Tech Founders Getting Ensnared In Jeffrey Epstein Scandal

Ghislaine Maxwell and Elon Musk at an Oscars afterparty, 2014. Image: Kevin Mazur/VF14/Contributor/Getty Images

Silicon Valley’s top tech bro titans have a lot to worry about, given a slew of new revelations involving Jeffrey Epstein’s evil partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell disappeared from sight after Epstein’s highly questionable “suicide” in prison last August, but was arrested last Thursday in hiding at a luxury compound in New Hampshire. She is now reportedly naming names and cooperating with the FBI.

Obviously, Britain’s Prince Andrew is the one who’s really shitting his pants right now. But a few revelations hit closer to home here in the Bay Area, and involve some of the most well-known tech founders in Silicon Valley. 

Don’t know Ghislaine at all. She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place ?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 3, 2020

The day Maxwell  was arrested, it was revealed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk partied with Maxwell in 2014. Musk claims “She photobombed me once,” but of course the tabloids are having a field day with it.

Did you hear about this billionaire guy who sent his 30 million+ followers after a journalist after he brought up his association with a known sex trafficker? despicable

— Rob (@robrousseau) July 4, 2020

By Saturday, Musk was very defensively complaining, “Please take a moment to report accounts clearly engaged in harassment. It is the only way to maintain public discourse.” The same Elon Musk who referred to the leader of a rescue mission of 12 young soccer players as “pedo guy.”

? Ellen Pao, former Reddit CEO and partner at VC giant Kleiner Perkins, says Ghislaine Maxwell attended Kleiner's holiday party in 2011, and "we knew" about her alleged role in Epstein sex trafficking. Pao has since made her twitter account private pic.twitter.com/6Zgw2qf2FZ

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) July 6, 2020

More revelations come from Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao (she has since made her Twitter account private.) Pao refers to her time as a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, the firm credited with funding Amazon, Google, and Twitter. Pao tweeted that “[Maxwell] was at the Kleiner holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have a photo taken with her. We knew about her supplying underage girls for sex, but I guess that was fine with the ‘cool’ people who managed the tightly controlled guest list.” 

She has said some more on the subject. pic.twitter.com/SnbC0lxt50

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 6, 2020

Epstein was very well-connected with tech founders, and according to a Business Insider report from last year, Epstein organized a “billionaire’s dinner” after a TED Conference event in 2011. Elon Musk was in attendance, as seen in these photos, as was Amazon CEO Jezz Bezos,  Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and, oddly, musician Peter Gabriel.

Epstein’s issues were already well-known at the time of this event. He had already been convicted in 2008 of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old. 

With Ghislaine Maxwell needing to save her own skin, and reportedly with plenty of damaging videos that incriminate other high-powered people, Silicon Valley might be about to get “disrupted” in a way it never anticipated.