How Jeffrey Epstein Used The Glamour Of The Nobel Peace Prize To Entice His Global Network Of Elites
STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein has repeatedly touted his ties to the former chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, extending invitations to and chatting with such elites as Richard Branson, Larry Summers, Bill Gates and Steve Bannon, one of President Donald Trump’s top allies. The Epstein files are shown.
Thorbjørn Jagland, who chaired the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015, appears hundreds of times in millions of countries. Documents related to former US financier and a convicted sex offender who was released by the U.S. Department of Justice last month.
Since his release, Jagland, 75, has been charged with “aggravated corruption” in Norway in connection with an investigation led by information in the files, Norwegian police Økokrim’s economic crime unit said.
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.
From an ‘interesting’ guest to joking with Bannon
In September 2018, in an apparent reference to Trump’s first term and his interest in the peace prize, Epstein exchanged several text messages with Bannon, at one point writing: In one of many grammatically irregular messages: “Donald’s head would explode if he knew you were friends with the man who will decide the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday.”
“I told him it should be you next year when we solve China,” he added, without elaborating.
In a 2013 email, Epstein mixed investment tips and praise for PR tips, telling British entrepreneur and tycoon Richard Branson that Jagland would stay with Epstein in September that year, adding: “If you’re there, you might find him interesting.”
A year after leaving his position as an advisor to President Barack Obama in the White House in 2015, Kathy Ruemmler I received an email from Epstein that said: “The president of the Nobel Peace Prize is coming to visit, would you like to join?”
In 2012, Epstein wrote about Jagland to former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president Larry Summers: “The president of the Nobel peace prize is staying with me, if you’re interested.”
In that exchange, Epstein referred to Jagland, who is also a former prime minister of Norway and former president of the Council of Europe, a human rights body, as someone who was “not brilliant” but 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 richest man in the world 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.
Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
The AP is reviewing documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom work together to review files and share information about what’s in them. Each publication is responsible for its own independent coverage of the documents.
