The emails that Democratic deputies who are part of the United States House Oversight Committee released on Wednesday (12) about the case of financier Jeffrey Epstein include mentions of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).
In one of them, Epstein claims that the American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky had brokered a call between him and Lula when the Brazilian president was in prison in Curitiba.
“Chomsky called me with Lula. From prison. What a world!”, wrote Epstein in an email dated September 21, 2018, the day after Chomsky’s visit to Lula at the Federal Police headquarters in the capital of Paraná.
The email released by the Democrats does not make it clear who the message was sent to, nor does it inform the content of the financier’s supposed conversation with Lula.
The following day, according to the files made public, Epstein wrote, also to an unidentified recipient, that “Bolsonaro is the guy [the real deal]On that date, Bolsonaro was in the final stretch of the campaign that would culminate in his election to the presidency the following month.
Epstein’s email praising Bolsonaro, in 2018 (Photo: Reproduction/United States House Oversight Committee)In another email, dated February 9, 2019, Epstein spoke of the two Brazilian politicians, but the context of the message and who the other people mentioned are are not explained.
“Yes, he would like that. His wife is Brazilian, so go easy on Bolsonaro. They are friends of Lula. But he is an iconic figure and you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to talk about history and politics. I will connect you by email so you can communicate directly,” said the financier.
Message from 2019 cites Lula and Bolsonaro, but context is not clarified (Photo: Reproduction/United States House Oversight Committee)In a message to People’s Gazettethe presidency’s Secretariat for Social Communication (Secom) said that Lula never spoke to Epstein. “This information is not valid. The aforementioned telephone call never took place”, said the ministry.
On Wednesday, a group of Democratic deputies released more than 20,000 files on the internet on Epstein, who was found dead in his cell in New York in 2019, while awaiting trial for a sex trafficking scheme.
In one of the messages, Epstein allegedly stated that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, “knew about the girls” and that the American president “spent hours” with one of the victims of the scheme.
In a press release, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of “selectively leaking emails to progressive media in order to create a false narrative to smear President Trump.”
