[ad_1]
Prince Andrew’s accuser posted a link to a Reddit post suggesting Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad or CIA spy.
Virginia Giuffre sued the royal for sexual assault in London, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands. When they settled out of court in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, Andrew acknowledged that she was an Epstein sex-trafficking victim. The prince denied the allegations against him.
Conspiracy theorists have long speculated about whether Epstein’s wide-ranging sexual abuse was part of an elaborate campaign to acquire compromising material about high-profile figures and politicians on behalf of intelligence agencies. Newsweek has no definitive evidence to back up this account and no official confirmation, but it is not entirely without foundation.
Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images
What Virginia Giuffre Shared
Giuffre posted a link on Twitter to a Reddit post that asked: “Does anyone else here also believe Epstein in all likelihood was a Mossad/CIA linked Intelligence agent that was responsible for helping run a Blackmail/Honey pot ring to entrap elite oligarchs?
“Based off all of Epstein’s known dubious activities,” the post added, “access to vast wealth, obvious connections to the Israeli Mossad (Ghislaine Maxwell’s dad was Robert Maxwell, a powerful British oligarch with Mossad ties), and Epstein’s suspicious murder that’s been covered up as a suicide, I think a strong argument can be made Epstein was indeed an Intelligence agent who helped run a blackmail/honey pot operation (that is most likely still running to this day).
“What better way to control the elites than to catch them doing something heinous and then hold it against them for life,” the Reddit post read.
What Other Sources Say
It is important to state that there is no on-the-record confirmation from U.S. or any other intelligence that Jeffrey Epstein was a spy. In addition, his cause of death in 2019 was recorded as suicide by hanging by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
However, this is not the first time it has been suggested that the New York financier may have had links to the intelligence community.
The 2019 book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, by Dylan Howard, James Robertson, and Melissa Cronin, quotes Ari Ben-Menashe, said to be an Israeli intelligence agent and handler to Robert Maxwell in the late 1980s.
Epstein dated British newspaper magnate Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in jail for grooming girls for Epstein to abuse.
Ben-Menashe said: “Maxwell introduced him to us, and he wanted us to accept him as part of our group.
“These guys were seen as agents,” he added. “They weren’t really competent to do very much. And so they found a niche for themselves, blackmailing American and other political figures.”
In conclusion, Ben-Menashe said to the authors: “Mr Epstein was the simple idiot who was going around providing girls to all kinds of politicians in the United States.
“See, f***** around is not a crime. It could be embarrassing, but it’s not a crime.
“But f****** a fourteen-year-old girl is a crime. And he was taking photos of politicians f****** fourteen-year-old girls—if you want to get it straight,” Ben-Menashe added.
“They [Epstein and Maxwell] would just blackmail people, they would just blackmail people like that.”
Vicky Ward, whose reporting for Vanity Fair played a role in the Epstein scandal, wrote in a piece for Rolling Stone magazine that: “The notorious financier pedophile told exaggerated stories of his time in intelligence circles—but some of those stories may have been, at least partially, true.”
Ward quoted a former business partner of Epstein, Steven Hoffenberg, whom the disgraced financier testified against during a criminal prosecution. Hoffenberg said that Epstein had talked about links to the intelligence community.
These related to national security issues involving “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”
Ultimately, short of official confirmation, it is impossible to know with any certainty whether Epstein had links to intelligence agencies or not and, if so, how strong those links are. Either way, the idea is not concocted out of thin air as many conspiracy theories are.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.
[ad_2]
