Jeffrey Epstein told several of his teenage sex objects that he had dirt on very powerful men—an “insurance policy” in case the need ever arose to cash in for his protection. The girls who had sex with various US politicians and foreign heads of state had to report back to Epstein details about the men, from exactly what their sexual preferences were, to what recreational drugs they enjoyed. Epstein wanted specific details to hold over their heads—information that would carry the ring of truth among those who knew the men intimately.

But words are not enough, particularly coming from these young, poor girls, whom Epstein and his attorneys managed to cast as gold diggers, problem children, and simply not credible. Epstein knew he needed more tangible and objective proof. Photos and videos would be the best evidence of these men’s sex crimes and could be used to blackmail them.

In 2006, as part of the Palm Beach Police search of Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion after Epstein’s original Florida arrest, they found hidden cameras and a number of photos of young girls, naked or partially naked, throughout the house. But someone—almost certainly a government employee who violated police confidentiality, and probably for some type of payoff—tipped off Epstein that the search was coming. One of his personal assistants had time to remove from the mansion the computers that allegedly contained the most incriminating evidence, including the naked or sexually explicit photos of underage girls that Ghislaine Maxwell created and kept on her computer. She was making kiddie porn, according to the victims, and had a very large quantity of the illicit materials that she created herself.

Papers filed in court in 2008 made the same allegations, according to the Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, which reported on January 3, 2015: “Details buried in original court papers filed against pervert Jeffrey Epstein, 61, reveal that he recorded the sordid orgies he threw for VIPs at his luxury homes using cameras hidden in the walls of guest bedrooms.”

The report said that Virginia Roberts Giuffre mentioned the cameras in a twenty-seven page federal court filing in Palm Beach, Florida. These are the same papers in which Virginia says she was sex-trafficked to “many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders.”

Other evidence also surfaced that Epstein installed hidden cameras in many places on his various properties for the purpose of capturing images of prominent men with underage girls, to be used later illegally, to force them to help Epstein cover up his crimes or get out of trouble. Ghislaine Maxwell told a friend that Epstein’s Orgy Island was “completely wired for video,” and the friend thought that Epstein and Maxwell were “videotaping everyone on the island as an insurance policy, as blackmail.”