Explosive theory emerges that Epstein's female handlers were hiding in plain sight

In a lengthy 4,300-plus-word essay published on Monday, renowned journalist and author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez came to a conclusion about Jeffrey Epstein that she said may come as a surprise to her readers: that Epstein was merely a tool for other “direct handlers,” all of whom, she believed, “were women.”

“Before going further, a distinction that matters enormously and must be stated plainly. The overwhelming majority of women in Jeffrey Epstein’s world were victims,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote in the essay published on her Substack Monday, adding that Epstein victims were “owed every ounce of respect and attention this story can generate.”

“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the women who were chosen to make their nightmare possible precisely because no one would ever suspect them. Not the media. Not detectives. Not the public. Not even Epstein.”

Valdes-Rodriguez pointed to three women in particular, either directly or indirectly connected to Epstein’s orbit: Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and accomplice serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges, Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s last known girlfriend and named inheritor of his fortune, and Catherine Huffines, wife to MAGA candidate and businessman Donald Huffines.

Maxwell, as Valdes-Rodriguez noted, has often been depicted in the media as “simply Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend.”

“I reject this assessment,” she wrote. “I reject it, and I posit a new one: Maxwell was an intelligence operative, and she deliberately manipulated Epstein into her orbit, knowing full well what he was and why he’d be useful to foreign intelligence, and it was she who ultimately controlled him.”

Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, was a wealthy British media mogul who was long alleged to have worked on behalf of the Israeli government. He’s also long been alleged to have ties to several intelligence agencies, including the Israeli Mossad, the Soviet Union’s KGB and the British MI6. As such, Valdes-Rodriguez argued that Maxwell had potentially used Epstein to continue her father’s work.

“I believe Ghislaine was Epstein’s handler,” she wrote. “And before she was his handler, she was her father’s daughter – which is to say, she was already inside one of the most consequential intelligence operations of the twentieth century before Epstein ever entered the picture. She was to the manor born.”

Much like Maxwell, Shuliak has also been frequently referenced by media outlets as “Epstein’s last girlfriend,” Valdes-Rodriguez noted. And, also like Maxwell, Valdes-Rodriguez argued that “remarkable” details about her life were often overlooked in the press.

“She was verbally and emotionally abusive toward Epstein. She slapped him on multiple occasions. She took control of his household staff, his finances, his schedule. She managed his operations,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.

“The terror and degradation that saturates every account of Epstein’s actual victims is entirely absent from the accounts involving Shuliak. She was seemingly never trafficked by him to anyone else.”

Valdes-Rodriguez also noted the timing of Shuliak coming into Epstein's life.

“She appears at the same time Ghislaine is likely headed toward a conviction and jail, too. His former ‘girlfriend’ handler is soon to be incapacitated. Enter Karyna," she wrote.

Two days before Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell, he would sign a new will naming Shuliak as his “primary heir” to his vast wealth, which included Epstein’s infamous Zorro Ranch property in New Mexico.

The third woman Valdes-Rodriguez would name was Huffines, who would go on to become a co-owner of Zorro Ranch after the Huffines family purchased the property in 2023, though was not revealed as the property’s new owner until last month.

Valdes-Rodriguez noted that Mrs. Huffines, years before her husband launched his political career in 2015, had regularly donated to a political action committee belonging to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) starting in 1996, the same PAC that had “intersected with Russian financial and influence operations at multiple documented points.”

“Mary Catherine Huffines was funding this operation. Independently. Before her husband’s career made it convenient or expected,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.

“Yet when Mary Catherine is described anywhere, if she is described at all, it is as Don’s wife. A religious Texas mother and grandmother.”

Valdes-Rodriguez clarified that while her essay was written as a mere “hypothesis,” it demonstrated what she characterized as a troubling pattern.

“I could be wrong about all of this. I am just a writer. What I have presented as hypothesis, is hypothesis. What I am certain of is the pattern,” she wrote.

“Three women. Categorically different from the survivors. Positioned at the legal, financial, and operational control points of a network that runs from a dead pedophile’s ranch in New Mexico to the White House to the Russian Federation Council. Described everywhere as ‘just’ girlfriends, daughters and housewives. Just girls.”