Who Are the Recently Exposed Epstein Associates, And How Rich Are They?
The Wall Street Journal recently released a multi-part report that showed several important figures that had some form of relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
These individuals were not listed in the black book or on the flight logs of his private jet before he died in 2019 while awaiting trial, making their association with the disgraced Hollywood socialite unknown to the public.
There’s one, rather, heavy-hitting public intellectual on this list whose close ties have been revealed, much to the chagrin of many fanboys and fangirls.
The WSJ uncovered the identities after getting a previously hidden collection of documents, including numerous emails and Epstein's private agendas from 2013 to 2017.
This was following Epstein pleading guilty in 2008 for paying for a minor's prostitution in Florida, and some of the time covered was after Giuffre accused Epstein of sex trafficking in 2015.
Numerous meetings, organized in the schedules, had Epstein as the planner and the other participants listed.
However, according to the WSJ, it was not possible to confirm if each of these meetings actually happened. A lot of them were held in his townhouse on the Upper East Side, which is one of the spots where he is accused of molesting women and girls.
In 2019, The New York Magazine put out a comprehensive list of all the high-profile people supposedly associated with Jeffrey Epstein, as was gleaned from public documents available at that time.
Here is an analysis of the names in the article by the WSJ and the reasons they were connected to him.
Ehud Barak, who was once the Prime Minister of Israel,
The documents indicate that the veteran Israeli politician was a frequent visitor to Epstein's home on the Upper East Side from 2013 to 2017, gathering with the money manager month after month throughout this period.
He also flew on Epstein's plane.
When approached by the Journal, Barak acknowledged that he did meet Epstein while in New York and that Epstein "sometimes invited other interesting people from all sorts of backgrounds, such as art, culture, law, science, finance, diplomacy, and philanthropy."
He went on to say that he never had the chance to witness Epstein in the presence of girls or minors, or even adult women, in an inappropriate setting or behavior.
Botstein, the chief of Bard College, is Leon
Botstein had around two dozen meetings with Epstein over the four years highlighted in the documents, mostly held at the latter's townhouse.
In 2012, Botstein recalled having a meeting with Epstein to show appreciation for his unsolicited donations to the college's high schools.
He then continued to meet with him in the hopes of getting more donations, which included 66 laptops given to Bard in 2015.
The president of Bard College extended an invitation to Epstein to attend musical performances there, but eventually concluded that Epstein wasn't interested in giving more and "was just wasting everyone's time".
Despite being a convicted sex offender who had confessed to obtaining a minor for the purpose of prostitution, Botstein and Bard were still interested in acquiring Epstein's financial backing.
"We investigated him and found out he had been found guilty of a sexual offense," Botstein said to the WSJ, “we believe in rehabilitation.”
They took his criminal background into account when he visited the college, as Botstein commented: “Because of his previous record, we had security ready. He did not have any free access to anybody.” According to the plans in the documents, Epstein brought some of his young female assistants on his trips to Bard.
CIA Director, William Burns
According to the documents, in 2014, Jeffrey Epstein had three separate meetings with William Burns, who held the position of deputy security of the state in the Obama administration.
These meetings took place both in Washington, D.C., and New York, as reported by the WSJ.
A lunch was planned that August at the office of law firm Steptoe & Johnson in Washington. Epstein scheduled two evening appointments that September with Mr. Burns at his townhouse, the documents show. After one of the scheduled meetings, Epstein planned for his driver to take Mr. Burns to the airport.
In October of that year, the career diplomat exited the State Department to take on the role of president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he stayed until President Biden selected him to lead the CIA in 2021.
Tammy Kupperman Thorp, a representative of the CIA, issued a statement to the Journal denying that Burns had any connection to Epstein: “The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on the transition to the private sector,” she said. “They had no relationship.”
Noted Linguist Noam Chomsky
The papers demonstrate that Epstein organized a few meetings with Chomsky in 2015 and 2016 when he was teaching at MIT, where Epstein had given many thousands of dollars.
The planned meetings included a social affair of academics and a trip on Epstein's private plane to New York to have supper at his townhouse with movie executive Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.
In response to being asked by the WSJ regarding their meetings, the 94-year-old Chomsky replied in an email saying that it was not their business.
He went on to say that he was familiar with Epstein and that they met up occasionally to talk about politics and academics.
Chomsky then added that if any flights were taken, it would have been from Boston to New York and would not have lasted very long.
Finally, he concluded that he was not obligated to inform them about an evening spent with a great artist.
Noam Chomsky told the WSJ that Jeffrey Epstein was known to have fulfilled his punishment for the crime he had been convicted of, meaning that, as per the regulations of the U.S., he had a clean slate.
Furthermore, Chomsky stated that Epstein had organized a meeting between himself and Barak so they could discuss the policies of Israel regarding the Palestinian affair and the global arena.
Chairwoman of Edmond de Rothschild Group, Ariane de Rothschild
In 2019, the Edmond de Rothschild Group, a Swiss private bank, and its chairwoman, Ariane de Rothschild, made the incorrect assertion that they had no connection to Jeffrey Epstein, as was revealed in documents examined by the WSJ.
Mrs. de Rothschild, who married into the powerful banking family, held more than a dozen conversations with Epstein.
According to the documents, he requested her assistance in finding a new assistant and staff, as well as discussed business deals with her.
Mrs. de Rothschild, who married into the famous banking family, had more than a dozen meetings with Epstein. He sought her help with staffing and furnishings as well as discussed business deals with her, according to the documents. In September 2013, Epstein asked Mrs. de Rothschild in an email for help finding a new assistant, “female … multilingual, organized.”
“I’ll ask around,” Mrs. de Rothschild emailed back.
She bought nearly $1 million worth of auction items on Epstein’s behalf in 2014 and 2015, the documents show. Mrs. de Rothschild was named chairwoman of the bank in January 2015. That October, she and Epstein negotiated a $25 million contract for Epstein’s Southern Trust Co. to provide “risk analysis and the application and use of certain algorithms” for the bank[.]
In an answer to the WSJ, the bank confessed that its 2019 statement was incorrect and mentioned that de Rothschild had professional meetings with Epstein from 2013 to 2019, had brought the bank in contact with U.S. finance authorities, given tax and hazard counsel, as well as had proposed law offices.
The bank also expressed that Epstein "asked her individually on a couple of events for direction and services on bequest administration" and that she "was equally oblivious of any queries concerning his personal behavior" then.
The general counsel of Goldman Sachs, Kathryn Ruemmler, is a highly regarded figure in the legal world.
The papers show that after she left the White House counsel's office and became a partner at the law firm Latham & Watkins, Epstein booked more than thirty-six get-togethers with Ruemmler.
He also organized for her to accompany him to Paris in 2015 and to his now-infamous island home in the US Virgin Islands.
In addition, he scrutinized the apartments Ruemmler was looking into and asked his staff if the young women working in his Manhattan townhouse would make her uneasy.
In 2020, Ruemmler became a top legal practitioner at Goldman Sachs Group, serving as co-chairperson of the firm's reputational-risk advisory committee.
According to a Goldman spokesperson, Ruemmler's association with Epstein was strictly a professional one and had to do with her duties at Latham & Watkins.
The WSJ was told this.
In the normal course, Epstein also invited her to meetings and social gatherings, introduced her to other business contacts, and, made referrals. It was the same kinds of contacts and engagements she had with other contacts and clients.
The representative noted that Ruemmler had never encountered anything improper at the townhouse, never flew anywhere with Epstein, never went to his island, and stated "I regret having known Jeffrey Epstein."