By 2011, Epstein appeared to have built up such a rapport with the Russians that he was having meetings with Putin. In September of that year, he received an email from an unidentified associate who discussed an “appointment with Putin” during a forthcoming trip to Russia.
The email read: “Spoke with Igor. He said last time you were in Palm Beach, you told him you had an appointment with Putin on Sept 16 and that he could go ahead and book his ticket to Russia to arrive a few days before you.”
The newly released files suggest Epstein had another meeting set up with the Russian leader in 2014, although it is not clear if it went ahead or not. It may have been cancelled after Russian-backed forces shot down a Malaysia Airlines airline in July 2014, killing nearly 300 people on board.
The planned meeting with Putin now seemed to be “a bad idea after the plane crash”, a Japanese go-between told Epstein.
Other newly released files show that Epstein told Thorbjorn Jagland, the then secretary general of the Council of Europe and a former prime minister of Norway, that he could advise Putin on the best way to handle US president Donald Trump before a key summit between the two leaders in Helsinki.
Epstein said he could offer “insight” on the American president to Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. “It is not complex. He [Trump] must be seen to get something. It’s that simple,” Epstein wrote.
The latest batch of Epstein files also reveal suspicions among Western intelligence agencies that Epstein was working as an agent for Mossad.
The FBI was informed by a source that “Epstein was close to the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and trained as a spy under him”.
In a declassified memo, the FBI said that a confidential human source “became convinced Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent”.
Mr Barak, who worked in Israeli military intelligence earlier in his career, visited Epstein’s New York townhouse more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017.
