David Enrich

And so they start extending some favors to him.

Well, one of Epstein's former managers at the firm, who is now helping to run him as a client, has a very attractive young assistant named Patricia Schmidt.

And one night in 1987, the manager asks Schmidt to deliver some papers to Epstein's apartment at night.

And Schmidt goes over to the apartment.

Epstein makes her tea, gives her a tour of his very nice apartment building, and invites her to come back whenever she wants to use the building's swimming pool.

And Schmidt takes him up on that offer and thus begins a year-long sexual relationship between Schmidt and Epstein.

And one of the things we found in our reporting is that the same Bear Stearns manager on multiple other occasions also sent young female assistants over to Epstein's apartment and that ended up leading to sexual relationships.

And Epstein seems to realize that if Bear Stearns can use women as a source of leverage, so can he.

And Schmidt, when I spoke with her, she was very clear-eyed about her role in this and that she was being used.

And the way she described it to me was that I was his plaything.

And Epstein perceived her as someone that's going to help him get where he wants to go.

And sure enough, we see him start to use Schmidt for other things, such as he would have Schmidt give his clients and acquaintances tours around Wall Street, bringing them into Bear Stearns, maybe take them out to a nice dinner.

And so Epstein had discovered that he could use Schmidt

Attractive young women was a potent form of currency as he sought to impress and cultivate relationships with rich and powerful people whom he wanted to do business with.

As far as we can tell, this is probably the first time that Epstein has really fully discovered his ability to use women to really advance his own agenda.

And at the same time, around now, Epstein has also really cultivated enough connections and built enough wealth that those things start compounding upon each other.

And so he'll build and exploit relationships with people like David Rockefeller.

Mm-hmm.

Like Les Wexner, the retail tycoon, ultimately with big institutions and big banks like JP Morgan.

And this is the Epstein who we all now know, right?