The banality of Jeffery Epstein’s expanding online world
In recent weeks, a project called Jmail.world has quickly recreated the online life of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender with myriad ties to the rich and powerful.
The effort started with a reproduction of the tranche of released emails in common Gmail style, searchable just like your own email app. Earlier this week, the team behind Jmail, software engineer Riley Walz and CEO of Kino Luke Igal, revealed JPhotos, which is inspired by Google Photos and is full of images that have been made public. The Jmail.world archive now includes sections imitating Google Drive, as well as “JFlights,” a section tracking Epstein’s flight history, “Jemini,” an Epstein-inspired chatbot, and even “Jotify.” Together, they create an immersive facsimile of Epstein’s digital world.
To engage Jmail.world, we must suspend our disbelief, at least in part. The emails, and other documents, include the redactions of government lawyers. Jeffrey Epstein did not have a virtual reality platform for exploring his old haunts (obviously). These pictures were not uploaded to a database in this format and no one actually tracks their flights like this.
Still, the endeavor feels not unlike the systems sometimes used by law enforcement to poke through the worlds of their subjects. They suck up records, and then recreate them on their own systems to mine through. In this case, the Jmail tool is available to everyone to examine. You, too, can sort through the digital refuse for evidence of one of the most odious scandals in U.S. history.
It is indeed horrifying, in a pick-your-poison sort of way. “[A]t some point this stuff will come out — as long [Trump] continues to top polls,” wrote a New York Times reporter to Epstein in one exchange, back in 2015. Epstein responded: “would you like photso [sic] of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.”
There are the ever-flowing emails from his associates, including Ghislaine Maxwell and Steve Bannon. The back-and-forths over strategizing with reporters on the myriad allegations facing Epstein and his associates. There are the redacted images of his sometimes-naked victims. There are his critics, who email him: You are dead. And then, his morally disturbed fans. One anonymous emailer wrote to Epstein: “I can’t believe they arrested you again, you are the only man on the planet who would never be bad with any women as you love them too much.”
What’s surprisingly striking is how much of the stuff on first glance doesn’t appear like much of anything, really. There is the endless supply of updates from Quora and the boomerist conversations on political-goings. There are lots of re-forwarded news stories, articles flagged by Flipboard, updates on the markets, and, sometimes, very strange Epstein wrote to himself.
In the photos, there are pictures of Epstein doing relatively normal things, like playing the piano and riding a horse. In his online orders, there’s a device for mitigating back pain, Fruit of the Loom men’s boxers, and CPAP machine replacement tubing. In a virtual recreation of his house, there’s a reading nook, a laundry room, and storage areas. It can seem fairly benign, dull even.
One has to look through the email back-and-forths to find direct references to the worst of it, but it’s there, if you know what to look for. His Amazon orders show he orders reveal he bought Bitcoin for Dummies, but also several books about Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita.
In the same database of pictures that include snapshots of a concert and pictures of a horse, and pictures of Epstein playing pingpong and petting a dog, are the pictures of horrifying crimes, including plenty of (redacted) images of victims. When he communicates with the other affluent accomplices, it’s often about nothing, in particular – until it isn’t.
Social media and the news industry have carefully mined through these emails, looking for the most concerning to highlight. But Jmail asks us to work by ourselves, in a notably more disturbing exercise, and sift through the everyday doings and digital vestiges of a very evil man.