“Donald's head would explode if he knew you were friends with the guy who will decide the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday,” Epstein told Steve Bannon
Jeffrey Epstein made full use of the head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee to attract his global network of elites
According to the documents cited by the Huffington Post, Epstein repeatedly mentioned that he hosted the head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in invitations and discussions with personalities such as Richard Branson, Larry Summers and Steve Bannon, an important ally of President Donald Trump, the Epstein files show.
Thorbjørn Jagland, who headed Norway's Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015, appears hundreds of times in the millions of documents on the former American financier and convicted sex offender released by the US Department of Justice.
Jagland, 75, has been charged in Norway with “aggravated corruption” in connection with an investigation triggered by information in the files, the Norwegian police's economic crime unit Økokrim said.
Økokrim said it would investigate whether gifts, trips and loans were received in connection with Jagland's position. His teams searched his residence in Oslo on Thursday, plus two other properties in Risør, a coastal town to the south, and Rauland to the west.
His lawyers from Norway's Elden law firm said Jagland denies the allegations and was being questioned by the police unit on Thursday.
Although the documents reviewed so far show no evidence of any lobbying, Epstein has repeatedly cited hosting Jagland at his properties in New York and Paris in the 2010s.
From an “interesting” guest to the subject of Bannon jokes
In September 2018, during Trump's first term and in an apparent allusion to his interest in the Nobel Peace Prize, Epstein had a heated exchange of text messages with Bannon, at one point writing — in one of several messages with messy grammar: “Donald's head would explode if he knew you were now friends with the guy who will decide the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday.”
“I told him that next year it should be you when we deal with China,” he added, without elaborating.
In a 2013 email that mixed investment advice and praise for PR advice, Epstein told British entrepreneur and tycoon Richard Branson that Jagland would stay with Epstein that September, adding, “if you're there, you might find him interesting.”
A year after she left her position as White House legal counsel to President Barack Obama, in 2015, Kathy Ruemmler received an email from Epstein saying, “The head of the Nobel Peace Prize is coming to visit, would you like to attend?”
In 2012, Epstein wrote to former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers about Jagland, saying “the head of the Nobel Peace Prize is staying with me, if you're interested.”
In that exchange, Epstein referred to Jagland — also a former Norwegian prime minister and former head of the Council of Europe, a human rights body — as “not necessarily smart” but someone who offered a “unique perspective.”
The financier wrote to Bill Gates in 2014, saying that Jagland had been re-elected as head of the Council of Europe.
“It's good,” wrote the Microsoft co-founder and former richest man in the world. “
During Jagland's tenure as chairman of the committee, it awarded the peace prize to Obama in 2009.
Jagland was brought into Epstein's orbit by Terje Rød Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat who helped negotiate the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Larsen and his wife also face corruption charges in Norway over their association with Epstein.
