Translation WSJ text.
During the 2016 presidential race, the infamous financier Jeffrey Epstein began organizing meetings with those close to the future president Donald Trump. He introduced some of them to another friend of his, a high-ranking Russian diplomat. Epstein hosted dinners with a venture capitalist in 2016, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal. Peter Thiel and real estate investor Thomas Barrack. Both were first-rate financial contributors to the Trump campaign at the time.
Epstein invited Thiel and Barrack to meetings with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations. According to the documents at the disposal of the editors, in the period from 2015 until the death of Churkin (presumably due to a heart attack in early 2017), the permanent representative had at least eight meetings scheduled with Epstein.
Epstein’s goals in arranging those meetings with Trump’s associates and the Russian ambassador are not mentioned in the documents. What exactly he wanted to achieve with this, even those with whom he met in 2016 do not know. In 2019, Epstein died in prison while awaiting a federal court hearing on sex trafficking charges.
Thiel, who is documented to have crossed paths with Epstein several times in 2014, says his meeting with Epstein and Churkin in October 2016 was “unremarkable.” “I was very naive,” Thiel recalls, “and I didn’t really think about Epstein’s agenda.” Barrack, founder of investment fund Colony Capital and longtime Trump ally, declined to comment.
“None of them was the official representative of the campaign, and Trump generally banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago (a private residence in Florida owned by Trump. – Forbes),” the press secretary of the ex-president said.
As a result of a two year investigations Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a separate investigations of both parties in the Senate, it turned out that Russia tried to interfere in the election process and help Trump, however, neither the prosecutor nor any of the parties of the Senate stated that Trump’s associates in the election campaign were knowingly involved in the collusion. Churkin does not appear in the reports of Mueller and the Senate. Russia denies interference in the elections. The press services of the Russian embassies and the UN mission ignored requests for comment.
Epstein and Trump interacted extensively in the 1990s and were often photographed at social events. Subsequently, both admitted that there was a quarrel between them. This happened even before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution, served time in a Florida prison and was registered for sexual rapists. When Epstein was arrested in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t spoken to him in about 15 years. “I was not delighted with him, that’s what I can say,” the US president said then.
Epstein boasted to many that he maintains ties with Trump and Bill Clinton and I am very familiar with both. According to the flight logs, both Trump and Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet. The contacts of both of them were in the financier’s notebook, which is now in the public domain.
In August 2016, when Trump’s chances of winning seemed slim, Epstein scheduled a lunch with Barrack, who was then Trump’s unofficial adviser and campaign fundraiser. Barrack was later appointed head of the inaugural committee. Federal prosecutors accused the man of lobbying Trump for the interests of the United Arab Emirates, but at a court hearing in 2022, Barraca acquitted.
Epstein had known Barrack for more than a year, and his name was also in the notebook. In the documents and the work schedule, which the editors got acquainted with, the name of the investor appeared only in the summer of 2016. That’s when Epstein scheduled a dinner that Barrak, Churkin, and Ehud Barak, the former Israeli defense minister, were supposed to attend, according to the documents.
Thomas Barrack appeared twice on Epstein’s schedule in September of that year, including as a guest at a big Sunday reception at the financier’s New York townhouse. The guest list also included Churkin, Barak and a film director Woody Allen.
Barak did not respond to requests for comment. He previously told The Wall Street Journal that he often met with Epstein during trips to New York, and in his townhouse he discussed politics with interesting people. Allen’s spokeswoman previously said that the director attended Epstein’s receptions with his wife.
According to the documents, several friends of the financier have been e-mailing Thiel for years and suggesting that he meet with Epstein. In March 2014, fellow billionaire venture capitalist Reed Hoffman, a major Democratic Party donor, sent Thiel a letter introducing Epstein and arranging a meeting at Thiel’s home in San Francisco.
“Will you meet one of the people who invented derivatives, Jeffrey Epstein?” Hoffman asked, repeating a false statement that Epstein himself sometimes uttered. Hoffman wrote that Epstein is “quite a jovial, very interesting guy, maybe a little stubborn, but very knowledgeable about biology, computing and macroeconomics.”
Hoffman claims that he regrets all interactions with the financier and that he introduced him to raise funds for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Epstein said that it is easier for him to donate to MIT with other IT leaders,” the billionaire explains in an email. – Introducing them to each other, I said what Epstein asked, including how he presented himself. I trusted the internal audit of the university, but did not conduct my own. ”
The institute says the acceptance of Epstein’s gifts was a mistake and is “the result of a collective and significant delusion.”
Recently, in response to a question about emails and other documents, Thiel said that he ignored early messages with offers to meet Epstein, but in 2014 agreed to meet with him at the suggestion of Hoffman. The latter has known Til since his student days at Stanford University.
Thiel says he never mentioned MIT with Epstein and Hoffman in his memory, and that it is “preposterous to assume” that he would help fund the university if he himself established a scholarship in 2010 that encourages students not to go to college and drop out.
Thiel states that Epstein encouraged him to further socialize, mainly by offering the opportunity to meet other people. “He was obsessed with useful contacts, but when talking in private, he hardly spoke on the merits,” notes the billionaire investor. “He was throwing dust in everyone’s eyes.”
In September 2016, the financier planned a dinner at his home with Hillary Clinton’s promoter and former governor of New Mexico, the documents say. Richardson claims that he did not meet with Epstein in 2016, and why his name appeared in the routine, he does not know. Epstein’s donation to his gubernatorial campaign was given to charity, the official said.
Election 2016
Early on the morning of November 9, 2016, Trump was declared the winner of the presidential race. Epstein told his friends that he was very pleased with his victory, and boasted of his acquaintance with several potential members of the new cabinet.
In the next few weeks, the financier again scheduled meetings with Churkin and his son Maxim Churkin, who was then studying at a New York business school.
The last scheduled meeting with Vitaly Churkin was scheduled for January 10, 2017. Next month on the eve of his own 65th birthday diplomat died. Trump, then President, issued a White House statement saying he was saddened by the news and thanked Churkin for his long diplomatic service.
Three days after Churkin’s death, Epstein sent Til an email: “As you heard, my friend, the ambassador from Russia, has died. Life is short, start with dessert.”