It was one of the biggest political events in Washington in 2019.

A Democratic member of the committee, Stacey Plaskett, was preparing to question Cohen when the camera caught her texting someone on her phone.

This week, the public learned the identity of the other person in that communication: the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Emails released by his executors under a court order show that he was urging the congresswoman to ask about an employee of the Trump Organization.

After Plaskett did so, Epstein sent her a message saying, “Well done.”

The Scope of His Influence

In retrospect, the incident struck a chord with many who point to how it highlights the extent of the late investor's influence within the American elite.

Plaskett, a representative for the U.S. Virgin Islands, has denied that she was soliciting Epstein's advice, saying that she had sent messages to many people that day, including Epstein, who was one of her voters.

As a former lawyer, she argued, she has learned to seek information from various sources, including people she didn't like.

“I am disgusted by Epstein's perverse behavior. I strongly support his victims and admire their courage. I have long called for all of Epstein's files to be released,” she told the BBC.

Plaskett claimed that the exchange occurred before the arrest Epstein for sex trafficking. But the truth is that it happened long after the financier was convicted of procuring prostitution in 2008.

His private island in the Virgin Islands had also been mentioned in an incriminating Miami Herald investigation just a year earlier,as one of the places where Epstein sexually abused underage girls.

Just six months after his exchange with Epstein, the disgraced financier would die in his jail cell as a result of suicide, according to the medical examiner.

His death, and the conspiracy theories it spawned, would trigger a reckoning that has unleashed a storm in Washington and Wall Street, and has brought down many of his former friends.

That exchange is just one of many that appear in the more than 20,000 pages of Epstein's personal documents recently released, which again demonstrated his ability to remain in the highest circles of power even after his conviction and the Miami Herald revelations.

How and why these relationships survived while other friendships cut ties with him tells us as much about the dynamics of the upper echelons of American society as about the influence Epstein wielded.

“He was a monster “Diabolical, but at the same time brilliant in the sense that he was able to maintain this incredible web with some of the most powerful individuals in the world,” explained Barry Levine, author of *The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell*. “He had a kind of charisma surrounding him that put him in a position where people sought him out.” “He used the information he accumulated.” Epstein considered himself a “collector of people” who created connections with transactional objectives, Levine indicates. “He used the information he accumulated… with the intention, ultimately, of setting aside favors he could ask of them, investments he could extract from them, or in a darker sense, I think, blackmail to which he could subject some of these individuals.” Epstein’s relationship with Peter Mandelson (a British politician and former Member of Parliament who held senior positions in several Labour governments) has been under particular scrutiny in the UK. He was dismissed as British ambassador to the US in September.

Documents released by Congress indicate that Mandelson maintained contact with the pedophile well into 2016, after he had already been convicted.

In a November 2015 email, Epstein wrote to him after his birthday: “63 years old. You made it.”

Mandelson replied less than 90 minutes later, saying: “Barely. I’ve decided to extend my life by spending more time in the US.”

The former diplomat denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes but has expressed regret for maintaining contact with him.

The eclectic circle of academics,Businessmen and Politicians

Documents released by Epstein's heirs reveal an eclectic circle of friends that includes distinguished academics, business titans, and politicians.

Levine said it wasn't a stretch to think that some of Epstein's friends might have been unaware of his abuses, or were simply impressed by his influential connections to overlook them.

“People forget things,” he said. “His credentials among powerful and influential people were extremely high, and I think many individuals simply dismissed the conviction against him.”

Others may have simply been dazzled by his wealth, some journalists and others who knew him suggest.

“A jail sentence doesn't matter anymore,” David Patrick Columbia, founder of the New York Social Diary, told The Daily Beast in 2011, after Epstein's first conviction. “The only thing that marginalizes you in New York society is being poor.”

A former U.S. Treasury Secretary and later president of Harvard University, Larry Summers, asked Epstein for love advice, including on one occasion in November 2018—the same month the Miami Herald investigation was published—when he forwarded the financier a woman's email asking how he should respond.

Epstein replied: “She's already starting to sound needy ? excellent.”

Summers' interactions with his confidant backfired last week, forcing him to announce he would step down from his public engagements and stop teaching at Harvard.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he said.

It also emerged that Epstein used his talent with money to help the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, with whom he exchanged several messages over the years, inviting him to stay at their homes.

The flattery was mutual. In an undated letter of support, Chomsky praised Epstein, saying the two had had “many long and often deep discussions.”

The 96-year-old academic had previously told the Wall Street Journal that the financier had helped him transfer money between accounts without “a penny of Epstein’s.”

“I knew him and we met occasionally,” Chomsky said. “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had committed a crime and that he had served his sentence. Under US law and norms, that’s a clean slate.”

Chomsky did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

The linguist was one of Epstein’s famous clients, whom he helped save billions of dollars, Levine said.

He was able to do it because “he understood the tax code and finance at a level perhaps higher than the highest-paid people on Wall Street,” Levine explained.

Those Who Severed Ties

In Epstein’s 23,000 pages of documents, one man’s name appears more than perhaps any other.

Trump neither sent nor received any of the messages, having severed ties with Epstein.

In 2002, Trump described Epstein as a “fantastic guy.” Epstein would later say, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.”

But the relationship soured. Trump has said they drifted apart in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein's first arrest. In 2008, Trump said he had not been "one of his fans." Trump has denied any knowledge of the sex trafficking Epstein was accused of. The White House also stated that Trump kicked Epstein out of his club "decades ago for being disgusting to his employees." Levine noted that many people will be ashamed of their messages with Epstein after his conviction, even if these messages do not suggest they participated in any of his crimes. "Naturally, everyone regrets the day they communicated with Jeffrey Epstein or spent time with him," he said. “It’s one of the most incredible stories of our time; power, privilege, and predation.” But there was at least one person who said they immediately understood that Epstein was “disgusting.” Howard Lutnick, the president’s Commerce Secretary, was Epstein’s neighbor for 10 years. He recounted in a New York Post podcast that his first encounter with Epstein was his last. Shortly after Lutnick moved into Epstein's residence on Manhattan's exclusive Upper East Side in 2005, Epstein gave him and his wife a tour of his large home. In Epstein's dining room, there was a massage table surrounded by candles, and Lutnick asked him how often he used it. "He says, 'Every day.' And then he leans in uncomfortably and says, 'And the good kind of massage.'" Lutnick said he and his wife exchanged glances, made their excuses, and left. "I decided I would never be in a room with that disgusting person again."