Ehud Barak
Ehud BarakFlash 90

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday commented on his dealings with disgraced American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, telling Israel’s public broadcaster Kan 11 in an interview that in hindsight, he wishes he had never met Epstein.

“I knew him the same way Trump knew him, the same way Clinton knew him. The person who introduced me to him was none other than Shimon Peres,” said Barak, adding that Epstein “once invested as a passive investor in a registered partnership in Israel in which I am the leading partner. He didn’t have any standing and any ability to influence. He invested, he had quite a bit of money and I would assume he had hundreds of such investments. The one investment he had with me attracted attention because I’m a former Prime Minister.”

“It’s obvious that if I could turn back time, which I’m smart enough to know can’t be done, I would have preferred to have never met him,” added the former Prime Minister.

Asked how many meetings he had with Epstein, Barak estimated the two had met 20 or 30 times over a period of eight years.

He was then asked why he had business dealings with a man who was convicted of solicitation of a minor for prostitution, and replied, “If that wasn’t enough for the top echelon of American society, the academy, the philanthropy [to disavow themselves from Epstein], so no red light should have gone off in my head. I say that now. In hindsight, of course I would have preferred that none of this had happened.”

Commenting on the photos of him published by the Daily Mail, in which he is seen entering Epstein’s home in New York with his face covered, Barak said he was wearing a neck warmer because the temperature in New York that day was -10 degrees.

“I wore the neck warmer because, even today when it’s -10 degrees outside I wear a neck warmer. In America, they say -10 degrees is 14 degrees (in Fahrenheit – ed.), so Netanyahu’s idiots presented it as ‘it was 14 degrees outside, what is he wearing a neck warmer for?’” continued Barak.

“It’s all nonsense. I was there for breakfast with senior UN ambassadors. I visited his island once with my wife and security guards from the Israel Security Agency. I was there for three hours, during daylight hours, and we came back. It’s all nonsense. But they turn it into a weapon. However, they warn the public for a year and a half that Barak, the moment they publicize what went on there, it will be seen that he’s involved with Epstein up to his neck. They just made public 2,000 pages worth of documents, by court order, from Epstein’s case with this woman who allegedly complained about me. It turns out my name isn’t mentioned even once in all the 2,000 pages and that this woman left the US for Australia more than a year before I even met Jeffrey Epstein.”