HACKED EMAIL SHOWS EPSTEIN AND EHUD BARAK PLANNING A MEETING WITH PETER THIEL https://t.co/gK4qYuml9g
Hacked emails from former Israeli PM Ehud Barak show some interesting contacts with Jeffrey Epstein. via @matthew_petti https://t.co/bi0hPU69So https://t.co/7I2QHIVqcg
After his first arrest for sex crimes, Jeffrey Epstein tried to get into a new line of work: surveillance. 🧵 https://t.co/nNkJB0xayB
Newly published emails taken from the inbox of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak show that Jeffrey Epstein sought to rebrand himself as a security-technology investor after his 2008 sex-crime conviction. The cache, released in May by transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets and reviewed by Reason magazine, outlines Epstein’s efforts from 2014 to 2018 to finance and broker deals in the surveillance and emergency-response sector across the United States, Israel and Russia. The correspondence centres on Reporty Homeland Security—now called Carbyne—into which Barak channelled Epstein’s money while obscuring the financier’s role, according to the messages. Epstein pressed Barak to meet U.S. tech investor Peter Thiel and arranged introductions to Valar Ventures; although Valar ultimately passed, Thiel’s Founders Fund later joined a $15 million Series B round for the company in 2018. Beyond Israel and the United States, Epstein portrayed himself to Russian officials as an apolitical deal-maker. In 2015 he introduced Barak to former deputy economy minister Sergey Belyakov, discussed ways to navigate U.S. sanctions and passed along information on Fifth Dimension, an artificial-intelligence surveillance firm backed by billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, the emails show. The documents also indicate that Epstein weighed investments in other security startups, including electromagnetic-imaging firm Levitection, and relayed a tip—via Britain’s Prince Andrew—about demand for personal-protection services in China. While several participants have since distanced themselves from Epstein, the leak provides the most detailed look yet at how he attempted to leverage political and business connections to gain a foothold in the global spy-tech market during the final years before his 2019 arrest and death.
