David Brooks Said Don’t Tell Me In The Epstein Story And Then It Ended Up In Epstein Photos
WASHINGTON – A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks urged people to put the Jeffrey Epstein scandal behind them.
“Epstein’s story? Tell me,” says the title of his November 21 opinion piece. In it, he laments that the American political class has spent months trying to get a clearer picture of the late convicted sex offender’s ties to President Donald Trump and other powerful people, and what they might have known about Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring.
The country faces much more pressing problems, Brooks argued, and the real reason people are so focused on the Epstein scandal is because “the QAnon mentality has taken over America,” referring to a far-right political conspiracy theory centered on a deep state cabal of elite liberal pedophiles.
It’s also not fair to lump all rich and well-connected people into the category of “the Epstein class,” he argued. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has been using this phrase, something he said he learned from voters who asked him if he is on the side of “forgotten Americans” or “the Epstein class.”
“I know a thing or two about the American elite, ahem, and if you’ve read my work, you may be sick of my attacks on educated elites for being insular, self-indulgent, and smug,” Brooks wrote. “But the phrase ‘the Epstein class’ is inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible. Say what you want about our financial, educational, nonprofit and political elites, but they are not mass rapists.”
The veteran New York Times columnist may have wanted to distance himself from the Epstein scandal, but he found it Thursday, when Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released more photos provided by Epstein’s estate, and Brooks was in them.
He appears in four of these photos, all of which appear to be from the same event. One shows Brooks smiling for the cameraand another shows him sitting at a table close to the co-founder of Google Sergey Brin. Two more images show Brooks in the background, apparently holding a glass of wineand then again, talking to brin.
Epstein does not appear in any of the photos with Brooks, but he does appear in two separate photos which appear to be from the same event.
The footage does not show Brooks doing anything strange or wrong. She was simply hanging out with a group of rich and famous powerful men, one of whom turned out to be a registered sex offender who had pleaded guilty three years earlier to state charges of procuring minors into prostitution.
When asked for comment on Brooks’ appearance in Epstein’s latest photo dump, The New York Times responded almost immediately.
“As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with prominent and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this one attendance at a well-attended dinner,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of communications at the New York Times, told News themezone in an emailed statement.
James Leynse via Getty Images
Khanna, for her part, said it’s important for people to distinguish between Epstein’s conspirators and people like Brooks who were photographed with him but had nothing to do with his crimes.
“I think the guilty people are those who abuse women or cover up for them,” Khanna told News themezone on Thursday, after seeing Brooks’ photos. “There are a lot of people, obviously, who just met him, and I don’t think we can paint everyone with the same brush.”
Still, it appears that certain people in Epstein’s social circle knew what he was doing.
Several of those who submitted notes for Epstein’s 2003 “birthday book” seemed familiar with his predilection for underage girls. One crude drawing, for example, shows Epstein giving balloons to little girls in a panel marked 1983, and then being massaged by topless women in a panel marked 2003.
Trump, who also contributed, said of Epstein in 2003 that he is a fantastic guy. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump told New York Magazine. “It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are younger. There’s no doubt about it: Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
The president has claimed he cut ties with Epstein around 2004, but emails released last month by the House committee suggest they were in contact as recently as 2017. Epstein committed suicide in prison in 2019.
The Trump administration said earlier this year that it planned to investigate another of Epstein’s friends, former President Bill Clinton, for his ties to Epstein. But in July, after a thorough review of the Epstein case files, the Justice Department concluded that no new material would be released and that no charges were warranted against anyone in Epstein’s orbit.
“This systematic review did not reveal any incriminating ‘customer lists,'” the department said. “Nor was any credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent people as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that would predicate an investigation against unindicted third parties.”
Epstein’s only accomplice serving time is Ghislaine Maxwell, whom the administration recently moved to a minimum-security prison camp and whom Trump has suggested he might pardon.
The latest release of Epstein photos by House Democrats comes a day before the Justice Department will have to release essentially all of its files on Epstein to the public, after Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill last month requiring it to do so. The Trump administration previously refused to release these documents, but lawmakers essentially forced Trump to sign their bill, which requires the Justice Department to place all of its materials in a searchable public database by Friday.