A New York Times reporter told Jeffrey Epstein he could write an article that defined the financier on his own terms as he faced allegations of sexual abuse of minors in the months before his 2008 conviction, newly discovered emails reveal.
After the publication of a negative article about Epstein in September 2007, Landon Thomas Jr., then a reporter for the New York Times, advised Epstein to “get a head start” on further bad publicity by conducting an interview that would set the story “on your terms.”
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“I just read the Post. Now the floodgates will open – you can expect Vanity Fair and NYMag to pile on,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated September 20, 2007, referring to Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.
“My view is that the sooner you get ahead of it and define the story and who you are on your terms at The New York Times, the better for you.”
Thomas, who left the Times in 2019, urged Epstein to grant an interview quickly to prevent the “popular tabloid perception” of him from hardening, and expressed sympathy for his legal troubles.
“I know it’s hard and hard for you, but remember that prison can [be] bad, but it’s not forever,” Thomas wrote.
As part of his speech to Epstein, Thomas recalled a 2002 profile he wrote on the financier for New York Magazine, titled Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.
Written before Epstein’s first arrest in 2006, the profile presented the financier as an enigmatic but highly successful businessman, with the appearance of a “taller, younger Ralph Lauren” and a “relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists.”
The article contained glowing assessments from many of Epstein’s high-level associates, whose glowing descriptions included that he was “very intelligent,” “amazing,” “extraordinary” and “talented.”
“Remember how for a while my NY Mag article was the defining article for you? That’s no longer the case after all of this,” Thomas wrote to Epstein.
“But I think if we did a story for the Times, with the documents and evidence that you mention, and if you spoke for the record, we could again have a story that becomes the last public word on Jeffrey Epstein.”
A little over a week later, on September 28, Thomas sent Epstein an email reiterating the importance of “getting a head start” on other publications.
Thomas suggested she begin contacting Epstein associates who could talk about the financier’s business activities and scientific and philanthropic work, including former Harvard President Larry Summers and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
“Before I preview the legal material, I thought I should at least start calling people who know you. Again to focus on the business and scientific/philanthropic aspect of the article,” Thomas wrote.
“Could I start doing that – calling people like Larry Summers, Jess Staley, George Mitchell, Ehud Barak, Bill Richardson and others? Thomas ended the email by expressing hope that Epstein “holds up” and asserting that “we need to move forward on this.”
It is unclear how Epstein responded to Thomas’s emails, which were included in a flurry of emails from Epstein’s personal accounts and made available to Al Jazeera by the whistleblower website Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.
Following Thomas’s correspondence with Epstein, the Times published an article by the journalist detailing the financier’s downfall the following year.
The article, published a day after Epstein’s guilty plea on June 30, 2008, draws on in-person and telephone interviews Thomas conducted with the financier, including during a visit to Epstein’s island, Little St James, several months earlier.
In the article, Thomas describes the financier sitting on the terrace of his island mansion as he compares himself to the eponymous character from the satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels.
“Gulliver’s playfulness had unintended consequences,” Epstein was quoted as saying.
“That’s what happens with wealth. There are unexpected burdens as well as benefits.”
A 2019 report from NPR said that Thomas’ colleagues at the Times were “appalled” by the article when they reread it years later, after the reporter admitted to soliciting a $30,000 donation from Epstein for a cultural center.
Emails obtained by Al Jazeera also show that Epstein emailed himself an error-ridden Word document in which Thomas is described discussing the court case against Epstein with then-Florida prosecutor David Weinstein.
The purpose and origin of the document, which describes Thomas and Weinstein discussing technical aspects of the accusations against Epstein, are unclear. Weinstein said he spoke to Thomas in January 2008, but the document did not contain a specific description of their conversation.
Weinstein said they talked about the “criminal justice process and general state and federal laws” but not about Epstein’s case specifically.
He said he did not know where the information in the document came from or who provided it to Epstein.
“I never spoke with him about the specific facts of the late Mr. Epstein’s case, nor did I express an opinion on this matter,” Weinstein told Al Jazeera.
The emergence of the emails between Thomas and Epstein comes after correspondence the two men shared from 2015 to 2018 was revealed last month in a batch of documents released by US lawmakers.
Among other revelations, those emails showed that Thomas let Epstein know that the late investigative journalist John Connolly had contacted him for information about Connolly’s 2016 book, Filthy Rich: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.
“He seems very interested in your relationship with the media,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated June 1, 2016. “I told him you are a hell of a guy :).”
A Times spokesperson said Thomas had not worked for the newspaper since early 2019 “after editors discovered his failure to adhere to our ethical standards.”
