A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks urged people to move on from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal already.
“The Epstein Story? Count Me Out,” reads the title of his Nov. 21 op-ed. In it, he laments that America’s political class has spent months trying to get a clearer picture of the late convicted sex offender’s ties to President Donald Trump and other powerful people, and what they may have known about Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring.
There are much more pressing issues facing the country, Brooks argued, and the real reason people are so focused on the Epstein scandal is because “the QAnon mentality has taken over America,” a reference to a far-right political conspiracy theory centered on a deep-state cabal of elite liberal pedophiles.
It’s also not fair to lump all wealthy and well-connected people into the category of “the Epstein class,” he argued. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has been using this phrase, something he’s said he picked up from voters who have asked him if he’s on the side of “forgotten Americans” or “the Epstein class.”
“I know a thing or two about the American elite, ahem, and if you’ve read my work, you may be sick of my assaults on the educated elites for being insular, self-indulgent and smug,” Brooks wrote. “But the phrase ‘the Epstein class’ is inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible. Say what you will about our financial, educational, nonprofit and political elites, but they are not mass rapists.”
The longtime New York Times columnist may have wanted to turn away from the Epstein scandal, but it found him on Thursday, when Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released more photos provided by Epstein’s estate ― and Brooks was in them.
He appears in four of these photos, all of which seem to be from the same event. One shows Brooks smiling for the camera, and another shows him seated at a table near Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Two more images show Brooks in the background, apparently holding a glass of wine, and then again, talking to Brin.
Epstein doesn’t appear in any of the pictures with Brooks, but is in two separate photos that seem to be from the same event.
The pictures don’t show Brooks doing anything weird or wrong. He was just hanging out with a group of rich and famous powerful men, one of whom happened to be a registered sex offender who’d pleaded guilty three years earlier to state charges for procurement of minors to engage in prostitution.
Asked for comment about Brooks appearing in the latest Epstein photo dump, The New York Times responded almost immediately.
“As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of communications at The New York Times, told HuffPost in an emailed statement.
Hellbound and Down 