The American 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 extended 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."
Romances and procuresses Eva Andersson-Dubin (1980s) Epstein dated Eva Andersson-Dubin for an 11-year period, mostly in the 1980s. After her marriage to Glenn Dubin in 1994, she and her husband remained friends with Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell (1991–2004) Epstein met Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of disgraced media baron Robert Maxwell, by 1991. Epstein had Ghislaine come to the U.S. in 1991 to recover from her grief following her father's death in November that year. She was later implicated by several Epstein accusers as procuring, or recruiting, underage girls in addition to being, for an extended period, Epstein's chief girlfriend. Epstein household employees testified in 2009 that Maxwell had a central role in his public and private life, referring to her as his "main girlfriend" who handled the hiring, supervising, and firing of staff starting around 1992. In 1995, Epstein renamed one of his companies the Ghislaine Corporation in Palm Beach, Florida; the company was dissolved in 1998. In 2000, Maxwell moved into a 7,000-square-foot townhouse, less than ten blocks from Epstein's New York mansion. This townhome was purchased for $5million by an anonymous limited liability company, with an address that matches the office of J. Epstein & Co. Representing the buyer was Darren Indyke, Epstein's lawyer.
A picture of Epstein and Maxwell, sitting at a cabin on Queen Elizabeth II's Balmoral estate, around 1999, at the invitation of then prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (then known as Prince Andrew, Duke of York) was shown to her jury to establish their status as romantic partners. In a 2003 Vanity Fair article, Epstein refers to Maxwell as "my best friend". In 2003, for a 50th birthday gift, Maxwell assembled an album of well-wishes from his friends; among the bawdy greetings was one from Donald Trump. In 2025, with the Epstein files in the public spotlight, the Wall Street Journal revealed details of the album. Virginia Giuffre alleged that Epstein and Maxwell sought to use her as a surrogate mother for a baby they were planning to have together.
In a 2022 interview, Maxwell said that "If I could go back today, I would avoid meeting him, and I would say that that would be the greatest mistake I've ever made, and I would make different choices for where I would work,"
Sarah Kellen According to Epstein pilot David Rodgers, Sarah Kellen began to take over Maxwell's role as "number two" in the Epstein organization after Maxwell entered a new romantic relationship around 2004 and started separating herself from Epstein around that time. She was listed alongside Nadia Marcinko, Lesley Groff, and Adriana Ross as unindicted co-conspirators in 2009, helping to supply Epstein's organization with underage girls.
Karyna Shuliak (2010–2019) Epstein's last female partner was Karyna Shuliak. Shuliak has not said she was one of his victims, and released files show that they had an eight-year relationship. He gave her a 33-carat diamond ring "in contemplation of marriage" and named her as a main beneficiary in his will: she could inherit as much as $100 million.
She met Epstein in 2011 when she was 21 years old. She was in the United States on a temporary student visa to study English and working as a dental assistant when another woman introduced her to Epstein. He donated about $210,000 to Columbia University to help her get into their dental school, Drs. Thomas Magnani and James Fine helped her prepare for the admissions exams, and Epstein paid her tuition.
Epstein provided financial support to her and her parents in Belarus. He helped her get US citizenship by setting up a marriage between her and one of his female victims after she overstayed her student visa. Epstein and Shuliak often professed their love to each other; they fought about his insistence on having sex with other women in their 20s including his assistants whom he called his "family". Shuliak traveled globally with him, helped manage his properties and staff, and lived in his New York mansion. She was helping him buy a Moroccan palace when he was arrested the final time.
She did not think he sounded suicidal when they spoke hours before his death, in a 15-minute call not logged and not recorded by his guards, as ought to have been the practice. In 2023, Shuliak was admitted to a postdoctoral program at Columbia, and she began practicing dentistry in New York after her 2025 graduation. In 2026, Shuliak was living in an apartment owned by Mark Epstein's real estate company.
Juvenile victims Virginia Giuffre met Ghislaine Maxwell in mid 2000, when she was almost 17, while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lagos. Life with Epstein provided a kind of security; he paid her, got her an apartment, and took her to New Mexico, London, Paris, Tangiers, and his island." A woman attested in a lawsuit that Epstein employed her to procure underage girls, including at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and she had witnessed a rape by Epstein.
Anouska De Georgiou, who says "Jeffrey thought that we were disposable", came to Epstein via modelling. Chauntae Davies and Rachel Benavidez came via massage services. Epstein manipulated Benavidez when they met at Zorro Ranch over two years, only to expel her from his circle when she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Benavidez said: "He provided me with promises of continuing education and a clientele that's a world-class clientele. And that's kind of how he lured his tentacles into me." Attorney Brad Edwards, who represents more than 200 victims, notes that while Epstein sexually abused all these women and girls, only a small percentage were sent to be abused by other men, who were also a select few.
Alleged children According to The Times, emails released by the U.S. authorities could suggest that Epstein might have fathered a number of children. One of his victims claimed to have given birth to a girl in about 2002 when she would have been 16 or 17 years old, but the child was taken from her by Ghislaine Maxwell 10 minutes after the birth. An email sent to him by Sarah Ferguson in 2011 congratulated him on the birth of a boy. FBI documents from 2020 contained claims of a victim who stated that she had seen "a picture of a blonde woman on the beach" in Epstein's New York home and he had mentioned to her that she was the mother of his child before showing her a "torso sculpture" of the same woman.
Acquaintances
Epstein was a longtime friend of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York), Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, and Tom Barrack, and attended parties with or otherwise frequented many prominent people, including Harvey Weinstein (who would also be convicted for sex offences), David Copperfield, Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Jack Horner, Noam Chomsky, Katie Couric, Woody Allen, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Lewis Ranieri, Ronald Perelman, Tom Pritzker, Naomi Campbell, and Stephen Hawking. Two printed phone directories belonging to Epstein, commonly referred to as the "black books", included Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, John Kerry, Richard Branson, Alec Baldwin, David Koch, and Michael Jackson. These books included Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, British prime minister Tony Blair, and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Epstein was involved with Sarah Ferguson and Maxwell maintains he bailed Ferguson out of financial difficulties; however, Epstein's relationship with Ferguson would become hostile by 2011. Epstein was seen at least once talking with Princess Diana. He negotiated a 1993 divorce settlement for Lynn Forester before she married Evelyn de Rothschild. Lady de Rothschild re-introduced Epstein to Alan Dershowitz; they had known each other at least since 1997, and their friendship was revealed by flight logs in 2015. Dershowitz said that "outside of his immediate family" he only showed manuscripts before they were published to his friend Epstein.
Epstein took Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker on a trip aboard his Boeing 727 jet. Clinton and Trump said they never visited Little Saint James, an island Epstein had owned since 1998, until his death. A Freedom of Information Act request in 2017 for U.S. Secret Service records found no evidence that Clinton ever visited Epstein's island, with Maxwell revealing in August 2025 that Clinton, who ceased having contact with Epstein in 2003, was connected to Epstein through her. However, Clinton was listed on Epstein's flight logs at least 11 times with Sarah Kellen between 2002 and 2003. Despite this, emails from 2011, including one which involved Epstein engaging in a private discussion over a stolen telephone book, and 2015 were also released in November 2025 which revealed that Epstein personally denied that Bill Clinton ever visited his island, with Epstein telling someone he identified as "the Duke" in the 2011 email: "[T]hese stories are complete ant utter fantasy,, I don't know and have never met Al gore, CLinton was never on the island ... the telephone book is not mine, it was stolen by my houseman that is currently in prison for doing so."