News
Featured Image
CIA Director and former deputy secretary of state William BurnsYouTube

(LifeSiteNews) — The late child sex trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein scheduled meetings with the current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director as well as with former Obama White House counsel and other prominent Americans, according to recently published findings from Epstein’s personal calendar.

CIA director and former deputy secretary of state William Burns, former President Barack Obama’s White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, professor and political activist Noam Chomsky, and Bard College president Leon Botstein were all scheduled to meet with Epstein several times or more according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal, although the news outlet could not confirm whether all the planned meetings occurred.

The meetings were scheduled after Epstein was convicted of a sex crime with a minor and was registered as a sex offender.

CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp confirmed that Burns met with Epstein “as he was preparing to leave government service,” according to the WSJ. She alleged that Burns’ contact with Epstein was for financial reasons, as did other Epstein acquaintances.

“The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector,” said Thorp, claiming that “they had no relationship.”

In 2014, when he was deputy secretary of state, Burns had three meetings scheduled with Epstein. They first met in a law firm office in Washington, and then Burns visited Epstein’s townhouse in Manhattan twice in September, the WSJ reported. Epstein had planned for his driver to take Burns to the airport after one of the meetings. However, Burns claims he was only introduced to Epstein in Washington, and then met with him “once briefly” in New York.

“The director does not recall any further contact, including receiving a ride to the airport,” Thorp said.

The month after his scheduled meetings with Epstein in New York, Burns left his position at the State Department to serve as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank before President Joe Biden nominated Burns in 2021 as CIA director.

It is not the first time Epstein has been linked to intelligence. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor and U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta, explaining why he agreed to a non-prosecution deal in the lead-up to Epstein’s 2008 conviction of procuring a child for prostitution, told Trump transition team interviewers that he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” adding that he was told to “leave it alone,” The Daily Beast reported.

Federal officials had identified 36 girls, some as young as 14, who had alleged sexual abuse by Epstein. The Daily Beast noted that the plea deal with Acosta effectively halted a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking.

The documents obtained by the WSJ, which include “thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017,” also show that Epstein had an ongoing professional relationship with Ruemmler. Epstein introduced her to potential legal clients and had more than 36 appointments scheduled with her over the span of three years. He was scheduled to fly with her to Paris and had plans in 2017 to take her to his residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs, of which Ruemmler is now a partner and for which she works as chief legal officer and general counsel, claimed, however, that Ruemmler never traveled with Epstein.

According to the spokesman, Ruemmler first met Epstein when he asked her if she would be interested in representing Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as clients.

Reports indicate Epstein had an ongoing professional relationship with Gates as well. A Norwegian newspaper reported in 2020 that Epstein and Gates had together attended a meeting with Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Prime Minister of Norway, which may have been instrumental in establishing connections between Gates and a think tank involved in the production of vaccines. According to the newspaper’s sources, Epstein had also introduced Gates to the International Peace Institute (IPI), with whom Gates later partnered to provide polio vaccines to tribal areas in the Middle East.

Epstein also introduced Ruemmler to Ariane de Rothschild, who is now chief executive of the Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild Group. Mrs. de Rothschild’s bank subsequently hired Ruemmler’s law firm, Latham & Watkins, for help with “U.S. regulatory matters,” according to the bank and the Sachs spokesman.

Emails show that Epstein discussed business deals with Mrs. de Rothschild, who married into the prominent banking family, and that the two met over a dozen times.

The documents defy the claim by the de Rothschild bank in 2019 — after Epstein’s arrest — that it had no business connections with Epstein, and that Mrs. de Rothschild never met with him. The bank has since admitted to the WSJ that its earlier statement was false, sharing that Mrs. de Rothschild met with Epstein as part of her “normal duties” at the bank, and that he “solicited her personally on a couple of occasions for advice and services on estate management.”

Emails also show that Epstein’s high-profile contacts include the left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky, who met with Epstein in 2015 together with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and several others to discuss Israel’s policies regarding Palestine. Chomsky had at least several meetings with Epstein while serving as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

When the WSJ asked Chomsky about his relationship with Epstein, he replied, “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.” He added that from his perspective, Epstein had a “clean slate” at the time, since he had already served his jail sentence.

Barak, another regular guest of Epstein, shared that he “often brought other interesting persons, from art or culture, law or science, finance, diplomacy or philanthropy.”

Epstein’s correspondence and calendar also show he met over a dozen times with Joshua Cooper Ramo, then co-chief executive of Henry Kissinger’s corporate consulting firm. Ramo also served at the time on the boards of Starbucks Corp. and FedEx Corp. Ramo’s meetings with Epstein were usually held in the evening at Epstein’s townhouse. Ramo still sits on the board of FedEx, but recently left Starbucks’ board.

Bard College president Leon Botstein, who had about two dozen meetings scheduled with Epstein, said he first met with him to “thank him for unsolicited donations to Bard’s high schools,” and subsequently met with him in an effort to procure more donations. Documents show Epstein donated 66 laptops in 2015.

However, Botstein said that despite all of their meetings, Epstein never donated again to Bard.

“[W]hat I finally came to believe, which is why we stopped contact with him, is that he was simply stringing us along,” Botstein told the WSJ.

While Epstein’s former influence as a wealthy financier is widely acknowledged, questions remain about who among Epstein’s acquaintances have “benefited” from or been compromised by his sex trafficking operations, and to what extent.

According to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra in February 2019, “from between about 1999 and 2007, Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused more than 30 minor girls … In addition to his own sexual abuse of the victims, Epstein directed other persons to abuse the girls sexually. Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him. Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.”

The “sweetheart deal” then brokered by Acosta not only swept aside any potential sex trafficking charges for Epstein, but for “any potential co-conspirators” of his as well, as the left-wing outlet Mother Jones noted.

The U.S. Virgin Islands have since sued J.P. Morgan Chase Bank (JPMorgan) for having “facilitated and sustained” Epstein’s expansive sex trafficking network.

According to the lawsuit, “JPMorgan continued to facilitate and sustain Epstein’s sex- trafficking by making the payments and covering up the trafficking, including for many years after it no longer held Epstein’s accounts … ”

“JPMorgan — through its head of Private Bank assigned to manage Epstein and Epstein’s accounts — made multiple visits to Epstein’s Virgin Islands residence where women and girls were sex-trafficked,” the lawsuit continues.

Email exchanges mentioned in the lawsuit show that Epstein and JP Morgan executive Jes Staley referred to sex-trafficked girls by Disney princess names such as “Snow White.”

Staley, who went on to become CEO of Barclays Bank, resigned that position in 2021 after the “preliminary conclusions” of an investigation by British regulators over his ties to Epstein.

2 Comments

    Loading...