He got by with a little help from his friends. From British royalty to White House alumni, from a Silicon Valley investor to a leftwing academic, connections and influence were the ultimate currency for Jeffrey Epstein.

Yet none appeared to challenge Epstein over his horrific crimes. If silence is complicity, the casual disdain of the elite circles he moved in spoke volumes.

Emails released this week by the House of Representatives’ oversight committee revealed how Epstein maintained contact with business executives, reporters, academics and political players despite his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Epstein’s death – he was charged with sex trafficking in 2019 and killed himself in prison a month later – has long been a magnet for conspiracy theories but the documents expose a reality less about a shadowy cabal and more about a system of power that operates in plain sight, indifferent to conviction or consequence.