Epstein Files Link “Trans Kids” to Child Trafficking Empire
- Michael Costa
- 2 minutes ago
- 8 min read
The new DOJ email disclosures connect Jeffrey Epstein to key institutional nodes during the rise of modern transgender medicine in ways that go beyond a medical scandal. A major player in trans surgery was a plastic surgeon who visited Epstein’s island and proposed bringing three young children, aged eight and under. We took a deep dive, and here's what we found.
Department of Justice Records
Newly released Department of Justice records, published under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, show Jeffrey Epstein funding research tied to key figures in transgender medicine, encouraging academic work on “transgender biology,” and circulating the topic through elite institutional networks during the exact years the industry’s power structure was consolidating. The DOJ files show a surgeon building a flagship academic transgender surgery program, updating Epstein, and soliciting support as the program and its promotional documentary were taking shape. They show a prominent academic dependent on Epstein’s money being pushed toward producing work on “transgender biology,” alongside correspondence that reduces human beings to sexualized biological objects and discusses earlier intervention for children. And they show Epstein treating “transgender” as a managed category across elite channels, including MIT’s Media Lab and Obama-era legal power networks, during the years the industry expanded into mainstream institutional dominance.
Independent outlets like 11thHourBlog had already mapped out billionaire funding pipelines that built out the infrastructure of gender clinics, advocacy organizations, and media narratives. The DOJ files are primary documentation that can move claims beyond commentary and into evidentiary territory. These newly surfaced emails do not prove that Epstein built the modern transgender medicine industry, but they do show that he maintained direct relationships with people positioned at key institutional nodes, while actively commissioning and steering “research” to share this topic with Epstein’s high-powered contacts. It shows the influence and architecture provided by corrupt individuals who financed, shaped, and legitimized a medical and political machine that increasingly pushed past parental involvement and treated children as a market.
Dr. Jess Ting
Dr. Jess Ting is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon affiliated with New York’s Mount Sinai Health System. In 2016, he became the surgical director of Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, which was described at launch as the first “full-spectrum academic program” in the U.S. focused on transgender surgery and care. According to DOJ-linked reporting, Ting’s relationship with Epstein predates his rise in transgender medicine and included years of contact and logistical coordination through Epstein’s staff.
The Island Visit
In March 2013, Ting accepted an invitation, facilitated by an Epstein assistant, to visit Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In correspondence, Ting proposed bringing a female friend and her three young children aged eight and under, and the assistant later wrote: “I hope you had a nice visit to Jeffrey’s island last Friday.”
The $50,000 Grant
The emails also document Epstein’s funding in Ting’s professional orbit. Ting informed Epstein in May 2016 that “the research you supported with a $50,000 grant has borne fruit,” referring to breast cancer research. The funding was attributed to the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation in a Mount Sinai announcement archived in the files. In the same May 2016 exchange, Ting told Epstein he had been named surgical director of Mount Sinai’s transgender surgery program and described it as groundbreaking. Later communications show Ting describing his career shift as a complete pivot. In July 2017, he wrote that he had “given up plastic surgery” and jumped into transgender surgery, calling it the most “gratifying” work he had ever done.
Epstein Emails – Politico
Then came the ask: Ting directly solicited Epstein’s support for a documentary about the Mount Sinai program, the film that would become Born to Be (released 2019), later nominated for two Emmys. The available records do not establish whether Epstein funded the film. A DOJ-record-referenced email preserved as EFTA02667053 shows Ting updating Epstein again in April 2018, telling him he had switched specialties into “gender-affirmation surgery (AKA transgender surgery)” and pointing him toward a documentary site about the new center. Epstein later forwarded that message to an associate with the subject line “Fwd: Film project.”
The Emails
The emails also show Ting seeking guidance from Epstein’s assistant when Reuters contacted him in January 2015 about Epstein’s philanthropy, asking whether Epstein wanted him to respond and proposing to route written questions to Epstein first. When The Advocate contacted Mount Sinai in February 2026 asking whether the hospital reviewed the newly released emails and what safeguards governed outside donors, Mount Sinai’s spokesperson did not answer substantively and said only: “We’ve encouraged Dr. Ting to respond to your questions.”
Ting told The Advocate he recalled treating only a few adult female associates referred by Epstein, described the origin of the relationship as a professional wound-care referral, and stated there were “no concerns about consent.” The record does establish a multi-year relationship that included island travel, donor money and fundraising outreach during the years Mount Sinai’s program was being built and promoted as a national model.
Robert Trivers and “Transgender Biology”
If the Ting paper trail shows donor proximity to surgical infrastructure, the Robert Trivers correspondence suggests something more explicit: Epstein pushing a topic agenda and using funding leverage to steer it. Robert Trivers is an evolutionary biologist known for major contributions to reciprocal altruism, parental investment theory, and self-deception. The newly reported email archive shows Epstein and Trivers corresponding back to 2009, after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, and continuing for years. Reporting based on the DOJ releases describes Epstein inviting Trivers to Florida in 2009 and offering to pay travel and accommodations. By 2015, Epstein wrote to Noam Chomsky claiming he was Trivers’ “major funder,” around the time Rutgers suspended Trivers from teaching after he refused to teach an assigned class. The key issue is not simply that Epstein funded Trivers, but that Epstein pressed him toward a specific lane. In an email, Trivers thanked Epstein for “extra money and appointment as an advisor” to Epstein’s foundation, and Epstein replied: “i want to see you [sic] piece on transgender in the bio world.”
In 2019, the pressure appears again in a more transactional form, with Epstein encouraging Trivers to “focus on transgender biology,” offering funding tied to that focus. The emails include dehumanizing and sexualized descriptions of transgenderism, as well as discussion of earlier medical intervention for children framed in speculative, experimental terms. When a convicted sex offender funds, influences, and platform-manages academic production, the public should be skeptical about how “knowledge” that is manufactured, sold to the public as settled science, and then used to justify institutional power.
Emails Showing Experimental Procedures
The DOJ emails also suggest that transgenderism was a topic that Epstein tracked and routed through elite contacts during the period when transgender medicine and activism were scaling rapidly. In an August 10, 2017 email cited from EFTA01038315, Epstein advised Joi Ito, then director of the MIT Media Lab, on how to pitch Bill Gates on science funding, telling him to “forget transgender” and pivot toward what Epstein labeled “transcience,” framed as “cutting edge.” Epstein played a part in curating what topics should be elevated, deprioritized, or repackaged for one of the world’s most influential philanthropic donors.
In October 2017, Epstein emailed Kathy Ruemmler, former White House Counsel under President Obama, and included the line: “transgender not yet on wall street.” It is further proof that Epstein was tracking transgenderism as a coming force in finance and corporate power centers, in direct conversation with a figure embedded in elite legal and political networks. In November 2016, an email cited as EFTA02669232 shows someone asking Epstein for term-paper topics for “Brynn,” and Epstein replying with a list that began with: “transgender?” followed by topics like life on Mars, self-driving cars, genetic engineering, and living to 120 years old.
Separate from Epstein, investigators like Jennifer Bilek have argued that billionaire philanthropy and aligned institutions helped scale pediatric gender medicine, legal frameworks, and cultural messaging into a durable industry. In-depth coverage shows the Pritzker family has been framed as an example of elite money shaping the “gender” ecosystem through donations and institutional influence, including funding connected to pediatric medicine. Whether Epstein was peripheral or a more central node in this broader architecture remains unanswered, in part because only a portion of the total archive has been processed and publicly released.
On December 18, 2025, HHS announced a series of proposed regulatory actions tied to an executive order, including CMS rulemaking to bar hospitals from performing what the agency called “sex-rejecting procedures” on minors under 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid, and additional steps involving Medicaid and CHIP funding limitations. The press release also stated that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed a declaration, based on an HHS peer-reviewed report, finding these interventions do not meet professionally recognized standards of care, and cited claims data that nearly 14,000 minors received such procedures between 2019 and 2023.
But some questions remain unanswered. For Mount Sinai: Did the institution review Epstein-linked donor activity connected to Ting’s research support when the transgender surgery program launched in 2016, years after Ting’s island visit and the donor relationship? What due diligence governed acceptance of money linked to the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation? For MIT and the Gates orbit: Was transgender science part of any subsequent pitch ecology after Epstein advised Ito on how to frame topics for Gates, and what internal safeguards existed, given MIT’s later public reckoning with Epstein-linked funding? For Congress and federal investigators: How much additional transgender-related correspondence remains in the unreleased portion of the archive, and has it been systematically searched and catalogued as potential evidence in oversight inquiries? For parents: If informed consent means understanding not only the claimed benefits and risks but also whether the supporting “science” was produced in good faith, what does it mean when Jeffrey Epstein is caught steering and incentivizing the production of “transgender biology” content in the first place?
As more information is released, we hope to have these questions answered and to uncover more evidence of Epstein’s involvement in the transitioning of kids. But until then, it is up to us to sound the alarm about what is actually going on. Parents deserve the truth about what is happening to their children.
References
Thank you to our investigative team, led by Mandy, whose work allows us to deliver accurate reporting.
Advocate. (2026). Renowned transgender medicine surgeon defends appearing in Epstein files disclosures.
Born To Be. (2026). Born To Be.
Chronicle of Higher Education. (2025). Jeffrey Epstein’s Inbox Reveals His Deep Ties to Prominent Researchers. https://www.chronicle.com/article/jeffrey-epsteins-inbox-reveals-his-deep-ties-to-prominent-researchers
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United States Department of Justice. (2026). Epstein Files: DataSet 11 - EFTA02667053.pdf. https://www.justice.gov/age-verify?destination=/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02667053.pdf
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United States Department of Justice. (2026). Epstein Files: DataSet 9 - EFTA01038315.pdf. https://www.justice.gov/age-verify?destination=/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01038315.pdf
X. (2026). [Post by @sayerjigmi]: 1/🚨 A convicted child sex trafficker told a biologist: produce research on "transgender biology" or I cut your funding. https://x.com/sayerjigmi/status/2023260181002416278
Yahoo News. (2026). Emails Reveal Epstein Encouraged Controversial Scientist to Study “Transgender Biology”. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/emails-reveal-epstein-encouraged-controversial-171058374.html