The Epstein affair has shaken the moral consciousness of America and Europe. Some of our most illustrious, self-righteous, and presumably trustworthy elites have proved themselves to be slimy, sex-hungry, money-hungry, power-hungry bestials—who care nothing for the values and principles that they claim to believe in.

The irony is that the Epstein affair goes way beyond “Pizzagate,” in which conspiracy theorists claimed that high-ranking Democratic Party officials and American restaurants were involved in an alleged human-trafficking and child sex ring. The Pizzagate conspiracy represented a poorly plotted scheme during the 2016 election year to weaken the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton to the benefit of Donald Trump and the Republicans.

By contrast, the Epstein Affair is a truly bipartisan affair1 involving both Democrats and Republicans, as well as major politicians, corporate executives, lawyers, and even intellectuals from the US and other countries, who have been accused of having a spicy taste of Epstein’s human-trafficking and child sex ring, with some more deeply involved than others.

Heads are beginning to roll as the global impact2 of the scandal and its impact on the credibility and legitimacy of our governing elites is just beginning to be realized. Whether or not all of the major “players”—and those individuals now in power known to be close friends of Epstein—will take a fall remains to be seen. Of course, they are all claiming innocence. Will all the documents be released? And how soon?

Yet even if not all of Epstein’s friends and acquaintances were involved with Epstein’s sex operations, the whole affair nevertheless raises real questions about what these elites thought they would obtain from being associated with Epstein, besides or in addition to sex. And how many politicians wanted a piece of the action!

Was it investment and business deals, insider stock market advice, lessons in how to avoid taxation by investing offshore, or else how to escape taxes by building NGOs and engaging in “philanthropy” and “charity,” info on corporate competitors, a billionaire boys club, a forum for lectures in high math, science, biolinguistics, or advise on how to obtain multimillion dollar grants, or something else?

Was Epstein selling girly data and other top secret info on elites for various governments and businesses? If so, which ones? How did a man with fake degrees3 make his fortune4, and why was he so well protected—until his imprisonment and “suicide,” assuming he is really dead? Will all the documents be released? If so, how soon?

As the scandal deepens, there is a danger that claims that Epstein was an agent of the Russian FSB, the Israeli Mossad, the British MI6, or the US CIA, or who knows who, will turn the whole affair into an exercise in propaganda. Such accusations—if not fully proven true or false—could be used to manipulate public opinion and deflect attention from the real hypocritical culprits and the deeper problems of global elite corruption.

The latter includes the outrageous ripoff of the global working populations and middle classes—in which the CEOs of major corporations have seen their pay and benefits5 soar by over 900% since 1970—even as industrial performance stagnates!

And this is not to overlook the continuing risk of the US, Russia and China being dragged into a major power confrontation!

Year of the Horseshoe Bat

In addition to the fact that the Epstein affair is already beginning to be manipulated for political purposes without necessarily bringing down those most involved, it has revealed another issue that has not received sufficient attention. That is how such cynical elites can « legally » use nonprofit organizations and NGOs for their own personal profit and interests, as well as for the nefarious purposes of governments and their secret services—all in the name of human rights, democracy, protection of refugees, and other worthy causes.

The latter are themes depicted in my second novel6, Year of the Horseshoe Bat—in Exile, written in 2024 during the global COVID pandemic that was presumably started by human contact with horseshoe bats in Wuhan, China.

The protagonist, Chia Pao-yu—a Chinese democracy activist who escaped Beijing at the time of the violent nationwide June 4, 1989, crackdown on the student-led democracy movement—is horrified to learn that his Paris employer, the Franco-American Bereft Laplante, the head of the Human Values Forever Foundation, has been using donations given to her human rights NGO for her own personal profit. And what was even more disheartening and grotesque from Chia’s perspective was that everything she was doing was legal or merely pushing the limits of the law.

It is only years after living in Paris that Chia learns that Laplante’s Foundation was one of the organizations that had helped Chia himself escape from China—along with other human rights NGOs, businesses, the CIA, the French government itself, and Chinese Triads (mafias)…

Here is an excerpt from the novel that specifically discusses the Epstein affair (at least in the footnote):

The primary focus of LaPlante’s Foundation was the crimes perpetrated against many women from all walks of life and cultures and countries, in both the developed and supposedly developing world.

One speaker, sporting a silken black head scarf, struck me in particular with her pancake makeup and thick coal eyebrows—and strong scent of oud. In her introduction, LaPlante explained how this international consultant, who had advised the UN, UNESCO, and other international organizations and governments on human rights issues, Ms. Leila Zarwich, “had been investigating the new slavery of women and how teenagers and even pre-teens were being seized by Chinese tattooed triads and mafias of many other nationalities who used them as both prostitutes and surrogate mothers in unhealthy and dangerous conditions…”

Zarwich provided more detail… “Yes, Bereft, it is a terrible situation… Some of these young women were sold by their own families…. Some were refugees from wars… Some, looking for jobs, find themselves trapped…. To lure them like a spider into its web, some were promised fancy clothes and modeling careers… Others were promised university training. Instead, they find themselves assaulted… gang raped… threatened with death…”

The audience was dead silent as she continued to speak defiantly in a clear British accent: “No society was innocent of this crime. Both male and female children could be sold into sex slavery in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere… Estimates put the number at as many as 2 million youth of both sexes forced into slavery throughout the world and trafficked across borders… Some are forced into marriage, others forced to engage in erotic massage, strip clubs, phone sex lines, child pornography photos, including live streaming… In many ways, children and teens were actually cheaper to handle than drugs… They were good for years of use and abuse…”

Her speech was one of the most powerful of all the HVF Foundation speakers. She explained how women forced into such situations were easily exposed to pandemics from AIDS to the horseshoe bat… “And if they did become sick, they would be thrown out into the street to be swept away like cigarette butts.”

Even a normally placid LaPlante seemed to become red with rage!

The racial question also played a major role: “White women obtained more pay as baby makers than women of color, as they were more ‘presentable.’” This was true even if genetics had nothing to do with “this new form of commercially ‘humanized’ Brave New World baby assembly lines,” as she put it so mockingly.

I was amazed at how radical this seemingly religious woman was—judging from her exterior dress and head scarf… There was not a hint of Islamism in her talk. What I did notice was that her shoes and classic handbag on the chair beside her were the latest Adori fashion… And her fingers were ringless…

I later learned from Laplante’s human rights advisor, Aiden, that a very “privileged” few out of these 2 million youth had been “loaned” to business executives, American, French, and other UK and European leaders—including a few presidents and prime ministers, among others… As Aiden explained, a once respectable high finance priest had used his managerial talents to organize a major sex trafficking operation…7

As the rumors spread, it was more than a scandal… It was a crime against humanity that reached the highest elite levels of society. And as the affair had touched global power elites in the US, in France, in the UK, and elsewhere, the investigations uncovered very little or were hushed up where possible… As Shakespeare’s palace guard put it in Hamlet, there is definitely “something rotten in the state of…”

The making of a US-Europe-China trilogy

Year of the Horseshoe Bat—in Exile is the sequel to the first novel, Year of the Earth Serpent Changing Colors, that depicts the experience of the American Maoist, Mylex Galvin, who comes to Beijing to teach English as a foreign language and finds himself caught up in the Chinese democracy and anti-corruption movement. In Beijing, Galvin meets Chia Pao-yu and other Chinese dissidents, not knowing which side to take, for or against, the Communist government.

Detested by Chai Pao-yu for his Maoist revolutionary beliefs, which appear so unbelievable coming from an American, Galvin is depicted as a “wokeist” in the second novel. The forthcoming third novel—forming a USA-European-China trilogy—will continue to explore the theme of how a rising China has been impacting American and European politics, society, and culture, at least since the days of Marco Polo.

References

1 Marcelo, P. (2026, February 1). A list of powerful men named in the Epstein files, from Elon Musk to former Prince Andrew. PBS NewsHour.
2 BBC News. (2026, January 31). US justice department releases more than 3 million pages of Epstein files.
3 Times of India. (2025, December 31). The Jeffrey Epstein story: How a middle-class schoolteacher with fake degrees accumulated power, money and impunity.
4 Tognini, G. (2025, July 25). How Jeffrey Epstein got so rich. Forbes.
5 Gardner, H. (2025, September 18). The future of transport and global society: From the horseless carriage to human-less driving. Meer.
6 Now more relevant than ever: Hall Gardner's "China-Duology."
7 Endnote: The Epstein affair had filled the Media Fourth Estate with conspiracy theories… and even more profits…. Some stories claimed Epstein had been able to escape prison… Others claimed he had been murdered… Others accepted the suicide verdict… Who knows the truth? Epstein had claimed that he only wanted to raise millions for a “charitable” fund, while he allegedly sought to blackmail those powerful men he had already seduced with young women…. Once dead, the charges were inexplicably dropped against him… His victims were thereby “denied proper recourse”—if they could not eventually win an appeal.