Opinion Ezra Klein What Ro Khanna Learned From the Epstein Files
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“These billionaires, these superelites, these superlawyers are working on a whole different kind of system,” Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” told me. “Their system has to do with how loaded with connections you are in this network, how high your stock is on a given day in this network. What Epstein figured out was how to game this. He figured out the vulnerability of this entire network, which is that these people are actually not that serious about character. In fact, character may be a liability for some of them, may be an unnecessary source of friction.”
Khanna has begun speaking of an “Epstein class,” his term for “the rich and powerful people who act and think like they’re above the law and, and perhaps above morality.” At first, I struggled a bit with Khanna’s coinage. What makes Epstein specifically loathsome is his pedophilia, and how many in his network really knew of that side of his life?
But the more I read the files, the harder I found it to deny the class solidarity evident within them. Epstein’s predilections were no secret. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump told New York magazine — in 2002. The choice was made, by many, to overlook or disbelieve them.
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“I certainly don’t want pitchforks,” he told me. “I don’t want pitchforks even against people who are billionaires.” But, he said, “I used to think, ‘Let’s just have a positive vision of Medicare for All and child care and a Marshall Plan for America.’ I am more in the camp now that there has to be some accountability. You need people’s faith in a democratic project. And what I’m realizing is that accountability for the elite, having some sense of justice, is essential to build trust for the broader vision.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-ro-khanna.html