The problem is that the secret international network of powerful men that Epstein created around himself will only convince the paranoid fantasists they were on to something
In later life Jean-Jacques Rousseau became convinced that former friends, including Diderot and Voltaire were plotting against him. He accused David Hume, who’d brought him to London to escape persecution in France, of much the same.
Rousseau had many real enemies, including both Catholics and the Calvinists, and his books had been burnt in public. He’d left Môtiers after his house was attacked by a stone-throwing mob. But as he grew older, he imagined enemies everywhere and was sure they were conspiring to mock him. [...]