As the US House of Representatives votes for a resolution demanding the release of files relating to the late sex criminal and financier Jeffrey Epstein, a new series of investigations is digging into an area of the disgraced financier’s life that has largely evaded scrutiny: his extensive ties with Israeli intelligence.
Epstein’s relationship with the Israeli government has long been the subject of speculation and conspiracy theorizing. But the extent of the connections has long been difficult to prove. That is, until October 2024, when the Palestinian group Handala released a tranche of more than 100,000 hacked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who led the country from 1999 to 2001.
The emails span the years 2013-16, beginning just before Barak concluded his nearly six-year tenure as Israel’s minister of defense. Barak is known to have been one of Epstein’s closest associates, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that he visited the financier’s estates in Florida and New York more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017, years after Epstein had been convicted for soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent victims, who died earlier this year, alleged in her posthumous memoir that a figure, described only as “the Prime Minister,” but widely believed to be Barak, violently raped her on Epstein’s private Caribbean island when she was 18. In past court filings, Giuffre accused Barak of sexually assaulting her. Barak has categorically denied those allegations and said he was unaware of Epstein’s activities with minors during the time of their friendship.
Emails between Barak and Epstein have served as the basis for the ongoing investigative series published since late September by the independent outlet Drop Site News, which used them to unearth Epstein’s extensive role in brokering intelligence deals between Israel and other nations.
The emails reveal that between 2013 and 2016, the pair had “intimate, oftentimes daily correspondence,” during which they discussed “political and business strategy as Epstein coordinated meetings for Barak with other members of his elite circles.”
The investigation comes as President Donald Trump’s extensive ties to Epstein face renewed scrutiny in Congress. On Wednesday, just a day after Drop Site published the fourth part of its series, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a new trove of documents from Epstein’s private estate.
Among them were emails sent in 2011 from Epstein to his partner and co-conspirator Ghislane Maxwell, in which he said the then private-citizen Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of his sex trafficking victims, referring to Trump as a “dog that hasn’t barked.”
Murtaza Hussain, one of the Drop Site reporters who has dug into Epstein’s Israel connections, told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that the focus on Trump, while important, has diverted attention from other key tendrils of Epstein’s influence.
“There’s been a lot of justifiable focus on Epstein’s very grave crimes and facilitation of the crimes of others related to sex trafficking and sex abuse,” Hussain said. “But one critical aspect of the story that has not been covered is Epstein’s own relations to foreign governments, the US government, and particularly foreign intelligence agencies.”
The first report shows that Epstein was instrumental in helping Barak develop a formal security agreement between Israel and Mongolia, recruiting powerful friends like Larry Summers, who served as an economist to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, to serve on a Presidential Advisory Board for the Central Asian nation’s economy.
Epstein helped to facilitate an agreement for Mongolia to purchase Israeli military equipment and surveillance technology from companies with which the men had financial ties.
Another report shows how Epstein helped Israel to establish a covert backchannel with the Russian government at the height of the Syrian Civil War, during which they attempted to persuade the Kremlin to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a major national security priority for Israel, which had become substantially involved in the conflict.
This process was coordinated with Israeli intelligence and resulted in Barak securing a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In one message, Barak explicitly thanked Epstein for “setting the whole thing together.”
Epstein also worked alongside Barak to sell Israeli surveillance tech, which had previously been used extensively in occupied Palestine, to the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire.
In 2014, the pair architected a deal by which the nation’s government, led by President Alassane Ouattara, purchased technology used to listen in on phone calls and radio transmissions and monitor points of interest like cybercafes.
In the decade since, the report says, “Ouattara has tightened his grip on power, banning public demonstrations and arresting peaceful protestors,” while “his Israeli-backed police state has squashed civic organizations and silenced critics.”
On Tuesday, just before the House Oversight Committee dropped its latest batch of documents, the series’ latest report revealed that an Israeli spy, Yoni Koren, stayed at Epstein’s New York apartment for weeks at a time on three separate occasions between 2013 and 2015. Koren served as an intermediary between the American and Israeli governments, helping Barak organize meetings with top intelligence officials, including former CIA Director Leon Panetta.
Drop Site’sreporting has fueled speculation of the longstanding theory that Epstein may have worked as an agent of Mossad, Israel’s central intelligence agency. Hussain said that the evidence points to the idea that Epstein was not a formal Mossad agent, but was working as an asset to advance its most hawkish foreign policy goals.
He marveled at the fact that throughout each of these stories, “it’s not Epstein chasing Barak—it’s Barak chasing Epstein,” and that at times, “it looked like Mossad was working for Epstein instead of Epstein working for Mossad.”
In a foreword to their latest report, Hussain and co-author Ryan Grim expressed bewilderment at the lack of media attention paid to the publicly available files revealing Epstein’s role as a semi-official node in Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
While Epstein’s relationship with Trump has routinely been front-page news for many outlets, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journalhave not published a story focused on Epstein’s role in Israeli intelligence.
“We’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents,” the reporters asked. “A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing?”
In the interview, Hussain said he and Grim “are going to continue drilling down on this and not shying away from the political implications of his activities.”