Epstein Emails Reveal a Lost New York

Washington went nuts — and the White House went on the defensive — after lawmakers dumped more than 20,000 emails belonging to Jeffrey Epstein into the public domain on Wednesday. The central intrigue was the late financier’s relationship with the president, but there were other stories buried in the mass of documents.

The emails are like a portal back to a lost Manhattan power scene. Mr. Epstein’s inbox was larded with boldface names — many of them now faded or forgotten — that once meant everything to status-obsessed New Yorkers. It was the world that Donald Trump came out of, and the one that Mr. Epstein had so effectively beguiled after having grown up in a middle-class household in Coney Island.