Sudan's heritage.

"What Shadia Abdrabo is doing is urgently essential — establishing what's missing," Emberling told the AP. "And with a team of about 15 Sudanese now working in the museum in Khartoum to clean and restore what has been damaged, they will soon be able to compare what remains there now."

'I cry when I talk about this'

Abdrabo has funding until April 2026 to finish compiling the data and building a platform, but she worries it won't be enough time.

The work is painstaking. Some datasets arrive as spreadsheets, others as handwritten inventories or photographs taken decades ago. Colleagues at the Louvre, the British Museum and others lend support but she works mostly alone.

"I'm trying to finish this database but it's a lot. I've done about 20% of the work. Just for the national museums, I've recorded 1,080 objects so far … and then I have to do other museums, sites, archives… I need to add pictures, ID numbers, coordinates …"

As the winter settles over Paris, the crisis in Sudan drives Abdrabo.

"We are working on tracking what has been looted," she said. "I cry when I talk about this. My only goal and message is to bring back as much as possible, to do as much as I can for Sudan, but it's not easy for us."

It's not just the war itself, but the consequences of it that could affect the country's heritage: "militias, people displaced… it's not safe for the art to be in unsecure locations," she added.

"Until the war finishes we just don't know what is going to happen."

byVaclav Urich

in

November 28, 2025

An archaeologist is racing to preserve Sudan's heritage as war threatens to erase its cultural past

PARIS (AP) — In a dimly lit office in a corner of the French National Institute for Art History, Sudanese archaeologist S...

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Arizona forces 5 turnovers, spoils rival Arizona State's Big 12 repeat title hopes with 23-7 win

TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Noah Fifita threw for 286 yards and a touchdown, and Arizona spoiled rival Arizona State's Big 12 championship game hopes with a dominating 23-7 win on Friday night.

The reigning Big 12 champion Sun Devils (8-4, 6-3 Big 12, No. 20 CFP) entered themost anticipated Territorial Cup gamein a decade with a slim chance of reaching the title game again.

Arizona (9-3, 6-3, No. 25 CFP) squeezed the life out of their chances with a suffocating defense that forced five turnovers and limited Arizona State to 214 total yards.

Sun Devils' quarterback Jeff Sims, making his fourth start for the injured Sam Leavitt, threw three interceptions and lost two fumbles. His botched handoff at Arizona State's 6 to open the third quarter set up Fifita's 9-yard touchdown pass to Cameron Barmore.

Arizona's Michael Salgado-Medina made two of his three field goals in the second half after missing two kicks and having another blocked. Kedrick Reescano scored on a 1-yard touchdown run with 1:56 left and Dalton Johnson capped Arizona's fifth straight win with an interception near midfield.

Arizona State won last year's game 49-7 in Tucson, but Arizona has taken a huge step forward defensively in coach Brent Brennan's second season, ranking in the top 25 nationally in numerous categories.

The Wildcats clamped down on the Sun Devils from the start, holding them to 15 yards in the first quarter. Arizona State found some success on the ground on a 90-yard drive capped by Sims' 27-yard run, but its only other sustained first-half drive ended when Jesus Gomez's 49-yard field goal clanked off the right goal post.

The Wildcats spent most of the first half stumbling in Arizona State's end of the field.

Quincy Craig lost a fumble at the Sun Devils' 8, Salgado-Medina missed a 42-yard field goal and had another from the same distance blocked. Arizona also failed to take advantage of Michael Dansby's interception to the ASU 37, punting after failing to gain a yard on three plays.

Salgado-Medina kicked a 37-yard field goal in the closing seconds to cap a quick-hitting drive, making it 7-3 at halftime.

The takeaway

Arizona: The Wildcats had a hard time finishing drives, but their defense stymied the Sun Devils all night to avenge last season's lopsided loss.

Arizona State: The Sun Devils fell flat in a must-win game against their rivals, ending the regular season with a thud.

Arizona: will play in a bowl game for the second time in three years.

Arizona State: will likely play in a lower-tier bowl after reaching the CFP last season.

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign uphere. AP college football:https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-pollandhttps://apnews.com/hub/college-football

byVaclav Urich

in

November 28, 2025

Arizona forces 5 turnovers, spoils rival Arizona State's Big 12 repeat title hopes with 23-7 win

TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Noah Fifita threw for 286 yards and a touchdown, and Arizona spoiled rival Arizona State's Big 12...

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Eagles commit rare tush push fumble in red zone against Bears

ThePhiladelphia Eagles' tush push is one of the more infamous plays in the NFL in recent years. QuarterbackJalen Hurtslines up under center in a tight formation and powers ahead with some help behind him to get short-yardage conversions.

For the first time this year, it backfired in a big way against theChicago Bears.

Philadelphia was driving down the field after an interception byCaleb Williams, and was in the red zone once again. Hurts lined up for a tush push from theBears' 12-yard line on 3rd and 1.

With Hurts stuck behind his offensive line, Bears cornerbackNahshon Wrightcapitalized and knocked the ball out of Hurts' hands and recovered the fumble.

what a play by Nahshon WrightCHIvsPHI FREE on Prime VideoAlso streaming on@NFLPluspic.twitter.com/Q7eJX1j8xo

— NFL (@NFL)November 28, 2025

byVaclav Urich

in

November 28, 2025

Eagles commit rare tush push fumble in red zone against Bears

ThePhiladelphia Eagles' tush push is one of the more infamous plays in the NFL in recent years. QuarterbackJalen Hurt...

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