Files Show Jeffrey Epstein Claiming To Have Been Involved In Barak’s 2019 Election Challenge To Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s Time To Ask More About The Billionaire Pedophile’s Links To Israel.
“Now you can understand why Trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
That’s one of the sensational, damning Jeffrey Epstein messages that has been roundly quoted since being extracted from the more than 20,000 documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week, a seeming reference to the power Epstein held via the damaging information he had amassed on the rich and influential, the now-president included.
Yet oddly, what has been universally left out of media coverage of that quote is what it was in reference to: Epstein appeared to be taking credit for former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s reentry into Israeli politics in 2019, which aimed to topple current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the second of what would be three Israeli elections in a year.
The quote’s missing context fits squarely with the unofficial deception in the mainstream press on discussing Epstein’s relationship to Israel — namely, the long-standing claims and rumors that the billionaire pedophile had been an asset or otherwise worked for Israeli intelligence.
That code of silence has been on the verge of breaking down over the past month, after a series of stories was published based on Barak’s hacked emails showing Epstein quietly carrying out work on behalf of the Israeli government. On Sunday, former Donald Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene pointed to the reporting while on CNN to charge that “the right question to ask is, ‘Was Jeffrey Epstein working for Israel?’” — a charge met with pushback on the network.
The Oversight Committee’s release sheds further light on Epstein’s entanglement with Israel, primarily through the figure of Barak, long a known associate of Epstein’s who has insisted that he only saw the convicted pedophile “on occasion” and never in the presence of women or girls. The recently released tranche of emails adds to a raft of disclosures in recent years that shows the two men were far closer than Barak publicly let on.
Ironically, many of those disclosures came in the wake of Barak’s apparently Epstein-backed attempt to reignite his political career.
In June 2019, after spending years attacking Netanyahu’s increasingly extreme and corruption-embroiled rule, Barak, a former defense minister and military chief of staff, officially came out of retirement and formed a new party to challenge him. In a chat with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon that month, Epstein implied the move was his doing, as he shared a report from an Israeli outlet about Barak’s announcement.
“I’ve been busy,” Epstein wrote in a follow-up message. “Wow!!!” Bannon replied.
“I’m dealing with Ehud in Israel. Making me crazy,” Epstein elaborated twelve minutes later.
“Ehud massive– can we announce I’m his strategic advisor?” Bannon asked.
“This will be a long campaign. Elections in sept (17). Lots to talk about,” Epstein wrote back.
“This is brilliant move,” wrote Bannon.
“Thx. Only the first step,” Epstein replied, before writing the quote that has been so widely spread in the past week free of its context. “Now you can understand why Trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
“Dangerous,” replied Bannon.
There are no other details in Epstein’s emails about his claimed involvement in Barak’s campaign, though he may have been hinting to Bannon that something like it was in the works. A month earlier, Epstein had sent Bannon a BBC report on Netanyahu’s failure to form a coalition government in the wake of Israel’s April 2019 election, which had triggered another round of elections to be held that September.
“Will Ehud Be PM,” Bannon asked him at the end of June. “Doubtful,” replied Epstein. “But 1. He is not to be underestimated. 2. Unlikely top job. But depends on coalition. 3. Driving me crazy.”
What helped sink Epstein’s “dangerous” plan to reshape the Israeli political landscape was, fittingly, Epstein himself. Not long after these messages, the billionaire was arrested and charged with sex trafficking minors, and a series of scandalous new revelations about Barak’s ties to Epstein soon followed. Netanyahu made them the centerpiece of his political offensive against Barak, going so far as to officially request an investigation of him from the attorney general, putting the challenger on the defensive and taking the wind out of the sails of Barak’s attacks on Netanyahu’s own criminal scandals.
Severely damaged by the revelations, Barak’s poorly polling party was forced to form an alliance with several other left-leaning parties to have any hope of winning seats in the Knesset, and he had to essentially take himself out of the running for a cabinet spot to get them over the line. One can only imagine how Epstein’s claimed involvement in that very political project would have further dented its standing, if Netanyahu had been able to use it.
Bannon’s claim to being Barak’s “strategic advisor” was likely a joke, but the two had met at least once before via their mutual connection with Epstein. In a February 2018 email, Epstein asked Kathryn Ruemmler — former White House counsel to Barack Obama who had a mysteriously close relationship with the billionaire sex trafficker — whether Bill Clinton “would like to join you me ehud and steve” in a meeting they had apparently already arranged. (Despite this email already being reported on by outlets like CNBC and the New York Post, each wrongly published the reference to Barak’s first name as “chud,” thereby obscuring his identity).
Upon learning that Epstein had had a hand in Barak’s sudden return to politics a year later, Bannon immediately tried to make himself useful to the former prime minister.
“My guy is in Israel– can we connect him to erhud [sic] ???” Bannon asked Epstein. “On it,” Epstein wrote back.
Even with the wealth of material that’s been released, Epstein’s exact relationship to Israel remains unclear, not to mention an answer to the specific question of whether or not he belonged to Israeli intelligence. While the latest disclosures show Epstein had a keen interest in Israel and its politics, they also show he held a similar interest in many countries and regions and had relationships with a variety of power players across the Middle East and around the world.
But what they should mean, at minimum, is an end to the widespread taboo of even asking questions about billionaire sex offender’s links to the Israeli state. Epstein brokered security deals for Israel, had a close friendship with one of its former prime ministers and military officials, and, apparently, even secretly involved himself in the country’s elections. If it were any other country, it would not be remotely scandalous to wonder out loud what it could all mean.
Hidden History -- In The Making 