Jeffrey Epstein pitched a young woman as a dinner date to Prince Andrew, assuring the British Royal she was “Russian, beautiful and trustworthy”.
The convicted paedophile extended the offer through email correspondence in 2010, writing to the now-disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor: “I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with.”
The message features in the three million documents within the Epstein files that the US Department of Justice unveiled on Friday, alongside 180,000 images and 2,000 videos.
Young Russians among women offered for sex
The documents reveal young Russians numbered among the women Epstein supplied for sex to wealthy and influential men across the globe.
However, the enormous cache of materials has suggested a darker Russian tie: that Epstein could have functioned as a long-standing agent operating for Moscow.
Amongst the documents are 1,056 files referencing Vladimir Putin and over 9,000 mentioning Moscow.
The materials suggest Epstein secured audiences with the Russian president – even following the American financier’s 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.
In 2010, Epstein sent an email to an associate offering to help them obtain a Russian visa, explaining: “I have a friend of Putin’s, should I ask him?”
Files suggest classic ‘kompromat’ operation
Some have suggested the recruitment of Russian escorts shows Epstein may have been running a classic “kompromat” operation – luring influential business tycoons, media moguls, statesmen and politicians into sexual encounters with the women and recording the encounters for purposes of blackmail.
Blackmail dominated his thinking in a 2015 email he dispatched to Sergei Belyakov, Russia‘s then deputy minister of economic development and graduate of the FSB (Russian intelligence) academy.
Epstein warned him that “a Russian girl from Moscow … is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful biznessmen [sic] in New York. It is bad for business for everyone involved.”
In a subsequent email sent to himself, he appears to map out a strategy for dealing with the woman and thwarting her blackmail attempt.
“You should know that I felt it necessary to contact some friends in FSB,” Epstein wrote.
He warned the woman that trying to blackmail an American businessman who was planning to invest in Russia would make her, in the eyes of the FSB, “vrag naroda” – Russian for an “enemy of the people”. She would be dealt with “extremely harshly” he said.
Yet alongside intimidating her, he intended to buy her silence, offering her $50,000 a month “for the next two years” in exchange for her dropping her blackmail attempt.
Epstein organised dinners with ‘new Russian girls’
Messages within the latest batch of DoJ materials expose the extraordinary efforts Epstein and his associates undertook to source attractive young Russian women.
The correspondence includes requests to arrange flights for models and escorts travelling from Moscow to Paris and Moscow to New York.
In an email written in 2010 to a person whose name has been redacted, Epstein wrote: “Tomorrow I’m organising a dinner for some new Russian girls … see you at 10.”
In 2012 he received an email from a redacted sender which read: “I have 2 Russian girls for you to meet, one 21, another 24. One skinny, another curvy and super cute.”
The Telegraph reproted on an email that Epstein wrote in 2013 detailing a claim that Bill Gates needed medicine “to deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls” and a further claim that the Microsoft founder tried to conceal his sexually transmitted infection from his then wife Melinda.
A spokesman for Mr Gates has described the claims as “absolutely absurd and completely false.”
Intelligence source describes ‘world’s largest honey-trap’
An intelligence source told the Daily Mail: “You have Andrew, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and all the rest placed in compromising positions on an island bristling with technology. It’s the world’s largest honey-trap operation.”
The high-profile personalities who are named in the files all deny wrongdoing.
Tanya Kozyreva, a Kyiv-based reporter who focuses on high-level corruption worldwide, wrote: “Epstein reportedly had contact with Russian officials and Putin himself. Many of his girls were Russian. Powerful Western elites passed through his orbit. What are the odds this wasn’t a classic Russian kompromat operation – and that DoJ is just ignoring the elephant in the room?”
Allegedly recruited by Robert Maxwell
Epstein reportedly entered the shadowy realm of espionage through Robert Maxwell, the British publishing magnate believed to have operated for Mossad.
An oil baron working for Russian intelligence allegedly brokered the introduction.
Maxwell, whose daughter Ghislaine became Epstein’s long-term girlfriend, perished in 1991 after seemingly tumbling from his yacht in the Atlantic. Lingering suspicions suggest he was assassinated – potentially by Israeli operatives.
Epstein quoted from an investigative article published in The Mirror in a 2018 email, which alleged the British tycoon had threatened Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, which then murdered him.
The story said: “He [Maxwell] told them that unless they gave him £400m to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.
“In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street, Ronald Reagan’s White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
“Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women.”
Emails show planned Putin meetings
By 2011, Epstein seemed to have cultivated such strong ties with the Russians that he was arranging encounters with Putin. An unidentified contact sent him correspondence that September referencing an “appointment with Putin” during an upcoming Russian trip.
The email read: “Spoke with Igor. He said last time you were in Palm Beach, you told him you had an appointment with Putin on Sept 16 and that he could go ahead and book his ticket to Russia to arrive a few days before you.”
Fresh documents indicate Epstein scheduled another encounter with the Russian leader in 2014, though whether it proceeded remains unclear. Russian-backed forces downing a Malaysia Airlines flight in July 2014, resulting in nearly 300 fatalities, potentially led to its cancellation.
The planned meeting with Putin now seemed to be “a bad idea after the plane crash”, a Japanese go-between told Epstein.
Epstein claimed he could advise Putin on Trump
Additional newly released materials show Epstein informed Thorbjorn Jagland, the then secretary general of the Council of Europe and a former prime minister of Norway, that he could advise Putin on the best way to handle US president Donald Trump before a key summit between the two leaders in Helsinki.
Epstein said he could offer “insight” on the American president to Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. “It is not complex. He [Trump] must be seen to get something. It’s that simple,” Epstein wrote.
The newest tranche of Epstein documents also exposes suspicions within Western intelligence agencies that Epstein functioned as an agent for Mossad.
The FBI was informed by a source that “Epstein was close to the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and trained as a spy under him.
In a declassified memo, the FBI said that a confidential human source “became convinced Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent.”
Mr Barak, who served in Israeli military intelligence earlier in his career, visited Epstein’s New York townhouse more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017.
