Did Elon Musk Have Links to Epstein?

A little less than a year ago, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, shot off a tweet containing a dinosaur, a unicorn, a winged dragon and a sly reference to “the Epstein/Maxwell client list.”

Above it was the heading, “Things I’ll never see in my life.” Musk also appended a note. “The only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?” he wrote.

Of course, Musk was referring to rampant speculation that the U.S. Department of Justice or other government officials may have a list of the sex-trafficking clients of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier-predator, and his former partner, the British socialite and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell.

Such a list has never been made public, but years of press coverage have revealed that Epstein rubbed elbows with a staggering list of celebrities, world leaders and CEOs. In the past, a photograph also circulated on social media showing Musk posing in a tux with Maxwell at a Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty in 2014. When Maxwell was arrested in 2020 on charges of sex-trafficking underage girls and the photo resurfaced, Musk was none too pleased. He tweeted, “Don’t know Ghislaine at all,” adding: “She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago.”

More recently, the U.S. Virgin Islands, which filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase alleging “human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained” at the bank, has subpoenaed prominent executives for their communications or documents related to JPMorgan and Epstein.

So far, those executives have included Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Hyatt Hotels chair Thomas Pritzker; entertainment executive Michael Ovitz; and U.S. News and World Report owner Mortimer Zuckerman.

This week, it emerged Musk is also being sought by the U.S. Virgin Islands for Epstein-related records. The subpoena, issued on April 28, only came to light Monday in a court filing in Manhattan because the U.S. territory was unable to locate him and was requesting to serve him by alternative means.

The court filing indicated Musk may have been referred to JPMorgan by Epstein. While the filing gave no implication of wrongdoing on Musk’s part, Musk himself seemed gravely affronted by the idea that he would ever have allowed Epstein to advise him. 

“This is idiotic on so many levels,” he wrote on Twitter this week. “That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever…the notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a dumb crook is absurd.”

The U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned a remote island used for his alleged sex-trafficking activities, did not offer further details about why it wanted documents from Musk. But it is certainly worth noting its growing lineup of executives appear to represent some of the world’s wealthiest men.