Seasoned editor Tina Brown expressed how unsettled she felt when Jeffrey Epstein unexpectedly entered her office uninvited 15 years ago.
Reflecting on her experience with Epstein, Brown described him as having ‘cold, snake-like eyes’ and recounted his warning for her to stop the Daily Beast’s coverage on his misconduct.
Brown, who co-founded the Daily Beast with media titan Barry Diller, recounted that the ominous confrontation occurred in 2010, soon after the publication released an extensive investigation into Epstein’s troubling past and questionable plea agreement.
She told the Daily Beast Podcast: ‘He said, “Just stop.” And he looked at me with this kind of snake eyes, cold, and it was menacing. It was really menacing. And he pointed his finger and he said, “Just stop.”
‘It was a very chilling experience,’ she said. ‘I mean, it was scary, actually.’
The article, headlined ‘Jeffrey Epstein, Billionaire Pedophile, Goes Free,’ broke new ground by revealing how victims had told investigators they were as young as 12 when Epstein trafficked them – years before prosecutors brought federal charges.
Before the uninvited visit, Brown said she’d already fielded calls from both Epstein and his attorney, trying to quash the story. She refused.
But when she returned from lunch one day, she found him sitting in her office – having bypassed her security. She said: ‘I was stunned. I stood at the door, aghast.’
Renowned editor Tina Brown recalls Jeffrey Epstein, who invited himself into her office at the Daily Beast, stared at her with ‘snake eyes’ and warned, ‘There will be consequences if you don’t stop’
The Beast’s 2010 investigation revealed girls as young as 12 were flown across the globe in Epstein’s jets
‘He was a master-class con man, so maybe he was just able always to kind of get what he wanted,’ she added.
Brown told him the reporting wouldn’t stop – and that’s when he dropped the threat.
‘He said, “There will be consequences if you don’t stop,”‘ she said. ‘And he just got up, and he left my room.’
At the time of the article, Epstein had already been convicted in Florida for soliciting a minor – but had served just 13 months in a county facility under a highly controversial deal that allowed him to spend most of his days outside the jail.
It would take nearly another decade before he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, with the medical examiner ruling it a suicide.
His death sparked widespread suspicion, political finger-pointing, and an ongoing storm of conspiracy theories.
This comes just after the Justice Department announced it would not release further records related to the case, and denied the existence of a so-called ‘client list’ implicating powerful allies.
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump moved in the same elite New York circles during the 1980s and 1990s, often spotted at the same high-society events (pictured together at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach in 1997)
The move enraged corners of the MAGA base, who had hoped Donald Trump, a former Epstein acquaintance, would declassify more information.
Brown, who had crossed paths with both Trump and Epstein during New York’s glitzy social heyday in the ’80s and ’90s, said the disgraced financier’s behavior during their brief office encounter made one thing clear: intimidation was his goal.
