The Epstein Files and Russiagate are the Same Thing

For years the culture war has assigned these scandals to opposite teams. Russiagate became a lib obsession, proof that Trump was a foreign asset and the republic was under external attack. The Epstein case became a right-wing fixation, proof that a pedophilic cabal ran the world and global elites were predatory monsters. Each side treated the other’s scandal as a distraction or hoax.

But the 3.5 million pages released by the DoJ confirm these are in fact the same story. Both highlight the post-1991 emergence of a transnational kleptocratic class that links Western oligarchs to foreign state interests, whether Russian or Saudi or Israeli or whoever. Treating Russiagate as isolated foreign interference or Epstein as individual depravity are limiting and, strange as it sounds, comforting frames because they give each side a villain.

I think the real story is more systemic. The documents suggest a reframing of Epstein’s case from one man’s crimes to transnational geopolitics.

The Post-Soviet Laboratory

It should not be surprising that Russian names are all over the files. In many ways Russia pioneered the modern transnational kleptocratic class when Soviet state assets were liquidated and intelligence officers became freelancers. The collapse created new oligarchs but also a global template.

The men who emerged from Russian bespredel built fortunes by moving money across jurisdictions, leveraging kompromat, and treating governments as service providers instead of sovereigns. In this they were enabled by willing partners in the West, who provided shell companies, anonymous LLCs, and real estate loopholes. As Casey Michel has documented in American Kleptocracy, the US was not a victim of this corruption but built the framework enabling it.

Jeffrey Epstein appeared to understand this world intuitively. He brokered connections across the worlds of Israeli intelligence, Gulf royals, European politicians, and the Russian state. One of his most frequent contacts was Sergey Belyakov, an FSB officer to whom Epstein provided expertise in tax havens and sanctions evasion; the Kremlin received help placing agents in the U.S. and access to American targets of interest.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, another recurring contact, went to Epstein for advice on handling Trump. “Churkin was great,” Epstein wrote in June 2018. “He understood Trump after our conversations. It is not complex.” This was sent weeks before the Trump-Putin Helsinki summit. Epstein also pushed to meet Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, telling Norway’s former prime minister and frequent intermediary Thorbjorn Jagland: “I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov can get insight on talking to me.”¹

The Epstein Class

As we’ve known for a while, a lot of the Russiagate stuff, despite being labeled cringe lib paranoia (e.g. Manafort working directly with Kilimnik) turned out to be completely true. I’ve had an interest in this subject for some time, arguing back in 2017 that the collusion was a byproduct of long-standing financial schemes where the protagonist was not Putin but the money itself. At a certain point it began to feel like shouting into the void.

People got so burned out on the overhyped effects of Russian Facebook trolls that they forgot the source of the problem, as usual, is not anonymous shitposters but the people in charge. As David Klion argued years ago, the spy-thriller framing was a distraction; the left should have treated the scandal as a critique of global capitalism rather than a defense of the FBI. We can have a debate over how much Russia influenced the 2016 election, but this is a bit of a red herring: the shady links were there years before Trump developed political aspirations.

The files highlight connections that span decades and resurface in unexpected places. In a 2019 email Epstein flagged a “coincidence”. The Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev bought Trump’s Palm Beach mansion for more than twice what Trump paid for it four years earlier; Rybolovlev never occupied the property before demolishing it. He was the same man who sold a da Vinci painting to Saudi Arabia’s MBS for $450 million, a price Epstein claimed was absurdly inflated. Epstein noted that Rybolovlev “knows all.”

Last year, Rybolovlev appeared as part of Russia’s delegation in the Ukraine peace talks held in Riyadh, sitting across from Trump’s team.

Just to be clear: the same man involved in laundering money through a Trump real estate deal is now helping to negotiate the end of Europe’s largest war. One of the most spiritually exhausting elements of current events is that it’s impossible to discuss such things without sounding like a conspiratorial lunatic, but here we are.

In the emails Epstein described Trump as “the dog that hasn’t barked,” someone who knew all but stayed silent. Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, appears throughout as an obsequious dinner companion and fundraiser contact. Bill Barr, who repeatedly appears in the files, unilaterally cleared Trump of Russiagate charges in 2019 and was Attorney General when Epstein died in federal custody. His father had given Epstein his first job at the Dalton School decades earlier.

But it wasn’t just Trump cronies. The Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler wrote that she “adored” Epstein. Bill Gates met with him repeatedly after his conviction. Bill Clinton flew on his plane, Noam Chomsky offered him advice, and Larry Summers took his money.

The Russian collusion story was never about shadowy foreign forces assaulting an innocent democracy. This lets the US off the hook too easily. It was about a sphere of elite impunity where American consultants, Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes, European politicians, Israeli intelligence figures and British ex-spies all swim in the same waters.

Abstracted from the lurid details, Epstein and Russiagate are two manifestations of the same phenomenon. Epstein was a node in that global infrastructure and Russiagate was one operation that ran through it. You don’t need an elaborate conspiracy if you have lots of power and similar concerns. Russia wants to weaken Western institutions and will pay for it? Great, the borderless elite profit from weak institutions and enjoy getting paid. Their interests converge. At a certain altitude, the lines on the map disappear.

1. There is also Epstein’s promotion of de-dollarization schemes like BRIC currencies and crypto, with ties to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. And the introductions of Russian women to targets like Prince Andrew and Bill Gates. And of course a Silicon Valley dimension via associates like Masha Drokova. A former commissar of the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi, she reinvented herself as a Bay Area venture capitalist. The files show she represented Epstein as a client, embedding Russian capital into the American tech sector through the same networks. A 2015 email shows Epstein pitching Peter Thiel on meeting his “very good friend” Belyakov, who was organizing an “innovation conference in Moscow.” Epstein had previously facilitated meetings between Thiel and Ambassador Churkin. The connection between Palantir’s surveillance capabilities and Moscow’s interests was framed as just another networking opportunity among friends.