Was he searching for his lost shaker of salt?
Jimmy Buffett was an unexpected face in the latest dump of photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, which has been littered with images of the sex trafficker hanging with the rich and famous.
The newest photos feature billionaires Buffett, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson, as well as the MAGA commentator Steve Bannon, filmmaker Woody Allen, and others.
New images of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were also included. Below is a look at Epstein’s personal pictures of and with his one-time associates.
Margaritaville!
Buffett and his wife, Jane Slagsvol, were once photographed with Clinton, Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell. A print of the image, which Clinton signed, was part of the Epstein estate.
No other details about the photo, including when it was taken, are available. However, Epstein’s “black book” listed the “Margaritaville” singer as one of the celebrities invited to his Palm Beach, Florida, home in 1995 for a Clinton fundraiser.
The musician, who died at age 76 in 2023, is photographed wearing a black jacket and a white button-up shirt. That is a dressier get-up than usual for the laid-back rocker, who had become a billionaire—and the owner of three homes in Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump and Epstein’s own mansions—by the time of his death.
Clinton, 79, is in the middle of the decades-old Epstein photo, with his arms tucked behind Maxwell, 63, and the now-80-year-old Slagsvol.
MAGA Attack Dog’s Selfie
These days, Steve Bannon is a MAGA attack dog searching for a legal loophole to allow Trump to be elected to a third term. In 2018, he was texting and snapping selfies with Jeffrey Epstein as they discussed how to restore his public image.
Texts released by Democrats show that Bannon, then a year removed from working as a White House adviser in the first Trump administration, coached Epstein on media strategies to rehabilitate his image ahead of a potential 60 Minutes interview that never occurred.
The texts began a year before Epstein was arrested and died via suicide in 2019. In the texts, they discussed the growing outrage about Epstein’s sex crimes—something that Bannon, 72, appeared to believe was a smear campaign.
“Who is running this op on u something serious going on,” Bannon texted Epstein. He wrote in a second message, “It’s an op dude—I do this for a living—the pieces that are dropping are deeply researched... This is sophisticated op.”
A Filmmaker’s Friend
The filmmaker Woody Allen met Epstein at a dinner party in 2010—two years after Epstein became a convicted sex offender.
Still, Allen, now 90, described Epstein publicly as a “charming and personable” man. Privately, Allen corresponded with Epstein, including him writing an eerie letter in 2016 that compared Epstein’s Upper East Side apartment to Dracula’s castle, “where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place.”
Epstein’s schedules from 2014 to 2019 documented nearly 100 social interactions between him, Allen, and Allen’s wife, Soon-Yi Previn. Their scheduled meetings included film screenings, dinners, and travel to Epstein’s properties.
A ‘Randy’ Bunch
Bill Gates has said he first met with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 to discuss philanthropic fundraising. He sat with Epstein at multiple dinners and even visited Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. In an email to colleagues after one meeting, the Microsoft founder wrote that Epstein’s “lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing, although it would not work for me.”
Gates has since called his association with Epstein a “huge mistake,” in part because it gave Epstein undue credibility. His ex-wife, Melinda, said she was not comfortable with her husband associating with Epstein and that the two billionaires’ relationship played a role in their divorce in 2021.
Gates, 70, was not pictured with Epstein in any of the photos released Friday, but he was in three pictures that the late sex trafficker possessed. One was of him and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then Prince Andrew, looking at each other. Andrew’s royal title was stripped in October after it was revealed he and his ex-wife continued speaking with Epstein beyond when they previously claimed to have stopped.
A second image shows Gates in a framed picture hanging over a black dresser in a home. The third shows him holding a messenger bag and binders as he poses with Epstein’s pilot, Lawrence Visoski, in front of a private jet.
His Caribbean Neighbor
English business magnate Richard Branson, who Forbes estimates is worth $2.8 billion, was photographed smiling and holding a piece of paper featuring percentages and equations with a grinning Epstein behind him. Also smiling in the photo is the engineer Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway and iBOT.
The trio appears to be in a tropical setting. Infamously, Epstein owned an island off the coast of Charlotte Amalie, capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where his accusers say they were trafficked and abused.
Branson, who made his billions by building the Virgin Group, also owns two private islands nearby—Necker Island and Moskito Island in the British Virgin Islands.
One of Epstein’s accusers, Sarah Ransome, alleged in 2016 emails that Epstein had sex tapes of Branson, Prince Andrew, and Clinton. However, Ransome admitted that she lied about the tapes in a 2019 New Yorker report.
Harvard Guys
Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor for nearly 50 years, and Larry Summers, the former Harvard president who recently stepped back from teaching, were both featured in new photos released by the Epstein estate.
Perhaps fittingly, Epstein is wearing a crimson Harvard quarter-zip in his photo with Dershowitz, who is now 87. Epstein donated $9.1 million to the university between 1998 and 2008, and was close friends with Summers, 71, who led the university for six of those years.
Summers, who was once Treasury Secretary, stepped down from several boards that he sat on after a release of Epstein emails revealed he was not only close friends with the trafficker, but also sought advice from him on pursuing a woman he worked with.
His ‘Closest Friend’
There was no shortage of photos of Epstein and Trump together before the latest release. Still, the new images further illustrate the president’s one-time relationship with the infamous sex offender, who once said he was Trump’s “closest friend.”
Released from Epstein’s estate was a photo of Trump smiling with a mystery woman—whose face was redacted—and with a group of women wearing leis, whose faces were also censored.
A third image shows a bowl of novelty condoms bearing a caricature of the president’s face, along with the text: “I’m HUUUUGE!”
