In 2014, venture capitalist Peter Thiel rose to prominence as one of Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors. He had made billions of dollars as co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, where he was chairman; and he sat on Facebook’s board of directors, where he was the company’s first outside investor.
That made him an ideal liaison for Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender with a knack for cultivating the rich and powerful.
Mr. Thiel apparently had several meetings with Mr. Epstein that year, according to the disgraced financier’s scheduling records reviewed by The New York Times.
The records – in the form of emails sent by Mr Epstein’s assistant reminding him of upcoming events – show that in September 2014, Mr Thiel would meet Mr Epstein at least three times, either in one-on-one a meetings or with others over lunch or dinner. Two other times, Mr. Thiel was on the list of more than a dozen other famous people that Mr. Epstein should try to see while at his New York mansion.
It is not clear from the files whether all meetings with Mr. Thiel took place. Some were listed as tentative or “TBD” – for “TBD”.
Jeremiah Hall, a spokesperson for Mr Thiel, declined to comment.
The Times obtained the data through a public records request to the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands, who had sued Mr Epstein’s estate. (Mr. Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.) The records suggest that Mr. Thiel may have had a closer relationship with Mr. Epstein than previously known.
Even after his 2008 Florida conviction on charges of inciting a teenage girl to prostitute, Mr. Epstein continued to hobble with top financial executives and investors, scientists, professors, politicians and celebrities.
Mr. Epstein was fascinated by the technology industry and attended conferences with leading industry executives. For example, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invited him to a dinner in 2015, which included Tesla CEO Elon Musk; the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg; and Mr. Thiel. (The dinner was previously reported by Axios.)
The data reviewed by The Times, which begins in 2011, is not a comprehensive account of Mr Epstein’s meetings. They do not cover every day, and even entire years are missing. (Some agenda items have previously been reported by The Wall Street Journal in connection with other individuals.)
On Sept. 14, 2014, Mr. Epstein was tentatively scheduled to have lunch with Mr. Thiel, the records show. The schedule then changed, with Mr. Thiel as an afternoon appointment, followed by a possible dinner with Mr. Epstein, the director Woody Allen and others. Mr Thiel was also expected to have lunch with the financier the following day and weekend, the records show.
It is unclear why Mr. Thiel met with Mr. Epstein. At that time Mr. Thiel served on Facebook’s board of directors and oversaw Founders Fund, a leading venture capital firm. Mr. Thiel was also the chairman of Palantir, the CIA-backed data analytics company, which was seeking outside investment at the time.
Two years later, Mr. Thiel was the most prominent Silicon Valley investor backing Donald J. Trump’s successful presidential campaign.
Mr. Thiel’s name appears much less frequently in the calendar entries than other names of famous people, such as Wall Street financier Leon Black, who is reported to have often stopped by for breakfast and lunch.
