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an institutional interest. You are part of government, or you want to be in government, or you are connected to a bank or other portfolio, or you have key relationships with certain corporations or industries. Because of my situation, I have none of that. I have no institutional ties which makes me in some sense one of the few wholly independent sources of information and actual honest brokers. That’s the usefulness of disgrace.” It’s also true that Epstein’s circle might be more forgiving of disgrace than the rest of the world. Many of these men have themselves been on the wrong side of a negative story or a scandal or a damaging public lawsuit. Any hyper-prominent person might run afoul of prosecutors, the political moment, the media, or the Internet hoi polloi. And they know that the media’s (or prosecutor’s) version of events seldom square’s with their own. In that way, they are, even with jail time, quite willing to give Epstein the benefit of the doubt. For some of his visitors, there’s a clear order of identification: there but for the grace of God. For others tthere is even a wry sense of humor about it. People who know Jeffrey exchange “Jeffrey” stories. “That’s Jeffrey,” says Mort Zuckerman, (whose paper, the Daily News, is ever vitriolic in its coverage of Epstein), with a twinkle in his eye and obvious enjoyment, to tales of Epstein escapades. It is an outréness that Epstein seems to cultivate. In his Paris apartment, 10,000 square feet on the Avenue Foch, a neighborhood otherwise occupied by foreign potentates, there is a stuffed baby HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022876