Jeffrey Epstein’s social contacts with Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, other celebs scrutinized

The new arrest of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has resurrected multiple reports about the wealthy and powerful people who once enjoyed the financier’s friendship or who socialized with him over the years, both before and after he was investigated in the mid-2000s for sexually abusing multiple underage girls at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

For example, a much-cited Daily Beast report described how Epstein hosted a dinner party for longtime friend Prince Andrew in 2010 at his nine-story townhouse in Manhattan. Dinner guests that night included TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedian Chelsea Handler and director Woody Allen.

The dinner party took place nearly a year after Epstein completed a 13-month jail sentence in Florida, a widely criticized sentence his powerhouse attorneys negotiated under a secret “sweetheart” plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami. An FBI investigation had turned up 40 underage girls whom Epstein allegedly paid to perform erotic massages and other sex acts. Epstein also was suspected of making these girls available to his famous friends for sex acts, but he was allowed to plead guilty to much less serious state solicitation charges.

Epstein’s dinner party with members of New York City’s media elite also took place after the enigmatic financier had paid out millions of dollars in settlements to seven of those victims, the 2011 Daily Beast report added.

At least one of those famous guests, “Good Morning America” host Stephanopoulos, has denied he was ever friends with Epstein, a source close to the anchor told this news organization Tuesday. The source added that the dinner was billed by a publicist as an opportunity to meet Prince Andrew, and that it was the only time Stephanopoulos ever spoke to Epstein. Couric, Handler and Allen did not respond to attempts to reach them for comment.

But after Epstein was arraigned Monday in federal court on new sex trafficking charges, these sorts of social and professional connections to world leaders, political figures, media stars and other celebrities have come under renewed scrutiny. Much of the focus has been on presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein in his original prosecution, and Prince Andrew. Questions have been raised about whether those connections allowed Epstein to avoid accountability for the full extent of his alleged crimes in 2008.

In addition to the report about Epstein’s dinner party, a 2015 story from Gawker has made the rounds again because it details the famous names in Epstein’s “little black book.” Images of entries from the book show that Epstein had multiple ways to contact Trump, Dershowitz and singer Courtney Love. Other names in the book include Alec Baldwin, Ralph Fiennes, Griffin Dunne, New York Post gossip Richard Johnson and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

On Monday, Clinton publicly addressed his friendship with the financier. In a statement issued on Twitter, the 42nd president said he knew nothing about Epstein’s “terrible crimes” and explained that he had not spoken to him for more than a decade. He also denied ever visiting Epstein’s home in Florida, his ranch in New Mexico or his private island in the Caribbean.

Clinton also tried to downplay the extent of his travels with Epstein, saying he only took “a total of four trips” with Epstein on his private plane in 2002 and 2003 to Europe, Asia and Africa. The trips included stops in connection with the Clinton Foundation.

It’s not clear if any of those trips involved more than one flight; other news stories allege that Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” on far more than four occasions.

Gawker, citing flight logs contained in civil lawsuits related to Epstein’s alleged crimes, reported in 2015 that Clinton traveled on Epstein’s plane 11 times between 2001 and 2003. Fox News, citing flight logs it obtained, reported in 2016 that Clinton took at least 26 trips abroad on Epstein’s plane. The destinations included Asia, London, New York, Russia and Africa. For five of those flights, Clinton ditched his Secret Service detail, Fox News said.

According to a 2002 New York magazine story, Clinton enlisted Epstein to make his plane available for a weeklong anti-poverty and anti-AIDS tour of Africa with Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, among others. At the time, Clinton told the magazine through a spokesperson: “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science. I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS.”

In his statement Monday, Clinton insisted that he always was accompanied by staff, foundation supporters and Secret Service agents on “every leg of every trip” with Epstein. Clinton also said he made “one brief visit” to Epstein’s apartment in New York — alongside a “staff member and his security detail” — in 2002. The men also met at Clinton’s Harlem office “around the same time” as the apartment visit, the statement said.

In addition to Clinton, another high-profile person who publicly disavowed her connection to Epstein is Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife.

Ferguson apologized and expressed regret for associating with Epstein back in 2011. This was after unsavory details began to emerge about Andrew’s friendship with Epstein and about the prince’s contacts with one of Epstein’s alleged “sex slaves.” In a March 2011 interview with the Daily Mail and in subsequent lawsuits and court filings, Virginia Roberts Giuffre said she was forced to have “sexual relations” with Andrew when she was 17 in New York, London and on Epstein’s private island as part of “an orgy with numerous other under-aged girls.”

In a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Ferguson responded to Giuffre’s claims and to tabloid headlines about Andrew’s friendship with Epstein (“The Prince and the Perv”) by admitting that her ex-husband had helped arrange for Epstein to pay more than $18,000 to one of the her former assistants to whom she owed nearly $100,000 in unpaid wages and other bills.

“I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me,” the Duchess of York told the Telegraph. “I abhor pedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf.”

At the time, Andrew was serving as Britain’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. Members of parliament began calling for Prince Andrew’s resignation from the prominent position, according to the Daily Beast. He eventually stepped down in 2011.

Buckingham Palace has never denied Andrew’s friendship with Epstein, but insisted the prince never had any sexual contact with Giuffre, the Guardian reported in 2015.

That same year, Andrew acknowledged that he had been a “fool” over his friendship with Epstein, as Giuffre’s allegations were back in the news with new court filings. The Duke of York continued to deny he ever had sex with Giuffre, but said he knew that the allegations had become “deeply uncomfortable” for the royal family.

“It would be crass and disingenuous to suggest that he has been unaffected by this,” a source close to Andrew told the Daily Telegraph in 2015. “He is watching the news and reading the headlines and even though the friendship with Jeffrey Epstein was acknowledged as being unwise back in 2011, the Duke has clearly had a long time this week for the consequences of that friendship to further sink in. More than ever, he can see how foolish it was.”

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