WASHINGTON — A dozen U.S. senators are calling on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine the department’s failure to release all records pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by last Friday’s congressionally mandated deadline, saying victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined 11 Democrats in signing a letter Wednesday urging Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume to audit the Justice Department’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Given the [Trump] Administration’s historic hostility to releasing the files, politicization of the Epstein case more broadly, and failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a neutral assessment of its compliance with the statutory disclosure requirements is essential,” the senators wrote. Full transparency, they said, “is essential in identifying members of our society who enabled and participated in Epstein’s crimes.”
Murkowski and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) led the letter-writing group. Others included Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Adam Schiff of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, both Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Gary Peters of Michigan, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a co-sponsor of the transparency act, posted Wednesday on X: “DOJ did break the law by making illegal redactions and by missing the deadline.”
Despite the deadline, the Justice Department has said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. More batches of records were posted over the weekend and on Tuesday. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
“The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply that to protect victims,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “So the same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that were produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don’t want us to protect victims.”
Records that have been released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context. Records that hadn’t been seen before include transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Other records made public in recent days include a note from a federal prosecutor from January 2020 that said Trump had flown on the financier’s private plane more often than had been previously known and emails between Maxwell and someone who signs off with the initial “A.” They contain other references that suggest the writer was Britain’s former Prince Andrew. In one, “A” writes: “How’s LA? Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”
The senators’ call Wednesday for an inspector general audit comes days after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the disclosure and deadline requirements. In a statement, he called the staggered, heavily redacted release “a blatant cover-up.”
Walking out of a Skid Row market, Harold Cook, 42, decides to play a game.
How long after opening YouTube will it take for him to see an ad asking him to join the latest wave of sex abuse litigation against Los Angeles County?
“I can literally turn my phone on right now, something’s going to pop up,” said Cook, opening the app.
Within a few seconds, a message blares: “They thought you’d never speak up. They figured you was too young, too scared, too Black, too brown, too alone. … L.A. County already had to cough up $4 billion to settle these cases. So why not you?”
Since the historic April payout to resolve thousands of claims of sex abuse in county-run facilities, law firms have saturated L.A.’s airwaves and social media with campaigns seeking new clients. For months, government officials have quietly questioned who is financing the wall-to-wall marketing blitz.
The ad Cook heard was from Sheldon Law Group, one of several law firms active in sex abuse litigation in California that receive backing from private investors, according to loan notices and SEC filings. The investors, which often operate through Delaware companies, expect to profit from the payouts to resolve the cases.
Sheldon, based in Washington, D.C., has been one of the most prolific L.A. advertisers. The firm has already gathered roughly 2,500 potential clients, according to a list submitted to the county. The lawsuits started being filed this summer, raising the prospect of another costly settlement squeezed out of a government on the brink of a fiscal crisis.
“We act in the best interests of our clients, who are victims in every sense of the word and have suffered real and quite dreadful injuries,” a spokesperson for Sheldon Law Group said in a statement. “Without financial and legal support, these victims would be unable to hold the responsible parties, powerful corporate or governmental defendants, accountable.”
The financing deals have raised alarms among lawmakers, who say they want to know what portion of the billions poised to be diverted from government services to victims of horrific sex abuse will go to opaque private investors.
Kathryn Barger, a member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, said she was contacted by a litigation investor who sought to gauge whether sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. “This is so predatory,” Barger told The Times.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m getting calls from the East Coast asking me if people should invest in bankrupting L.A. County,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said. “I understand people want to make money, but I feel like this is so predatory.”
Barger said an old college friend who invests in lawsuits reached out this spring attempting to gauge whether L.A. County sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. Barger said the caller referred to the lawsuits as an “evergreen” investment.
“That means it keeps on giving,” she said. “There’s no end to it.”
The county has spent nearly $5 billion this year on sex abuse litigation, with the bulk of that total coming from the $4-billion deal this spring — the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.
The April settlement is under investigation by the L.A. County district attorney office following Times reporting that found plaintiffs who said they were paid by recruiters to join the litigation, including some who said they filed fraudulent claims. All were represented by Downtown LA Law Group, which handled roughly 2,700 plaintiffs.
Downtown LA Law Group has denied all wrongdoing and said it “only wants justice for real victims.” The firm took out a bank loan in summer 2024, according to a financing statement, but a spokesperson said they had no investor financing.
Lawyers who take the private financing say it’s a win-win. Investors make money on high-interest rate loans while smaller law firms have the capital they need to take on deep-pocketed corporations and governments. If people were victimized by predators on the county’s payroll, they deserve to have a law firm that can afford to work for free until the case settles. Money for investors, they emphasize, comes out of their cut — not the clients’.
But critics say the flow of outside money incentivizes law firms to amass as many plaintiffs as possible for the wrong reasons — not to spread access to justice, but rather ensure hefty profit for themselves and their financial backers.
“The amount of money being generated by private equity in these situations — that’s absurd,” said former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote the 2019 bill that opened the floodgate for older sex abuse claims to be filed. “Nobody should be getting wealthy off taxpayer dollars.”
For residents of L.A.’s poorest neighborhood, ads touting life-changing payouts have started to feel inescapable.
Waiting in line at a Skid Row food shelter, William Alexander, 27, said his YouTube streaming is punctuated by commercials featuring a robotic man he suspects is AI calling on him to sue the county over sex abuse.
Across the street, Shane Honey, 56, said nearly every commercial break on the news seems to feature someone asking if he was neglected at a juvenile hall.
In many of the ads, the same name pops up: Sheldon Law Group.
Austin Trapp, a case worker in Skid Row, was among several people in the neighborhood who said ads seeking people to join sex abuse litigation against L.A. County have become increasingly common.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Sheldon’s website lists no attorneys, but claims the firm is the “architect” behind “some of the largest litigations on Earth.” They list their headquarters online at a D.C. virtual office space, though the owners on their most recent business filing list their own addresses in New York. The firm’s name appears on websites hunting for people suffering from video game addiction, exposure to toxins from 9/11, and toe implant failure.
Sheldon Law Group was started by the founder of Legal Recovery Associates, a New York litigation funding company that uses money from investors including hedge funds to recruit large numbers of plaintiffs for “mass torts,” cases where many people are suing over the same problem, according to interviews with former advisers, court records and business filings.
Those clients are gathered for one of their affiliated law firms, including Sheldon Law Group, according to two people involved in past transactions.
Ron Lasorsa, a former Wall Street investment banker who said he advised Legal Recovery Associates on setting up the affiliate law firms, told The Times it was built to make investors “obscenely rich.”
“It’s extremely profitable for people who know what the hell they’re doing,” Lasorsa said.
The idea, he says, emerged from a pool cabana at a Las Vegas legal conference called Mass Torts Made Perfect in fall 2015.
A man visiting friends on Skid Row holds up his phone showing an ad recruiting clients for sex abuse case in Los Angeles County on December 11, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Lasorsa had just amassed 14,000 clients for personal injury lawsuits in one year using methods that, he now says, were legally dubious. A favorite at the time: using call centers in India that had access to Americans’ hospital records and phoning the patients to see if they were feeling litigious.
Near the pool at a Vegas hotel, Lasorsa said Howard Berger, a former hedge fund manager barred by the SEC from working as a broker, asked if he could turbocharge the caseload of Legal Recovery Associates, where he worked as a consultant.
Lasorsa said he soon teamed up with the founders of LRA — Gary Podell, a real estate developer, and Greg Goldberg, a former investment manager — to create “shell” law firms based in Washington. The nation’s capital is one of the few places where non-lawyers can own a law firm, profiting directly from case proceeds.
Goldberg, who is not licensed to practice law in D.C., would become a partner in at least six D.C. law firms including Sheldon Law Group by 2017, according to a contract between Legal Recovery Associates and a hedge fund that financed the firms’ cases.
Sheldon, which said it was responding on behalf of Podell, said in a statement that all their partners are lawyers, though declined to name them. Goldberg did not respond to a repeated request for comment.
The Sheldon spokesperson said Legal Recovery Associates is a separate entity that engages in its “own business and legal activities.”
Investors typically make money on litigation by providing law firms with loans, which experts say carry interest rates as high as 30%, representing the risk involved. If the case goes south, investors get nothing. If it settles, they make it all back — and then some.
Lasorsa said he helped the company gather 20,000 claims using the same Indian call centers before a bitter 2019 split. He later accused the owners of unethical behavior, which led to a half-million dollar settlement and a non-disparagement agreement that he said he decided to breach, leading to a roughly $600,000 penalty he has yet to pay, according to a court judgment.
Lasorsa was also ordered to delete any disparaging statements he’d made, according to the judgment.
D.C. law firms with non-lawyers as partners must have the “sole purpose” of providing “legal services,” according to the district’s bar. Some attorneys have argued no such service was provided by the firms associated with Legal Recovery Associates.
Troy Brenes, an Orange County attorney who co-counseled with one of the firms over flawed medical devices, accused the company of operating a “sham law firm” as part of a 2022 court battle over fees.
“The sole purpose … appears to have been to allow non-lawyers to market for product liability cases and then refer those cases to legitimate law firms in exchange for a portion of the attorney fees without making any effort to comply with the D.C. ethics rules,” Brenes wrote.
A spokesperson for Sheldon and LRA noted in a statement that “no court or arbitration panel has ever concluded” that its business structure violates the law.
In the medical device cases, the affiliate firm, which was responsible for funding the marketing campaign, took 55% of recoverable attorney fees, according to an agreement between the two firms. The profit divide mirrors the 55/45 breakdown between Sheldon Law Group and James Harris Law, a two-person Seattle firm they have partnered with on the L.A. County sex abuse cases, according to a retainer agreement reviewed by The Times.
A person on Skid Row in downtown L.A. shows an ad on their phone seeking plaintiffs to joint a lawsuit over sexual abuse in juvenile halls.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
This summer, ads linking to a webpage with the name of James Harris appeared online, telling potential clients they could qualify in 30 seconds for up to $1 million. When a Times reporter entered a cell-phone number on one of the ads, a representative who said they worked for the firm’s intake department called dozens of times.
After The Times described these marketing efforts in a story, Harris emphasized in an email that he did not know about the ads or the persistent calls and said they were done by his “referring firm.” The landing page the ads led to was replaced with the name of Sheldon Law Group.
Harris said his firm and Sheldon, which he described as “functioning as a genuine and independent co counsel law firm,” have “been highly selective and have only prosecuted cases that we believe are legally and factually meritorious.”
“I continue to believe that lawyer advertising, when conducted ethically and without misleading claims, serves as a vital tool for raising public awareness about legal rights and available recourse, particularly for survivors of abuse seeking justice,” he said.
Over the last five years, experts say, the practice of funding big mass tort cases has boomed in the U.S.
Of the five main firms in L.A. County’s initial $4-billion sex abuse settlement, two took money from outside investors shortly before they began suing the county, according to public loan filings.
The loans to both Herman Law, a Florida-based firm that specializes in sex abuse cases, and Slater Slater Schuman, a New York-based personal injury firm, came from Delaware-registered companies. Deer Finance, a New York City litigation funding firm that connects investors with lawyers, is listed on business records for both companies.
The loan documents do not specify which of the firms’ cases were funded, but show each deal was finalized within months of the firms starting to sue L.A. County for sex abuse. Neither firm responded to questions about how the outside funding was used.
Slater, which received the loan in spring 2022, represents more L.A. County plaintiffs than any other firm, by far.
Slater’s caseload surged after the county signaled its plan to settle for $4 billion in October 2024. Several of the main attorneys on the case told The Times they stopped advertising at that point, reasoning that any new plaintiffs would now mean less money for the existing ones.
The next month, Slater Slater Schulman ran more than 700 radio ads in Los Angeles seeking juvenile detention abuse claims, according to X Ante, a company that tracks mass tort advertisements.
By this summer, the number of claims jumped from roughly 2,100 to 3,700, according to court records, catapulting Slater far beyond the caseload of any other firm.
This fall, another Delaware-registered company took out a lien on all of Slater’s attorney fees from the county cases, according to an Oct. 6 loan record. The law firm assisting with the transaction declined to comment.
“These are extraordinarily complex cases and litigating these cases effectively requires resources,” said an outside attorney representing Slater in a statement, responding to questions from The Times.
The firm, which also represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts sex abuse cases, was singled out by the judge overseeing the litigation this fall for “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs. The firm was one of several called out by insurers in the litigation for using hedge fund money to “run up the claim number.”
The firm has said they’re working “tirelessly” to address the issues and justice for survivors is its top priority.
April Mannani, who says she was assaulted in the 1990s by an officer while she was housed at MacLaren Children’s Center, said she feels lawyers on the sex abuse cases are putting profits ahead of the best interests of clients.
(Jimena Peck/For The Times)
Many plaintiffs told The Times they were discouraged to see how much money stood to be made for others off their trauma.
April Mannani, 51, sued L.A. County after she said she was raped repeatedly as a teenager at MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter now notorious for abuse. Mannani accepts that her lawyers are entitled to a cut for their work on the case, but said she was disheartened watching the numbers of cases suddenly skyrocket this year. With the district attorney investigating, a pall has been cast over the entire settlement.
“We’ve been made fools of and we were used for financial gain,” she said. “They all just see it as a money grab.”
That firm that represents her, Herman Law, has filed roughly 800 cases against L.A. County. Herman Law took out a loan in 2021 from a Delaware-registered company affiliated with Deer Finance, according to a loan notice. The firm said they use traditional bank loans for “overall operations.”
Herman Law is the most prolific filer of county sex abuse cases outside of L.A. County since the state changed the statute of limitations.
Herman Law has filed about half of these roughly 800 sex abuse lawsuits that have been brought outside of L.A. County, according to data reviewed by The Times.
Herman Law has sued several tiny counties, where public officials say they’ve been inundated with advertisements on social media and TV looking for plaintiffs. Some counties say they threw out relevant records long ago and have no way to tell if the alleged victim was ever in local custody.
A judge fined Herman Law about $9,500 last month for failing to dismiss Kings County from a lawsuit despite presenting no evidence the county ever had custody of the victim, calling the claim “factually frivolous” and “objectively unreasonable.” An attorney for Herman Law said in a court filing the client believed she’d been in a foster home there, and the lack of records didn’t conclusively establish anything.
“There are not records. There’s nothing that exists,” said Jason Britt, the county administrative officer for Tulare County, which has been sued at least eight times by Herman Law. “Counties at some point are not gonna be able to operate because you’re essentially going to bankrupt them.”
The firm said its clients are always its top priority.
“No lender or financial relationship has ever influenced, directed or played any role in legal strategy, client decisions or case outcomes, including any matters involving the Los Angeles County,” the firm said. “Herman Law’s work is driven solely by our mission to advocate for survivors in their pursuit of justice and healing.”
Joseph Nicchitta, L.A. County’s acting chief executive officer, said he believed the region’s social safety net was now “an investment opportunity.” In an October letter to the State Bar, he called out the “explosive growth” of claims, arguing a handful of firms were “competing to bring as many cases as possible” to the detriment of their existing clients.
He estimated that attorney fees in the lawsuit would amount to more than $1 billion. “It begs reform,” he wrote.
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers unhappy with Justice Department decisions to heavily redact or withhold documents from a legally mandated release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein threatened Saturday to launch impeachment proceedings against those responsible, including Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general.
Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the omissions, while Democrats also accused the Justice Department of intentionally scrubbing the release of at least one image of President Trump, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggesting it could portend “one of the biggest coverups in American history.”
Trump administration officials have said the release fully complied with the law, and that its redactions were crafted only to protect victims of Epstein, a disgraced financier and convicted sex offender accused of abusing hundreds of women and girls before his death in 2019.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), an author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the release of the investigative trove, blasted Bondi in a social media video, accusing her of denying the existence of many of the records for months, only to push out “an incomplete release with too many redactions” in response to — and in violation of — the new law.
Khanna said he and the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), were “exploring all options” for responding and forcing more disclosures, including by pursuing “the impeachment of people at Justice,” asking courts to hold officials blocking the release in contempt, and “referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice.”
“We will work with the survivors to demand the full release of these files,” Khanna said.
He later added in a CNN interview that he and Massie were drafting articles of impeachment against Bondi, though they had not decided whether to bring them forward.
Massie, in his own social media post, said Khanna was correct in rejecting the Friday release as insufficient, saying it “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.”
The lawmakers’ view that the Justice Department’s document dump failed to comply with the law echoed similar complaints across the political spectrum Saturday, as the full scope of redactions and other withholdings came into focus.
The frustration had already sharply escalated late Friday, after Fox News Digital reported that the names and identifiers of not just victims but of “politically exposed individuals and government officials” had been redacted from the records — which would violate the law, and which Justice Department officials denied.
Among the critics was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who cited the Fox reporting in an exasperated post late Friday to X.
“The whole point was NOT to protect the ‘politically exposed individuals and government officials.’ That’s exactly what MAGA has always wanted, that’s what drain the swamp actually means. It means expose them all, the rich powerful elites who are corrupt and commit crimes, NOT redact their names and protect them,” Greene wrote.
Senior Justice Department officials later called in to Fox News to dispute the report. But the removal of a file published in the Friday evening release, capturing a desk in Epstein’s home with a drawer filled of photos of Trump, reinforced bipartisan concerns that references to the president had been illegally withheld.
In a release of documents from the Epstein family estate by the House Oversight Committee this fall, Trump’s name was featured over 1,000 times — more than any other public figure.
“If they’re taking this down, just imagine how much more they’re trying to hide,” Schumer wrote on X. “This could be one of the biggest coverups in American history.”
Several victims also said the release was insufficient. “It’s really kind of another slap in the face,” Alicia Arden, who went to the police to report that Epstein had abused her in 1997, told CNN. “I wanted all the files to come out, like they said that they were going to.”
Trump, who signed the act into law after having worked to block it from getting a vote, was conspicuously quiet on the matter. In a long speech in North Carolina on Friday night, he did not mention it.
However, White House officials and Justice Department leaders strongly pushed back against the notion that the release was somehow incomplete or out of compliance with the law, or that the names of politicians had been redacted.
“The only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law — full stop,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche. “Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim.”
Other Republicans defended the administration. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, said the administration “is delivering unprecedented transparency in the Epstein case and will continue releasing documents.”
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He’d been convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution in Florida, but served only 13 months in custody in what many condemned as a sweetheart plea deal for a well-connected and rich defendant.
Epstein’s crimes have attracted massive attention, including among many within Trump’s own political base, in part because of unanswered questions surrounding which of his many powerful friends may have also been implicated in crimes against children. Some of those questions have swirled around Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had what the president has described as a falling out.
Evidence has emerged in recent months that suggests Trump may have had knowledge of Epstein’s crimes during their friendship.
Epstein wrote in a 2019 email, released by the House Oversight Committee, that Trump “knew about the girls.” In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to help him sexually abuse girls, Epstein wrote that “the dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him … he has never once been mentioned.”
Trump has ardently denied any wrongdoing.
The records released Friday contained few if any major new revelations, but did include a complaint against Epstein filed with the FBI back in 1996 — which the FBI did little with, substantiating longstanding fears among Epstein’s victims that his crimes could have been stopped years earlier.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the president’s most consistent critics, wrote on X that Bondi should appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain under oath the extensive redactions and omissions, which he called a “willful violation of the law.”
“The Trump Justice Department has had months to keep their promise to release all of the Epstein Files,” Schiff wrote. “Epstein’s survivors and the American people need answers now.”
Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen were among the familiar faces in the latest batch of photographs released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in connection to the late Jeffrey Epstein. With the Justice Department preparing to make additional files public, the images underscore an uncomfortable truth for us all: The convicted sex offender moved comfortably among some of the most intelligent men in the world. Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.
Also in the release was a photograph of a woman’s lower leg and foot on what appears to be a bed, with a paperback copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” visible in the background. The 1955 novel centers on a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Epstein, a serial sexual abuser, famously nicknamed one of his private planes “The Lolita Express.” And we are to believe that some of the globe’s brightest minds could not put the dots together?
Donald Trump, who once described himself as “a very stable genius,” included.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.
“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Here’s the reality: Democrats like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked, and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”
Jackson has a point.
Democrats were cherry-picking which photos to release, even if many of the men pictured were aligned with progressives. That includes the president, who was a Democrat when he and Epstein were running together in New York in the 2000s. Trump didn’t register as a Republican until 2009. Now whether the choice of photos and timing was designed to shield political friends or weaponize against perceived enemies isn’t clear. What is clear is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of this is a hoax.
The victims are real. The flight logs are real. The millions that flowed into Epstein’s bank account have wire transfer confirmation numbers that can be traced. What Democrats are doing with the information is politics as usual. And you don’t want politics to dictate who gets justice and who gets vilified.
Whatever the politicians’ intentions, Americans can decide how to react to the disclosures. And what the men around Epstein did with the information they gathered on his jet or his island fits squarely at the heart of the national conversation about masculinity. What kind of men could allow such abuse to continue?
I’m not saying the intelligent men in Epstein’s ecosystem did something criminal, but the lack of whistleblowing before his arrest raises questions about their fortitude for right and wrong. And the Trump White House trying to characterize this conversation as a partisan witch hunt — a hoax — is an ineffective strategy because the pattern with their use of that word is so clear.
We saw what happened on Jan. 6, and Trump tells us the investigation is a hoax. We hear the recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to find votes, and he tells us the investigation is a hoax. Trump campaigned on affordability issues — the cost of bacon, no taxes on tips — but now that he’s in office such talk is a hoax by Democrats. As if we don’t know the price of groceries in real time. Ten years ago, Trump told us he had proof that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We’re still waiting.
In his book, “Art of the Deal,” Trump framed his lies as “truthful hyperbole” but by now we should understand for him hyperbole matters more than truth — and his felony convictions confirm that some of his claims were indeed simply false.
So if there is a hoax, it is the notion that none of the brilliant men whom Epstein kept in his orbit had any idea what was going on.
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
The release of photographs and documents from the House Oversight Committee demonstrates that Epstein moved freely among some of the world’s most accomplished and intelligent individuals, including Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.
Either these prominent men failed to recognize warning signs despite obvious indicators like Epstein’s “Lolita Express” nickname referencing a novel about child sexual abuse, or they recognized the reality and chose silence—neither explanation reflects well on their character.
Claims that this is a hoax lack credibility because the evidence is concrete: the victims are real[1], the flight logs are documented[1][3], and the millions flowing through Epstein’s bank accounts have verifiable wire transfer confirmation numbers.
The apparent lack of whistleblowing from the men in Epstein’s ecosystem before his 2019 arrest raises serious questions about their moral fortitude and willingness to stand against wrongdoing.
The Trump administration’s strategy of characterizing these disclosures as a partisan witch hunt is ineffective, given the pattern of applying the term “hoax” to numerous matters that subsequently proved to be substantiated, from investigations into January 6 to documented pressuring of Georgia officials.
Regardless of whether Democrats’ selection of which photographs to release was politically motivated, legitimate questions about masculinity and moral responsibility remain central to the national conversation.
Different views on the topic
Democrats selectively released cherry-picked photographs with random redactions designed to create a false narrative while attempting to shield their own political allies, including figures like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries who solicited money and meetings from Epstein after his conviction.
The timing and selection of photographs released by House Democrats appear strategically designed to weaponize the Epstein matter against political opponents while deflecting scrutiny from Democratic figures who also maintained connections to the convicted sex offender[2].
The Trump administration has demonstrated greater commitment to transparency on the Epstein matter through the release of thousands of pages of documents and calls for further investigations into Epstein’s connections to Democratic associates.
Characterizing this as purely a partisan response overlooks the fact that prominent figures across the political spectrum, including those who were Democrats when they associated with Epstein in the 2000s, had connections requiring examination[2].
WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Rosenberg is still trying to understand why President Trump would free the man who defrauded him out of a quarter of a million dollars.
Rosenberg, a retired wholesale produce distributor living in Nevada, has supported Trump since he entered politics, but the president’s decision in November to commute the sentence of former private equity executive David Gentile has left him angry and confused.
“I just feel I’ve been betrayed,” Rosenberg, 68, said. “I don’t know why he would do this, unless there was some sort of gain somewhere, or some favor being called in. I am very disappointed. I kind of put him above this kind of thing.”
Trump’s decision to release Gentile from prison less than two weeks into his seven-year sentence has drawn scrutiny from securities attorneys and a U.S. senator — all of whom say the White House’s explanation for the act of clemency is not adding up. It’s also drawn the ire of his victims.
“I think it is disgusting,” said CarolAnn Tutera, 70, who invested more than $400,000 with Gentile’s company, GPB Capital. Gentile, she added, “basically pulled a Bernie Madoff and swindled people out of their money, and then he gets to go home to his wife and kids.”
Gentile and his business partner, Jeffry Schneider, were convicted of securities and wire fraud in August 2024 for carrying out what federal prosecutors described as a $1.6-billion Ponzi scheme to defraud more than 10,000 investors. After an eight-week trial, it took a jury five hours to return a guilty verdict.
More than 1,000 people attested to their losses after investing with GPB, according to federal prosecutors who described the victims as “hardworking, everyday people.”
When Gentile and Schneider were sentenced in May, Joseph Nocella Jr., the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, and Christopher Raia, a senior official in the Justice Department, called their punishment “well deserved” and a warning to would-be fraudsters.
“May today’s sentencing deter anyone who seeks to greedily profit off their clients through deceitful practices,” Raia said in a statement.
Then, on Nov. 26 — just 12 days after Gentile reported to prison — Trump commuted his sentence with “no further fines, restitution, probation, or other conditions,” according to a grant of clemency signed by Trump. Under those terms, Gentile may not have to pay $15 million that federal prosecutors are seeking in forfeiture.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters this month that prosecutors had failed to tie “supposedly fraudulent” representations to Gentile and that his conviction was a “weaponization of justice” led by the Biden administration — even though the sentences and convictions were lauded by Trump’s own appointees.
The White House declined to say who advised Trump in the decision or whether Trump was considering granting clemency to Schneider, Gentile’s co-defendant. Attorneys for Gentile and Schneider did not respond to a request seeking comment.
Adam Gana, a securities attorney whose firm has represented more than 250 GPB investors, called the White House’s explanation “a word salad of nonsense,” and questioned why Trump granted Gentile a commutation, which lessens a sentence, rather than a pardon, which forgives the offense itself.
“If the government wasn’t able to prove their case, why not pardon David Gentile? And why is his partner still in prison?” Gana said. “It’s left us with more questions than answers.”
‘It hurts a lot’
To Rosenberg, Tutera and two other investors interviewed by The Times, the president’s decision stripped away any sense of closure they felt after Gentile and Schneider were convicted.
Rosenberg has tried not to dwell on the $250,000 he lost in 2016, after a broker “painted a beautiful picture” of steady returns and long-term profits. The investments were supposed to generate income for him during retirement.
“A quarter of a million dollars, it hurts a lot,” Rosenberg said. “It changed a lot of things I do. Little trips that I wanted to take with my grandkids — well, they’re not quite as nice as they were planned on being.”
Jeffrey Rosenberg, a longtime Trump supporter, said he felt “betrayed” after the president granted clemency to convicted fraudster David Gentile.
(Scott Sady / For The Times)
Tutera, who runs a hormone replacement therapy office in Arizona, invested more than $400,000 with GPB at the recommendation of a financial advisor. She hoped the returns would help support her retirement after her husband had died.
“I was on grief brain at the time and just feel I was taken advantage of and really sold a bill of goods,” said Tutera, 70. Now, she says: “I have to keep working to make up for what I was owed.” She has been able to recover only about $40,000.
Tutera said her sister, Julie Ullman, and their 97-year-old mother also fell victim to the scheme. Their mother lost more than $100,000 and now finds herself spending down savings she had planned to leave to her children and not trusting people, she said.
“That’s really sad,” Tutera said. “People, unfortunately, have turned into thieves, liars and cheaters, and I don’t know what’s happened to the world, but we’ve lost our way to be kind.”
Ullman, 58, who manages a medical practice in Arizona, said the financial loss was life-changing.
“I’m going to have to work longer than I thought I would because that was my retirement fund,” Ullman said.
Mei, a 71-year-old licensed acupuncturist who asked to not use her full name out of embarrassment, said a broker introduced her to the GPB investment funds at a lunch meeting targeting divorced women. She eventually invested $500,000 and lost all of it. It was only through lawsuits that she was able to recover roughly $214,000 of her money, she said.
Mei had planned to retire in New York to be close to her children. But the loss of income has forced her to live in China, where the cost of living is much lower, six months out of the year, she said.
Mei fears Trump’s decision to commute Gentile’s sentence will allow these schemes to continue.
“Donald Trump is promoting more white-collar financial criminals, for sure,” Mei said. “How unfair.”
Bob Van De Veire, a securities attorney who has represented more than 100 GPB investors, said he has mostly handled negligence cases against the brokers who touted GPB investments.
“Based on all the red flags that were present, they should have never sold these investments at all,” Van De Veire said.
Gana, the securities attorney, added that he will continue to fight for victims in civil court, noting the clemency only addressed the criminal conviction.
The commutation caught the eye of Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who sent a letter to the White House last week asking several questions: Why, for example, did Gentile receive clemency while Schneider did not? And what were the trial errors cited as a reason for the commutation? He said victims deserve answers.
“They will not forget that when they needed their government to stand with them against the man who stole their futures, their President chose to stand with the criminal instead,” Gallego wrote.
Rosenberg, the retiree from Nevada, said he still supports the president but can’t help but think Trump’s decision makes him “look like another of the swamp” that Trump says he wants to drain.
“I think Trump does a lot of good things,” he said, “but this is a bad one.”
Still, Rosenberg is hopeful Trump may do right by the victims — even if it’s just by admitting he made a mistake.
“I would like to think that he was fed some bad information somewhere along the way,” he said. “If that is the case … at least come forward and say, ‘I regret it.’ ”
A coalition of Eaton fire survivors and community groups called on Southern California Edison on Tuesday to provide immediate housing assistance to the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Jan. 7 wildfire.
The coalition says an increasing number of Altadena residents are running out of insurance coverage that had been paying for their housing since they were displaced by the fire. Thousands of other residents had no insurance.
“When a company’s fire destroys or contaminates homes, that company has a responsibility to keep families housed until they can get back home,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, one of the coalition members asking Edison for emergency assistance of up to $200,000 for each family.
At the coalition’s press conference, Altadena residents spoke of trying to find a place to live after the Jan. 7 fire that killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes, apartments and other structures. Thousands of other homes were damaged by smoke and ash.
Gabriel Gonzalez, center, an Eaton Fire survivor, shown with Joy Chen, Executive Director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network (EFSN), left, and other survivors at a press conference in Altadena. They urged Southern California Edison to provide urgent housing relief to keep Eaton Fire families housed this winter.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
Gabriel Gonzalez said he had been living in his car for most of the last year.
Before the fire, Gonzalez had a successful plumbing company with six employees, he said. He had moved into an apartment in Altadena just a month before the fire and lost $80,000 worth of tools when the building was destroyed.
His insurance did not cover the loss, Gonzalez said, and he lost his business.
Edison is now offering to directly pay fire victims for their losses if they give up their right to file a lawsuit against the utility.
But members of the coalition say Edison’s program is forcing victims who are most desperate for financial support to give up their legal right to fair compensation.
Andrew Wessels, Strategy Director for the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, speaks about Edison’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Plan (WRCP).
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
“If families are pushed to give up what they are owed just to survive, the recovery will never have the funds required to rebuild homes, restore livelihoods or stabilize the community,” said Andrew Wessels. He said he and his family had lived in 12 different places since the fire left ash contaminated with lead on and in their home.
In an interview Tuesday, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said the company would not provide money to victims without them agreeing to drop any litigation against the company for the fire.
“I can’t even pretend to understand the challenges victims are going through,” Pizarro said.
He said the company created its Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program to get money to victims much faster than if they filed a lawsuit and waited for a settlement.
“We want to help the community rebuild as quickly as possible,” he said.
Pizarro said Edison made its first payment to a victim within 45 days of the compensation program launching on Oct. 29. So far, he said, the company has received more than 1,500 claims.
The company has said a leading theory is that its century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which it last used in 1971, briefly became energized from the live lines running parallel to it, sparking the fire.
The program offers to reimburse victims for their losses and provides additional sums for pain and suffering. It also gives victims a bonus for agreeing to settle their claim outside of court.
Pizarro said the program is voluntary and if victims don’t like the offer they receive from Edison, they can continue their claims in court.
Edison has told its investors that it believes it will be reimbursed for all of its payments to victims and lawsuit settlements by $1 billion in customer-paid insurance and a $21 billion state wildfire fund.
Zaire Calvin, of Altadena, a survivor who has lost his home and other properties, speaks.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created the wildfire fund in 2019 to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their electric wires cause a disastrous wildfire.
State officials say the fund could be wiped out by Eaton fire damages. While the first $21 billion was contributed half by customers of the state’s three biggest for-profit utilities and half by the companies’ shareholders, any additional damage claims from the Jan. 7 fire will be paid by Edison customers, according to legislation passed in September.
Some Altadena residents say Edison’s compensation program doesn’t pay them fully for their losses.
Damon Blount said that he and his wife had just renovated their home before it was destroyed in the fire. They don’t believe Edison’s offer would be enough to cover that work.
Blount said he “felt betrayed” by the utility.
“They literally took everything away from us,” Blount said. “Do the right thing, Edison. We want to be home.”
At the press conference, fire victims pointed out that Edison reported nearly $1.3 billion in profits last year, up from $1.2 billion in 2023.
Last week, Edison International said it was increasing the dividend it pays to its shareholders by 6% because of its strong financial performance.
“Their stock is rising,” said Zaire Calvin, one of the Altadena residents calling on Edison for emergency relief. Calvin lost his home and his sister died in the fire. “They will not pay a penny when this is over.”
