EPSTEIN AND MIDDLETON
Aside from the sudden death of Ron Brown and other Commerce officials, Mark Middleton – a central figure in the campaign finance scandals of the mid-1990s – would also, years later, suffer a grisly fate. He died on May 7, 2022 at a ranch in Arkansas owned by Heifer International, a non-profit whose funders include Walmart, Blackrock and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.209 Heifer International is partnered with the Heifer Foundation, and the foundation’s board of trustees is chaired by Martha Brantley, the former Director of Strategy and Business Development for the Clinton Development Initiative, which is part of the Clinton Foundation.210
The local sheriff told media that, at the ranch, Middleton was found hanging from a tree branch by the neck with a shotgun blast to the chest.211 It was subsequently claimed by authorities that he had hung an extension cord around his neck before shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun. Despite the shotgun blast to his chest, police claimed there "was not a lot of blood or anything" at the scene.212 Speculation about Middleton’s death grew after an Arkansas judge sealed all photos, videos, and visual content related to Middleton’s alleged suicide.213
Shortly after Middleton’s death was reported, it was widely noted that he had been the official at the Clinton White House to sign off on many of Jeffrey Epstein’s visits. The full extent of Middleton’s role in facilitating these visits had been made public only a few months before Middleton’s death, in December 2021.
Thus, not only was Middleton the point man for questionable individuals with links to Chinese military intelligence seeking to gain access to the White House compound, he was also the point man for the intelligence-linked Epstein to do the same. This should be a clear indication that the real "Chinagate" scandal was much larger in scope than just China and the same can also be said of Mark Middleton’s activities at the time.
While foreign intelligence-linked individuals were gaining unparalleled access to the Clinton White House through fundraisers, so was another intelligence-linked individual, Jeffrey Epstein. As previously mentioned, Epstein’s first visit on – February 25, 1993 – was signed off on by Robert Rubin, who would go on to serve as Treasury Secretary. Other visits in 1993 included the donor reception detailed earlier in this chapter as well as other visits signed off by Ann Stock, then- White House social secretary who also appears in Epstein’s book of contacts, and Lisa Mortman, then-staff assistant to the director of media affairs.
Epstein began meeting with Mark Middleton in 1994 and it was this year that the bulk of Epstein’s visits to the White House were made. Several of the visits during 1994 either list Middleton or Karen Ewing as signing Epstein into the White House. According to sources cited by the Daily Maial, Ewing "was involved in sending names of visitors to be cleared by the Secret Service and that Epstein was there to see Middleton, not her."214
In addition, the three days in 1994 where Epstein made multiple White House visits in a single day were all tied to Middleton. Middleton, from early 1994 on, seems to have been the main facilitator of Epstein’s White House visits as Epstein’s final visit, in January 1995, took place just weeks before Middleton resigned. It was during these visits that Epstein allegedly met then-Senate majority leader George Mitchell. As previously mentioned, Mitchell was named by Virginia Giuffre in a deposition as one of the men Epstein forced her to have sex with.
Epstein was notably accompanied by young women, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell, during several of his White House visits. The first of the women to accompany him appears to have been a woman named Shelley Gafni, of which little is known. It was suspected that an Israeli model of the same name had been the one to accompany Epstein, but she denied this was the case when confronted by a journalist in early 2022.215
Other women included Celina Midelfart, a Norwegian heiress who was 21 at the time and had also dated Donald Trump; Eva Andersson-Dubin, a former girlfriend of Epstein’s who was then 33 and married Glen Dubin shortly before her White House visit with Epstein; and Francis Jardine, a South African former model who was believed to be in her 20s; and his one-time girlfriend turned madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was 32 at the time.216 Midelfart, Jardine, and Maxwell were all reported to be Epstein’s "girlfriends" during the 1990s and it seems their intimate relationships with Epstein may have overlapped. Their relationships with Epstein are revisited in chapter 18.
Francis Jardine was alleged to have been in a relationship with Epstein in the 1990s, as revealed during the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. Jardine flew on Epstein’s plane 12 times and appears in his contact book. Sometime in the 1990s, Jardine married John Deuss, the oil trader with deep ties to Marc Rich and Ted Shackley. Deuss, like Epstein, Khashoggi, and others in this network, had a reputation for using beautiful young women, usually models, to secure favors and loyalty (as well as potential blackmail) from business associates.217 Notably, Jardine’s address during this time is listed as being the Ossa Properties-owned apartments at 301 66th Street discussed in chapter 12.
Other women who also appear in the White House visitor logs alongside Epstein are Jennifer Garrison, Jennifer Driver, and Lyoubov Orlova. Flight logs from Epstein’s plane confirm that these women were traveling with him at the time of those visits.218 However, little about them is known. Some of them may be the mysterious women who are in photographs with Epstein that were taken at the White House. During the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, two framed pictures hanging on the wall of Epstein’s mansion showed Epstein standing at the podium of the White House briefing room on two occasions. In one, he is with an unidentified brunette, and in another with an unidentified blonde.219
Jennifer Driver’s visit to the White House with Epstein, which took place on May 13, 1994 is particularly interesting. Flight logs for that day show Epstein flying from Teterboro to Reagan National Airport with Jennifer Driver. After their visit to the White House, the two flew from Washington to Palm Beach, this time – per flights logs – accompanied by "Mark."220
This Mark was Mark Middleton, as the following day, Mark Middleton appeared on the flight logs, showing that he accompanied Epstein on his plane from Palm Beach to Grand Bahama International Airport.221
With both Middleton and Epstein dead, it is exceedingly difficult to determine the exact nature and extent of their relationship as well as the subject of their White House meetings. Yet, Middleton’s major role in the campaign finance scandal, as described above, is a critical clue. As it turns out, Epstein and other unsavory figures tied to Robert Maxwell were also involved in suspect fundraising and influence efforts during the 1996 campaign season in what is perhaps the other, less explored side of the so-called Chinagate scandal.
THE DNC AND THE MAXWELL MAFIA
Whatever Middleton and Epstein had discussed at the White House, Epstein’s involvement with the Clintons had grown considerably by the time Middleton departed the Clinton administration. Roughly a month after Middleton’s resignation, Epstein was among a "very select group of people," fourteen in total, who joined President Clinton for a three-hour dinner at the home of billionaire Ron Perelman in Palm Beach, FL, in March 1995.
Ron Perelman, like another close Epstein associate Leon Black, is a veteran of the infamous corporate raiders of Drexel Burnham Lambert during the 1980s and prior to its collapse in 1990. Perelman’s business tactics were known to be informed by his volcanic temper and his ruthlessness, with former Salomon Brothers CEO John Gutfruend once having remarked that "believing Mr. Perelman has no hostile intentions is like believing the tooth fairy exists."222
Perelman apparently first became interested in courting influence with the Clintons after marrying Patricia Duff in 1994. Duff was deeply connected to the Democratic Party, having worked for Democratic pollster Pat Cadell. Prior to marrying Perelman, she had been married to movie mogul Michael Medavoy and had "introduced Clinton to the Hollywood establishment," according to the Washington Post.
As Perelman’s wife, Duff styled herself a leading Democratic fundraiser, with the 1995 fund-raising dinner being emblematic of that. Also, in 1995, Perelman attended a $1,000-a-plate dinner in New York for the Clintons, where Perelman sat across from the President, as well as a state dinner for Brazil’s president at the White House.223
For Perelman, his generosity to the Clinton political machine resulted in an appointment by Clinton to the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center in 1995. Other, less public gestures from the Clintons were likely, as Perelman offered much more to the First Family than he appears to have received in return. Perhaps most notable of Perelman’s favors for the Clintons was his offering of jobs to scandal-ridden members of their administration, Webster Hubbell and Monica Lewinsky, in the wake of their respective controversies.224
However, after the job offers were publicly reported, both Hubbell and Lewinsky were let go, though the offers later caught the attention of independent counsel Ken Starr. Starr never subpoenaed or investigated Perelman or the offers he had made to Hubbell or Lewinsky and, years later, would be one of Epstein’s defense lawyers.225 Perelman would later be listed as a frequent dinner guest of Epstein’s in the 2003 Vanity Fair profile penned by Vicky Ward and is listed in Epstein’s black book of contacts.226
Perelman’s controversial hiring of Hubbell and Lewinsky had been arranged by Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan, who sat on the board of Revlon, a Perelman-owned company, while his wife was on the board of another Perelman-owned firm. Jordan was known as Clinton’s "conduit to the high and mighty" and had taken Clinton to the 1991 Bilderberg conference.227 On the decision to hire Lewinsky following the scandal, a former business associate of Perelman’s told the Washington Post that "It’s like the Mafia, it’s all done in code," adding that "I can assure you that Ronald made the decision to give Lewinsky the job. And I can assure you he wouldn’t want to know why Jordan was asking."
At the 1995 fundraiser in Perelman’s mansion, other guests besides Epstein included: Clinton friend and "bundler" A. Paul Prosperi, singer Jimmy Buffett, Miami Vice actor Don Johnson, actor Michael Douglas’ then-wife Deandra, and DNC co-chair Don Fowler. According to the Palm Beach Post, guests had donated at least $100,000 to the DNC to attend the dinner with the President, including Epstein.228 This was, of course, part of the fundraising season for the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, where the DNC was later under heavy scrutiny due to illegal fundraising, much of which appears to have been linked to foreign intelligence operations.
Other notable guests at the fundraiser included Bob Kanuth, an investment banker who previously served in both the US military and the CIA, and Sylvia Hassenfeld of the Hasbro family.229 Aside from being extremely wealthy due to her family connections, Hassenfeld was intimately involved in Zionist philanthropic organizations, serving as the national chairwoman of the United Jewish Appeal’s women division and holding top leadership posts at related organizations like United Israel Appeal and the Jewish Agency for Israel.230 This is significant as Leslie Wexner was, as previously mentioned in chapters 13 and 14, one of the largest donors to the United Jewish Appeal and served as its national vice chairman while also attending closed door meetings with Israel’s top leadership during this period.231
In addition, all three of these organizations to which Hassenfeld belonged also had considerable ties to the Bronfman family, particularly Charles Bronfman, who co-founded the Mega Group with Leslie Wexner in the early 1990s. In the 1980s, Charles Bronfman served on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel; served as honorary President of United Israel Appeal’s Canada branch and built a coalition with the United Jewish Appeal via the Charles and Andrea Bronfman Foundation to create Israel Experience Inc., an initiative to send Jewish teens to Israel founded in 1993.232
In addition, Bronfman’s foundation has donated millions to the Jerusalem Foundation, where Hassenfeld served as vice chairwoman.233 The foundation had been founded in the late 1960s by Teddy Kollek, the former mayor of Jerusalem whose ties to the organized crime and intelligence-linked Bruce Rappaport were detailed in chapter 3. Bronfman would lead both the United Jewish Appeal and United Israel Appeal after those organizations merged in 1999 with the Council of Jewish Federations to form what is now called the Jewish Federations of North America. Soon after the merger, Bronfman became its first chairman of the board and served in that capacity until 2001.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Edgar Bronfman, Charles’s brother, was on the DNC’s Finance Board of Directors during this campaign season. In addition, other members of the Mega Group were involved with major fundraising events during this controversial election cycle, namely Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, as well as his organized crime-linked mentor Lew Wasserman, hosted fundraisers that played a role in the activities of Johnny Chung and Johnny Huang, respectively. Also discussed earlier in this chapter was the fact that the Mega Group’s other co-founder, Leslie Wexner, has been alleged to have been courting influence at the White House at the time via his "protégé" and money manager, Jeffrey Epstein.
It is certainly telling that all of Epstein’s earliest documented interactions with the Clinton White House revolved around controversial fundraising, including illegal fundraising tied to foreign influence campaigns. This is especially true given that Mark Middleton was Epstein’s main White House contact, as Middleton was one of the key players in the Chinagate affair that also involved controversial fundraising tied to foreign intelligence. It is also important to keep in mind that, by this point, Epstein had been involved in criminal financial activity with Towers Financial and in helping to both find and hide "looted" funds for powerful people, including Adnan Khashoggi.
It is also worth noting that, during this period of questionable fundraising in which Epstein was involved, other dubious figures linked to organized crime also sparked controversy for attending prominent Clinton and DNC fundraisers. For instance, Richard Mays, an Arkansas lawyer and Clinton friend, secured the attendance of twice-convicted felon Eric Wynn, who was linked to the Bonanno crime family via court documents, at a DNC-arranged coffee with the President in December 1995.234 Wynn had also attended several DNC fundraisers using tickets purchased by Richard Tienken, who had close ties to the Lucchese crime family. Wynn had also aided Tienken’s separate fundraising efforts for Clinton, according to the Washington Post. Notably, Richard Mays also played a peripheral role in the suspect activities of Charlie Trie during this period.
Another organized crime figure was nearly brought into the 1996 election fundraising fold by DNC fundraiser and Zionist millionaire Sam Domb, a close friend of Steven Spielberg and former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, among others.235 Domb was a major fundraiser during the 1996 campaign for Clinton, so much so that he was prominently seated at the First Lady’s table at a DNC managing trustees’ dinner in February 1995. Next to Domb at the table was Charlie Trie. Notably, Domb can be found in Epstein’s book of contacts.
Domb came under media scrutiny in 1996 for having brought a man named Grigori Loutchansky to a DNC dinner in 1993. At that fundraiser, Loutchansky later "told reporters that the President asked him to convey a message to the president of Ukraine, asking him to reduce the country’s nuclear stockpile," a charge later denied by a senior administration official.236
Domb attempted to bring Loutchansky to a 1995 DNC fundraiser at the Hay Adams hotel, until the Clinton administration’s national security council recommended Loutchansky not attend. Domb was asked to rescind the invitation and reluctantly did so. It later emerged that the NSA had monitored conversations between Domb and Loutchansky and those conversations revealed that Domb was planning to donate $25,000 to the DNC so Loutchansky could attend a DNC fundraiser. In 1996, TIME magazine reported that Loutchansky was "under investigation by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States and other countries" for suspected involvement "in arms-trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes." Loutchansky’s US attorney at the time was Thomas Spencer Jr., a close friend of Ted Shackley’s.237
It turns out that Loutchansky was most likely a part of the "global coalition of criminals" organized by Robert Maxwell in the late 1980s when he went into business with organized crime in Eastern Europe and Russia. Loutchansky, at the time, was the president of a company called Nordex, a trading company based in Austria that mainly did business in the former Soviet Union and was previously discussed in chapter 9. Though he was born and raised in the Soviet Union, like Semion Mogilevich, he was using an Israeli passport to do business in Europe and the United States. Loutchansky was also "considered a significant player in Russian mob activities," according to a congressional report.238
Per that same report, and as previously noted in chapter 9, Loutchansky was close to Marc Rich. The report noted that Rich "has … been linked" to Loutchansky and that "According to press accounts, Loutchansky worked with Rich in the early 1990s selling Russian oil and aluminum from formerly state-run enterprises."239 In addition, "English investigators found that [Loutchansky’s company] Nordex was co-founded by Rich when the Soviet empire collapsed. At the time, it served to transfer the Communist Party’s funds abroad, including stolen assets."240 It was also reported that Nordex was a key part of Rich’s network after he helped found it: "the Volga Refinery, one of the largest in the Russian petroleum network, was acquired by Rich through an underworld corporate storefront called Nordex."241
Nordex was later described by Andrew Cockburn as an "ex-KGB front company" that intelligence sources believed was "involved in arms, drugs, the whole nine yards."242 It was also involved in the trade of nuclear materials. Its ties to both Soviet Union era intelligence and an Israeli intelligence asset like Marc Rich make Nordex a prime example of the intermingling of those networks, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Another prime example of how those networks intermingled was, of course, Robert Maxwell himself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Maxwell child who had sought to be his "father reincorporated," Kevin Maxwell, was intimately involved with Nordex as was his brother Ian.
According to a Guardian report from 1996:
[Kevin and Ian Maxwell] are working in what is described as a freelance capacity for Westbourne Communications, a central London consultancy run by Jean Baddeley – Robert Maxwell’s long-standing secretary – which has a number of projects in the former Soviet Union. … At one time they were working with Nordex, a mysterious Vienna-based trading company, many of whose employees are former Soviet intelligence officers. Their involvement with Nordex was arranged through Westbourne.243
According to Tom Bower in his book Maxwell: The Fianal Verdiact, Kevin Maxwell used Westbourne to continue his father’s work in Russia and Bulgaria.244 Bower writes: "Kevin offered his expertise in finance and banking to Russians looking for investment opportunities in the West. Simultaneously, he had proffered his services to Western companies seeking contracts in the Soviet bloc."245 Those companies, per Bower, included Nordex and Salomon brothers.
Thus, it seems that many of the same tactics employed by those linked to the Riady family and/or Chinese military intelligence in Chinagate were also utilized by Jeffrey Epstein and those in his broader network.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Aside from Epstein’s growing importance as a Clinton donor, it appears that 1995 was also the year that the relationship between the Clintons and Epstein became more intimate in other ways.
In a letter dated April 27, 1995, Lynn Forester, now Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wrote:
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.246
Forester de Rothschild then states that she had been asked to prepare a memo on behalf of George Stephanopoulos, former Clinton communications director and currently a broadcast journalist with ABC News. Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party hosted by Epstein at his now infamous Manhattan townhouse in 2010, years after Epstein’s first conviction.247
While it is unknown exactly what Forester de Rothschild discussed with Clinton regarding Epstein and currency stabilization, a potential lead may lie in the links of both Forester de Rothschild and Epstein to Deutsche Bank. As noted previously in chapter 12, Epstein boasted of "skill at playing the currency markets 'with very large sums of money’" and that "Epstein had several meetings with Harold Levin, then head of Wexner Investments, in which he enunciated ideas about currencies that Levin found incomprehensible." Epstein also often claimed that he had made his fortune investing clients’ money, including Wexner’s, into currency markets.248
Epstein’s more recent activity in currency markets, in the years that followed his first conviction, appears to have been achieved through his long-standing relationship with Deutsche Bank. As the New York Times reported in 2019:
[Epstein] appears to have been doing business and trading currencies through Deutsche Bank until just a few months ago, according to two people familiar with his business activities. But as the possibility of federal charges loomed, the bank ended its client relationship with Mr. Epstein. It is not clear what the value of those accounts was at the time they were closed.249
As previously mentioned, the son of Esther Salas, the judge set to oversee a case against Deutsche Bank related to its role in enabling Epstein’s financial activities, was murdered right before that court case was to begin. The alleged assailant was Roy Den Hollander, formerly of Kroll Associates.
Forester de Rothschild, at the time of Epstein’s arrest and still today, has served as an advisor to the Deutsche Bank Microfinance Consortium for several years and is currently a board member of the Alfred Herrhausen Society of International Dialogue of Deutsche Bank.250 Her close relationship with Epstein may be part of the reason why Deutsche Bank kept Epstein as a client for so long, despite years of warnings from bank employees regarding questionable activities connected to Epstein’s accounts.
At the time the 1995 letter was written, Forester de Rothschild was a member of Clinton’s National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council and, during the latter years of Clinton’s second term, she also served on the advisory board for then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. Richardson would later become one of the Clinton era officials closest to Jeffrey Epstein.
Forester de Rothschild had apparently known Epstein for at least a few years before she wrote the 1995 letter. Epstein had apparently played a role in her divorce from Andrew Stein, a major figure in New York Democratic politics, in 1993.251 Andrew’s brother, James Finkelstein, had married Cathy Frank, the granddaughter of Lewis Rosenstiel, the mob-linked businessman whose role in sexual blackmail operations were discussed in Chapter 2 and elsewhere.
Rosenstiel’s apparent protégé, Roy Cohn, was the lawyer for Cathy Frank and James Finkelstein.252 It was at their behest that Cohn attempted to trick a nearly comatose Lewis Rosenstiel into naming Cohn, Frank, and Finkelstein the executors and trustees of his estate, valued at $75 million (more than $407 million in 2022 dollars). Stein later worked for Ron Perelman and Perelman had hired Roy Cohn to represent him during his first divorce in the early 1980s.
According to a 2019 Vaniaty Faiar article, Epstein claimed that Forester de Rothschild had "needed his financial help" during her divorce and that he had "graciously floated her," a claim that a Forester de Rothschild spokesperson denied at the time of the article’s publication.253 A few years later, as a "gift" to Epstein, Forester de Rothschild introduced him to Alan Dershowitz, who would allegedly become entangled in his sex trafficking activities and later become one of Epstein’s defense attorneys.
Forester de Rothschild also has ties to Ronald Lauder through her position on the board of directors of Estee Lauder companies. Forester de Rothschild also partnered with Matthew Bronfman, son of Mega Group billionaire Edgar Bronfman, to create the investment advisory firm Bronfman E.L. Rothschild LP.
More relevant, however, is Forester de Rothschild’s decades-long relationship with the Clintons. Forester de Rothschild is a long-time associate of the Clintons and has been a major donor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton since 1992. Their ties were so close that Forester de Rothschild and her current husband, Evelyn de Rothschild, spent the first night of her honeymoon at the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House while Clinton was president. She and Rothschild had first been introduced at a Bilderberg conference by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose close relationship with Hillary Clinton is well documented.254 Kissinger’s role in the PROMIS scandal as an enabler of Robert Maxwell’s sale of the bugged software to Sandia national laboratory was discussed in Chapter 9.
Furthermore, a leaked email between Forester de Rothschild and Hillary Clinton saw Clinton request "penance" from Forester de Rothschild for asking Tony Blair to accompany Clinton on official business while she was Secretary of State, preventing Blair from making a planned social visit to Forester de Rothschild’s home in Aspen, Colorado.255 Humbly requesting forgiveness is not something Hillary Clinton is known for, given that her former bodyguard once said she could "make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi."256