Jeffrey Epstein used Nobel Peace Prize to lure elites
Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly strengthened his ties with the former chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, extending invitations to and chatting with elite figures such as Richard Branson, Larry Summers, Bill Gates and President Donald Trump’s top ally Steve Bannon, the Epstein files show.
Thorbjørn Jagland, who chaired the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015, appears hundreds of times in millions of documents about the former US financier and convicted sex offender released by the US Justice Department last month.
Since his release, Jagland, 75, has been charged with “aggravated corruption” in Norway in connection with an investigation sparked by information in the files, Norwegian police Økokrim’s economic crime unit said on Saturday.
Økokrim said it would investigate whether gifts, travel and loans were received in connection with Jagland’s position. Crews searched his home in Oslo on Thursday, as well as two other properties in the coastal town of Risør in the south and Rauland in the west.
His lawyers at the Elden law firm in Norway said Jagland denied the accusations and was questioned by the police unit on Thursday.
While there is no evidence of direct lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize in documents seen so far, Epstein hosted Jagland repeatedly at his properties in New York and Paris in the 2010s.
In September 2018, in an apparent reference to Trump’s first term and his interest in the peace prize, Epstein engaged in several text message exchanges with Bannon, at one point writing: “Donald’s head would explode if he knew you were friends with the man who will decide the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday,” in one of many grammatically irregular messages.
“I told him it should be you next year when we solve China,” he added, without elaborating.
In a 2013 email, combining investment tips and PR tips, Epstein told British entrepreneur and tycoon Richard Branson that Jagland would stay with Epstein in September of that year, adding: “If you’re there, you might find it interesting.”
In 2015, a year after she left her job as an advisor to President Barack Obama at the White House, Kathy Ruemmler received an email from Epstein that read: “Is the Nobel Peace Prize president coming to visit, would you like to join?”
In 2012, Epstein wrote a letter about Jagland to former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president Larry Summers, saying, “The president of the Nobel Peace Prize will be staying with me, if you’re interested.”
In that exchange, Epstein referred to Jagland, who is also a former Norwegian prime minister and former president of the Council of Europe, a human rights body, as not “intelligent” but as someone who offered a “unique perspective.”
The financier wrote to Bill Gates in 2014 that Jagland had been re-elected as president of the European Council.
“This is good,” the Microsoft co-founder and former world’s richest man wrote. “I guess his peace prize committee business is up in the air, too?”
During Jagland’s tenure as committee chairman, he awarded the peace prize to Obama in 2009 and to the European Union in 2012.
Jagland was brought into Epstein’s orbit by Terje Rød Larsen, the Norwegian diplomat who brokered the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinians.
Larsen and his wife also face corruption charges in Norway over their relationship with Epstein.
