Epstein and Pentagon property that never was

Newly released US Department of Justice files have added another layer to the Jeffrey Epstein story — not through new criminal charges, but by exposing the scale and nature of the financial opportunities that continued to reach him years after his 2008 conviction.

Among the documents is a proposal that, if completed, would have made Epstein a co-owner of a vast office complex in Arlington, Virginia, described in investor materials as a “mission-critical” facility serving the US Department of Defense. The 84,710-square-metre site sits about 1.6km from the Pentagon and was marketed as the only property in the area, apart from the Pentagon itself, capable of meeting the department’s space and infrastructure requirements.

The suggested purchase price was about $116m. The structure of the deal would effectively have turned Epstein into a landlord to the US government.

There is no indication the transaction ever went ahead. Even so, the mere existence of such an offer raises questions that are less about real estate and more about access — who was still willing to do business with Epstein, and how close those proposals came to sensitive federal infrastructure.

The Pentagon-linked opportunity appears in a cluster of three documents: an email, an investor presentation and a deal summary. The offer was forwarded by businessman David Stern, who described himself as Epstein’s “soldier” and who also maintained close ties to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. In the same year he relayed the Arlington proposal, Stern was appointed director of the St George’s House Trust at Windsor Castle and attended an event at St James’s Palace, where he was seated beside Queen Elizabeth II.

The real estate deals were not limited to one project. A separate proposal sent to Epstein in 2015 involved potential investment in two FBI field offices in Richmond and Baltimore, as well as federal courthouses. Those properties were described in the materials as “sexy assets” and the structure of the deal required an initial $25m, followed by another $80m, with ownership routed through a Cayman Islands offshore entity. Both sets of property proposals originated with real estate investor Jonathan D Fascitelli.

Alongside the financial material, the files also contain an FBI informant memo that states Epstein was a “Mossad Agent” and adds that he was “close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and trained as a spy under him”. The documents do not present these claims as established findings, but their inclusion has intensified scrutiny of Epstein’s international connections.

Epstein did maintain a long relationship with Barak, who visited his New York townhouse more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017. The files also record Epstein’s financial support for Israeli organisations and his links to figures connected to the country’s political and security establishment.