The King of Sports at the White House
In the time of Epstein
We saw Democrats win big up and down the ballot recently, also about affordability in many respects. President Trump won the most recent presidential elections in large part because people cared about the economy more than any other issues that the Democrats were pressing.
So it feels really remarkable that after all of this, Democrats are focusing on Jeffrey Epstein. So what do you make of that?
–Rachel Abrams, hosting The Daily on November 13
I spat my toothpaste. What an insane question! Any government of any party should be embarrassed not to understand the sex trafficker with a big network, intelligence ties, private jets, and determination to pull strings in the halls of power. Duh.
We have been learning, by glimpses over a decade, that the way the world works at the highest levels–of finance, politics, power, and even sports–is opaque by design and not at all as designed by the framers of the Constitution.
For example, everyone knows Brexit changed the United Kingdom forever; only recently, though, is it clear that it all happened with a coalition that included Epstein and his dark money insight.
Analogous things have been happening in the U.S. and, bummer, the NBA. There’s an Epstein cancer in the halls of power. New information arriving right now is the spyhole us regular folks can peek through to understand the creepy movements of many titans of our time. Not sure how anyone, certainly a journalist, can say to themselves “that’s probably fine let’s leave that alone.”
To me, the people who demand to understand are, sure, politicians with angles, but also anyone curious about our world. Now we know enough that we should never again refer to an Epstein “conspiracy theory.” It’s real. Epstein had a powerful network and used it. What exactly did they get up to? To what extent are they still around? It’s like wanting to understand flooding, cancer, or calf strains. When we watch the news, and see powerful people declaring this or that position–are they declaring their beliefs, or are they part of Epstein’s cabal, maybe even in his video collection, and having their strings pulled from elsewhere?
Don’t we need to know that?
Over the very same few days that the House and then the Senate demonstrated they would not let Trump drive on the Epstein issue, Trump had a visitor in the White House: Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia.
MBS is the most important person in all of sports. The NBA’s recent surge in team valuations has followed an influx of private equity money–the ballroom where Trump entertained MBS and his entourage was stuffed with private equity people who have raised tons of money from Saudi Arabia, some of which has led to a surge in sports valuations.
No one in sports can ignore the Saudi influence. When the PGA wouldn’t play ball with Saudi Arabia, the kingdom ended the PGA’s monopoly on elite pro golf by launching LIV golf. The NBA has been aggressive in forming NBA Europe out of money-losing teams, maybe because if they don’t lavish money on pro basketball in Europe, they could have a LIV hoops situation on their hands.
And what is behind the extraordinary runup in NBA franchise valuations, even as the fundamentals of the NBA business don’t justify it? It’s the influx of offshore money from Saudi Arabia and a short list of other places where Epstein focused his attention in the final decade of his life. More than one pro sports team, right now, has a very real business plan of doing X, Y, and Z to attract Saudi money and an irrational valuation.
Of course it’s all close to the NBA. Scott O’Neil is a guy I have met many times, because he once ran the business of the 76ers. Now he runs LIV Golf for the kingdom. When he worked for the 76ers, O’Neil worked for Josh Harris, who both Daryl Morey’s boss and on the guest list of Trump’s MBS dinner.
As MBS and Trump sat down together on Tuesday, they were two men who–you can see for yourself–had both appeared in framed keepsake photos in Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion.
On Wednesday, Michael Wolff wrote on his Substack that Epstein planned to relocate to Riyadh. And Wolff adds:
Trump and Epstein’s long relationship, other than about the girls, was about the grift. Follow the money would certainly not be bad advice for getting to the bottom of what was going on with these Palm Beach Bros.
And, if you followed it, you’d likely end up in last night’s dinner at the White House.
Epstein and MBS go way back. Epstein visited MBS in 2016, and according to his own emails, said he received a gift of a massive tent complete with rugs. In 2017, MBS–who was the sixth son of the 25th son of the original king and thus not at all on track to lead the nation–conducted a coup to take over Saudi Arabia. A huge chunk of the royal family was excommunicated, stripped of their fortunes, or neutered–leaving a whole new power structure built around MBS.
When a reporter emailed Epstein to ask if his contacts in the Saudi leadership had survived the purge, Epstein replied “All. With gods help. ;)”
Take a breath here, and think about who runs the world. Is Epstein bragging that he played a key role bringing MBS to power? And if he did, what does MBS owe in return?
There’s evidence Epstein brought young women to Saudi Arabia. In his book Too Famous, Michael Wolff reports on a conversation he had with Epstein about a photo in Epstein’s house, of Epstein and MBS cracking up:
Epstein said: ‘Do you know why he’s laughing?’
Bannon said: ‘Because he just cut up Khashoggi?’ referring to Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi American Washington Post journalist who was dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.
Epstein said: ‘No, because I just told him I smuggled girls into the kingdom dressed as airline stewardesses—the penalty for which is’, at which point Epstein brought down an imaginary saber.
The next year, Epstein emailed that MBS had the entire Louvre to himself and 400 body guards (talk about a Louvre heist!) and it seemed he had invited Epstein to join him there.
On May 15, 2019 Epstein sent the following messages:
“I love the idea that the g20 next year, hosted by MBS.”
“i wonder if the center pieces will be the “ heads “ of corporations :)”
“would give new meaning to want to be at the head table”
I’m honestly not sure if those references are to sex or the assassination and dismemberment, months earlier, of MBS critic Jamal Khashoggi.
In July 2019, when Epstein was arrested, one of the many interesting things authorities found in his house was a passport with a fake name and an address in Saudi Arabia.
Both Trump and Epstein learned a lot from Adnan Khashoggi, who traveled with an infinite supply of young women and prostitutes and ended up being a wildly successful arms dealer, mostly by convincing U.S. firms to sell massive quantities of military equipment to the then-newish country of Saudi Arabia. When authorities dug into Khashoggi’s work, all kinds of U.S. military contractors got in trouble, and new legislation called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was born. One of Trump’s first acts in office was to announce that the FCPA would not be enforced.
And indeed Saudi Arabia once again seems to have a curious ability to convince the U.S. to deal. The U.S. didn’t sell the United Arab Emirates its most advanced fighter jets out of concern they’d share the technology with China. Reportedly, the intelligence community is also concerned that Saudi Arabia could share the technology with China, but Trump is doing the deal anyway. Trump also lifted restrictions on high-end microchips that could fuel the kingdom’s AI future, whatever that might look like. There’s a rare earths project, and all kinds of AI.
The word “nuclear” pops up. Some of these are irreversible historic shifts–MBS can’t be ungiven these tools. He’s young, will be around for a long time, and will do whatever he wants with tools he gets now.
Maybe everyone in positions of power thinks it’s a good idea. Or maybe they’ve been pressured by some cabal with special leverage. Do we have a good mechanism in place to “rescue” people who want out of Epstein’s shadow?
Many figures from the sports world appear in strange places in Trump’s orbit. (Here’s the social media account of the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Tilman Fertitta. Yes, that Tilman Fertitta.) Another early Trump appointment that raised eyebrows for me was Jay Clayton. The most badass prosecutors in the justice system are in the Southern District of New York. If you have ties to New York and get in huge trouble, the SDNY might be coming for you. Sam Bankman-Fried, Ghislaine Maxwell, Diddy … Jeffrey Epstein himself had been charged by the SDNY when he died in custody.
In Trump’s first term, he battled the head of the SDNY, Geoffrey Berman, evidently after Berman kept prosecuting people Trump didn’t want him to prosecute. Then Trump tried to bring in his own guy, Jay Clayton to run SDNY, but couldn’t get the Senate to sign off.
In the second administration, Trump appointed Clayton to that gig from the start. That meant Clayton would have to resign his other jobs—including his four-year, multimillion-dollar stint as the chairman of Apollo Global. Apollo Global, the NBA’s most important source of cash, where Josh Harris got the money to buy the 76ers and Commanders. There was an opening for a new chairman because the last guy–firm founder Leon Black–had funded Jeffrey Epstein to the tune of almost $200 million and resigned in disgrace.
Exactly why Leon Black did that has never been well explained, which strikes me as a massive hole in our understanding of Epstein and his enterprise. Does anyone believe it was all about tax advice?
Now our lack of understanding about Apollo Global could become a massive roadblock in the release of the Epstein files. The Venn diagram of Clayton’s career had some other overlap with Epstein, too: Clayton worked with banks Epstein reportedly used like JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, and The Weinstein Company run by Epstein’s friend Harvey Weinstein. Clayton also represented noted financier Reid Hoffman.
In early November, Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the judiciary committee, sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Raskin said the famously independent Southern District of New York, working with the FBI, had interviewed more than 50 of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.
“As these survivors made clear to DOJ and FBI, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell did not act alone,” Raskin writes. “The information provided by this huge group of women was precise and detailed: they described how Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell, and their co-conspirators orchestrated a sophisticated and clandestine sex trafficking conspiracy that trafficked them to at least 20 men. These survivors shared with DOJ and FBI the specific identities of many of these co-conspirators, how this operation was structured and financed, and which individuals facilitated these crimes.”
In other words: the investigation we all want.
Before he died, Epstein’s former business partner Steve Hoffenberg and I spoke often, largely about Epstein’s role in arms dealing. Hoffenberg repeated like a mantra that this story was about “Epstein and his large group.”
Who is the large group?
“It’s gigantically deep,” Hoffenberg said. “These are the largest crimes in American history, and it hasn’t been exposed yet. I believe it’s going to get very deeply exposed. I don’t see how they can not expose it. You’re on the tip of the iceberg. Is that where you want to be?”
The most obvious thing ever is that all kinds of people involved in … whatever Epstein was up to exactly … have not tasted justice:
There’s a man in England with the new name of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who’s no longer known as Prince Andrew, because of his association with Epstein. Losing a title like that takes evidence! If he behaved legally, why the excommunication? If he behaved illegally, why no charges?
There are allegations of $1.5 billion in Epstein-related transactions through blue-chip financial institutions like JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and Bank of New York Mellon.
Jes Staley no longer runs Barclay’s bank because of his Epstein associations.
In a recent email dump, Epstein asked current U.S. ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack to “make me smile” by sending “photos of you and child.”
Here’s a story about an Israeli spy who stayed for weeks with Epstein in New York, and it appears Epstein wired him money.
Peter Thiel, Ehud Barak, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Steve Bannon … so many names have come up close to Epstein.
But in January 2025, the very month Donald Trump was sworn in, the case files from that SDNY investigation were transferred to the Department of Justice, which has been run by Bondi since February.
In July, the whole investigation was announced finished, leaving too many loose ends to count. Raskin points out that FBI director Kash Patel “refused to answer whether he had subpoenaed Mr. Epstein’s lawyers and accountants, dodging the question by saying they were part of an investigation in 2018 and 2019. But that ignores years of subsequent investigation and disclosures by survivors. Since that time, there have been additional horrifying revelations regarding how bankers, accountants, attorneys, and other facilitators enabled the financial transactions and legal paperwork—including sham marriages orchestrated between Epstein victims—necessary to carry out this sprawling sex trafficking enterprise.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that this has all taken a compelling turn recently, with Congress sending the president, dang near unanimously (way to make history, lone holdout Clay Higgins) a demand to release all of the Epstein files. President Trump signed it, but few expect unfettered access to the records—the legislation allows records to be withheld for various reasons including if they would jeopardize an active federal investigation.
Many have pointed out that Trump recently directed the Department of Justice to investigate Epstein’s ties to people like Bill Clinton and Reid Hoffman. Those investigations could easily be used as a justification to withhold a lot.
When Trump wrote on social media that the Epstein story was another “Russia, Russia, Russia scam” that was really about democrats and not him, Pam Bondi immediately responded on X that “SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and that she had asked him to take the lead. (Which means, among other things, that she asked Jay Clayton to investigate his former client, Reid Hoffman.)
“So where is AG Bondi sending this new Epstein investigation?” asks former Deputy Chief of the Southern District Kristy Greenberg on her YouTube channel. “To the SDNY. As the former deputy chief of SDNY Criminal Division, here’s my unsolicited advice to my former colleagues: Don’t touch this. You know exactly what this is: a political hit job disguised as an investigation. You know that abusing prosecutorial power for a political game is wrong. You know the job is to follow the facts and the law without fear or favor. You know, SDNY earned its reputation as the sovereign district for not bending the knee. Don’t sacrifice your ethics, your integrity or your reputation for this circus. They may appeal to your ambition—do the dirty work and set yourself up for a front page headline and a fast track to a job with a fancy title. Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap. The second things go wrong, they will throw you under the bus. I know it’s not easy to refuse an assignment, especially when doing so will cost you your dream job, but being a minion who does Donald Trump’s bidding, that isn’t the job you signed up for.”
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would stick their neck out, at this point, to squash a real investigation into Epstein. Who would do that?
Greenberg takes it as a done deal that the answer is Jay Clayton. “Let’s be real,” Greenberg says, “Clayton was never a [high-level federal prosecutor]. He doesn’t know how to do this job. But you do. Trust your gut, follow your principles, honor your oath. Don’t become the next black sheep to disgrace the SDNY.”
As a fan of sports and regular decent folk, I am eager for a future where the big decisions are made by people who, like most of us, have no ties to Jeffrey Epstein at all.
Thank you for reading TrueHoop!
Thank you so much for your remarkable reporting. The links to your older reports make me want to get a gigantic white board and construct a diagram with all the people involved, but I’m afraid that I’d end up looking like Matthew McConaughey in True Detective. Thanks again for an enlightening and fascinating read.
Hard as nails.