Who Was Epstein? Where did his money come from?

[Peter Lemkin]

‘I was Epstein’s butler for 18 years. There’s no way he killed himself’
Trusted aide tells of life in disgraced financier’s inner circle, which included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Woody Allen
Henry Samuel. Robert Mendick Chief Reporter. Connor Stringer Deputy US Editor
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...on-cotrin/



  
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Valdson Vieira Cotrin with Jeffrey Epstein on his private jet in 2019. This photo, given exclusively to The Telegraph, may be one of the last taken of the financier and shows him wearing an Israel Defense Forces sweatshirt Credit: The Telegraph
Jeffrey Epstein “loved life too much” to kill himself and was confident of securing bail before he died, his butler for 18 years has told The Telegraph.
In an interview that will heap renewed pressure on the Trump administration to make [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/07/23/epstein-documents-blocked-from-release/]the Epstein files public, one of his closest aides said he had spoken to the paedophile financier before he died and insisted he had been in good spirits.
Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein’s Paris home, told The Telegraph he could not accept the official verdict of suicide and feared that his own life was in danger.
He also said he believed that Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who accused Prince Andrew of rape and died by suicide in April, was a victim of foul play.
Mr Cotrin also made the extraordinary claim to The Telegraph that Epstein told him he had been offered a job by Donald Trump in his first administration in 2016 – but had turned it down.
There is no evidence that the allegation is true, and Mr Trump has maintained that he stopped speaking to Epstein in 2004 after they fell out over a business deal.
But Mr Cotrin’s recollection of a conversation with his boss will fuel a growing demand for the full Epstein files – the trove of documents from the criminal investigations into the financier that allegedly name high-profile celebrities and politicians, possibly including Mr Trump – to be released.
In his exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Mr Cotrin, speaking on the record for the first time, also alleged that:

• Prince Andrew visited Epstein in Saint Tropez along with a British photographer famous for taking pictures of naked girls and accused of having sex with a 13-year-old
  
• Prince Andrew was a frequent guest at Epstein’s Paris town house, with Royal protection bodyguards paid for by the British taxpayer
  
• Ghislaine Maxwell was the “authoritarian boss” who gave the orders in the Epstein household
  
• Epstein gave money to Woody Allen to finance one of his movies
  

Mr Cotrin remains in possession of a number of photographs taken with friends of Epstein, including a photo of himself with Bill Clinton on the so-called Lolita Express, Epstein’s private plane that he used to traffic underage girls and women for sex.
   
Bill Clinton on board Epstein’s private jet in a new picture obtained exclusively by The Telegraph Credit: The Telegraph
The existence of the photo showing Mr Clinton on board Epstein’s jet will also fuel demands for the former president to reveal his full dealings with Epstein.
Mr Clinton was issued with a subpoena on Tuesday, demanding he give evidence to a congressional committee investigating the financier.
Mr Cotrin also shared a photograph of himself with Epstein, taken on his private jet in January 2019, which may be one of the last taken of the financier.
Epstein looks puffy, but is smiling and relaxed, and is notably wearing an Israel Defense Forces sweatshirt. Epstein has long been accused of being an operative for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, although last month his former lawyer told The Telegraph that Epstein used to laugh off the claim.
Mr Cotrin, who acted as Epstein’s butler, chauffeur and cook in Paris, recalled driving his boss to Le Bourget airport in Paris to catch a flight to New York, where he was arrested upon landing on July 6 2019.
Epstein, who was 66, was charged with sex trafficking underage girls and remanded in custody. He was found hanged in his cell on Aug 10 that year.
But Mr Cotrin is insistent that Epstein would never have killed himself. Epstein had told him he was planning to negotiate with the judge in the case to secure bail, having been held in custody as a possible flight risk.
“I am like his brother [Mark Epstein]. I don’t believe this was suicide. He loved life too much,” said Mr Cotrin.
Mr Cotrin recalled seeing Epstein for the last time. Epstein, he said, was relaxed and had been talking about making more investments in his islands – he had discreetly bought a second, which Mr Cotrin visited – as well as spending more time in Paris.
“I drove him to Le Bourget airport. It was a Saturday, because on Monday he was supposed to appear before the judge regarding all these accusations,” he said.
“When I got home, two young women rang, his main girlfriend who had been with him officially for several years, Karyna [Shuliak] and another who worked for him. And then they told me, ‘Mr Epstein has gone to prison. He arrived in New York. The police were waiting for him’.”
Mr Cotrin’s partner, Maria Gomes de Melo, who also knew Epstein well, recalled that in Paris, Epstein had said goodbye to her and added: “I’ll be back next week”. Ms de Melo told him: “Sir, don’t go.”
She also questioned the official conclusion that he had killed himself. Mark Epstein has suggested the financier may have been murdered, ordering a second autopsy that tended to back up that assertion.
“On the Saturday late, we got the news that he had hanged himself, and honestly, he loved life too much to float away like that,” she said.
The Department of Justice has released nearly 11 hours of surveillance video from outside Epstein’s cell in the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center, but a crucial minute from 11:58:58pm to midnight was missing. That has further fuelled conspiracy theories that Epstein was murdered to silence him.
Mr Cotrin remains fiercely loyal to Epstein and insists he never saw his boss cavorting, let alone having sex, with underage girls.
He said young women were hired to give Epstein massages and to cut his nails, adding: “The girls did that to him, but it stopped there.”
Mr Cotrin gave an extraordinary insight into Epstein’s world, and the rich and famous who would stop by for his guidance and hospitality.
Mr Cotrin, who has joint French and Brazilian nationalities, worked for Epstein for 18 years, managing his sumptuous eight-bedroom Paris apartment on Avenue Foch, overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. He lived in a garret flat on the sixth floor.
   
Jeffrey Epstein’s eight-bedroom Paris apartment, on Avenue Foch
But he also worked dozens of times at Epstein’s properties in New York, Palm Beach, Florida and on Little St James, Epstein’s private Caribbean island – dubbed ‘“paedophile island” – where he is said to have trapped and raped often underage victims.
“He trusted me completely,” said Mr Cotrin, who has not worked since his boss’s death six years ago.
“I was his chauffeur, his cook, his housekeeper. I did everything in Paris, I was his only full-time, paid-up employee and worked for him from 2001 until his death. If someone could have seen something, it’s Valdson, there’s no one else,” he said.
His interview with The Telegraph took place in his French home over a beer and Brazilian bread and cheese balls, which he says were a hit with Bill Gates. Upstairs, a large photo of Mr Cotrin and Epstein taken on the “Lolita Express” hung on one wall, alongside another with the butler and Mr Clinton.
Mr Cotrin reeled off a list of dignitaries who came to visit Epstein over two decades, including Prince Andrew, who he cooked for and chauffeured “five or six times” in Paris and New York; Mr Clinton, whom he met once in Epstein’s jet during a stopover in Paris; Lord Mandelson, now the UK’s ambassador to Washington DC; Woody Allen; and Israeli ex-prime minister Ehud Barak, along with other Middle Eastern dignitaries.
A photograph of Lord Mandelson with Epstein and Mr Cotrin, taken at the Paris apartment on Epstein’s birthday, has been widely circulated, causing Lord Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, huge embarrassment.
   
Peter Mandelson (left) and Epstein, celebrating a birthday at Epstein’s Paris apartment in January 2007. Mr Cotrin is holding the cake
Mr Cotrin has refused countless requests for interviews since Epstein was found hanged in his prison cell, but told The Telegraph he was breaking his silence to “tell my truth” about Epstein, to whom he refers as “Monsieur” or “Patron”.
Mr Cotrin and Ms Gomes de Melo, 65, who often accompanied him to Epstein’s properties, both insist they never saw any evidence of the sexual abuse multiple young women have said they suffered.
“I want to say with all my heart from the life I lived with him, Monsieur is not the man they say he was,” insisted Mr Cotrin.
One reason the couple had declined to talk publicly was concern for their own safety. They pointed to what they consider Epstein’s mysterious death and also the suicides of Ms Giuffre, who had accused Prince Andrew of rape (he denied it but paid her millions of pounds to settle a civil case) and Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran a modelling agency that procured girls for Epstein.
Giuffre took her own life at her home in Australia in April, aged 41. Brunel was found dead in his prison cell in Paris in February 2022, after apparently hanging himself. He was awaiting trial on charges of raping a 17-year-old girl.
“And what about Virginia [Giuffre] Roberts?” said Mr Cotrin, adding: “I’m scared because after what happened to them, poor Valdson, who knows?”
   
Mr Cotrin’s interview with the Telegraph took place in his French home over a beer and Brazilian bread and cheese balls, which he says were a hit with Bill Gates
Mr Cotrin never met Mr Trump – Mr Trump and Epstein had fallen out over the sale of a property in Palm Beach in 2004.
However, Mr Cotrin said that Epstein had boasted of being offered a job by Mr Trump after his surprise first presidential election win in November 2016.
The claim – if true – would be dynamite, although there is no evidence to back it up. Sources inside Mr Trump’s first administration told The Telegraph that Mr Cotrin’s recollection appeared fanciful.
Mr Cotrin said: “I can tell you one thing [regarding Mr Trump]. A few days after Trump’s [2016] election, Mr Epstein arrived in Paris on Monday or Tuesday, and I went to pick him up at the airport.
“He said: ‘Valdson, you saw that Trump is the new US president?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I saw it on the news in Paris.’
“‘Well, Trump asked me to work for him in the new government’.
“I said: ‘Congratulations. I’m happy for you,’ in my bad English. He said: ‘No, I didn’t accept.’”
Mr Cotrin insisted Epstein was not in the habit of trumpeting false claims in such a confidential setting. He said his boss made no mention of what position that might be.
“I was surprised, because I would have thought such a position could be interesting, but I asked no more questions as it wasn’t my place,” said Mr Cotrin. “In my job, one waits to be spoken to.
“But in my opinion, if he did turn it down, it was because he liked his freedom. I think he didn’t want to be controlled by anyone, because once you accept a position, a job of any kind in a government, the president is going to give you orders and you have to listen to him.
“That’s how it is. Just look at Elon Musk and all his financial power, and see what happened in his life today.”
   
Donald Trump with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 1992 Credit: NBC News
Epstein would visit his Paris home “for a week roughly every two months” but periodically Mr Cotrin was flown abroad to cook for famous friends. “It could be a dinner with Ehud Barak, Bill Gates. Epstein hired top chefs in New York or Paris and then he asked me to show them what I did because he liked it,” he recalled.
There is no suggestion that any of the dignitaries were involved with the women hired by Epstein, and Mr Cotrin said he saw nothing inappropriate.
But Mr Trump’s Maga movement has long contended that “Deep State” elites continue to protect Epstein’s most powerful associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.
After the 2024 election win, the Trump administration acknowledged that it was reviewing tens of thousands of documents and videos related to Epstein.
But in a memo made public last month, the Justice Department and FBI said there was no evidence that the disgraced financier kept a “client list” or was blackmailing powerful figures. The memo also dismissed the claim that Epstein was murdered in jail, confirming his death by suicide, and said the agencies would not be releasing any more information on the investigation.
Mr Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
Mr Cotrin continued to work for Epstein even after he was first convicted of sex crimes in 2008. Three years earlier, in 2005, the FBI and Florida police began an investigation into Epstein for the alleged sex trafficking of more than 30 young women, mostly minors.
He pleaded guilty in state court to just two felony charges, including soliciting a minor, as part of a plea deal that avoided far tougher federal charges. In the end, Epstein served just 13 months in prison and was obliged to register as a sex offender.
The deal, described by victims’ lawyers as “extraordinarily lenient”, protected Epstein and unnamed co-conspirators from future prosecution.
Mr Cotrin said: “I remember the first time he went to prison. It was in Florida and I accompanied him to Palm Beach airport. The boss called me and said, ‘I’m going to jail. To prison.’
“I said, ‘Why, Monsieur?’ He said: ‘Because of these ladies.’”
Mr Cotrin has no recollection of Epstein ever meeting Mr Trump – either in Paris or in Florida – but did recall Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, driving to Mr Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.
“She used to pop over there very often in her Mercedes shortly after I was taken on in the early 2000s,” he said. He added that he had no idea who she visited.
   
Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell, his one-time girlfriend who was jailed for 20 years after conspiring with him to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls
In 2021, Maxwell, the daughter of the disgraced British newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
Maxwell, 63, has been moved to a minimum security jail in Texas after giving two days of testimony in July to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is also Mr Trump’s former personal attorney.
Maxwell was well aware of the goings-on inside Epstein’s households, and Mr Cotrin is certain she holds the key if any other celebrities or politicians are to be dragged into the scandal.
Mr Cotrin said: “If anyone knows things, it’s Ms Maxwell. She was the boss and the lady of the house. She was harder and more authoritarian because [she was] more bourgeois. She didn’t give massages, but she was in charge. For a long time, she ran everything in the house.”
Mr Cotrin said that, in every home, there were notepads to jot down messages. He had a photograph of two – one with Epstein’s name on it and the other headed Lady Ghislaine.
Lady Ghislaine was the name of the luxury yacht from which her father was presumed to have fallen overboard to his death in November 1991.
   
Mr Cotrin had a photograph of two notepads, one with Epstein’s name on it and the other headed Lady Ghislaine
“We wrote in either depending on who the message was for,” said Mr Cotrin. “I also kept the boss’s professional American Express card, which no longer works, of course, as a memento. I told myself it might bring me luck for later.”
He remembered being hired by Epstein in 2001, but said that Maxwell had been instrumental in sorting out the details, suggesting she controlled the day-to-day running of the Epstein homes.
“The first time I met him, he came out of his jet with a beautiful woman aged around 25 to 30. and he was in a tatty sweatsuit. He often looked like a tramp in cheap clothes. I had my CV. He looked at me and said: ‘How old are you?’ Forty. ‘How long have you been working for?’ I said 20 years. He said: ‘You’ve got the job.’
“Then he said: ‘Where’s Ms Maxwell?’ My English is bad and she speaks perfect French, so he handed me the phone. She said, ‘Don’t worry, he wants you to work for us, come to Avenue Foch tomorrow.’ He said, ‘Is it ok now?’ And that was it.”
Asked whether he saw Maxwell bring back girls for Epstein, he said: “I never saw Madame leave the house, go anywhere and come back with a new girl, never. It was more people who came to see her – whether they were contacts she had before or other people, I can’t tell you.
“But to say, ‘Oh yes, Ms Maxwell was here, she went to Trocadero and came back with two women I didn’t know,’ that’s not true. Never.”
Maxwell introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, and Mr Cotrin recalled first serving the Duke of York along with the late, disgraced British photographer David Hamilton at a property in Saint-Tropez in the early 2000s. The pair “came for tea”.
   
David Hamilton at a property in Saint-Tropez in 1999. He died by suicide in 2016 following allegations he had abused underage models as young as 13
The presence of Hamilton is ironic given that he died by suicide in 2016 following allegations that he had abused underage models as young as 13. The accusations came after decades in which he was feted for his semi-erotic, soft-focus shots of mostly nude girls in their early teens, which he said depicted “a lost paradise”.
“It was my first year working for Monsieur, so it was 2002,” said Mr Cotrin. “There were many girls. At that time, he was at the height of his powers, both financially and as a young man. In terms of women, it was a merry-go-round. Two arrived and two left every day.”
But there were no big parties. “Monsieur was not a socialite,” he insisted.
He said he also served the Duke in Paris when Epstein lent him his flat. He was not sure of the dates.
“I remember him coming twice to Paris. Once for two or three nights, and the second time for two nights. And when he came to Paris, he came alone with his bodyguards. Monsieur told me to look after him. I picked him up in the boss’s Mercedes. It was a V12 600, very luxurious.
“He was a very nice man, very polite. He taught me how to make a proper cup of tea. He told me: ‘Valdson, it’s not strong enough.’
“One time, I drove him to a soirée at the Eiffel Tower. I left him at the foot of a building and came back a few hours later.
“Once, a woman aged between 25-30 came to Monsieur’s flat in Avenue Foch to serve him tea. They talked together, but I never saw them touch each other. It lasted about an hour, and then she left. I also met him in New York, maybe once or twice.”
‘He told me to cook for the Prince’
Epstein’s servant also cooked for his boss, who was not a big eater. “Monsieur didn’t eat much – he grazed. But he told me to cook for the Prince, who had an appetite. Upon Monsieur’s instructions, in New York I prepared fresh mushrooms, a nice steak filet French-style – seared on both sides, rare in the middle – with sauce au poivre.”
The Duke clearly approved. “He asked me: ‘Who taught you to cook like that?’ I told him I taught myself,” he recalled. “He said: ‘I never had better’ and yet he had all that staff and good cooks.” Mr Cotrin took it as a compliment, coming from a royal.
Rattling through the globally known figures he came across, the ex-butler mentioned Mr Clinton, whom he met just once in the autumn of 2002 when the former US president passed through Paris at the end of a nine-day trip with Epstein.
Flight logs indicate that Mr Clinton was on Epstein’s private jet at least 26 times between 2001 and 2003.
“When Monsieur went on tour to Africa in 2002, when I got to Le Bourget to fetch the boss, he asked me whether I wanted to meet ‘the president’. I thought it was George W Bush, but no, it was Clinton. I was trembling as it’s not every day you meet someone of that stature,” he said.
Mr Clinton had been travelling with Kevin Spacey, Maxwell and Epstein himself. Also present was a 21-year-old masseuse, Chauntae Davies, who later testified that she was repeatedly raped and abused by Epstein, whose “little black book” contained 14 phone numbers for Mr Trump, and 21 for Mr Clinton.
Mr Clinton then joined in a tour the Duke of York led around Buckingham Palace, in which Maxwell and Spacey were pictured sitting side-by-side in thrones reserved for the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The extraordinary photograph of Maxwell and Spacey on the thrones was first made public by The Telegraph. Another obtained by The Telegraph showed Mr Clinton, Prince Andrew and Maxwell in Buckingham Palace.
   
Ghislaine Maxwell and Kevin Spacey sitting on thrones belonging to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace
   
Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in Buckingham Palace
The former US president has always denied having had any knowledge of the “terrible crimes” committed by Epstein.
However, he has come under fresh scrutiny since July, when it was reported that he praised Epstein’s “childlike curiosity” in a birthday message to the paedophile in 2003.
Mr Cotrin remembers that Epstein often laughed in front of a painting he bought of Mr Clinton in red high heels and a blue dress – just like the one Monica Lewinsky reportedly wore for their Oval Office encounter – that hung in his Manhattan mansion.
   
A painting Epstein bought of Mr Clinton in red high heels and a blue dress
The butler then brandished a photo of himself alongside the Democrat ex-president, now 78, in Epstein’s luxury Boeing 727. “Monsieur said: ‘You’re not going to sell that photo, are you?’” He never did.
Mr Cotrin had no recollection of another notorious photograph – the one taken in 2007 of himself presenting a birthday cake to Epstein, in which Lord Mandelson is also present.
Lord Mandelson has always insisted he “regretted ever meeting” Epstein or “being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell”.
Mr Cotrin struggled to recall the birthday in 2007. “I saw so many important people, it’s hard,” he said. “But I remember his [Mandelson’s] face and do recall travelling with that man in Mr Epstein’s private jet with him from his island. We flew from Saint Thomas to New York.
“It was soon after I started working for Monsieur, in the early 2000s. I remember he had a trade position at the time.”
Lord Mandelson was the European Commissioner for Trade from November 2004 to October 2008.
“I have no recollection of any of their conversations, as my job was to make myself scarce,” he said. “All I can say is that I got the impression that nobody came to see Epstein to bring him something but to ask for something, whether it be money, although some like Bill Gates clearly didn’t need it – business advice or investment tips.”
He met the Microsoft billionaire a couple of times in Paris and New York, he recalled, and drove Woody Allen around at the request of his boss. Mr Cotrin and his partner alleged that Epstein gave Allen money for a film, though they didn’t know the details. The Telegraph reached out to Allen’s representative for comment.
Allen has likened Epstein to Dracula, with “young female vampires who service the place”.
   
Epstein is photographed walking with Woody Allen on Madison Avenue in New York in 2013
Mr Cotrin said the Paris home, which has been sold in the aftermath of Epstein’s death, contained “a large gym, a massage room, a dining room, there was a nice kitchen, [eight] bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and around 820 square metres”.
“New York was much bigger. Three or four times that. So it was seven floors, also with a sauna and steam room. He had to have a massage and sauna every day – it was a need with him”.
Despite scores of testimonies by alleged victims and other evidence, Mr Cotrin and his partner refuse to believe Epstein had sex with underage girls.
“I would like to tell the truth that I knew. It’s not the truth the world is talking about,” said the butler. He was aware that young women were coming and going from the Paris home, but was not aware of wrongdoing.
“If something abnormal that was scary and someone screamed or was abused, I would have phoned the police – but I saw nothing,” he said. “I can’t understand everything that’s being said, because I really lived almost his private life, not everything, but almost.
“I can’t rule out foul play. But you can’t live with someone for 18 years and not see the good or the bad. I did everything, I took care of the house, was his chauffeur, his cook. I even changed his sheets.
“In 18 years, how many times do you think I would have seen the signs of someone who had done sexual acts? If you ask me, he just liked to surround himself with girls without necessarily having sex with them. It was mostly for show.”
But he added: “It’s true [Epstein] wasn’t into older women. He preferred the company of younger women and liked to change those around him. But that doesn’t mean they were underage – they certainly didn’t look it to me. Some would stay for 10 minutes and leave if not comfortable, others would stay.”
Mr Cotrin painted a picture of Epstein as anything but an unbridled hedonist. “He didn’t like food, alcohol, he wasn’t a socialite.
“And I can tell you that in 80 per cent of cases, nothing happened with women to the extent I told some young women, ‘I’m not like him, at least I go all the way. All he does is have massages and nothing else’. I said it loud so he could hear me when he annoyed me.
“He rarely did anything with these young women. All they did was say ‘I’ll rub your back, I’ll cut your nails’. The girls did that to him, but it stopped there.”
Mr Cotrin’s partner, Ms Gomes de Melo, backed him up. “Never did we see anything untoward with any underage women in 20 or so years, neither in New York, nor on the island or in Paris,” she said.
“They nicknamed his plane the ‘Lolita Express’. It flew from New York to the island. I took that plane with him, my husband. But there were no young girls. There was the pilot, the co-pilot, him, an assistant, and just me. That’s it.”
   
Epstein standing in front of his private jet
She said that a police search of the Paris home by French police had also yielded nothing, bar some nude photos on the walls, along with photographs on the mantelpiece of Epstein with a host of famous people, from Fidel Castro to Pope Jean-Paul II, as well as Mr Trump, Mr Clinton and Allen.
“There was one of I think a Sultan of Dubai and a wealthy Saudi,” recalled Mr Cotrin. He said French police “took them all and never gave them back”.
Ms Gomes de Melo said: “The police came in with machines. They said they were for scanning the walls and floors in case there were hidden cameras or rooms with hidden children and torture devices. They did a thorough job. They arrived at 2pm and they left at 4am. There were 16 of them. They found nothing.”
But she did say the house also contained numerous pictures of Ms Giuffre, whose allegations against Epstein – and later Prince Andrew – effectively sparked the FBI investigation that led to Epstein’s downfall.
   
The Duke of York, Virginia Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell in Maxwell’s London home. The photograph is said to have been taken on March 10 2001
“There were lots of photos of Virginia, who accused Prince Andrew, in the Paris flat. And at one point, when I was there with my husband, I said to Epstein: ‘Sir, are you going to throw the photos away?’ since we knew it was she who had started all [the lawsuits]. And he said: ‘Why, Maria? She was part of my life. I have nothing to hide.’”
The photographs of Ms Giuffre were taken away by the French police.
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing and suggested the infamous photograph of himself with Ms Giuffre taken in Maxwell’s London home may have been a fake. Ms Gomes de Melo agreed. “For me, it’s a photo montage. Because if you look closely at the girl’s hand, it’s not around Andrew’s arm,” she said.
In the aftermath of Epstein’s death, Mr Cotrin has struggled to find work – tainted, presumably, by association with Epstein.
There was an apparent lump in his throat as he recalled driving Epstein that one last time to the airport in Paris, a month before his death.
“I often tell myself, I should have had an accident with him on the way to the airport, not a fatal one, just one that prevented him from leaving. Sometimes chance can change everything,” he said.
“We could have been hospitalised, I could have broken an arm, but the next day everything would have been different. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but that’s what I would have wanted.”
It is an astonishing wish, but an intriguing one too. For if Epstein hadn’t died in custody, perhaps the full truth of what happened in those homes in Paris and elsewhere might have come out.
“You can write this too,” said Mr Cotrin. “The day I die, I would like to continue serving him up there – his tea, coffee, his sandwiches, his bread and cheese buns.”

[Peter Lemkin]

Strange friend, of many, Epstein had. I think the belief that Epstein was working for some/several intelligence entities is the only thing I agree with Bannon on.....

Steve Bannon Thought Jeffrey Epstein Was a Spy
The billionaire may have exaggerated his connections to the world of international espionage, but the tales were enough to pull in a top official in Trumpworld

October 18, 2021

Steve Bannon, left, and Jeffrey Epstein, right Thibault Camus/AP; Rick Friedman/Corbis/Getty Images
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, Jeffrey Epstein told associates something they would never forget: He was advising both Republicans and Democrats.
“He would say things like ‘Trump’s people were here this morning. Hillary’s people were here for lunch,’” a former Epstein associate tells Rolling Stone. Epstein “would claim he was impacting the campaign dramatically.” But he would never name names, and these meetings always took place behind closed doors.
Like many things Epstein said, it may have been a wild exaggeration with a kernel of truth. Years earlier, when Epstein’s influence was at its peak, former President Bill Clinton flew multiple times on his private plane and future President Donald Trump famously described him as a “terrific guy.”
There’s no evidence that Epstein’s connections to either president had survived the 2008 scandal that branded Epstein a sex offender — with one notable exception: Steve Bannon, the chairman of the Trump campaign and a White House strategist, was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s New York mansion.


A former Epstein associate, who spoke to Rolling Stone anonymously for fear of professional reprisal, recalled being introduced to Bannon at Epstein’s Manhattan home. “He was the main person that [Epstein] would brag about to literally everyone. It wasn’t a secret,” this person said. Epstein “loved having this ‘one famous person’ around that he would talk about and introduce to everyone. Almost like [he was] using Bannon to get more people to accept him. That’s my sense.”


Bannon did not respond to several messages left seeking comment. His spokesperson declined to comment on the record.
Although Epstein’s reputation was badly damaged after he spent 13 months in a Florida jail for soliciting sex from a teen, the conviction didn’t stop the flow of wealthy and famous people who flocked to his $77 million Upper East Side mansion. Behind the 15-foot oak front doors, Epstein played host to old friends like Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and new ones like Steve Bannon.

According to Too Famous, a new book by journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein and Bannon had been introduced in December 2017. The two men had bonded, in part, “out of a shared incredulity about Donald Trump,” Wolff writes. Bannon liked to compare notes with Epstein and “was often astonished by what Epstein knew.”
Why would the media-savvy Bannon run the risk of associating with a sex offender? Two Republican operatives who worked for Bannon offer an explanation. While reporting on MAGA world, and Bannon in particular, merits an extra degree of caution as it often involves unreliable sources with questionable motives, these independent accounts line up and point to an alluring thesis: Bannon was intrigued by Epstein’s reputed role as middleman for intelligence services in the United States and abroad.
One of the operatives, who spoke anonymously to discuss private conversations, asked Bannon in 2018 about reports that he was spotted entering Epstein’s mansion. Bannon admitted they had met and then said, cryptically, “Have you seen the Turkish currency?” which the employee took to mean that Epstein was somehow involved in the recent collapse of the Turkish lira. “He [Bannon] always insinuated that he was still working with the CIA, even when he was outside the White House, which is completely bullshit,” the former employee said. The Wall Street Journal and New York magazine reported that Epstein claimed to have a currency-trading business that earned tens of millions of dollars.
Charles Johnson, a conservative provocateur, worked with Bannon at Breitbart News, the right-wing website Bannon led for several years, and also got the impression that Bannon’s visits to Epstein involved the intelligence world. Johnson says that Bannon made several visits to Epstein’s New York mansion after he was ousted from the White House in August 2017. “He also offered to introduce me to him at one point,” Johnson tells Rolling Stone. (Johnson declined the offer.) “What I was told about that meeting by people close to Bannon was that he was trying to replace Epstein as a source for information from various intelligence networks. He saw Epstein as a rival or a partner but he wanted what Epstein had.” Johnson, who says he’s now a Biden supporter, said he has been cooperating with law-enforcement officials investigating Bannon.


Reports have circulated for years that Epstein had a foothold in the murky world of intelligence. Journalist Vicky Ward reported in Rolling Stone earlier this year that Epstein had dealings in the arms world in the 1980s that led to his work for multiple governments, including Israel’s. Epstein had been introduced to the Israelis by British publisher Robert Maxwell, who had done his own work for Israel. Epstein then began to gather compromising material on influential people, Ward reported. Before he died, Epstein told James Stewart, a columnist for The New York Times, that he collected dirt on powerful men.
Epstein’s ongoing friendship with Ehud Barak suggests that his high-level relationships with the Israeli leadership are still active. One of the places where Epstein may have been useful was Saudi Arabia. The former Epstein associate tells Rolling Stone that Epstein had close relations with the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia was one of the only places where Epstein would travel by himself — the source says obtaining a visa wasn’t easy and, until recently, Saudi Arabia did not welcome unmarried women. Epstein told the associate in 2018 that the Saudis were willing to pay him, although he was vague about what work he would be doing. A picture of Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman hung on the wall of Epstein’s home along with photos of Bill Clinton and Woody Allen.
Whatever Bannon’s purpose in meeting with Epstein, a former Trump adviser said she doubted that it involved women. Bannon, in her experience, was respectful to women, and she never even heard him comment on a woman’s looks. In some ways, the two men had much in common. Both Epstein and Bannon grew up in blue-collar homes and spent time on Wall Street. They were both prodigious collectors of information and gossip and had a knack for befriending wealthy and powerful people and getting them to finance their far-flung endeavors. “Bannon and Epstein, birds of a feather,” says Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime advisor (who has a long-standing beef with Bannon).
Bannon wasn’t the only member of Trump’s inner circle who knew Epstein, but he was the only one who was willing to risk being seen with Epstein after his 2008 conviction.
Not surprisingly, given the circles they traveled in, Trump and Epstein had been good friends for many years. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump told New York in 2002. The two later had a falling out, reportedly over a Palm Beach mansion they were vying to purchase. After Epstein’s arrest, Trump told the White House press corps he was “not a fan.”


In September, Bannon told The New York Times that he had recorded more than 15 hours of interviews with Epstein, and that he encouraged Epstein to tell his story to 60 Minutes. Bannon told the newspaper he was making a documentary to illustrate how Epstein’s “perversions and depravity toward young women were part of a life that was systematically supported, encouraged, and rewarded by a global establishment that dined off his money and his influence.”
But media reports suggest that Bannon himself was enjoying sponging off Epstein’s lavish lifestyle. Epstein’s French butler claimed that Bannon stayed at the convicted sex offender’s luxurious Paris apartment in the fall of 2018. “I was even his driver in Paris,” the butler, identified only as Gerard, told Franceinfo. (The former Epstein associate tells Rolling Stone that Epstein loaned his Paris apartment to multiple people as a favor.) The New York Post reported that Bannon was spotted entering Epstein’s New York mansion in September 2018.
And the claim that Bannon was filming a documentary was news to the former Epstein associate who shook the former Trump White House strategist’s hand. The associate said they never saw a camera and never heard Epstein mention a film. “I am surprised how quiet they kept it. Usually he would brag about it,” the former Epstein associate says. “That was just his nature to boast.”
Every relationship involves a give-and-take, and this was no exception. For Epstein, Bannon conferred some legitimacy in a political world that wanted to nothing to do with him; it was a name Epstein could drop that would show that he was still a player, notwithstanding his sordid past. Epstein proudly showed off his new friend, inviting James Stewart, the New York Times columnist, to dinner with Bannon. (Stewart declined and Bannon says he didn’t attend.) Bannon phoned in to a discussion on how to rehabilitate Epstein’s image with Ehud Barak and attorney Reid Weingarten, according to Michael Wolff.
Epstein also introduced Bannon to his patron Leon Black, the Wall Street billionaire who helped finance Epstein’s lifestyle and was a frequent guest at Epstein’s mansion. Epstein’s former associate tells Rolling Stone that Black met Bannon during a breakfast at Epstein’s mansion. (Black’s spokesman disputed this, calling reports of such a meeting “completely inaccurate” and declining further comment.) However, in his 2018 testimony to the Senate intelligence committee in its voluminous investigation of Russian election interference, Black said that he and Bannon shared a “common friend” who had introduced them over breakfast.


Black, a founder of the private-equity giant Apollo Global Management, has since joined the list of people who have paid a severe reputational cost for associating with Epstein. Black left Apollo Global after an investigation by the law firm Dechert revealed that he had paid Epstein a whopping $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for financial advice. In a phrase that underscored Black’s flawed judgment, the Dechert report notes that “Black viewed Epstein as a confirmed bachelor with eclectic tastes, who often employed attractive women.”
Black had known Epstein since the 1990s, when Epstein was still partying with Trump and Black flew to Moscow to do a real estate deal with the future president. After Epstein’s arrest, Black told investors that he had made a “terrible mistake” when he decided to give him a second chance.
Others who paid a similar price include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose friendship with Epstein reportedly played a role in the collapse of his marriage. Britain’s Prince Andrew stepped back from public life after he faced questions about why he visited Epstein after his 2008 conviction. Even those whose associations were more fleeting have paid a price for having their names linked time with Epstein.
As for Bannon, arrested last year (and later pardoned) for defrauding donors out of $1 million and now facing contempt charges for stonewalling an investigation into his role in the January 6th insurrection, his relationship with Epstein lines up with everything we know about his character and record.
In recent years, Bannon has become a close to Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire living in New York who has been locked in a dispute with his homeland. Guo has accused Chinese Communist Party officials of corruption; China has accused him of bribery, fraud, and blackmail. At the same time, Guo has been accused by one of his former business partners and a Chinese media star of, among other things, sexual blackmail. According to a lawsuit filed in New York and reports in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, Guo allegedly used prostitutes and hidden cameras to compromise powerful figures as a means of clout and control. A message sent to Guo’s representative seeking comment was not returned.
Just as he helped elevate Epstein’s status, Bannon has attempted to legitimize Guo. He has served on the boards of companies and nonprofits linked to Guo, some of which are reportedly under federal investigation. He had been living on Guo’s yacht when he was arrested last year for defrauding donors to a group trying to build Trump’s border wall.


Billionaires with scandal and nasty allegations swirling around them seem to be the company Bannon likes to keep.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Trump-Epstein-bin Laden connection
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[url=https://substack.com/@adamzarnowski]Adam Zarnowski
Jul 25, 2025

In my newly released book, Jörmungandr: A Study in Global Human Trafficking and Abolitionist Strategy, I revealed the suppressed story as to how we actually got bin Laden’s phone number, allowing us to track him down in Abbottabad (for reference, this instance can be found in the Post Script). More information has now become public (as promised) that highlights and further verifies the importance of this story.
In 2010, Donald Trump was in severe legal trouble. The DOJ presented him with a choice: first, they could throw the book at him, and he’d likely spend the rest of his life in jail. Alternatively, he could provide them with a phone number, and all his troubles would magically go away.
Now, Trump didn’t personally have that phone number that was requested, but he knew who did. He made a call to a contact in the Russian government - this contact, not wanting to lose their valuable agent Krasnov, then provided the phone number of the individual in Abbottabad. This was in the latter half of 2010; the Abbottabad operation, of course, took place in May 2011.
This alone raises a number of questions such as, “why did the Russians have bin Laden’s phone number?” and, “how did Donald Trump know who in the Russian government to call to get bin Laden’s number?”
Yet, this misses the much more massive picture before us. We now know that Jeffrey Epstein was deposed as to his relationship with Donald Trump and their interest in underage girls in March of 2010. As I mentioned in a previous substack post and repeatedly in the book, establishing a timeline of events is particularly important to understanding this decades-long nightmare.
However, this tells us even more about the all important Kremlin-Likud connection and the role of the Russian-Israeli mafia, currently the greatest organized crime threat in the world and responsible for everything from the invasion and genocide of Ukraine to the false flag of October 7 (funded by Russian shadow fleet oil courtesy of IDF SIGINT Unit 8200) and genocide in Palestine to to the ICE atrocities, mass deportations, and concentration camps springing up in America, all of which were tested and perfected during the AfghanEvac.
Epstein, it must be remembered, ran his sex trafficking operation through this very mafia, with a very important connection to Vladimir Putin’s own AI aspirations having recently been reported on by Craig Unger. This is significant as it draws another link to Israel’s Lavender AI, most famous for its use in targeting Gazans in Israel’s ongoing genocide, but also responsible for directing Russian missiles against civilian targets in Ukraine as revealed in the aforementioned substack article. The bin Laden tie-in is also highly relevant in potentially explaining how certain individuals became compromised, if not turned completely, against the United States.

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