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James Goldsmith
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/21/25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Goldsmith

TODD BLANCHE: And then you mentioned some other people. You mentioned President Clinton --
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Yes.
TODD BLANCHE: -- you mentioned President Trump early on. Who were other famous/politicians, who were other individuals in Mr. Epstein's life during that time period? So the early '90s --
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: It was the '90s. Let's -- should we just --
TODD BLANCHE: Yes.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Okay. Congressman McMillen.
TODD BLANCHE: Say it again.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: McMillen.
TODD BLANCHE: Okay.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Henry Rosovsky, who was the provost of Harvard. Hang on (Indiscernible).
TODD BLANCHE: Sure. You're looking at your -- your -- your notes.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Yes.
TODD BLANCHE: Go ahead. Go ahead.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Joe Pagano, Jerry Goldsmith, Joe Roberts, Kenny Lipper, Dan Abramson. I don't know if in the '90s Tom Pritzker, Ace, Jimmy Cayne, Lou Ranieri. I mean, there were --
TODD BLANCHE: What about the royal family?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No. He didn't know them in the '90s.

-- MAXWELL INTERVIEW, by U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Released: 8/22/25

-- Sir James Goldsmith: Rich, Loud and Ignorant. Goldsmith’s Trap-Crap, by Gwydion M. Williams, 1994-1997

By 1989, Maxwell and Goldsmith were closely associated, and Goldsmith would also later [LC: Correction: "and Goldsmith already had his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein."] have his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein.35 Goldsmith apparently knew Epstein long before Epstein had started at Bear Stearns. According to a former friend of Epstein’s, art collector Stuart Pivar, he had first met Epstein at "Jimmy Goldsmith’s mansion" in the early 1970s. -- CHAPTER 11. THE RISE OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN, from "One Nation Under Blackmail" by Whitney Webb

Goldsmith in 1994
Leader of the Referendum Party
In office: 1994–1997
Member of the European Parliament for France
In office: 1994–1997
Born James Michael Goldsmith, 26 February 1933, Paris, France;
Died: 18 July 1997 (aged 64), Benahavís, Spain
Nationality: French; British
Political party : Movement for France; Referendum Party
Spouses: María Isabel Patiño y Borbón, ​(m. 1954; died 1954)​; Ginette Christiane Léry, ​(m. 1956; div. 1978)​; Annabel Goldsmith, ​(m. 1978)​
Domestic partner: Laure Boulay de La Meurthe
Children: 8, including Jemima, Zac, Ben, and Charlotte
Parents: Frank Goldsmith, Marcelle Mouiller
Education: Millfield, Eton College
Known for: Finance, Eurosceptic politician
Website: sirjamesgoldsmith.com

Sir James Michael Goldsmith (26 February 1933 – 18 July 1997) was a French-British[1] financier and politician who was a member of the Goldsmith family.[2] His controversial business and finance career led to ongoing clashes with British media, frequently involving litigation or the threat of litigation.

In 1994 he was elected to represent a French constituency as a Member of the European Parliament. He founded the short-lived Eurosceptic Referendum Party in the United Kingdom, which became an early campaigner for opposition to Britain's membership of the European Union.

Early life

Born in Paris,[3] Goldsmith was the son of luxury hotel tycoon and former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Major Frank Goldsmith and his French wife, Marcelle Mouiller,[4] and younger brother of environmental campaigner Edward Goldsmith. Frank Goldsmith had previously changed the family name from the German Goldschmidt to the English Goldsmith. The Goldschmidts, neighbours and rivals of the Rothschild family, were a wealthy, Frankfurt-based, Jewish family that had been influential in international merchant banking since the 16th century. James's great-grandfather was Benedikt Hayum Goldschmidt, founder of the B. H. Goldschmidt [de] bank and consul to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. James's grandfather was Adolphe Benedict Goldschmidt (1838–1918), a multi-millionaire who moved to London in 1895.[3]

Raised initially in Paris, James Goldsmith had to flee France with his family when Nazi Germany overran the country in 1940, only just managing to escape on the last over-loaded ship from the French port of exit, leaving behind their hotels and much of their property.[5] After that the family relocated to the Bahamas, and Goldsmith was sent to school at St. Andrew's College, Aurora, in Canada,[1] where he founded a business trapping small furbearing animals such as rabbits, skunk and mink.[5] He later attended Millfield and Eton College, which he left early in 1949 at the age of 16, after winning £8,000 (equivalent to £357,000 in 2023) on a horse racing bet of £10 (equivalent to £450 in 2023) for a three-horse accumulator at Lewes racecourse. With the money, he decided that he should leave Eton immediately; in a speech at his boarding house, he declared that "a man of my means should not remain a schoolboy!"[1] He then took over a business in Paris from his brother Teddy, which sold a cure for rheumatism and electrical plugs and sockets.[5]

Goldsmith served as a Gunner in the British Army's Royal Artillery under the National Service requirements, during which time he received a commission as an officer.[6]

Business career

During the 1950s and 60s, Goldsmith's involvement in finance and as an industrialist involved many risks, and brought him close to bankruptcy several times.[7] His successes included winning the British franchise for Alka-Seltzer and introducing low-cost generic drugs to the UK. He was described in the tabloid press as a greenmail corporate raider and asset stripper, a categorisation he denied vigorously. He claimed the re-organizations he undertook streamlined the operations, removed complacent inefficient management, and increased shareholder value.[2]

Having taken on the management of the Paris business handed on by his brother Teddy, Goldsmith organised a publicity stunt involving an arthritic racehorse. Sales escalated in response and, within a couple of years, the staff had been expanded from two to over a hundred. Goldsmith took on the agency for various slimming remedies and branched out into the manufacture of generic prescription drugs.[8] His acquisition of the distributorship for Slimcea and Procea low-calorie breads was the start of the shift of focus towards the food industry. In the early 1960s, in partnership with Selim Zilkha, Goldsmith founded the Mothercare retail chain, but sold out his share to Zilkha who went on to develop it with great success.[9]

With the financial backing of Sir Isaac Wolfson,[10] he acquired diverse food companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange as Cavenham Foods in 1965. Initially, the group had an annual turnover of £27m and negligible profits. He added bakeries and then confectioners to the group, and then took over a number of wholesalers and retailers, including small chains of tobacco, confectioner and newsagent shops. By rationalising the activities, closing inefficient factories, and improving the management practices, he steadily improved productivity. By 1971, the turnover was £35m and profits were up to £2m.[2]

In June 1971, he launched a bid for Bovril, which was a much larger company with a diverse portfolio including several strong brands (including Marmite, Ambrosia, Virol and Jaffajuice), dairies and dairy farms, and cattle ranches in Argentina. It was run by the third generation of the founding family and Goldsmith concluded that they were ineffectual. The bid was strongly contested and Goldsmith was fiercely attacked by the financial press. The directors tried to induce Beechams and Rowntree Mackintosh to make rival offers but, in the end, they both withdrew.[2]

After the successful bid, Goldsmith sold the dairies and farms to Max Joseph's Express Dairies group for £5.3m, and found buyers in South America for the ranches. Sales of other parts of the company recouped almost all of the £13m that the acquisition had cost him.[10] Some years later, he sold the brand names to Beecham for £36m. Later, he took over Allied Distributors, who owned a miscellaneous portfolio of grocery stores and small chains, including the Lipton shops. As journalists began to question his techniques of dealing with the funds and assets of publicly quoted companies, Goldsmith began dealing through private companies registered in the UK and abroad. These included the French company Générale Occidentale and Hong Kong and then Cayman-registered General Oriental Investments.[2]

In early 1973, Goldsmith travelled to New York to assess US business opportunities, followed by a tour round Central and South America. He took the view that the UK economy was due for a downturn and began aggressively liquidating many of his assets. In December that year, in the midst of financial chaos, he announced that he had acquired a 51% controlling stake in Grand Union, one of the oldest retailing conglomerates in the US. He set Jim Wood – who had revitalised his British retail operations – to work on rationalising the operations of the chain, but ran into continuous obstruction from both unions and management.[citation needed]

During the 1960s and 1970s, Goldsmith received financing from the banking arm of the conglomerate Slater Walker, of which he succeeded founder Jim Slater as chairman following the company's collapse and rescue by the Bank of England in the secondary banking crisis of 1973–75.

Goldsmith was knighted in the 1976 resignation honours – the so-called "Lavender List" – of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In early 1980, he formed a partnership with longtime friend and merchant banker Sir Roland Franklin. Franklin managed Goldsmith's business in the Americas. From 1983 until 1988, Goldsmith, via takeovers in America, built a private holding company, Cavenham Forest Industries, which became one of the largest private owners of timberland and one of the top-five timber-holding companies of any type in America. Goldsmith and Franklin identified a quirk in American accounting whereby companies with substantial timberland holdings would often carry them on their balance sheets at a nominal valuation (as the result of years of depreciation).[2]

Goldsmith, a reader of financial statements, realised that in the case of Crown Zellerbach the underlying value of the timberland assets alone, carried at only $12.5m on the balance sheet, was worth more than the target company's total market capitalisation of around $900m. With this insight, Goldsmith began raids that left him with a holding company owning huge tracts of timberland acquired at virtually no net cost.[11][12] The majority of the pulp and paper assets were sold in 1986 to James River Corporation,[13][14][15] which in turn became a part of Georgia-Pacific in 2000. (The brown paper container division became Gaylord Container.)[16]

Additionally, in 1986, Goldsmith's companies reportedly made $90 million from an attempted hostile takeover of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, although he regarded this profit as an inadequate consolation for the failure to carry the bid through to a successful conclusion. The management of the company coordinated a virulent campaign against Goldsmith, involving unions, the press, and politicians at state and federal level.[2]

Goldsmith retired to Mexico in 1987, having anticipated the market crash that year and liquidated his assets. However, he continued corporate raiding, including an attempt on British-American Tobacco in 1989 (for which he joined Kerry Packer and Jacob Rothschild). He also swapped his American timber assets for a 49.9% stake in Newmont Mining and remained on the board of Newmont until he liquidated his stake through open-market trades in 1993. He had been precluded by the original purchase of Newmont from acquiring a controlling shareholding in the company. In 1990, Goldsmith also began a lower-profile, but also profitable, global "private equity style" investment operation. By 1994, executives working in his employ in Hong Kong had built a substantial position in the intermediation of global strategic raw-material flows.[2]

A large Hong Kong-linked and Goldsmith-funded stake in one of the world's largest nickel operations, INCO Indonesia, was also disclosed in the 1990s, showing Goldsmith's ability to position capital before a trend became obvious to others. The group was also a major backer of the Hong Kong-based and Singapore listed major raw material player Noble Group, with low-profile long-time Goldsmith protégé Tobias Brown serving for many years as the company's non-executive chairman.[citation needed]

Goldsmith and the press

Goldsmith attracted little attention until he became embroiled in a damaging dispute with anti-establishment satirical magazine Private Eye. In 1976 Private Eye accused Goldsmith of being part of what amounted to a conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice in relation to the fugitive Lord Lucan, who was wanted for the murder of his children's nanny. The article falsely stated that Goldsmith had participated in a meeting supposedly called by John Aspinall to help Lucan. Goldsmith was a regular at his close friend Aspinall's gambling club, the Clermont, where Lucan was one of the house players having their losses written off, rather than a true member.

In addition to pursuing a large number of civil lawsuits against the editor of the magazine and a journalist who was also a TV researcher and regarding them as dangerous subversives, Goldsmith sought to bring a criminal libel prosecution, though there had not been one for half a century. Through his actions Goldsmith formed an unlikely friendship with the Labour Party's then Prime Minister Harold Wilson who loathed Private Eye. The access to Wilson aided Goldsmith when, to the horror of Bank of England officials, he became head of the troubled Slater Walker, and this is said to have been the reason for his knighthood. The costly libel suits were eventually settled by Goldsmith, but he was subsequently dogged by disparaging commentary from a wide range of British media.[17]

In November 1977, there were two editions of The Money Programme on BBC; the first gave a critical account of Goldsmith's business history and methods. In the second programme a combative Goldsmith appeared in person and countered the implication of asset stripping by pointing to an investment of over a hundred million pounds his company was making to upgrade their going concerns.[18]

In 1977 Goldsmith bought the French weekly L'Express and between 1979 and 1981 published the UK news magazine NOW! which never met circulation targets and incurred heavy losses. After 84 issues, Goldsmith closed it in early May 1981.[19]

In 1999 an episode of The Mayfair Set, a BBC television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis, portrayed the by then deceased Goldsmith as a playboy, speculator and deluded victim of the success as a corporate raider that made him one of the world's richest men.[20][better source needed]

Political career

Goldsmith had become increasingly concerned throughout the 1980s about the nature of the European Economic Community (EEC), and harboured a deepening suspicion that at its core lay a desire for the domination of the European continent by Germany, a suspicion which was for him confirmed further when in 1992, via the passage of the Maastricht Treaty, the EEC re-titled itself as the European Union, with dramatically centralising governmental powers being enacted over its constituent member nations.[21]

In March 1993 Goldsmith gave a televised lecture publicly declaring opposition to the European Union, which was transmitted across the United Kingdom on Channel 4 Television as part of its Opinions political commentary series, the text of which was published in The Times the following day under the title Creating a Superstate is the way to destroy Europe.[22] In the mid-1990s he financially supported a Eurosceptic think tank entitled the European Foundation.

In 1994 he published The Trap,[23] a book detailing his broader political philosophical thoughts, giving a critique of the dominance of neoliberalism in the governments of the First World. In its text he criticised their ideological dogmatic pursuance of free trade, and the facilitation of the American "melting pot" societal model being copied by the rest of the First World's governments through mass foreign migration, driven by a pursuance of short-term economic advantage, which he posited was fatally flawed in societal concept and brought with it great societal dangers. As an economic alternative he espoused a restoration of classical liberalism, and a return to mercantilism. He also advocated the prevention by governmental action of mass migrations by populations from poorer areas of the globe into the First World driven by economic motivation, which he foresaw as an inevitability of escalating Third World population demographics and First World governmental neoliberal and socialist ideologies.[24][25]

In 1994 he was elected in France as a Member of the European Parliament, representing the Majorité pour l'autre Europe party, and subsequently became the leader of the eurosceptic Europe of Nations group within the European Parliament.

Referendum Party

In the early 1990s, with the removal of Margaret Thatcher from the United Kingdom's Prime Ministerial office by the Tories, and their enactment into law of the Maastricht Treaty, Goldsmith, who up until that time had retained close links with the Conservative Party, came to the conclusion that it was no longer a serious political vehicle to oppose the European Union's advancing power, and that opposition would have to be created within the party political system beyond its current order of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats parties, all of which supported the United Kingdom's incorporation into the European Union.[Note 1]

In consequence, in 1994 Goldsmith founded and financed the Referendum Party in the United Kingdom, modelled upon the Majorité pour l'autre Europe, with the objective of seeking a referendum for its national withdrawal from the European Union, which would go on to stand candidates in the country's general election of 1997. As the mid-1990s progressed Goldsmith involved himself in British politics, appearing with increasing regularity in the political press, and in domestic political televised debates, raising opposition to the nature of the European Union and what he perceived was mainstream media culpability in playing down its supranational ambitions, and pouring scorn on a Westminster parliamentary political order that he stated had failed the nation and was now wilfully betraying its governmental sovereignty.[26]

During the 1997 electoral campaign Goldsmith had mailed to approximately five million homes a VHS video cassette film to allow him to address the electorate free from the editorial control of the nation's mainstream media, having previously rejected the idea of by-passing the United Kingdom's legal restrictions on the broadcast of political information by the means of an offshore radio station named "Referendum Radio".[27]

1997 United Kingdom general election

At the 1997 general election, Goldsmith stood as a candidate for the Referendum Party in the London constituency of Putney, against the former Conservative minister David Mellor, MP, in an electoral contest in which Goldsmith polled 3.5% of the vote. The declaration of the Putney result, which was televised and nationally broadcast live on the night of 1 May 1997, saw a charged atmosphere at the count, with a rowdy crowd in attendance of anti-European Union activists from the Referendum Party, and the recently inaugurated UK Independence Party (which would itself receive only a couple of hundred votes in Putney that night). An acrimonious confrontation between Mellor (who had lost his seat to the Labour Party candidate) and Goldsmith developed on stage after Mellor, in what was to be his valedictory address from politics, personally insulted Goldsmith's candidacy. During the speech, part of the crowd, Goldsmith and some of the other candidates began a gleefully defiant collective repetitive shouting chant of "Out!" in response, in celebration of the perceived substantive damage having been done to a prominent member of the Westminster Parliamentary political order of which they had become so contemptuous.[28]

Goldsmith's electoral performance at Putney had been reasonably insubstantial, in a British electoral culture in which it is notoriously difficult for new political parties or maverick politicians to establish themselves. He was also terminally ill during the election, a fact which he had kept secret beyond his closest personal circle, and which had limited his ability to campaign. When interviewed by the BBC's Michael Buerk during the count prior to the result being announced, he described his chances as being "extremely low" – the 1,518 votes that his candidacy had garnered had not in itself defeated the incumbent Mellor, who had lost by 2,976 votes; moreover it amounted to less than 5% of the total votes cast, this being insufficient for Goldsmith to retain the candidate's financial deposit of £500, a part of the 20 million pounds that he had reportedly poured into the Referendum Party in its brief existence.[29][30]

Mellor had correctly predicted at the count that the Referendum Party was "dead in the water", and indeed the party did disappear with Goldsmith's death two months after the election. However, many of the Referendum Party's activists and voters would go on to join and support the Referendum Movement, a non-party successor campaign against EU single currency membership, which, in 1998, was re-named the Democracy Movement.[31]

Sir James Goldsmith's political legacy, in securing the promise of a referendum on euro membership and through successor campaigns, would almost 20 years later see the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union in a referendum on the issue.[32]

Death

Two months after contesting the 1997 general election, Goldsmith died aged 64, from pancreatic cancer at a farmhouse that he owned in Benahavís, southern Spain, on 18 July 1997.[30]


Personal life

Goldsmith was married three times. At 20 he married 17-year-old Bolivian heiress María Isabel Patiño y Borbón, the daughter of tin magnate Antenor Patiño by his wife María Cristina de Borbón y Bosch-Labrús, 3rd Duchess of Dúrcal [es]. When Goldsmith proposed the marriage to Antenor Patiño, it is alleged his future father-in-law replied, "We are not in the habit of marrying Jews." Goldsmith is reported to have replied, "Well, I am not in the habit of marrying [Red] Indians."[3] The story, if true, is typical of Goldsmith's attempts at humour. With the heiress pregnant and the Patiños insisting the pair separate, the couple eloped in January 1954. The marriage was brief: rendered comatose by a cerebral haemorrhage in her seventh month of pregnancy, Maria Isabel Patiño de Goldsmith died in May 1954. Her only child, Isabel Goldsmith, was delivered by caesarean section and survived.[33]

Goldsmith next married Ginette Léry, with whom he had a son, Manes Goldsmith, and a daughter, Alix Marcaccini. They divorced in 1978 but shared a house in Paris until his death, and he built her a house on his estate at Cuixmala, in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

In 1978 Goldsmith married his mistress Lady Annabel Birley, with whom he had already had two children, Jemima and Zacharias; they later had a third child, Benjamin. After this marriage, Goldsmith embarked on an affair with Laure Boulay de La Meurthe (granddaughter of Bruno, Count of Harcourt and Princess Isabelle of Orléans), with whom he had two children, film director Charlotte Colbert and Jethro Goldsmith.

Publications

Books

• The Trap. Paris: Fixot (1993). ISBN 0786701854.
• The Response. New York: Macmillan (1995). ISBN 0333665120, 978-0333665121.

Pamphlets

• Communist Propaganda Apparatus & Other Threats to The Media. London: Conservative Monday Club.
Goldsmith's statement to the Media Committee of the Conservative Party at the British House of Commons, January 21, 1981.

Speeches

• Small Today, Bigger Tomorrow: Three Speeches from the 1984 Small Business Bureau Conference, with Margaret Thatcher and Milton Stewart. London: Conservative Political Centre (1984). ISBN 978-0850707137. OCLC 12100879.
• GATT Speech at U.S. Senate (Nov. 15, 1994).

Notes

1. Other splinter groups emerged from the Conservative Party and the defunct Liberal Party in this same period that had reached the same conclusion, viz. The Anti-Federalist League, the United Kingdom Independence Party, and the Liberal Party (UK, 1989).

References

1. "Sir James Goldsmith". The Telegraph. 21 July 1997. Archived from the original on 24 July 2010. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
2. Fallon, Ivan. (1991). Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith. ISBN 0-09-174380-X.
3. Otto Friedrich (23 November 1987). "The Lucky Gambler Sir James Goldsmith is a Billionaire Buccaneer (Yes, Even After the Crash)". Time. Archived from the original on 10 March 2007.
4. "Teddy Goldsmith, écologiste et altermondialiste". Le Monde (in French). 27 August 2009.
5. "Tycoon may shaft Major, not EMU". The Irish Times.
6. Obituary: "Sir James Goldsmith" Archived 16 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Daily Telegraph, 21 July 1997.
7. "Flamboyant Goldsmith Dies of Heart Attack". BBC News. 20 July 1997. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
8. Fallon, Ivan. (1991). Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith. pp. 137–138. ISBN 0-09-174380-X.
9. Fallon, Ivan. (1991). Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith. pp. 132–141. ISBN 0-09-174380-X.
10. "Ketupa.net (media industry resource) article on Goldsmith". Archived from the original on 28 August 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2007.
11. "Financier obtains control of Crown Zellerbach". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. 26 July 1985. p. 1B.
12. "Goldsmith wins in C-Z takeover". Bend Bulletin. (Oregon). UPI. 26 July 1985. p. A13.
13. "James River plans to take over mill". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. 17 December 1985. p. 6B.
14. "Crown Z makes stock swap". Ellensburg Daily Record. (Washington). UPI. 17 December 1985. p. 13.
15. "James River to buy most of Zellerbach". Spokane Chronicle. (Washington). 17 December 1985. p. B5.
16. "Hayford, Pomerantz to buy 2d paper products company". The Chicago Tribune. 20 September 1986. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
17. Obituary, Sir James Goldsmith Archived 19 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine, in The Independent, 21 July 1997, accessed 13 September 2015.
18. Leigh Holmwood (3 September 2008). "BBC's Money Programme series to become one-off specials". The Guardian.
19. Staff (11 May 1981). "Suddenly, Now! Is Never". Time. Archived from the original on 13 November 2007. With losses mounting, Goldsmith folds his newsmagazine
20. "The Mayfair Set – BBC Two England – 1 August 1999". BBC Genome. August 1999.
21. Sir James Goldsmith speech Referendum party conference Brighton 1996 FULL VIDEO. hudsoninbury. 1 August 2014. Archived from the original on 3 April 2022. Retrieved 17 April 2022 – via YouTube.
22. 'The Times', 15 March 1993.
23. 'The Trap', by J. Goldsmith (Pub. Carroll & Graf, 1994).
24. "- YouTube". https://www.youtube.com. Retrieved 29 June 2023.
25. Daily Telegraph, obituary for James Goldsmith, 21 July 1997. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitua ... smith.html Archived 16 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
26. Dimbleby Debate on Europe and the Referendum Party: 1996. Sir James Goldsmith. 29 January 2015. Archived from the original on 21 November 2020. Retrieved 17 April 2022 – via YouTube.
27. Genie Baskir (20 February 2003). "Sir James Goldsmith's UK Referendum Radio of 1997". Geocities. Archived from the original on 6 May 2004.
28. Film of the scene broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation, 1 May 1997, 'BBC Rewind: David Mellor loses Putney', published on BBC's website 17 November 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politi ... ses-putney [1]
29. "UK Parliamentary election procedures" (PDF).[dead link]
30. Honigsbaum, Mark; Blackhurst, Chris (19 July 1997). "Maverick billionaire Goldsmith dies with wife and mistress at his side". The Independent. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
31. "BBC News | UK Politics | 20m fight against euro". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
32. Fidler, Matt (24 June 2016). "How newspapers covered Brexit – in pictures". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
33. Christies Archived 7 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine Lot 21, Christie's

Further reading

Books

• Geoffrey Wansell, Sir James Goldsmith: The Man and the Myth, HarperCollins, 1982, ISBN 0006365035, 978-0006365037.
• Geoffrey Wansell, Tycoon: Life of James Goldsmith, HarperCollins, 1987, ISBN 0246129212, 978-0246129215.
• Ivan Fallon, Billionaire, Little, Brown, 1991. ISBN 0316273864, 978-0316273862.
• Richard Ingrams, Goldenballs!: The Incredible Story of the Long and Complex Legal Battle Between Sir James Goldsmith and Private Eye. London: Private Eye Productions, 1979. ISBN 1897597037, 978-1897597033.

Documentaries

• The Mayfair Set, a 1999 BAFTA Award-winning documentary series by Adam Curtis describing buccaneer capitalists in the Thatcher years, focusing on James Goldsmith and other members of the Clermont Set.

The Mayfair Set | Part 1: WHO PAYS WINS | Adam Curtis Complete Documentary | 1999
Adam Curtis Documentaries
Jan 28, 2024

Four stories about the rise of business and the decline of political power. Is a BBC docuseries by filmmaker Adam Curtis, it explores the decline of Britain as a world power. This episode focuses on the birth of the global arms trade in the 1960s.

viewtopic.php?f=227&t=4626&start=40#p41646

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to James Goldsmith.

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• James Goldsmith at IMDb
• James Goldsmith on Charlie Rose
• James Goldsmith collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• The Lucky Gambler: Sir James Goldsmith Is a Billionaire Buccaneer, Time, 23 November 1987
• Television coverage of the Putney election result 1997 on YouTube, featuring Goldsmith heckling David Mellor

[admin]

Katie Johnson’s lawyer: ‘There’s No Doubt in My Mind She Told the Truth’
He spent days questioning her, hired investigators, and filed the suit. Nearly a decade later, he’s breaking his silence about what he saw.
Tara Palmeri
Oct 08, 2025
https://www.tarapalmeri.com/p/the-disap ... n-jane-doe

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

So many of you have left comments or reached out directly about Katie Johnson, the Jane Doe who accused President Trump of raping her at Jeffrey Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse in 1994, when she was just 13 years old. She later dropped the lawsuit on November 4, 2016, just days before the election. Her lawyer said she had received threats.

You’ve urged me to find her. And while I’ve followed leads and received tips on where she might be, I’ve been clear: I’m not going to hound someone who has identified herself as a victim of a heinous crime. If she wants to come forward, she will. Many of you also asked me to reach out to her lawyers. I took that seriously.

I called her attorney Lisa Bloom’s office. They told me she’s no longer in contact with her client and couldn’t discuss it further. I reached out to another of Johnson’s attorneys, Thomas Meagher and Evan Goldman, but never heard back. You may recall from my interview with Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen that he recalled sending a private investigator to track down a Jane Doe who accused Trump of rape before the 2016 election. Cohen told me that Trump dismissed it as “bullshit” and instructed him to “take care of it.” He also claimed he had been in communication with a male lawyer about the case, who admitted he had never met his client. I wanted to know if that was true, and if we were talking about the same case. I have yet to find another summons and complaint from before the election by another Jane Doe connection Trump to Epstein.

Two weeks ago, I tried Johnson’s fourth lawyer: Cheney Mason. To my surprise, he picked up the phone and he was willing to talk. Mason spoke with me over several days, and while he declined to join me on The Tara Palmeri Show, he allowed me to quote him on the record. He was candid about the rigor with which he investigated Johnson’s claims, her credibility, and the limits of what he could disclose.

First, Mason made it clear he has no current contact with his former client. He suggested it would be an ethics violation to reveal too much. Still, he shared what he could:

“I don’t know if my client is still alive,” Mason told me. “I would have been the happiest I’ve ever been if she could come forward, because I’ve seen women on television in the category of victim who tell such a similar story to what happened to her, it’s almost like they’re quoting the affidavit I filed nine years ago.”

[admin]

Jeffrey Epstein Visited Clinton White House Multiple Times in Early ’90s. A Daily Beast investigation has uncovered ties between Epstein and the Clinton administration that date back to the president’s earliest days in the White House.
by Suzi Parker & Emily Shugerman, Senior Reporter
Daily Best
Published Jul. 24 2019 6:54PM EDT



Editor's note: On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein died in an apparent jailhouse suicide. For more information, see The Daily Beast's reporting here.

Days after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest on sex-trafficking charges in New York, Bill Clinton distanced himself from the high-flying financier and convicted sex offender. The former president owned up to just six encounters with Epstein, starting in 2002: four flights on the billionaire’s private jet, a single trip to his Harlem office, and one “brief visit” to his New York apartment, all with staff and security detail in tow.

Now, a Daily Beast investigation has uncovered ties between Epstein and the Clinton administration that date back to the president’s earliest days in the White House, casting doubt on the oft-circulated narrative that the two only began associating after Clinton left office.

As early as 1993, records show, Epstein donated $10,000 to the White House Historical Association and attended a donors’ reception hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Around the same time, according to a source familiar with the connection, Epstein visited presidential aide Mark Middleton several times at the White House. Two years later, businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote a personal letter to Clinton thanking him for their talk about the financier.

“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” Clinton’s spokesperson, Angel Ureña, told The Daily Beast. “Any suggestion to the contrary is both factually inaccurate and irresponsible.”

Representatives for Epstein, de Rothschild and Middleton did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Dinner At The White House

How Epstein entered Clinton’s orbit remains unclear. When the president released his initial statement on Epstein, he did not explain the multiple other trips he appears to have taken on the financier’s plane—including one flight to Westchester with Epstein, his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell, and an “unnamed female.”

Clinton also failed to mention the intimate 1995 fundraising dinner at the Palm Beach home of Revlon mogul Ron Perelman, where Clinton hobnobbed with the likes of Epstein, Don Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett. (Nearby, at Epstein’s own Palm Beach mansion, the money man allegedly abused hundreds of underage girls.)

The two were clearly chummy by the early Clinton Foundation years, as attested to by a 2002 photo of Epstein and Clinton in Brunei that appeared in Vicky Ward’s 2003 profile of the financier. In a 2002 piece for New York magazine about the Africa trip, Clinton praised Epstein as a “highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist.”

Politico recently claimed that Clinton and Epstein connected in the first few years after the president left office. Citing “people who know those involved,” the article pegged Maxwell as the glue connecting the two men, and Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, as the tie between the president and the British socialite. Politico noted that Maxwell had vacationed with the Chelsea in 2009, attended her wedding in 2010, and participated in the Clinton Global Initiative as recently as 2013. (A Clinton spokesperson denied Chelsea and Ghislaine were close.)

Documents in the Clinton Library, however, attest to much earlier links between Maxwell, Epstein, and the Clinton White House.

In late September of 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton hosted a reception for supporters who had contributed to recent White House renovations. The nearly $400,000 overhaul—which included new gold draperies and a 13-color woven rug for the Oval Office—was funded entirely by donations to the White House Historical Association, a private organization that helps preserve and promote the White House as a historical monument.

The reception took place at the White House residence from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., according to a copy of the president’s daily schedule. White House Social Secretary Ann Stock—who appears in Epstein’s little black book of phone numbers—was listed as the point of contact. According to multiple attendees, the evening included an intimate tour of the newly refurbished residence, followed by a receiving line with the president and first lady. Dessert was served in the East Room, where the couple thanked everyone for attending and announced the Committee for the Preservation of the White House.

Guests for the event, according to the invitation list, included the journalist and philanthropist Barbara Goldsmith, heiress Jane Engelhard, political consultant Cynthia Friedman, and “Mr Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell.” Epstein and Maxwell do not appear on the ‘regret list,’ and there is a letter ‘A’ next to both of their names, indicating they planned to attend. A press release from the event, put out by Hillary Clinton’s office, lists Epstein as a White House Historical Association donor.

Attorneys for Epstein did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Clinton
REPORT DATE 09/28/93
REPORT TIME 04:59PM

WHITE HOUSE DONORS RECEPTION - September 29, 1993

AA Hon. Clark M. Clifford, Esq. and Mrs. Margery K. Clifford
Washington,DC
A Ms. Trudy Connolly
Waverly Fabric ...
U Ms. Wendy Cooper
Curator of Decorative Arts, The Baltimore Museum of Art
AA Mrs. Dorothy M. Craig & Mr. Earle M. Craig
Midland, TX
RA Mrs. Ann Cummis
A Mr. James Cunningham
Media, PA
A Ms. Angela Martinez
AA Mr. and Mrs. Mike Dugan (Barbara)
Hickory, NC
UU Mr. and Mrs. Kelly Duke
Little Rock, AR
AA Mrs. Cynthia East & Mr. Robert East
Cynthia East Fabrics, Inc.
AA Dr. & Mrs. G. Franklin Edwards (Peggy J.)
Washington, DC
RU Mrs. Jane Engelhard, Mr.
AA Mr. Jeffrey Epstein & Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell
New York, NY
AA Mr. & Mrs. Jonathan Fairbanks (Louisa)
Katherine Lane Weens Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts
AA Mr. & Mrs. Lee Ficks (Joy)
Ficks Reed Company
AA Mr. & Mrs. Rod Fisher
Scarsdale, NY
AA Mr. & Mrs. Gordon Freesman (Norma)
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
AA Mr. & Mrs. Milton Friedman (Cynthia)
Chevy Chase, MD
AU Dr. & Mrs. Dana Allen Fuller
U Mr. Carson K. Glass, Esq.
Lubbock, TX
AA Mr. & Mrs. Stephen P. Gnadt (Pat)
Country Life
A Mrs. Barbara Goldsmith
New York, NNY
A Ms. Elizabeth Robins
A Mr. C. Gerald Goldsmith
Palm Beach, FL
A Ms. Susan Zizes Green
New York, NY

A letter from the following month reveals the extent of the financier’s generosity. Bernard R. Meyer, the executive vice president of the White House Historical Association, sent a note to Epstein’s Madison Avenue offices on Oct. 4, thanking him for his $10,000 contribution. The donation, Meyer wrote, would "assist in funding the costs of refurbishing the Oval Office in the West Wing and certain areas of the Executive Residence.”

A carbon copy of Meyer’s letter was also sent to A. Paul Prosperi—a college friend of Bill Clinton’s who visited Epstein frequently when the financier was jailed in 2008. Visitor logs show Prosperi, a Florida-based attorney, visited Epstein at least 20 times during the 13 months he spent in Palm Beach county jail for procuring an underage prostitute. Prosperi also attended the 1995 Perelman fundraiser where both Epstein and Clinton were present.

Clinton Presidential Library Photocopy

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
740 Jackson Place, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20505
(202) 737-8292

Dear Mr. Epstein:

This letter acknowledges the receipt, from Mr. A. Paul Prosperi, of your check, dated September 29, 1993, in the sum of $10,000, made payable to this Association.

We thank you for this contribution which will be used solely for the benefit of the White House, primarily to assist in funding the cost of refurbishing the Oval Office in the West Wing and certain areas of the Executive Residence.

By copy of this letter, we are informing Mr. Prosperi as well as Ms. Margaret Williams of the White House of the receipt of this gift from you.

Sincerely,

Bernard R. Meyer
Executive Vice President

The White House refused to identify anyone associated with the Historical Association fundraising at the time, but records show Prosperi was intimately involved. The attorney is cc’d on letters to numerous donors, in which Meyer identifies him as the recipient of the contributions. Prosperi even wrote a $10,000 check to the association himself, according to a letter from Hillary Clinton’s personal counsel, Susan Thomases.

“I am forwarding the enclosed check in the amount of $10,000 to the White House Historical Association,” Thomases wrote to Meyer in 1993. “I expect to receive additional contributions and will forward them to you.”

Prosperi was convicted of fraud, filing false tax returns and forging securities to hide his multimillion-dollar swindle of a client in 1997. Clinton commuted his sentence in 2001, in one of his last acts as president. The attorney died in 2016.

White House Contacts

Epstein’s name also turns up in connection with another shadowy figure in the Clinton administration: White House aide Mark E. Middleton. A friend of Clinton’s from Arkansas and an early addition to the president's campaign, he joined the administration in 1993 as a special assistant to Chief of Staff Mack McClarty—another Arkansas insider—and added “Deputy to the Counselor” to his title in 1994.

Over that same time period, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast, Middleton met with Epstein in the White House at least three times. It is unclear what they discussed, or for how long. Middleton did not respond to repeated calls and emails for comment, or to a reporter who visited his home in Arkansas.

Middleton and Epstein also appear to have shared a famous friend in common. Donald Trump—who once called Epstein a “terrific guy”—sent Middleton a signed copy of his book, The Art of the Deal, while the lawyer was working in the White House. The inscription read, “To Mark — Best wishes. Your mom is the best.”

Hobnobbing with businessmen like Epstein and Trump was part and parcel of Middleton’s White House job, according to a 1999 report from the House Committee on Government Reform. (“In the course of his duties, Middleton was in contact with many prominent business people and contributors to the President,” the report states.) But it also got the lawyer in trouble with the administration once he left.

According to a 1996 Los Angeles Times article, Middleton maintained a telephone line at the White House for months after he departed, directing callers to the trade company where he started working afterward. (He also allegedly held on to his White House business cards.) That same year, the administration revoked Middleton’s access to the executive mansion without high-level approval, claiming he had abused his access to the White House to impress personal business clients.

Middleton eventually left the trade company to start his own international consulting business, but controversy followed him. In 1999, the House Committee on Government Reform subpoenaed him to testify in hearings about nearly half a million dollars in foreign donations to Clinton’s re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The attorney refused to testify, invoking his right against self-incrimination. Several other figures in the scandal were later convicted of campaign finance violations.

'My Fifteen Seconds of Access'

Jeffrey Epstein’s name shows up again in the Clinton Library archives in a letter dated April 27, 1995, from Lynn Forester to “President William T. Clinton.” Forester—who became Lynn Forester de Rothschild after her marriage in 2000 to Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild—served on Clinton’s National Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee and on the president’s Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. She and her husband also spent the first night of their honeymoon in the Lincoln Bedroom by invitation of the Clintons.

In the 1995 letter, Forester de Rothschild writes, “Dear Mr. President: It was a pleasure to see you recently at Senator Kennedy’s house. There was too much to discuss and too little time. Using my fifteen seconds of access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization, I neglected to talk to you about a topic near and dear to my heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future.” She then goes on to note that she’s sending him a memo on the latter subject, which George Stephanopoulos had asked her to write, and signs off, “Sincerely, Lynn Forester.”

The businesswoman did not respond to a request for comment left with her office.

April 27, 1995

President William T. Clinton
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

It was a pleasure to see you recently at Senator Kennedy's house. There was too much to discuss and too little time. Using my fifteen seconds of access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization, I neglected to talk with you about a top near and dear to my heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future. I am sending you a copy of a memo George Stephanopoulos asked me to prepare, and an article about my participation in an FCC set aside program.

I would very much like to continue my involvement with this issue. You deserve a lot of credit for many of your initiatives in this area. Let me know if I can help you in any way.

Sincerely,
Lynn Forester

A 1995 letter from Lynn Forester to President Clinton that discusses Jeffrey Epstein.

What exactly Forester de Rothschild discussed with Clinton about Epstein and “currency stabilization” is unknown. In its 2002 profile of Epstein, New York noted that the mysterious money man liked to talk currency trading with his brainy pals—“the euro, the real, the yen.” And in 2003, Vicky Ward reported in Vanity Fair on his self-declared “skill at playing the currency markets ‘with very large sums of money’.” Epstein was also doing business and trading currencies with Deutsche Bank until a few months ago, when the bank ended the relationship.

Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s onetime lawyer, previously claimed Forester de Rothschild was the first to introduce him to his future client. In a recent interview with New York magazine, Dershowitz recounted that in the summer of 1996, at a party on Martha’s Vineyard for Lord Rothschild, Forester de Rothschild told him, “I have this friend, he really would like to meet you.”

The friend turned out to be Epstein, another Brooklyn guy made big. “He was feisty, he was utterly politically incorrect,” Dershowitz recalled. “He was interesting to be with.”

Dershowitz has also been accused by an alleged victim of molesting her at Epstein’s Palm Beach house and on his private island. He vehemently denies the allegations.

—With additional reporting by Michael Daly

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Trump’s Elite Pedophile Protection Program: Who are they Protecting? Amy Wallace says the FBI and DOJ have the list. Twenty abusers. Zero accountability. How long will we tolerate this cover-up?
by Thom Hartmann
Oct 23, 2025
https://hartmannreport.com/p/trumps-eli ... ection-46a

When Emmett Till’s mother lifted the veil from her son’s mutilated body in 1955, she forced America to face itself. She knew that if the nation could see what had been done to her child, it could no longer pretend innocence. That open casket was a moral explosion: it turned private grief into a public reckoning.

The same courage is needed now.

Amy Wallace, the co-writer of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl, has said she knows the names of the men who raped and trafficked children with Jeffrey Epstein.

She says the FBI — and, presumably, its director Kash Patel — knows the names of those men.

She says the Department of Justice — and, presumably, it’s director AG Pam Bondi (who turned a blind eye to Epstein’s crimes during the 8 years she was Florida’s Attorney General while he was raping children under her nose) — knows the names of those men.

The only ones kept in the dark are the American people.

Wallace’s words should set the country on fire:

“Yes, I know who the names are. Virginia knows who the names are. So does the FBI and the DOJ.”

Yet the files remain sealed, and the truth sits buried under bullshit excuses about “ongoing investigations” and “legal process” that are obviously designed to protect one person: Donald Trump. Was he also raping children? Was the Miss Teen USA Pageant he owned back then also part of Epstein’s network, feeding teenage girls to predators?

Is that what Mike Johnson is working so hard to cover up? Are they haunted by the Newsweek headline: “Epstein Victim Was Contestant in Donald Trump’s Teen Beauty Pageant”? Is that why Johnson is refusing to swear Adelita Grijalva into office?

Most recently we’ve been treated to the naked lies Patel and Bondi are apparently telling (or shrouding with legalese) about not having “Epstein’s list” at all, something both of them previously claimed existed. Did it simply vanish? Did they destroy it, after Bondi told the press that it was “sitting on my desk right now” back in February?

Virginia Giuffre fought to expose Epstein’s network of predators who were, and still are, protected both by their great wealth and the status that can confer and, now, by the Republican Party itself. Her courage cost her her life, and her death leaves behind both a tragedy and a moral demand.

Her story is not gossip. It’s unambiguous testimony about how men in power like Donald Trump shield themselves from justice. It’s the record of an old boy system that would rather bury the victims than confront the abusers.

Every institution involved in this cover-up is rotting from within. The Republican-controlled House and Senate. Trump’s Department of Justice. His toady-controlled FBI.

We’ve seen this sickness before.

The Catholic Church protected pedophile priests for decades. George W. Bush’s administration lied about torture and murder.

Corporations selling tobacco, asbestos, fossil fuels, and opioids hid reports on their deadly products and hired corrupt “scientists” and paid off mostly-Republican politicians to help them continue killing Americans and our planet for billions in profits. Trump’s administration even tried to bring back asbestos.

There’s not a family in America that wasn’t touched by this criminality and these men’s lies: the asbestos industry’s executives’ coverups killed my father, and the tobacco industry’s executives’ coverups killed my younger brother Stanley.

The formula never changes. When uncomfortable truths threaten people who hold great wealth and power, they use that power to hide the truth. The result is always the same: a deep moral infection that spreads — and often kills — until the public rises up to clean it out.

The Epstein case is not about one man. It’s about a culture of privilege that believes laws are for the poor and justice is for the powerless.

If a large group of men are named in the files as abusers of children, and if the FBI and DOJ know who they are as Virginia Giuffre alleges, then every day of silence is a crime against humanity.

Every Trump administration official who stays quiet is an accomplice. Every Republican representative or senator who hides behind “procedure” and cowers in fear of Trump joins the conspiracy.

America cannot heal by hiding its wounds. Just as Emmett Till’s mother forced the nation to look at the face of violent racism, we must now look at the faces of those men Trump and Epstein traveled with who used children as sex objects and hid behind the power their great wealth conferred.

It may be painful to see, but the truth is always painful before it’s redemptive. The cover-up must end. The files must be released. The names must be spoken.

Those who raped and trafficked children with Jeffrey Epstein — including Donald Trump, if the evidence points in that direction — must face public exposure and legal punishment. They should not hold office, sit on boards, or enjoy the comforts of respectability. They should face justice.

And those who know and remain silent must be held to account as well. We can’t have one standard for the powerful and another for everyone else. A democracy that protects predators because they’re rich or politically powerful is no democracy at all.

The FBI, the Department of Justice, Republicans in Congress, and every public servant with knowledge of these crimes must decide which side of history they stand on. If they choose secrecy, they stand with the abusers. If they choose truth, they stand with the victims and with the conscience of the nation. There is no middle ground.

This is not about revenge. It’s about cleansing the moral fabric of our country. Evil thrives in silence. It feeds on secrecy. When sunlight hits corruption, it dies. The moment those names are made public, the reckoning begins. That’s how justice starts.

Let the people see what’s been done. Let them see who did it. Let them see the truth that Trump and those around him have tried so hard to bury.

Emmett Till’s mother showed us what courage looks like. Now that same courage is needed again. Until the truth is out, until the names are spoken, until justice is real, the stain will remain on us all.

Louise’s Daily Song: “Who Are They Protecting?”

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Epstein Victim Was Contestant in Donald Trump’s Teen Beauty Pageant
by Khaleda Rahman, National Correspondent
Newsweek
Jul 31, 2025 at 03:02 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/epstein-victim ... nt-2106406

A victim of Jeffrey Epstein testified during Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 trial that she was once a contestant in President Donald Trump's teen beauty pageant.

The woman, identified by the pseudonym "Jane," testified that she met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club when Epstein took her there in the 1990s when she was 14. She did not describe any inappropriate behavior by Trump during her testimony.

Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email.

[x]
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters near the Rose Garden after returning to the White House on Marine One on July 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Getty Images

Why It Matters

It comes as Trump's personal relationship with Epstein has come under renewed scrutiny after the Department of Justice announced earlier this month that it would not release any more files related to the Epstein investigation, despite promises that claimed otherwise from Attorney General Pam Bondi. The department also said that an Epstein client list does not exist.

Authorities have said Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, died by suicide in a federal jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The decision to not release any more files angered parts of Trump's base of supporters and the case continues to garner attention and conspiracy theories because of Epstein's ties to many prominent people, such as royals, presidents and billionaires, including Trump. Trump has denied prior knowledge of Epstein's crimes and claimed he had cut off their relationship long ago.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi told Trump that his name was in the files during a May briefing. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the inclusion of someone's name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

What To Know

Jane testified that she took part in the Miss Teen USA pageant in 1998, NBC News reported at the time. However, it was not clear if that was before or after she said she visited Mar-a-Lago.

Trump owned the pageant from 1996 until 2015, and four women who competed in the pageant in 1997 told BuzzFeed in 2016 that Trump had walked into their dressing room while they were changing.

[x]
Donald Trump, Natalie Glebova, Miss Universe 2005, and Chelsea Cooley, Miss USA 2005 | Getty/Getty

During her testimony, Jane said she was sexually abused by Epstein after meeting at a summer arts camp in Michigan in 1994. She said that Maxwell—who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls—would sometimes be in the room when she was abused.

The White House last week denied that Trump had met an Epstein accuser in Epstein's offices in 1995.

White House communications director Steven Cheung told Newsweek it was "recycled, old fake news" and that Trump had kicked Epstein out of his club "for being a creep."

However, Trump offered a different explanation for his falling out with Epstein, saying it came after Epstein "stole" young women who worked for a spa at Mar-a-Lago, including Virginia Giuffre.

Giuffre, one of Epstein's most well-known accusers who died by suicide in April, said that she was hired as Epstein's masseuse after Maxwell spotted her working at Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2000.

But those remarks have come under scrutiny, given Trump continued to associate with Epstein for several years afterward.

He was quoted as saying Epstein was a "terrific guy" in a 2002 profile of Epstein in New York magazine, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein a sexually suggestive letter that was included in a 2003 album for Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump has denied writing the letter and is suing the newspaper for defamation.

Epstein also remained on the membership rolls of Mar-a-Lago until October 2007, according to The Grifter's Club, a book by Sarah Blaskey, an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, that was published in 2020. Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago after hitting on the teenage daughter of another club member, the book reported.

What People Are Saying

Trump said on Monday: "For years I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn't talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, and I said don't ever do that again. He stole people that worked for me. I said don't ever do that again. He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata, I threw him out and that was it. I'm glad I did if you want to know the truth."

Asked if any of the workers were young women, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday: "The answer is yes, they were ... people that worked in the spa."

He confirmed that Giuffre was among them saying: "I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever."

The Democrats' X account posted on Tuesday: "It's telling that Trump seems more upset about the staff Epstein "stole" from his business than the fact that a minor who had worked at his resort was trafficked, groomed, and raped by Epstein."

The Republicans against Trump account on X posted on Tuesday: "Trump just casually admits Epstein was recruiting girls from his spa, and we're all supposed to move on? Release the files!"

What's Next

Last week, Maxwell sat for interviews with Department of Justice officials in Florida. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said she was interviewed because of Trump's directive to gather and release any credible evidence about others who may have committed crimes. Blanche said the additional information about what was learned would be released "at the appropriate time."

Maxwell has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Oversight Committee in August 11. The committee on Tuesday rejected Maxwell's request for immunity from future prosecution as a condition for testifying.

[admin]

Panic Spreading Through GOP After DOJ Reveals Epstein Files Are More Damaging For Trump Than They Thought: Report
November 6, 2025 7:40 am
by Staff Writer
DailyBoulder.com
https://dailyboulder.com/panic-spreadin ... ht-report/

[x]
The DOJ has reportedly warned Republicans that the Epstein files are even more damaging to Trump than they had imagined. (Image composition: The Daily Boulder, from file photos)

Panic is reportedly spreading among Republicans as whispers grow louder about what’s hidden in the unreleased Jeffrey Epstein files — and just how bad they could be for Donald Trump.

According to veteran journalist David Shuster, who has worked with MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, several House Republicans have heard directly from Department of Justice contacts that the Epstein documents are “especially compromising” for the president.

Shuster posted the bombshell on Wednesday, writing on X that “speculation/rumors [are] sweeping through [the] GOP caucus” about what’s inside the files.

“A few GOP house members say they’ve heard from FBI/DOJ contacts that the Epstein files (with copies in different agencies) are worse than Michael Wolff’s description of Epstein photos showing Trump with half naked teenage girls,” Shuster wrote.

That comment points to an earlier interview with Trump biographer Michael Wolff, who told the Daily Beast in October that he had personally seen “about a dozen Polaroid snapshots” of Trump and Epstein. Wolff said the photos showed Trump with “several topless young women on his lap,” and that Epstein “pulled the photos out of a safe and spread them out like a deck of cards” while Wolff was visiting. According to the author, Epstein wanted him to write a book about his life.

If that sounds incriminating, Shuster’s report suggests the DOJ’s files could be even worse.

The story took another twist during Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asked Bondi whether she had personally seen any of the photos seized from Epstein’s safe, she dodged the question — and then fired back by grilling Whitehouse about campaign donations from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who also had ties to Epstein.

“She didn’t give a denial,” Shuster noted.

That moment, according to Shuster, left Republican lawmakers “spooked.” Bondi’s refusal to answer — especially given her close ties to Trump — raised new fears about what could surface if the Epstein files are made public.

Meanwhile, Shuster says “more than 100+ Republicans” are preparing to side with Democrats on a bipartisan discharge petition led by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The petition, which would force a vote to release the Epstein documents, is just one signature away from success.

Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who recently won a special election to replace her late father, has vowed to provide that final signature once she’s sworn in.

Between the whispers from DOJ insiders, Bondi’s evasive testimony, and growing bipartisan support to unseal the Epstein files, Republicans appear to be in a full-blown state of alarm. If the rumors are true, the worst may still be ahead — and the fallout could be devastating

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Epstein Confidant Larry Summers Guiding CAP’s ‘Project 2029’. Summers was overseeing the economic policy plank of the Center for American Progress’s effort. Emails released this week show him in regular contact with Jeffrey Epstein.
by Daniel Boguslaw
The American Prospect
November 14, 2025
https://prospect.org/2025/11/14/epstein ... ject-2029/

[x]
Larry Summers participates in a television interview during the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Venice, Italy, July 9, 2021. Credit: Luca Bruno/AP Photo

As Democrats continue to regroup after their brutal loss in last year’s presidential election, they have yearned to replicate the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and deliver policy recommendations to their next presidential candidate. The highest-profile think tank on the center-left, the Center for American Progress (CAP), has assigned several high-profile policy types to lead an effort that documents show was internally described as “Project 2029.”

According to two people with knowledge of the arrangement and a member of CAP, one of the leads on the economic policy plank for this project is Harvard professor and former Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who has now been exposed as regularly exchanging emails about his personal life with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Officially, Summers has the title of “distinguished senior fellow” at CAP. All three sources confirmed that CAP is compiling a policy blueprint in the event of a Democratic presidential victory in the next election. Summers had taken a leadership role in advising the project’s economic policy arm, two of the sources said. They also said that Summers was the final sign-off on a CAP housing policy paper set to be released next week.

Despite shocking new emails detailing the close friendship between Epstein and Summers released by the House Oversight Committee this week, the CAP employee said they had heard of no plans to remove Summers from the organization, or the policy planning around Project 2029.

In a statement, a CAP spokesperson said: “Larry Summers is a non-resident, uncompensated fellow at CAP. We are reviewing this week’s disclosures to determine appropriate next steps.” In addition, the spokesperson denied that CAP was running an official Project 2029 effort, and denied that Summers was the final sign-off on the housing paper, describing him instead as “one of a number of people, we reached out to consult on our housing plan.”

Summers did not respond to a request for comment, though this week he did give a statement to The Harvard Crimson: “I have great regrets in my life … As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

Here’s a simple thought exercise. Read the following 2019 interaction that took place just months before Epstein died mysteriously in his cell awaiting trial, and then decide whether Summers should be overseeing the Democrats’ national economic policy:

Summers: We talked on the phone. Then “I can’t talk later”. Dint think I can talk tomorrow”. I said what are you up to. She said “I’m busy”. I said awfully coy u are. And then I said. Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming” She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans. I said ok I got to go call me when u feel like it. Tone was not of good feeling. I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.

Epstein: shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.

Another one of the emails released in the most recent tranche finds Summers describing women as low-IQ, the Saudis in need of “slathering,” and Donald Trump as lucky. In the same email, Summers goes on to say that he is struggling “to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

Not feeling disgusted enough? Try this missive from Summers’s wife, Harvard poetry professor Elisa New, emailing Epstein in 2018:

Dear Jeffrey … I’m going upstairs to hunt for my copy of Lolita, or will get on my kindle and reread on our way to Australia. I may have lent it to one of my kids. I would recommend reading My Antonia by Cather next time you’re on a long plane trip. The prose is gorgeous, and the book has—come to think of it—similar themes to Lolita in that it’s about a man whose whole life is stamped forever by his impression of a young girl.

Jeff Hauser, executive director of the government watchdog organization the Revolving Door Project, told the Prospect that “Larry Summers has an argument for being on the Mt. Rushmore of people responsible for destroying America. Only insane people would seek out the counsel of a man who relies on Jeffrey Epstein for dating advice and Milton Friedman for economic inspiration.”

Nonetheless, this is exactly what CAP, and a laundry list of other elite organizations, has done. In addition to CAP, Summers also maintains his affiliation with Harvard University (as Charles W. Eliot University Professor), OpenAI (as a member of the board of directors), Bloomberg (as a columnist), The New York Times (as a contributing opinion writer), Skillsoft (as a member of the board of directors), the Center for Global Development (as chair of the board of directors), the Peterson Institute for International Economics (as vice chair of the board of directors), Atlas Merchant Capital (as a senior adviser), Jiko (as a advisory committee member), Aven (as an advisory board member), Palmetto (as an advisory board member), and the Yale Budget Lab (as an advisory board member).

These affiliations have remained intact thus far, despite the fact that Summers’s (and his wife’s) relationship with Epstein has been detailed in multiple news articles and investigations stretching back to the 1990s. In 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that found that even after Harvard University began refusing donations from Epstein, Summers continued to meet with Epstein and solicit him for financing.

“I need small scale philanthropy advice. My life will be better if i raise $1m for Lisa,” Summers wrote to Epstein in April 2014, referring to his wife. “Mostly it will go to make it a pbs series and for teacher training. Ideas?” The two arranged to meet at the Fireplace restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, to discuss the matter further. Two years later, a nonprofit linked to Epstein donated $110,000 to Summers’s wife’s nonprofit.

Summers’s efforts at CAP are part of a multipronged effort by high-powered centrists in the Democratic Party to bend the agenda of the 2028 presidential candidate toward the middle. There is an official Project 2029 effort that was initially run out of the policy magazine Democracy Journal. According to a source with Project 2029, they have no relationship with or contact with Summers.

However, the source did say that Project 2029 is collecting ideas from across the party, including from CAP. Internal emails show that CAP has described its own effort as Project 2029, and ideas generated there could feed into the broader effort. Neera Tanden, president and CEO of CAP, was on the advisory committee of the other Project 2029, but a CAP spokesperson said she has ended her participation.

As The New York Times reported over the summer, the Project 2029 advisory committee includes Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the economist Justin Wolfers, New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Third Way’s Jim Kessler. Roosevelt Institute principal Felicia Wong, who is departing the institute at the end of the year, also had involvement but resigned from the advisory committee in October, according to a Roosevelt spokesperson.

Writing in response to the rollout of Project 2029 last summer, the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker, wrote that the centrist coalition plotting the Democratic Party’s future is in dire need of populist messaging.

“Stealing the title from a right-wing think tank’s policy book as a path back to political power makes about as much sense as buying the same socks as LeBron James as a path to basketball stardom. But no one ever accused the Democrats of being great thinkers,” Baker wrote, adding, “I don’t know if a Democrat running on a populist platform in 2028 can overcome the real obstacles that big money creates. But it is important to have a clear view of the issues and the obstacles. Somehow, I don’t think that Project 2029 will give us that.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated with information received after publication from spokespeople at CAP and the Roosevelt Institute. It also seeks to clarify the differences between the effort at CAP internally described as Project 2029 and the more official Project 2029 effort underway.

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The Epstein Emails Show That Conspiracy Theorists Are Right: ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Is Real. It seems there is a code among people with power and money who are pals no matter what side of the aisle, no matter the sins
by Sharon Waxman
The Wrap
November 17, 2025 @ 6:15 AM
https://www.thewrap.com/epstein-emails-conspiracy/

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Jeffrey Epstein, "Eyes Wide Shut" by Chris Smith for TheWrap

The shocking revelation in the trove of 20,000 emails from the sordid world of Jeffrey Epstein is not that crimes were being committed.

It’s more sinister. The emails are disturbing because what they reveal — and in fact prove — is that conspiracy theorists are right. That their theories of full-on corruption in the upper spheres where power lives are valid. That the “Eyes Wide Shut“ cabal of political and financial interests married to sexual deviance depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 film is not, in fact, fiction. It is reality.

So often journalists like myself attempt to demonstrate to family members and voters in the far reaches of the country, away from centers of power and money, that their conspiracies are false. That politicians are flawed, but that corruption is not the norm. It isn’t how we all operate.

But the Epstein emails suggest otherwise. They suggest that in fact there is a widespread code among people with power and money who support one another. They are pals no matter what side of the aisle. They are in the club no matter the sins of their members — transgressions that get contextualized, explained away, “understood.”

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“Eyes Wide Shut” (Warner Bros.)

Leave aside, for a moment, Donald Trump’s involvement in any of this. His name appears more than 1,600 times in the email release, according to a Wall Street Journal review, and we all know how hard he’s fighting to keep the files from the Department of Justice investigation from being released.

But the web extends beyond the President of the United States. Epstein’s email pals range across the landscape of the politics and trip across business, media, tech, academia and society, from former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to former White House Democratic counsel Kathy Ruemmler. From MAGA dark knight Steve Bannon to prime ministers across northern Europe and Gulf oil dignitaries.

They include chummy conversations with a New Age health guru Deepak Chopra and a New York PR fixer Peggy Siegel, with a New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr, a Bonfire of the Vanities simulacrum Michael Wolff – and Harvard literature professor and poet Elisa Lew, whom Epstein gave a $500,000 donation for her TV project, “Poetry in America.”

In an email, she recommended he read “Lolita” by Nabokov, “a man whose whole life is stamped forever by his impression of a young girl.” (No, I am not making this up. And — just a guess — Epstein was probably already familiar with the novel.)

The emails include real-time texting with US Virgin Islands Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett while she was soliciting public testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, live on C-SPAN.

“Great outfit,” he texted her during the 2019 hearing, later advising: “Cohen brought up RONA — keeper of the secrets,” referring to Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant, before pushing her to ask about other “henchmen” in the Trump organization.

At the time these emails were being exchanged, Epstein had already pleaded guilty to procuring a girl younger than 18 for prostitution and sentenced to 18 months in prison (serving only partially). That was in 2008. By the 2010s he was back in the saddle, with dinner invitations accepted, his private jet sought after — and apparently his friendship and advice.

In March 2019, Summers whined to Epstein that a woman had “blown off” a weekend plan and complained about “being the friend without benefits.”

Epstein replied with his best dating advice: “She’s smart … making you pay for past errors … you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring … no whining showed strength.”

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Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend de Grisogono Sponsors The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Just a few months after this exchange, Epstein was arrested again, this time by the feds, on charges of sex trafficking. As a reminder, the search of his Manhattan townhouse at the time turned up evidence of sex trafficking and “hundreds—and perhaps thousands — of sexually suggestive photographs of fully — or partially —nude females,” according to the indictment. In a locked safe, there were CDs with handwritten labels: “Young [Name] + [Name],” “Misc nudes 1,” and “Girl pics nude.”

“So many people tried to ingratiate themselves with him,” observed Julie K. Brown, the intrepid journalist from The Miami Herald who first exposed Epstein’s crimes and has doggedly pursued the story long after. She hopped on the phone with me on Sunday.

I asked Brown if she thought the emails validated those who believed in wacky Pizzagate-style theories (where Hillary Clinton was bizarrely accused of participating in a pedophile ring).

“What do you mean by conspiracy? (Ghislaine) Maxwell and Epstein — that was a conspiracy,” she said. “And that’s exactly the way they should be looked at. He got away with this. And our criminal justice system is broken. People who have money and power get away with crimes. That’s just a fact. [The email trove] shows that people are willing to overlook even the worst crime if they think that somehow they’re going to benefit.”

She added: “It’s what they call the swamp.”

The swamp is specifically what Donald Trump promised to clean up. But he and Epstein are the swamp. We already knew about the likes of Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and ex-Prince Andrew. But these emails suggest a much wider group of elites who accepted Epstein as fine company.

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You remember the scene in “Eyes Wide Shut” when Tom Cruise finds that weird orgy mansion with masks and creepy rituals? I always found that scene eye-rolling. But can we honestly argue that Epstein’s Pedophile Island isn’t just like that? It’s the deep state network depicted in “One Battle After Another” with sex instead of racism as the social glue. And it validates what has animated so much of the MAGA movement and the populist anger among progressives: the belief that the system is rigged. That regular people cannot get access to the byways of power or, eventually, money.

This is the antithesis of democracy.

I used to scoff at the notion that there was a vast conspiracy of men — from public figures to shadowy spooks — who trafficked in women across the world. I don’t any more.

The question is: What are we going to do about it?

Here’s a new PSA released by Epstein survivors:

Aaron Parnas
@AaronParnas
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.

Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
https://x.com/AaronParnas/status/199020 ... spiracy%2F
3:41 PM · Nov 16, 2025

[admin]

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey- ... irect=true


Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d’Ivoire. Leaked emails show the details behind talks between Cote d’Ivoire and Israel shepherded by Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein
By Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim
Dropsite News
Nov 07, 2025

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Jeffrey Epstein with unidentified soldiers in Africa. Photo from Epstein’s “birthday book.”

Jeffrey Epstein and Ehud Barak were specialists in war profiteering. At the end of his tenure as Israel’s defense minister and after his supposed “retirement,” Barak embraced a role as a salesman of Israeli security services to embattled governments, opening the door for Israeli intelligence leaders to shape the security apparatuses of several African nations, including the country of Côte d’Ivoire.

Quietly facilitating these efforts was Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019. Epstein wrote at one point to Barak: “with civil unrest exploding [...] and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak replied:, “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.” Transforming unrest into cash flow, in the case of Côte d’Ivoire, involved brokering deals between the Israeli state and the embattled West African nation.

New details about Epstein’s role in Israeli intelligence operations in Africa have emerged from two sets of documents: an archive of leaked emails released by the Handala hacking group and hosted by non-profit whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets and documents released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee last month. The latter set includes Epstein’s personal emails and appointment calendars, which provide clear evidence of Epstein’s involvement in Israel’s West African security negotiations in 2012, while Barak was still Israel’s Defense Minister.

The two men worked together as a conduit for Israel’s intelligence sector in Côte d’Ivoire, where Barak was welcomed as a representative of the Israeli government even after leaving public office. Epstein helped Barak deliver a proposal for mass surveillance of Ivorian phone and internet communications, crafted by former Israeli intelligence officials.

As in Mongolia, Epstein and Barak’s private deal-making evolved seamlessly into an official security agreement between Israel and Côte d’Ivoire in 2014. Since the agreement was signed, over a decade ago, President Alassane Ouattara has tightened his grip on power, banning public demonstrations and arresting peaceful protestors. In this October’s election, the octogenarian won a fourth term, in defiance of constitutional term limits, while opposition candidates were barred from participation.

Today, Ouattara continues to enjoy the support of Israeli security firms to help him maintain power. His Israeli-backed police state has squashed civic organizations and silenced critics. In the wake of the recent election, exiled activist Boga Sako Gervais denounced Ouattara’s authoritarian slide: “Under Ouattara, since 2011, freedoms of opinion, thought, and expression have been criminalized,” he said. “It has become forbidden to criticize the head of state.”

The story of Israel’s security agreement with Côte d’Ivoire is only one chapter in the saga of Epstein and Barak’s covert activities in Africa—it is reported here as the next entry in an ongoing series on Epstein’s ties to Israel’s intelligence.

Epstein, Israel, Ivory Coast: How Israeli Intelligence Built a Police State In West Africa
In late 2010, a disputed presidential election in the west African nation of Côte d’Ivoire triggered political upheaval and violence that rapidly destabilized the country. The UN certified Alassane Ouattara as the winner of a November 2010 runoff vote. But the outcome was not accepted by the rival incumbent, Laurent Gbago. After months of violence, a French and UN military intervention was launched in April 2011 to remove Gbago and drive him from the country.

After Gbagbo’s exile, Ouattara inherited a security apparatus fractured by the crisis, and his own hold on power was uncertain. The new president announced that his government had foiled a coup plot against him by officers still loyal to Gbagbo in June 2012.

Five days after that announcement, the new Ivorian president, who had a long career as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and a reputation as a technocrat, traveled to Jerusalem to meet Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and discuss cooperation on science, technology, and counterterrorism. The following month, an Israeli delegation visited Côte d’Ivoire to field Ouattara’s questions about Israel’s security apparatus and rebuilding the Ivorian presidential army.

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While Israeli and Ivorian officials sat in hotel conference rooms and took press photographs, American financier Jeffrey Epstein was across the globe, engaged in shadow diplomacy to develop further ties between Israel and the new Ivorian leader.

On June 18, 2012, the very same day Barak was meeting with Alassane Ouattara in Jerusalem, according to Epstein schedules released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, his son David Dramane Ouattara was in New York City for an appointment with Epstein.

On September 12, three months later, Epstein met with Ouattara’s niece Nina Keita, whom he had known since at least 2002; as a young fashion model in Jean Luc Brunel’s Karin Models agency, she had traveled on his “Lolita Express” plane between New York and Paris. After Keita’s visit, records show that Epstein went straight to the Regency Hotel in New York for a private meeting with the Israeli defense minister.

The next month, Epstein flew to Africa. In a note to his assistant, he instructed her to arrange to switch planes in London before flying to Côte d’Ivoire, Angola, and Senegal. There are no flight logs documenting the Africa trip.

The flurry of visits appeared to pay dividends for Epstein, Barak, and the Israeli government. Two weeks after Epstein’s trip to Africa, the Ivorian Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko was in Tel Aviv to meet with Barak and discuss a bilateral security accord focused on intelligence and cybercrime.







Epstein’s assistant sends schedule for DC meeting with Barak. Source: House Oversight documents.



Epstein discusses October travel with his assistant, including stop in Côte d’Ivoire. Source: House Oversight documents.
Barak has previously claimed his “private investments” with Epstein were conducted as a private citizen and unrelated to official Israeli state affairs. The documents released by the House in October, however, suggest that Epstein played the same “fixer” role while Barak was still the sitting Defense Minister of Israel. Barak did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a year later, Barak resigned from the Israeli government. In 2011, Barak had split from Israel’s Labor Party and formed a small “centrist” faction called Independence. Despite his long history in government, including a past stint as prime minister, his tiny party was predicted to get wiped out in the January 2013 Knesset election.

He left his position as defense minister on March 18, 2013, before an agreement with Côte d’Ivoire was reached. Barak’s departure from government did not end his role negotiating security agreements for Israel, however. After he left his formal government role, emails and private records show that he finished negotiating the intelligence deal with Côte d’Ivoire covertly. In these efforts, Epstein provided critical assistance.

On March 19, 2013, one day after leaving his government post, Barak received an email from his business partner and brother-in-law Doron Cohen, containing materials prepared by MF Group, a French-Israeli security contractor run by Michel Farjon. The consortium of companies, spread across several European countries, did security work in Africa; the group had been involved in a controversial sale of military helicopters to the government of Cameroon.

An email address associated with Farjon sent details of MF Group’s planned projects in Côte d’Ivoire: a mobile and internet communications surveillance center and a video monitoring center in Abidjan. According to email logs, Barak and Farjon met three days later, on the fourth floor of G Tower in Tel Aviv, on March 22, 2013.

Barak and Cohen made efforts to keep these communications secret. Farjon’s emails to Cohen never mentioned Barak by name—instead using cryptic subject lines like “files to be transferred to your friend”—and Barak and Cohen’s emails referred to Farjon by his initials “MF,” often in connection with another player called “AM,” or “Maoz.” Cohen took precautions to ensure their conversations were not overheard; on April 12, he emailed Barak: “I had a good meeting today with MF and AM. I’ll be glad [to] update you. I’ll be in the car alone at 0415 am until 5am.”

Reached for comment by Drop Site at the same email address that appears in the files, Farjon acknowledged that the documents containing proposals for Côte d’Ivoire had originated from his company. But, he said, his company did not actually engage in business in the country and denied that he had ties with Barak and Cohen. “The documents are accurate as previously stated. No cooperation with Barack, Cohen, Epstein. No deal with Ivory Coast, nor any cooperation,” Farjon said. Drop Site was unable to reach Cohen.

Although the talks were proceeding briskly, the momentum was halted after an unexpected report came from the United Nations.

Since 2004, during the country’s first civil war, Côte d’Ivoire had been subject to a UN arms embargo that blocked weapons sales and applied strict requirements for even “non-lethal” training and equipment transfers. On April 17, 2013, the UN Security Council reported the discovery of “dozens of crates” of Israeli ammunition at the presidential palace and the Attécoubé naval base, likely transferred to Gbagbo’s security forces during the 2010-2011 crisis. The crates had Israel Military Industries labels and Spanish markings; the report suggested the ammunition had been relabelled and retransferred to Côte d’Ivoire from a third country.




UN Group of Experts Report, suspected Israeli ammunition crates with Spanish markings
On April 21, Cohen emailed Barak: “I met with MF and AM last night. We are facing a problem. We need to schedule a serious talk about them.” Cohen refrained from discussing the problem over email. Four days later, the Security Council announced it was extending the arms embargo on Côte d’Ivoire for another year.

Immediately upon his return to Israel, Barak made phone calls to Israeli security leaders with some connection to Côte d’Ivoire. On May 15, he called Amos Malka, the former head of Israeli intelligence and a recent chairman of Israeli armor manufacturer Plasan. Plasan had also been swept up in the sanctions enforcement: in addition to the Spanish-marked ammunition crates, UN embargo monitors had flagged a five-ton shipment of Plasan body armor to Abidjan.

Malka, like Barak, occupied a blurred public-private boundary in Israeli intelligence. Malka’s company Logic Industries was installing a surveillance apparatus in the United Arab Emirates under contract with a Swiss company, as Israel and the U.A.E. did not have direct security ties. The email logs do not disclose the subject matter of Barak and Malka’s phone call—but, after hanging up, Barak emailed Malka the résumé of a Spanish-Israeli logistics expert at the “Prime Minister’s Office,” a common cover name for either Shin Bet, Israel’s counterintelligence service, or the Mossad, both of which are based out of the office.

“I have never worked with Mr. Barak since my retirement,” Malka told Drop Site when reached for comment, referencing his departure from the security services in 2002. “I know him very well but no business together.”

Barak called one more stakeholder on May 19, 2023: the Honorary Consul of Côte d’Ivoire in Israel, Michael “Micky” Federmann, chairman of the Israeli military technology giant, Elbit Systems. Federmann was experienced at navigating UN sanctions and West African politics; Elbit had supplied military helicopters to Côte d’Ivoire during the first Ivorian civil war.

Finally, on May 27, Barak called Sidi Tiémoko Touré, Chef de Cabinet (head of office) of President Ouattara. Barak emailed Touré after the call to formally request an audience with Ouattara, and they arranged a meeting in Abidjan in August.

In preparation for his West Africa trip, Barak asked private intelligence firm Ergo to prepare a briefing on Côte d’Ivoire. It contained a dossier on Ouattara and his inner circle and detailed organization charts of the state’s defense and internal security organs.

Meanwhile, Barak prepared paperwork for a “non-security” pretext to visit West Africa. On July 22, he received a document from his son-in-law Michael Menkin, a manager at the medical equipment supplier Elsmed, containing a brief proposal to build hospitals and diagnostic centers in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.

Barak arrived in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on the first of August. According to an itinerary sent to him by Touré, Barak met with Marcel Amon-Tanoh, Ouattara’s chief of staff, and Hamed Bakayoko, Minister of the Interior and Security, on August 2, 2013, who shared more information about the Ivorian security apparatus. Barak and his wife even visited Amon-Tanoh’s home, and met his two daughters, both Oxford-educated graduate students in London. The next day, August 3, Barak met with President Ouattara and Paul Koffi Koffi, the deputy in charge of Defense.

Farjon, of MF Group, told Drop Site that he learned independently that Barak had indeed met with Ouattara, but said he did not know how his materials became involved. “I don’t see how or why Barak could have accessed my documents. Keep digging,” he told Drop Site.




Ehud Barak and wife Nili Priel at hotel Le bélier de Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire (August 2013). Photograph taken by Maud Amon-Tanoh, daughter of Marcel Amon-Tanoh, chief of staff of Alassane Ouattara.
“How Can We Move Forward”
Barak finally returned to Israel late at night in August. Upon arriving, emails show that Barak made a phone call to Stanley Fischer, the governor of the Bank of Israel and a close friend of Ouattara from their days at the International Monetary Fund during the late 1990s.

A few days later, Barak was contacted by Jean-Baptiste Gomis, the Ivorian ambassador to Israel, bearing gifts from Côte d’Ivoire. Gomis wrote: “i seize this opportunity to ask you for a meeting to talk about your impression of your visit in Cote d Ivoire and moreover how can we move forward.” Barak visited Gomis at his home soon after.

On September 16, 2013 the details of Israel’s offer arrived in Barak’s inbox. Barak received a proposal from Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash, former head of Israeli intelligence, for a SIGINT (“signals intelligence”) organization in Côte d’Ivoire.

The document, a 13-page PDF, mapped out the complete architecture for eavesdropping on phone calls, satellites, tactical radio, and “special targets” like cyber cafés. The data streams flowed to “media processing” servers, to be reviewed by analysts, then synthesized into reports for security leaders.




SIGINT processing chain included in proposal document.
The document was authored by Farkash and Amnon Unger, who developed these systems in occupied Palestine during the two periods of Intifada between 1990 and 2005. The two men had been senior commanders in Israel’s Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit, before branching off to other roles in the military and private sector.


Ic Preliminary Proposal
1.37MB ∙ PDF file
Download
Farkash reminded Barak that he was operating in a gray area by sharing planning documents with a foreign country. He wrote to Barak in Hebrew: “The document is based on experience that has been accumulated during Amnon’s and my service in the unit… I believe this meets the ‘export‑of‑knowledge’ test. I thought it appropriate to bring this to your attention.” “Export-of-knowledge” (יצוא ידע) refers to Israel’s Defense Export Control Act, which requires a license for transfer of “defense know-how,” even unclassified, exploratory material like a technical spec.

Barak replied to inform Farkash that he would “probably be in touch with the client toward the end of the month.” A few days later, Barak flew to New York where he visited Epstein, during the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Epstein had been coordinating meetings for Barak for that week.

Epstein had been helping manage Barak’s itinerary in anticipation of his visit, writing that “we should try to scheudle some people for dinners or lunches when you are here.” Epstein proposed several prominent business and political leaders: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, British Ambassador Peter Mandelson, banker Ariane de Rothschild, and Joshua Cooper Ramo, advisor to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Epstein also planned a meeting for Barak with another, less famous guest—Sidi Tiémoko Touré, Chef de Cabinet for President Ouattara. Before arranging the meet, he made a phone call to Ouattara’s niece, Nina Keita, according to last month’s House Oversight release.

On September 21, Epstein sent Barak a message with Touré’s personal email address: “chief of staff of outara, he arrives tomorw, try to coordianate, i am flexible. if you decide you have time.” Barak planned to visit Epstein’s house the next morning for coffee: “Let’s talk it tomorrow.”

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[i]Emails between Epstein to Barak, September 21 and 22, 2013.

For several months, Barak’s email logs showed no further discussion of the Côte d’Ivoire plan. But Epstein’s calendars, released by Congress, show another meeting with Nina Keita on November 7, 2013—the same day UN peacekeepers launched a joint operation with Ivorian security forces to dismantle armed militias and remove illegal checkpoints. The security operation, followed by a UN Security Council meeting two weeks later, set the stage for the lifting of sanctions.

In March 2014, a piece was printed in the Israeli publication Calcalist about the pending Ivorian security deal, with glowing remarks about Barak’s business acumen and his reputation in the global defense industry. Barak gave a quote coyly denying his involvement, saying “These are private conversations, and the public has no interest in them.” Barak’s brother Avinoam emailed him a link to the story, and Barak replied, “Creative minds. HaLevay Alay,” a Hebrew saying for “I wish it were me.”

As winter turned to spring, the key players were mobilized again. Ouattara made preparations for a sweeping re-organization of the Ivorian intelligence apparatus. On April 10, 2014, he dissolved the intelligence service, Agence nationale de la stratégie et de l’intelligence (ANSI), and transferred its resources into a new body, the Coordination nationale du Renseignement (CNR).

Four days later, the UN Group of Experts issued a new recommendation to the UN Security Council to ease the arms embargo in Côte d’Ivoire and lift a decades-long ban on diamond exports. Non-lethal equipment used for maintaining “public order” no longer required notification to the UN Sanctions Committee. Barak’s wife Nili emailed Ivorian ambassador Gomis to arrange a meeting with Barak.

The UN embargoes were officially lifted on April 29, 2014. After Gomis returned to Israel from Abidjan in May, Barak’s wife invited the ambassador to G Tower for a meeting with Barak and Danny Yatom, the former head of Mossad. Gomis replied to the invitation: “I WAS IN COTE D IVOIRE LAST WEEK AND HAD A CHANCE TO TALK TO THE PRESIDENT HE IS WILLING TO TALK TO THE PRIME MINISTER EHUD BARAK NOT TO ANYONE ELSE.”

Barak emailed his wife: “Just tell Danny that following their request I will meet alone first and then arrange for a trilateral meeting.” Barak and Gomis met in the afternoon on May 29, 2014, and Gomis sent Barak’s wife a thank-you note afterward:

erev tov
i would like to thank your husband for the nice meeting we had yesterday
i will report to the president
thank you again for your patience

Two weeks later, on June 13, 2014, Avigdor Liberman, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived in Côte d’Ivoire to sign an agreement on defense and internal security, accompanied by more than 50 businessmen, who came to evaluate prospective investments in the country. The dollar amounts of the deals conducted were not made public.

The efforts that Barak had taken with the assistance of contacts like Epstein bore fruit with this formal agreement signed between Israel and Côte d’Ivoire. But the deal was only one of several that the two men were orchestrating on behalf of Israeli interests on the continent.

On August 17, 2014, Doron Cohen emailed Barak with an update on their other endeavors in Africa: “I met the man who has some money in the bank in Africa. Very interesting and very generous offer. Let’s talk.” This time, even Barak was confused by the cryptic message. He replied: “Who is the man who has money in Africa and what does he offer[?] Catch me on the mobile to explain.”