Jeffrey Epstein Claimed to Have Meddled in Israel’s Elections
Newly released files show Jeffrey Epstein claiming to have been involved in Ehud Barak’s 2019 election challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s well past time to ask questions about the billionaire pedophile’s links to Israel.
Recently published emails shed light on Jeffrey Epstein’s entanglement with Israel, primarily through the figure of Ehud Barak. (Davidoff Studios / Getty Images)
“Now you can understand why Trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
That’s one of the sensational, damning Jeffrey Epstein messages that has been roundly quoted since being extracted from the more than 20,000 documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week, a seeming reference to the power Epstein held via the damaging information he had amassed on the rich and influential, the now-president included.
Yet oddly, what has been universally left out of media coverage of that quote is what it was in reference to: Epstein appeared to be taking credit for former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s reentry into Israeli politics in 2019, which aimed to topple current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the second of what would be three Israeli elections in a year.
The quote’s missing context fits squarely with the unofficial omertà in the mainstream press on discussing Epstein’s relationship to Israel — namely, the long-standing claims and rumors that the billionaire pedophile had been an asset or otherwise worked for Israeli intelligence.
That code of silence has been on the verge of breaking down over the past month, after Drop Site published a series of stories based on Barak’s hacked emails showing Epstein quietly carrying out work on behalf of the Israeli government. On Sunday, former Donald Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene pointed to Drop Site’s reporting while on CNN to charge that “the right question to ask is, ‘Was Jeffrey Epstein working for Israel?’” — a charge met with pushback on the network.
The Oversight Committee’s release sheds further light on Epstein’s entanglement with Israel, primarily through the figure of Barak, long a known associate of Epstein’s who has insisted that he only saw the convicted pedophile “on occasion” and never in the presence of women or girls. The recently released tranche of emails adds to a raft of disclosures in recent years that shows the two men were far closer than Barak publicly let on.
Ironically, many of those disclosures came in the wake of Barak’s apparently Epstein-backed attempt to reignite his political career.
In June 2019, after spending years attacking Netanyahu’s increasingly extreme and corruption-embroiled rule, Barak, a former defense minister and military chief of staff, officially came out of retirement and formed a new party to challenge him. In a chat with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon that month, Epstein implied the move was his doing, as he shared a report from Israeli outlet Ynet Global about Barak’s announcement.
“I’ve been busy,” Epstein wrote in a follow-up message. “Wow!!!” Bannon replied. (Jacobin has cleaned up Epstein’s bizarre punctuation for clarity.)
“I’m dealing with Ehud in Israel. Making me crazy,” Epstein elaborated twelve minutes later.
“Ehud massive– can we announce I’m his strategic advisor?” Bannon asked.
“This will be a long campaign. Elections in sept (17). Lots to talk about,” Epstein wrote back.
“This is brilliant move,” wrote Bannon.
“Thx. Only the first step,” Epstein replied, before writing the quote that has been so widely spread in the past week free of its context. “Now you can understand why Trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
“Dangerous,” replied Bannon.
There are no other details in Epstein’s emails about his claimed involvement in Barak’s campaign, though he may have been hinting to Bannon that something like it was in the works. A month earlier, Epstein had, apropos of nothing, sent Bannon a BBC report on Netanyahu’s failure to form a coalition government in the wake of Israel’s April 2019 election, which had triggered another round of elections to be held that September.
“Will Ehud Be PM,” Bannon asked him at the end of June. “Doubtful,” replied Epstein. “But 1. He is not to be underestimated. 2. Unlikely top job. But depends on coalition. 3. Driving me crazy.”
What helped sink Epstein’s “dangerous” plan to reshape the Israeli political landscape was, fittingly, Epstein himself. Not long after these messages, the billionaire was arrested and charged with sex trafficking minors, and a series of scandalous new revelations about Barak’s ties to Epstein soon followed. Netanyahu made them the centerpiece of his political offensive against Barak, going so far as to officially request an investigation of him from the attorney general, putting the challenger on the defensive and taking the wind out of the sails of Barak’s attacks on Netanyahu’s own criminal scandals.
Severely damaged by the revelations, Barak’s poorly polling party was forced to form an alliance with several other left-leaning parties to have any hope of winning seats in the Knesset, and he had to essentially take himself out of the running for a cabinet spot to get them over the line. One can only imagine how Epstein’s claimed involvement in that very political project would have further dented its standing, if Netanyahu had been able to use it.
Bannon’s claim to being Barak’s “strategic advisor” was likely a joke, but the two had met at least once before via their mutual connection with Epstein. In a February 2018 email, Epstein asked Kathryn Ruemmler — former White House counsel to Barack Obama who had a mysteriously close relationship with the billionaire sex trafficker — whether Bill Clinton “would like to join you me ehud and steve” in a meeting they had apparently already arranged. (Despite this email already being reported on by outlets like CNBC and the New York Post, each wrongly published the reference to Barak’s first name as “chud,” thereby obscuring his identity).
Upon learning that Epstein had had a hand in Barak’s sudden return to politics a year later, Bannon immediately tried to make himself useful to the former prime minister.
“My guy is in Israel– can we connect him to erhud [sic] ???” Bannon asked Epstein. “On it,” Epstein wrote back.
Bannon’s “guy,” he made clear, was Aaron Klein, almost certainly the former Jerusalem bureau chief of Breitbart who played a key role in Trump’s 2016 campaign and, following Trump’s victory, became a prominent Jewish voice defending Bannon against credible accusations of antisemitism. Whatever came of the idea, it was clearly not meant to be: following the September 2019 elections, Klein instead became a close advisor and campaign strategist to Netanyahu, a post he still holds today.
The office of the Israeli prime minister did not respond to a request for comment.
Old Friends
Epstein is a notoriously unreliable narrator prone to self-aggrandizement. But it would not be surprising if he’d had a hand in Barak’s 2019 comeback, given their close relationship outlined in these and earlier disclosures.
In October 2014, Barak sent Epstein, seemingly through his wife’s email address, an op-ed he had written about the danger Netanyahu’s disrespect toward Obama was placing the US-Israel relationship in, asking for “your opinion and your remarks.” It’s not clear exactly how the edited version Epstein sent back differed from the original, but Epstein’s unmistakable writing style — filled with elementary spelling mistakes and bizarre punctuation — suggests his fingerprints throughout the piece.
One error-riddled passage, for instance, features inordinately lengthy praise of then–secretary of state John Kerry, who Epstein had donated money to, had the contact details of in his infamous “black book,” and tried to set Bannon up with in 2018, according to a separate chat log. (Kerry’s spokesperson denied having a relationship or contact with either man to CBS News.) Other similarly error-riddled passages in the Epstein edit of the op-ed concern the “unique relationship” between the two countries, the vital importance of asymmetric US aid to Israel (“We should never forget it”), and the fact that both countries might unilaterally do things and “take tough decisions” from time to time that the other disagrees with.
Contrary to Barak’s denials, other emails show regular meetings and communication between the two men. In a 2011 email to Jes Staley, the disgraced former Barclays bank CEO whose career was ended thanks to his friendship with the pedophile, Epstein poked fun at a Jerusalem Post headline about then–defense minister Barak’s trip to the United States, listing his meetings with several officials. “It seems they forgot one person on the list,” Epstein wrote, an apparent reference to himself. Five years later, Epstein tried to get author Michael Wolff to join a meeting between him and Barak, then later that year, made reference to another meeting the two were due to have upon Barak’s return to the United States.
When Larry Summers bowed out of the running for chair of the Federal Reserve in 2013, Barak emailed Epstein. “A major blow to a friend,” he wrote. “Yes the good side is now he is free to have fun and a life,” Epstein replied. “Tell you more when I see you.”
“Jeffrey arranged a meeting with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, whose record I had studied carefully and written about,” Noam Chomsky wrote in what appears to be a glowing character reference letter for Epstein of an indeterminate date. “We have our disagreements, but had a very fruitful discussion about a number of controversial matters.”
In August 2015, after Epstein solicited Chomsky’s thoughts on the then–recently signed Iran nuclear deal, he forwarded Chomsky’s response to Barak. “Thought you might find amusing,” Epstein wrote.
“I really find it amusing. I don’t agree with everything he says. But it is fascinating,” Barak wrote back. “Noam is so sharp and focused. Really impressive,” he added, before telling Epstein that he and his wife “greatly enjoyed” staying in the building Epstein owned on Manhattan’s East 66th Street and floating future dates that they could meet up.
Another proposed meeting between Epstein and Barak mentioned in the Oversight Committee’s release involved two separate September 2013 breakfasts with “Kissinger China guy” and bank executive Ariane de Rothschild. The latter is the subject of the latest Drop Site report drawn from Barak’s hacked emails, showing the two men attempting to use Rothschild’s financial resources to develop cyberweapons for Israel.
End of Omertà
Even with the wealth of material that’s been released, Epstein’s exact relationship to Israel remains unclear, not to mention an answer to the specific question of whether or not he belonged to Israeli intelligence. While the latest disclosures show Epstein had a keen interest in Israel and its politics, they also show he held a similar interest in many countries and regions and had relationships with a variety of power players across the Middle East and around the world.
But what they should mean, at minimum, is an end to the widespread taboo of even asking questions about billionaire sex offender’s links to the Israeli state. Epstein brokered security deals for Israel, had a close friendship with one of its former prime ministers and military officials, and, apparently, even secretly involved himself in the country’s elections. If it were any other country, it would not be remotely scandalous to wonder out loud what it could all mean.