Leaked Emails Expose Israeli PM Ehud Barak’s Ties To Jeffrey Epstein

It began with a breach. A hacker group known as Handala, believed to have ties to Iranian intelligence, stole more than 100,000 emails from the inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The files, dating from 2007 to 2016, were passed to leak archive DDoSecrets and reviewed this week by Straight Arrow News.

Inside the trove, among defense briefings and political chatter, appear exchanges with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The tone was casual. The content raised eyebrows.

In one 2014 email, Barak wrote that he was working to keep his security team from following him to Little Saint James, Epstein’s private Caribbean island. “I’m still trying to arrange that the security guys will NOT come with us to the island,” Barak wrote. Epstein responded by promising a helicopter pickup from nearby St. Thomas. Later that year, Barak thanked Epstein directly: “Thx for the hospitality. Great, impressive island.”

Other emails point to shared ventures, including a 2015 investment in Reporty Homeland Security, a surveillance startup. According to reports, Epstein leveraged Barak’s connections to reach global power brokers, from Palantir founder Peter Thiel to individuals described as close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

By 2016, Epstein was inviting Barak to a dinner alongside filmmaker Woody Allen, long accused of child abuse, and Ariane de Rothschild, CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Group. Whether Barak attended remains unclear.

Barak has previously acknowledged visiting Epstein’s homes in both New York and the Caribbean but denied any involvement in sexual misconduct. In 2019, after Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, Barak announced he had cut ties. One month later, Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell.

The emails now surface at a time when questions over the depth of Epstein’s networks, and the people who moved within them — remain as sharp as ever.