The long-running scandal surrounding the disgraced late financier and convicted sex offender
Jeffrey Epstein broadened on Tuesday after the
New York Times published a trove of previously unseen letters to Epstein from numerous powerful figures as well as unseen photographs from inside his Manhattan mansion.
The letters, written to Epstein by a number of high-profile individuals, were reportedly compiled as a birthday gift for Epstein’s 63rd birthday in 2016. Their publication comes amid intense speculation around
Donald Trump’s ties to Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 and had long cultivated a celebrity social circle of the rich and powerful.
In one letter, former prime minister of Israel Ehud Barak and his wife wrote “there is no limit to your curiosity.”
“You are like a closed book to many of them but you know everything about everyone,” they wrote, describing Epstein as “A COLLECTOR OF PEOPLE”.
They continued: “May you enjoy long and healthy life and may all of us, your friends, enjoy your table for many more years to come.”
In a
letter from film-maker Woody Allen, Allen reminisced about Epstein’s dinner parties at his Upper East Side townhouse and described the gatherings as “always interesting”. He noted that the parties included “politicians, scientists, teachers, magicians, comedians, intellectuals, journalists” and “even royalty”.
Allen also described the dinners as “well served”: “I say well served – often it’s by some professional houseman and just as often by several young women” who he said reminded him of “Castle Dracula where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place.”
Other letter writers reportedly included billionaire media mogul Mortimer Zuckerman; Noam Chomsky and his wife; Joichi Ito, the former head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab; physicist Lawrence M Krauss; and Harvard biologist and mathematician Martin Nowak.
