Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and many others all dined with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein after he was released from prison on charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl and was a known sex offender.
The founders of Amazon, Google, Tesla, and many other powerful executives in the technology industry gathered together with Jeffrey Epstein at an upscale Italian restaurant in Long Beach, California in March 2011 for a private annual event called the “billionaires’ dinner,” organized by New York literary agent John Brockman’s Edge Foundation, according to a report by BuzzFeed News.
Epstein attended the billionaires’ dinner in 2011, seeking to reintroduce himself to elite society after his 13-month prison stint for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The report added that a leaked 2013 email also suggests ties between Epstein and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Moreover, the New Yorker reported on Friday that Epstein had “directed” a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab in 2014, and that the lab knew about the effort to conceal its connection to the financier, with some staff members in lab director Joi Ito‘s office even referring to Epstein as “Voldemort” or “he who must not be named.”
Speaking of “he who must not be named,” a guest list from Brockman’s 2011 billionaires’ dinner showcasing the names of Big Tech executives, but doesn’t include Epstein, despite the disgraced financier being seen in the background of an event photo from taken of Zack Bogue, a venture capitalist and husband of former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
Other photos from the event show Bezos, Musk, Brin, Brin’s then-wife and 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, and senior Google executive and former YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar. The report added that 2011 had not been Epstein’s first appearance at Brockman’s annual billionaires’ dinner to mingle with the Masters of the Universe.
In 2004 Epstein was present at Brockman’s event alongside Bezos, Brin, and Google co-founder Larry Page. Epstein also attended the private dinner in 1999, which included Bezos on the guest list. In 2000, Epstein was again, present at the annual event, photographed mingling with former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold.
According to BuzzFeed, Brockman has declined to answer questions about his relationship with Epstein since the financier’s arrest on charges of sex trafficking in July 2019, and has since quietly removed Epstein’s profile from the Edge website, as well as the entire page for both the 1999 and 2000 billionaires’ dinners.
Both pages, however, have been archived to the Internet, making it so that the 1999 and 2000 events can still be viewed.
As for Brockman’s billionaires’ dinner in 2011, several attendees told BuzzFeed that they do not remember Epstein having attended the event, or that they did not know of him then.
Among those guests who claim to have no recollection of Epstein’s presence at the event include Bogue — who was photographed at the March 2011 event sitting at the same table with Epstein — Mayer, and Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s former chief strategy and research officer.
The report added that “a manager at the Italian restaurant that hosted the 2011 billionaires’ dinner in Long Beach said she dealt directly with Brockman and was the only one allowed to check people in for the ‘hush hush’ event.”
After the event, the manager was not even allowed to save the list of attendees.
“They took the guest list and shredded it,” she said.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
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