Musk, Bannon, Prince Andrew mentioned in latest Epstein records

Washington: Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, MAGA strategist Steve Bannon and venture capitalist Peter Thiel are all named in new Jeffrey Epstein documents released by the US Congress that give a glimpse into the contacts the convicted sex offender maintained in the 2010s.

One of the documents, a flight log from the year 2000, named Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, as a passenger on Epstein’s jet from New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida, with Epstein and his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Another document, identified as a ledger of transactions, was entirely redacted except for two entries named “massage for Andrew”, both from 2000 and in the amount of $200.

In total, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released six heavily redacted pages received under subpoena from Epstein’s estate.

One of the diary records said Epstein was due to have breakfast with Bannon in February 2019, after the MAGA influencer had left the White House and returned to media roles, and just a few months before Epstein was arrested and charged with sex-trafficking of minors.

Another email said Epstein was due to meet Thiel for lunch in New York in November 2017. Thiel, an investor and entrepreneur, was a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and also the first outside investor in Facebook.

Epstein’s December 2014 schedule included a “tentative breakfast” with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, while there was a reminder that Musk might be coming to Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James. A note with the Musk entry said: “Is this still happening?”

Epstein was first indicted in 2006 in Florida for solicitation of prostitution. The case was referred to the FBI, which led to a further investigation. Epstein’s lawyers negotiated a deal in which he pleaded guilty on two charges – including solicitation of prostitution with a minor – in 2008. He spent 13 months in jail with work release.

The few documents released by the Democrats were highly redacted, which the party said was to protect victims while investigators from the committee continued to analyse the documents. There was no information about what the meetings entailed or whether they went ahead.

All the people involved have already acknowledged their relationships with Epstein. In 2019, Musk told Vanity Fair he had visited Epstein’s New York residence for about half an hour many years previously, and “did not see anything inappropriate at all, apart from weird art”. Musk said that Epstein repeatedly tried to get him to visit Little Saint James, but he declined.

On Friday (US time), Musk responded to a news report about his tentatively planned visit to the island. “This is false,” he posted on his social media site X.

Bannon has also acknowledged his encounters with Epstein. He told The New York Times he had recorded 15 hours of interviews with the disgraced businessman. Bannon said the interviews were for a documentary and that he wasn’t giving Epstein media training.

And Thiel told The Wall Street Journal in 2023 of his meetings with the disgraced financier: “I was rather naive, and I didn’t think enough about what Epstein’s agenda might have been.”

Prince Andrew, meanwhile, has always denied wrongdoing. He settled a civil lawsuit with Australian-American Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre in 2022. She died by suicide earlier this year in Western Australia.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said the small tranche of documents the Democrats released constituted “old news” and accused them of conveniently withholding documents containing the names of Democratic officials.

“Once again, they are putting politics over victims,” they said. “That’s all [Democratic congressman] Robert Garcia and Oversight Dems know how to do. We are releasing them all soon.”

‘We don’t care how wealthy you are’

Democrats said the committee had received 8544 documents in the latest batch, which were still being reviewed.

“We don’t care how wealthy or powerful you are – or if you are a Democrat or Republican,” Garcia said. “If you are in the Epstein documents and files, we are going to expose it, and bring justice for the survivors.”

Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial. Despite swirling conspiracy theories, the FBI says he killed himself, and there is no evidence to the contrary.

The first batch of documents, released earlier this month, contained a copy of the so-called “birthday book”, a compendium of letters, photographs and other notes compiled by Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.

One entry took the form of a cryptic, imaginary conversation between Epstein and Donald Trump, inside the outline of a woman’s body, with a signature resembling Trump’s. Trump has denied signing the document or drawing the picture. The two men were friends in the 1990s, but Trump says they fell out in the 2000s, before Epstein was indicted.

Facing a backlash from many of his own MAGA supporters for not releasing more of the investigation files, Trump has repeatedly sought to play down the Epstein saga. He now labels it a “Democrat hoax”.

This week, the Journal, which revealed the birthday book’s existence, reported Trump was perplexed about the ongoing fascination with the dead financier, and complained to aides that “people don’t understand that Palm Beach in the ’90s was a different time”.

Trump is suing the Murdoch-owned paper for $US10 billion ($15 billion) over the birthday book story. The paper’s lawyers this week sought to have the case dismissed, calling it meritless and saying it would have a chilling effect on free speech.

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