JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S RESENTMENT TOWARD DONALD TRUMP. There’s no doubt Jeffrey Epstein thought he was a very, very smart guy. “He always thought he was the smartest person in the room,” said one associate. Another said Epstein “thought he was smarter than the next guy.” When in 2008 Epstein pleaded guilty to procurement of a minor for prostitution, his defense asked for leniency based on his “unique intellect.”

Someone with such high self-regard can be deeply disturbed if a friend or associate, or a former friend or associate, achieves more, makes more money, and rises higher up society’s ladder than the person who feels he is the smartest guy in the room. Reading through Epstein’s emails released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, one gets the impression that Epstein was troubled by the success of his former friend Donald Trump, as he watched Trump take a wildly improbable path from successful developer to television star to president of the United States. At the same time, of course, Epstein was pleading guilty to sex crimes, struggling to recover, and then finding himself charged with even more serious sex crimes. Suicide in a jail cell was in his future, while Trump was in the White House.