WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General William Barr told Congress that late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s long-rumored links to intelligence agencies could be explained by the fact that the CIA has a special division that “talks to people who are well-connected.”
“Many American businessmen who have foreign contacts sometimes will talk to intelligence agencies and provide information to them. And the CIA has a unit that goes around and talks to people who are well-connected and asks them questions,” Barr told the House Oversight Committee in an August deposition.
“So my supposition, when I saw things about him being connected to U.S. intelligence, maybe, like many other businessmen, he talks to them, but this is not, in my opinion, based on what I saw, I didn’t think it was an intelligence operation, and I never received any information that led me to believe that.”
The former attorney general said that he doesn’t believe that the pedophile was formally “working for” the agency, according to a transcript made public Tuesday.
The CIA did not immediately offer comment for this story.
Barr started his career working for six years at the CIA in the 1970s and served two stints as attorney general, first from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, and then under President Trump in 2019 and 2020.
The former attorney general, who broke with Trump after the 2020 election, said he only had two unremarkable conversations about Epstein with the president during his first term.
Barr attempted to swat down conspiracy theories during his deposition, including about his own family, saying that the connection between his father, former Dalton School headmaster Donald Barr, and former Dalton schoolteacher Epstein was “not pertinent at all.”
Epstein was indicted on federal charges for sex trafficking minors in July 2019 when Barr led the Justice Department. He died one month later in what authorities say was a prison suicide.
Barr testified that he is convinced Epstein was not murdered and cited the fact that he had one prior suicide attempt in custody. He said that he was unaware of a missing minute of security camera footage near the cell, which current Attorney General Pam Bondi has blamed on antiquated technology.
Epstein’s possible connection to spy agencies roared back into public focus with Bondi’s July memo saying that Epstein “harmed over one thousand” girls and young women — but that there was no evidence to charge anyone besides accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence.
That memo controversially said that “no further disclosure” about the case “would be appropriate or warranted” — sparking the House Oversight Committee inquest for more documentation on Epstein’s associations.
Both Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have said they are unaware of whether Epstein worked with an intelligence agency, but neither ruled it out when questioned by reporters.
Former Miami US Attorney Alex Acosta allegedly explained a lenient 2008 plea deal for Epstein by saying, “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” prompting years of speculation about whether Epstein helped US or foreign spy agencies gain leverage on powerful men.
There’s also significant speculation about Epstein’s links to Israel’s Mossad due to the fact that Maxwell’s father, Robert, was a reputed agent of the Israeli spy agency. Epstein was also a close associate of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak with about 30 documented interactions between 2013 and 2017.
