Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett denied Monday that the late financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein ever worked for the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.
Epstein trafficked underage women to rich, famous, and powerful men, who visited his private island for trysts. Former President Bill Clinton and billionaire Bill Gates were among his frequent guests.
There has long been speculation that Epstein ran a blackmail operation, or that he worked for one or more intelligence services.
As Breitbart News has reported, Epstein was friendly with former left-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who visited Epstein in New York and Florida dozens of times. (Barak has led the protest movement against incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)
The connection with Barak has sparked speculation among conspiracy theorists and antisemites that Epstein was an Israeli agent, though there is no evidence that he worked for the Mossad or any other intelligence agency.
In a statement on X, Bennett said:
As a former Israeli Prime Minister, with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I say to you with 100% certainty:
The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.
Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel.
Epstein never worked for the Mossad.
This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t.
They just make things up, say it with confidence and these lies stick, because it’s Israel.
There’s a vicious wave of slander and lies against my country and my people, and we just won’t take it anymore.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said that there was no Epstein “client list,” nor evidence of blackmail, despite years of speculation to the contrary by some of the same Trump appointees who have delivered that information.
Bennett is a former chief of staff to Netanyahu who split with him and launched his own conservative party, the New Right. He was briefly prime minister from 2021 to 2022.
He is considered a frontrunner to succeed Netanyahu, when the latter leaves politics.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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