Through his successful financial career, Epstein became a multimillionaire and developed a social circle that included extremely wealthy individuals, prominent politicians, and even royalty.
While jailed and awaiting a federal sex-trafficking trial, Epstein allegedly killed himself by hanging on August 10, 2019.
Epstein had already been convicted by a Florida state court of soliciting prostitution from a minor, serving 13 months in 2008 in a sentence widely denounced as extremely lenient.
Writing an article on Middle East Eye, Soumaya Ghannoushi, a British Tunisian writer and expert, says the Epstein leaks show how a foreign influence network -AIPAC - governs the United States, the world's most powerful nation, through seduction, dependence and capture.
In the article headlined “Epstein saga exposes Israel's iron grip on U.S. power”, Ghannoushi notes the Epstein leaks “expose not a single predator, but a system built on moral decay, foreign influence, intelligence engineering and elite complicity.
She says American “foreign policy remains bent to Israeli priorities.”
The following is the text of the article:
The Epstein leaks have reopened a door many in Washington hoped would remain sealed. Not the door of gossip - though the media is content to drown the public in that - but the door that leads into the machinery of American power.
These leaks do not merely reveal the fall of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. They expose an unholy triangle of money, politics and sex, whose central thread leads to a foreign influence network that has learned to govern the world’s most powerful nation through seduction, dependence and capture.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is not an antisemitic delusion. It is what the documents show, and what Washington’s behavior confirms. And it is what the Epstein files illuminate with violent clarity.
They show, firstly, that Epstein was never simply a brilliant fraud who climbed from obscure math teacher to wealthy elite. He was a facade - the social face of an intelligence apparatus designed to corrupt, compromise and control.
His network was not accidental. His closest confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, long reported to have worked closely with Israeli intelligence. His investments flowed into ventures led by Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister who visited him repeatedly, even after Epstein’s conviction for procuring a child for prostitution. Barak headed Carbyne, an Israeli security tech firm in which Epstein quietly placed funds.
Investigations by Drop Site make the picture even clearer. Epstein was not just socially adjacent to Israeli intelligence; he was operationally useful. The outlet’s reporting shows that his Manhattan home hosted senior Israeli intelligence officer Yoni Koren for extended stretches.
It also reveals that Epstein helped broker a security agreement between Israel and Mongolia, tried to establish a backchannel with Russia during the Syria war, and facilitated a security deal between Israel and Cote d’Ivoire. These were not social favours. They were state-level services.