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present tabloid interest in Epstein’s old address book with its many Clinton contacts. And his sex offender status has transformed him from libertine playboy to pedophile. While he has regularly entertained PR proposals aimed at his public rehabilitation, until Gates prodded him, and until this recent renewed tabloid fever, Epstein had concluded that he was perfectly satisfied living behind high walls and in his own exclusive club. Even now, this new Dershowitz-Prince Andrew chapter seems like a parallel disturbance rather than something that is actually affecting him. “Bad press is not something actually bad,” he notes, trying to balance perception and reality. And, indeed, the tabloid narrative and his own story rather define divergent realities. The ongoing case, with the filings that introduced the Dershowitz and Prince Andrew allegations, was brought by the imprisoned Rothstein’s former partner, Brad Edwards. It relies entirely on the testimony and the memoir, excerpts of which were published by the Daily Mail, of Virginia Roberts, who claims that Ghislaine Maxwell met her, when she was 17, at Donald Trump’s Palm Beach resort and got her a job in the Epstein house, which she held for several years, traveling in the Epstein entourage. It is Roberts—who refused to cooperate with the FBI’s 2007 investigation of Epstein—who has propounded the “sex slave” narrative. She claims that “massage” was a code word for sexual acts, and that she worked for Epstein for HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022922