Influencers on right and left team up to push bogus Israel-Epstein claims

Unconfirmed email troves, political infighting in Israel, analysis posing as reporting, and sloppy journalism fuel conspiracy theories on the American left and right linking Jeffrey Epstein to Israel’s government and foreign policy.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Amid pressure in the US on the federal government to release documents linked to disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, political pundits and other online influencers on both the left and right are amplifying conspiracy theories, promoted by fringe media outlets, linking the State of Israel to a convicted sex offender.

Epstein’s death in 2019 has fueled a wide range of conspiracy theories regarding not only the circumstances of his demise, but also the nature of his sex-trafficking operations, his alleged ties to international intelligence agencies, and his relationships with world leaders.

A substantial fraction of those theories have noted Epstein’s known ties to prominent Israelis, most notably former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and have cited the strong support for Israel and relationships with Israeli leaders cultivated by Robert Maxwell, father of Epstein’s close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Rumors that Robert Maxwell worked as a Mossad asset have further fueled speculation that Epstein had his own ties to Israel’s intelligence community.

However, while Epstein is known to have Israeli associates, including Barak, no evidence has thus far surfaced linking Epstein to the State of Israel or Israeli agencies such as the Mossad.

That has not stopped a number of fringe media sites, internet influencers across the political spectrum, and even some lawmakers from seizing upon unverified email hacks and political infighting in Israel to claim that unproven claims of an Israel-Epstein link have been validated and to delegitimize criticism of the Israel-Epstein conspiracy theories.

Over the past few days, a varied group of pundits and other internet personalities have latched onto a series of reports claiming to have finally proved direct links between Epstein and the highest levels of the Israeli government.

“ZERO Ties to Israel! – We Lie To You News Update,” reads the headline of a parody skit released early Thursday morning by AwakenWithJP, a YouTube channel with over three million subscribers produced by right-wing comedian Jonathan Patrick Sears.

The segment noted that Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie claimed, without providing proof, that Epstein had “close ties to our own intelligence agencies and Israel’s intelligence agencies.”

In character as the “We Lie To You News” anchor, Sears berates Massie for the claim, calling it antisemitic.

“Massie baselessly claiming Epstein had ties to Israel is nothing more than hateful, antisemitic accusations.”

Sears then plays clips from a recent video produced by the far-left “The Young Turks” show, which referenced a series of articles penned by Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim on behalf of Grim’s left-wing site Drop Site News, an outlet heavily critical of Israel.

“That journalistic report that’s based on actual Epstein emails that were hidden until a hacker exposed them, is easily discredited by pointing out that the whole thing is antisemitic,” Sears said sarcastically.

The clip from “The Young Turks” – a program also known for its strongly anti-Israel stance – uncritically repeated claims made by Grim and Hussain in multiple Drop Site News pieces published from September to November.

The articles allege that Epstein “helped broker” an Israeli security agreement with Mongolia, “helped Israel build a backchannel to Russia,” and “helped Israel sell a surveillance state to” the Ivory Coast.

All three pieces rely entirely on a supposed trove of hacked Epstein emails to and from Barak, which an anti-Israel, Iranian-linked hacker group known as Handala released via the website Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The email dump was entirely ignored by international news agencies and cybersecurity news sites, amid serious questions regarding the authenticity of the documents.

While there have been reports that Barak’s private email account was hacked several years ago, tech analysts have expressed skepticism that the leaked emails were actually obtained from the former Israeli prime minister.

The supposed leaked emails lack DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authenticators, routing data, and other basic information used to verify hacks.

Handala’s history of manipulating some of its past leaks has further fueled skepticism regarding the email dump, as have apparent inconsistencies in the timeline of the alleged emails.

Despite the suspicions and the lack of independent verification, Drop Site News mined the same unconfirmed email trove for multiple stories, all focused on Barak’s ties to Epstein.

However, the Drop Site News pieces falsely claim the unverified emails link Epstein not merely to Barak, but to the Israeli government, though the documents themselves, cited by the articles, make no references to the State of Israel or point to Israeli involvement with Epstein.

In a September 28, 2025 article, Hussain and Grim claimed that in the 2010s, Epstein “facilitated a deal that led to a security agreement between Israel and other nations.”

The story, relying on the unverified Handala emails, claimed that shortly after his departure from the Israeli government in 2013, Ehud Barak corresponded with Epstein via his personal email account regarding business trips to Mongolia.

The documents cited by the report suggest Barak relied on Epstein’s aid to help facilitate business deals with Mongolia, after Barak had entered the private sector.

The authors suggest, without proof, that Barak’s business involvement in Mongolia as a private citizen in 2013-16 was part of a broader effort to quietly open a channel to negotiate a broad security deal between Israel and Mongolia, allegedly signed in 2017.

In fact, the two countries did not sign a security agreement in 2017, though a minor memorandum on emergency response services was inked that year, offering rescue training in Israel to Mongolian teams.

The other two Drop Site News articles make similar unsubstantiated connections between Ehud Barak and the Israeli government, based on the unverified Handala email trove. No proof of links to Israeli intelligence agencies or the Israeli government is offered in any of the Drop Site News pieces.

The segment by “The Young Turks” also denounced critics of the Epstein-Israel theory, echoing comments by right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly, who pointed to a cryptic social media post by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.

On Friday, Netanyahu posted a link to an article by Jacobin, a far-left magazine focusing on political commentary.

The piece, which weaves together references to verified Epstein files and unverified sources, including the Handala emails, highlighted claims made by Epstein that he had helped Ehud Barak’s unsuccessful 2019 election bid.

While Netanyahu apparently highlighted the article to note Barak’s close ties to Epstein and Epstein’s claims of working to advance Barak’s campaign against Netanyahu, both “The Young Turks” and Kelly seized on it as a sign that the Prime Minister of Israel had endorsed claims that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset.

“So I guess it’s not antisemitic to ask if Epstein as an asset for Israeli intel and we shouldn’t just take Ehud Barak’s word for it that he wasn’t? Got it,” Kelly wrote on X.

“If it were any other country, it would not be remotely scandalous to wonder out loud what it could all mean.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a political rival of Netanyahu who is expected to challenge Netanyahu for the premiership in next year’s Knesset election, pushed back on Kelly’s comments and rejecting claims that Epstein worked for the Mossad.

“Megyn, you’re a decent and honest journalist. When this conspiracy theory first surfaced, that Israel supposedly used Epstein as an agent, I decided to check it out,” Bennett wrote on X Saturday night.

“After all, as Prime Minister I oversaw the Mossad, and if it were real, I would have likely known about this. So I checked with two former Mossad chiefs and another former Prime Minister whether anything like this had ever happened.”

“No. It never happened. 100% untrue. Since the Pollard affair in the 1980s, Israel has not operated on American soil. This is simply a false theory. I have no personal stake here since the period in question was long before my tenure. I’m just describing the truth.”

Cenk UygurConspiracy theoriesJeffrey EpsteinMegyn Kelly