Dozens of messages contained in the latest tranche of Epstein files lay bare the attempts by Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon to tap Jeffrey Epstein for support and funding to bolster European far-right parties.
The messages mostly date to 2018 and 2019, when Bannon, after being sacked by Trump, regularly visited Europe in his quest to forge a movement in the European parliament uniting ultra-rightwing and Eurosceptic forces from several countries including Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and Austria.
Bannon especially set his sights on Matteo Salvini, the Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League, who at the time was at the height of his political power. Italian opposition parties this week urged Salvini to clarify whether Epstein influenced the rise of the League after Salvini’s name was cited several times in messages exchanged between Bannon and Epstein.
In France, the leftwing party La France Insoumise also called for a cross-party parliament inquiry after several French figures, including Jack Lang, a former culture minister, and his daughter appeared in the latest Epstein trove, as did exchanges between Epstein and Bannon in which Bannon spoke of his desire to raise money for the far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
In Germany, the files revealed exchanges between Epstein and Bannon promoting Alternative for Germany (AfD) while denigrating the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
In texts from 2018, Bannon bragged about his influence as an “adviser” to the new right-wing populists and saw the parties’ gains in Europe as a chance to use them to his and Epstein’s benefit.
There is no evidence of any direct relations between Salvini and Epstein, nor any suggestion that Salvini was involved in Epstein’s sex-trafficking network. But what the messages do reveal is Epstein’s interest in European nationalists.
In a message contained in one of the files and dated 5 March 2019, a couple of months before the European parliamentary elections, Bannon writes that he is “focussed on raising money for Le Pen and Salvini so they can actually run full slates”.
Others messages detail Bannon’s travels in Europe at the time and his ambition for increased nationalist power in Brussels, as highlighted in a flurry of exchanges between the pair at the time of the European parliament ballot in late May 2019.
The messages also refer to Bannon’s meeting with Salvini in Milan in March 2018, just a few days after Italian general elections that culminated in the League forming a government with the populist Five Star Movement (MS5).
Bannon met Salvini again in Italy in September that year when the League joined his anti-EU organisation, The Movement. By the following summer, Salvini was in opposition after collapsing the League’s coalition with M5S in a failed attempt to trigger early elections.
There is no evidence that Epstein financed the League, which returned to government in 2022 as an ally in Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition, and other European far-right parties. However, it does appears that Bannon tried to tap him for funds.
Andrea Casu, a politician with the centre-left Democratic party who raised questions about the subject of funding in the Italian parliament on Tuesday, said: “We are asking the government – not just Salvini – for clarity and transparency … we must first understand if there is a link, not only with Bannon, but with those who today play a political game with these rightwing forces at the European level.”
Riccardo Magi, president of the leftwing party Più Europa (More Europe), claimed the Epstein files “implicate Matteo Salvini in alleged funding that Bannon had promised to provide for his election campaign”, an allegation that “raises concerns about potential external influence affecting the second-largest party in the current majority”.
Bannon has declined to comment to US media about the exchanges in the latest Epstein files. Salvini’s League party dismissed speculation that Epstein might have contributed funds as “unfounded” and “serious exaggerations”. It added that the party has “never requested or received funding” and would defend itself and Salvini “in every way possible in the event of insinuations or associations with disgusting figures.”
In France, Lang, who currently heads Institut du Monde Arabe, a cultural organisation, features in emails discussing meetings and holidays. He admitted knowing Epstein, saying it was “at a time when nothing suggested Jeffrey Epstein was at the heart of a network of criminality”.
His daughter Caroline, a film producer, resigned this week from France’s Union of Independent Producers after the emails showed she had founded an offshore company with Epstein in 2016 to invest in the work of young artists. There was no suggestion of illegality. She said she had resigned from the company when Epstein’s criminal acts were revealed.
The emails also showed extensive communications between Epstein and Olivier Colom, a former diplomatic adviser to the former rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy. One email exchange with Colom in 2018 suggested that the former finance minister Bruno Le Maire had gone to Epstein’s house in New York at an unspecified date. A person close to Le Maire told Politico that Le Maire had not known whose house he was visiting in September 2013, before he was finance minister, and quickly left when he saw Epstein at the residence, never seeing him again.
Casu said the issue was not Epstein’s files per se, “because he is dead”, but the questions the messages raise about powerful foreign influences and the networks aimed at weakening Europe.
“These files are getting a lot of attention in the US, as is obvious,” he said. “But in my opinion, they should be given just as much attention for what they represent for Europe today, and for the political situation in which we are in.”
