But what we do know for certain is that Epstein's account had hundreds of millions of dollars flow through them. You don't get that kind of money by pimping 13-year-olds.
And it is highly likely that much of that money came from Russian oligarchs. We need to understand the history. That began in a period where the KGB had already targeted Trump to be an asset. This was 20+ years before his political career started in earnest. Trump's businesses were all failing, one BK after another. He started entering the KGB world (wittingly or unwittingly) in the late 1980s.
It was about that same time (early 90s) that Epstein started handling insane amounts of money in NYC. It is highly likely that the KGB(aka FSB) was targeting BOTH Trump and Epstein, more for money laundering than anything else. By 1991, Gorbachev was out, and Putin started acquiring power. And that involved privatizing industries and handing them to loyal oligarchs as Putin assembled a power center. And that, in turn, created the need for massive money laundering to get the money out of Rubles and out of Russia. Putin didn't know how long this would last, so he and his circle of oligarchs grabbed as much as they could and laundered it as fast as they could. They used Deutsche Bank, which was already very involved with Trump. And they used Trump's properties. It remains to be seen what role Epstein might have had in the laundering operation.
The point is that it seems most likely that at least the Russian part of this affair began mostly as a way to strip massive wealth from Russia and stash it is dollars and other assets outside of Russia. If the sex stuff was happening with Trump and Epstein in the early 90s, it probably was mostly because these two are degenerates who felt they would always be above the law and were entitled to anything, including raping children.
But obviously, there came a time when the Russians (and possibly Mussad and others,) saw Epstein's "Fantasy Island" as a way to entrap very important people and then extort them, not for money, but for the influence they could bring to world affairs. What shapes up is a partnership where Maxwell inherited contacts and influence with global spy agencies from her father's circle. Epstein already had the sex ring going, with Trump's help. And Trump's main role was to recruit "all the best people" into the kompromat trap. And at some point, it is very likely that FSB and others started placing orders for kompromat on specific individuals.
I believe that is the general outline of what happened. How much of it is in the FBI files, and still intact, is anybody's guess. I expect the worst of it has been destroyed.