My ‘Chilling’ Encounter With Cornered Monster Jeffrey Epstein

Legendary editor Tina Brown says Jeffrey Epstein once showed up to her office—uninvited and unannounced—after the Daily Beast published an early investigation into his sex trafficking network.

“It was a very chilling experience,” Brown told The Daily Beast Podcast on Wednesday. “I mean, it was scary, actually.”

“He said, ‘Just stop.’ And he looked at me with this kind of snake eyes, cold, and it was menacing. It was really menacing. And he pointed his finger and he said, ‘Just stop.’”

Brown was editor-in-chief of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair before she co-founded the Daily Beast with Hollywood mogul turned internet entrepreneur Barry Diller. She was at the helm when the Beast published a series of investigative reports about the financier in 2010.

At the time, Epstein’s reputation remained relatively untarnished, despite a conviction in 2008 by a Florida state court, secured through a plea deal in which he admitted to soliciting a minor for prostitution.

The Daily Beast revealed that victims even then—nine years before more serious charges were brought against him—had told investigators that children as young as 12 had been flown around the U.S. and the world on private jets. Those allegations reported by Conchita Sarnoff should have led to his prosecution for sex-trafficking far earlier. The Daily Beast was the first outlet to report on the sweetheart deal that Epstein was able to negotiate with the authorities.

Brown says she knew Epstein and Donald Trump from the New York social scene in the ’80s and ’90s, and had run into both men at events on separate occasions.

Both Epstein and his lawyer called her after the publication of the first report, titled “Jeffrey Epstein, Billionaire Pedophile, Goes Free,” in July 2010, Brown recalled, but she declined to kill the story.

“And then a couple of days later, I went out to lunch, and I came back from lunch,” she said. “And sitting in my own office, in a chair in front of my desk, was, guess who? Jeffrey Epstein.”

“And I was stunned. I mean, I stood at the door just kind of aghast. Because my question is, like, how did he get past security?” she continued.

“I mean, he... was a master-class con man, so maybe he was just able always to kind of get what he wanted,” she added.

Brown informed Epstein the investigations would continue, prompting him to threaten, “There will be consequences if you don’t stop.”

“And he just got up, and he left my room,” she added.

Following his 2008 conviction, Epstein served a controversial 13-month stint in county jail that allowed him to spend his days at his office six days a week under a generous work-release deal.

It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges. He died in custody on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on charges that could have led to a life sentence. His death was ruled a suicide.

Questions have lingered in the years since, and Epstein’s death and case files have long been the subject of much speculation and a number of widespread conspiracy theories.

The Justice Department earlier this month moved to shut down the idea that Epstein was murdered or that the government possesses an Epstein “client list” of powerful people who committed similar crimes. It said no further documents would be released, prompting fiery fault lines to open up in the MAGA base, which had expected President Trump, a former Epstein associate, to be more forthcoming about the case.

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