Featured Image Credit: Rick Friedman/Contributor/via Getty
Topics: Jeffrey Epstein, Elon Musk
Ben Williams
Topics: Jeffrey Epstein, Elon Musk
Fresh documents linked to Jeffrey Epstein have reignited conversations around the controversial financier’s connections, with a resurfaced photograph showing a number of well-known figures gathered around a dinner table.
The files - released as part of a wider batch of material from federal investigations, include emails, images and correspondence - have been steadily drawing attention online.
For years, Epstein’s social circle has been scrutinised, with past reports suggesting he regularly attempted to position himself around powerful names in business, science and entertainment.
The newly public material doesn’t accuse anyone pictured of wrongdoing, but it has once again highlighted how widely he moved within elite spaces.
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A photograph Epstein emailed to himself on 3 August 2015 appears to capture a small, intimate setting, with several guests seated at a long table under dim lighting, looking toward someone just out of frame. Epstein is not visible in the photograph, though it’s believed he may have taken it.
Among the names on a guest list shared a day before the dinner on 1 August are Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, along with Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, who were both seated at the table.
Also on the list are PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. Not all of the individuals on the guest list appear in the photograph itself.
In a separate email to billionaire Thomas Pritzker on 20 August, Epstein described the event simply as ‘wild’, writing that he ‘had dinner with zuckerburg, mu=k, thiel hoffman'.
Back in 2019, Vanity Fair reported on a dinner organised by Hoffman and attended by Epstein, in honour of MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden. The publication claimed Musk introduced Epstein to Zuckerberg at the gathering.
Musk denied this, telling Vanity Fair: “Epstein is obviously a creep, and Zuckerberg is not a friend of mine.”
Despite this, emails released in the Epstein files show Musk and Epstein discussing the Tesla CEO visiting Epstein's Little St James island on multiple occasions. In one email, he asked to visit on the day of the 'wildest party on your island'.
Musk later wrote on X: “I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his ‘Lolita Express', but was well aware that some email correspondence with him could be misinterpreted and used by detractors to smear my name.”
Zuckerberg’s representatives previously said he only met Epstein ‘in passing one time’ and ‘did not communicate with Epstein again following the dinner.’