Then, just before the New Year, Epstein forwarded me a heads-up email that Alan Dershowtiz, one of Epstein’s long time friends—they have a bickering brotherly relationship—and occasional legal advisors, had received from a reporter at Politico and forwarded to Epstein. The Politico reporter had been following Epstein-related court filings (there is a determined contingent of Epstein reporters) and found a new one added to an old law suit with some rather jaw-dropping claims. Eight years after the original suit, a Florida lawyer was now seeking to add new plaintiffs to the old case. This new filing was accompanied by allegations connecting a catch-all of bold-faced names associated with Epstein more than ten years ago, including Dershowtiz and Britain’s Prince Andrew, to a “sex slave” ring—indeed, that Epstein’s purported sex slaves had had sex with Dershowitz and the Prince at Epstein’s command. This seemed to me to be merely a desperate, even comic-book, filing—just a lawyer trying to revive a dead case. I responded to Epstein that I doubted this would be seen as credible by anyone. Epstein, who sometimes seems to have an out-of-body attitude to his own fate and bad press, said he thought it might be “quite a show.” Two days later, the Daily Mail, which has become the effective ground zero in the English language for anti-privilege, and moral opprobrium (the more salacious the better), and whose editor Paul Dacre has a long time feud with Prince Andrew, put the story on its front page. (Epstein also has a long relationship with the family of disgraced press baron, Robert Maxwell, another reliable target of the British press.) Flimsy and far-fetched court filings in the U.S. by settlement-hungry plaintiffs might be discounted by skeptical U.S. reporters, but, the U.K. media, constrained by onerous rules about legal proceedings in the U.K., promptly went into tabloid frenzy (even the normally sniffy Guardian, in full anti- royal and anti- billionaire fever, joine