Good analogy, though under the circumstances, I'm a bit surprised he didn't go with Zelig.

Ed Niedermeyer, the journalist who wrote what is still the definitive book on Tesla specifically and on any Musk enterprise in general, and who is doing the ugly but necessary job of digging into the Epstein files to see what they tell us about the world’s richest man in an ongoing thread. 

Musk-Epstein: Year One
February 10, 2026

The rolling release of the Epstein Files is nothing short of a seismic event, throwing open the very ground we walk on and opening staggering new vistas into the ways in which our world actually works. Though much of work on the files so far has focused on Epstein’s trafficking of women and girls, for good reason given the horrors his victims endured and their inability to obtain justice thus far, the files illuminate far more about our fallen world. A kind of Forrest Gump of our hideously venal and corrupt elite, Epstein’s dealings are a skeleton key for an almost impossible number of terrible yet difficult-to-explain phenomena at the highest levels of wealth and power.

My little corner of that world centers on Elon Musk, whose empire of deception and greed has become something of a fascination for a decade now, starting as a simple automotive story. With the benefit of so much context, I’ve found a lot of material in the most recent releases of the Epstein files that make sense to me, but which might not mean anything to people who have managed to live their lives free of such sordid obsessions. With the first rounds of media and congressional reporting managing to avoid a lot of the Musk connections, I feel called to share what I’ve learned in my digging.

First, though, an important caveat: what follows is a limited first look at a massive corpus of evidence, which itself only offers a limited glimpse of events, and which has obviously been compromised by agenda-driven redaction. This is my best effort at putting elements from the Epstein Files into order and context, but should not be viewed as a comprehensive or final accounting of all the facts. I offer it here to help the public make the most of this unique moment of transparency, without malice toward anyone referenced within it. Though I personally believe that Jeffery Epstein and Elon Musk are among the worst individuals humanity has recently produced, they have the same right to the truth as everyone else. If anything, my time with the Epstein Files have only further convinced me that the worst of us deserve the truth most of all.

One of these days, there will be a serious, definitive biography of Jeffrey Epstein and one of Elon Musk. We are considerably closer to the first than the second. With Epstein dead and disgraced, and with most of his life now in the public record, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle and finding a biographer who is up to the enormous task.

Musk is currently at the peak of his wealth and political power, and an alarming number of influential people still somehow buy into the personal mythology on which he built his empire, though the cracks in the façade are growing rapidly.

When the two books are finally available, you probably won’t see a lot of Epstein in the Musk biography, and vice versa, except for their mutual association with Donald Trump (who will be all over both books). This does not mean those overlaps will not be important. In Epstein’s story, Musk tells us a great deal about how one courted the rich and well-connected, while Epstein’s role in Elon’s story tells us a lot about Musk’s businesses, his tendency toward revisionism, and perhaps most of all, the underreported role that Kimbal Musk played.

In an age full of Fredos, Kimbal may be today’s definitive example—weak, ineffectual, easily influenced, and a general source of embarrassment. In his defense, he has been more loyal than the original Fredo Corleone (though that really hasn’t been tested so far). As a member of the handpicked boards of both Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX, he’s been a reliable rubber stamp whenever his brother decided to loot either company.

Kimbal’s Fredo tendencies have recently come into high relief thanks to the release of the Epstein files, largely due to the diligent work of Ed Niedermeyer, the journalist who wrote what is still the definitive book on Tesla specifically and on any Musk enterprise in general, and who is doing the ugly but necessary job of digging into the Epstein files to see what they tell us about the world’s richest man.

Epstein seems to have immediately zeroed in on Elon’s younger brother as the most vulnerable point of attack.

The origins of the Musk-Epstein relationship are one of the most important ways to understand who Jeffery Epstein was and how he operated. Though widely depicted as a sub-literate lecher, and certainly not the kind of intellectual he liked to court, Jeffery Epstein was not stupid. His casual, text-y (probably dyslexia-inflected) email style makes him easy to dismiss at first glance, but after reading enough of his email it eventually becomes clear that Epstein was in fact a remarkably sophisticated operator. Learning to appreciate Epstein’s actual abilities–the ability to spot opportunity, insinuate, flatter, hype, build intimacy, and connect–leads to a far more important lesson: these, and not any actual intellectual abilities, are the tools that our elite run on.

...

On September 18 [2012], Boris Nikolic (a medical doctor who worked with the Gates Foundation at the time) formally made the first connection between the Musks and Epstein in the files, in one of the more disturbing emails I’ve personally read. Nikolic’s entire email [PDF] reads as follows:

Hope you are having fun and getting adjusted to living a simple life [wink emoji inserted here -- MP]

Just talked to Kimbal. His actual bday is on Thursday night (although
his party is on Saturday).

Kimbal, Elon and few of their closest friends will go out that night.
I told him that I am going w Mette [Ed:likely the crown princess of Norway] for that Gala and that after we
wil join them somewhere — or even easiest that they should come to
Boom Boom Room.

I told him that you will join us as well. Also I told him that you are
coming with [victim redacted] and that he might want to ditch his ex/or current
to be. He said yes and is looking so much forward.

So please prepare [victim redacted]—;)
She might like Elon as well.

The overall image of Epstein that emerges in the files is of a man who understands connections in a world that runs on them, and already we have a good picture of how he operated. His connections allowed him to understand the preoccupations of his fellow elites, understand who they wanted to meet, work his own relationships to get into a room with them, and then use women as currency to win them over. In the very first reference to Epstein’s path crossing Musk’s we see him leveraging Nikolic’s relationship with Kimbal to reach Elon, and “preparing” a woman as the bait for his hook. In the meantime he had already informed [PDF] Jes Staley, head of private wealth management at Deutsche Bank, who Epstein appears to have served as a client funnel for, of the Musk’s presence in New York.

Kimbal, it seems, was easily hooked. A recent Guardian piece fills out the story: the woman was in fact a victim, who has said through a lawyer that she was trapped, coerced, and abused by Epstein. As the email makes clear Kimbal was both aware that Epstein wanted to meet him, and willing to “ditch his ex/or current to be” for a woman to be provided by the man who had been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution four years earlier. That initial hangout appears to have been jovial enough for Kimbal to email Nikolic on the 21st: “Fun time last night! Let Jeffrey and his friends know they are invited tomorrow night.”

 

 

 One essential bit of context that needs to be kept in mind when reading anything about connections between Epstein and the Musk family is that this all starts in 2012, four years after Jeffrey Epstein’s first arrest.

One of these days, when we have more distance from recent events, we should probably have a discussion about what the ethical or honorable thing to do is when we learn that a friend or someone we had admired has done something horrible. It is not a straightforward question; it is a complex one. But it’s not a question that applies here. Elon and Kimbal Musk knew they were dealing with a sex offender before they had any exchanges with Epstein.

Along similar lines, we should probably revisit the old debate (going back at least as far as Shaw's Major Barbara) about the ethics of accepting charitable donations from reprehensible people and, more to the point, about how far we should go in allowing these people to launder their reputations through such donations.

Once again, though, none of this applies to the Musk brothers, who, as far as I can tell, never showed any interest in charitable causes during their interactions with Epstein.

The files also give us additional insight into (or at least confirmation of) Elon Musk’s almost pathological arrogance and dishonesty, possibly even toward himself, regarding his decision to aggressively push for opening the files during his bitter, albeit brief, feud with Donald Trump a few months ago.

I previously suggested that Musk was so blind with rage over having someone in the White House drop the dime on his drug use and bizarre behavior in that The New York Times story that he simply didn’t think things through, particularly given his long history of evading consequences for his actions.

I’m still certain that’s at least part of the explanation, but having seen the relevant emails, I suspect that he had convinced himself that they weren’t all that damning. We are all revisionists when it comes to personal memories, something that heavy drug use can only exacerbate. It’s true that Musk was sometimes brusque with Epstein and had more than once rejected his invitations. For someone with a lifetime of seeing events through the most self-serving lens possible, it’s not difficult to see how he imagined himself getting out from under this one.

By early November Musk was “looking forward to” visiting Epstein’s island [PDF], by the end of the month he was infamously asking [PDF] about “the wildest party on your island,” and by December it was just a matter of discussing logistics [PDF]. It appears that Musk may not have actually made it to Little St James that winter, despite Epstein’s urging to clear customs in St Thomas [PDF], but it didn’t prevent Epstein from bragging to the Norwegian Crown Princess [PDF] that he would in fact be having lunch with Musk. One of the major impressions one gets of Epstein from his emails is that, like Musk himself, the gap between perception and reality is irrelevant. What seemed to matter to him was that people believed he was close to Musk, whether they were actually meeting or not.

Clearly Musk and Epstein were getting closer, as just months later the two mens staffs were coordinating a visit by Epstein to SpaceX, with three of “his girls” in tow. In the meantime, a series of puzzling emails [PDF] hint at a possible motivation on Epstein’s part for pursuing Musk, beyond a generically valuable social connection and/or a promising lead for Deutsche Bank’s wealth management department. This exchange, between Epstein and a redacted party that has been widely identified through redaction errors as Svetlana (“Lana”) Pozhidaeava, is one of many in the files fitting a pattern of women complaining to Epstein about his treatment of them. “I thought you went to califomia and want to be with elon now,” Epstein seems to tell her. “You have told me as much. So you confuse me.”

This cryptic exchange is made more compelling by an email from roughly three months earlier [PDF], in which Pozhidaeva recounts a long exchange between herself and one Joshua Fink, who “asked 6 times if Elon has given me anything? and what did elon give me?” Public photos of Joshua Fink, son of Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, with Svetlana Pozhidaeva at a 2011 gala provide a very real context for one of the more surreal references to Musk in the files. Reporting linking Pozhidaeva and other young Russian women in Epstein’s orbit with Putinist organizations and potentially Russian intelligence, provides yet another layer of context for a woman who the files suggests became close with Elon Musk as well as the son of one of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions.

...

The day after the SpaceX tour [February 27, 2013 -- MP]  Epstein emailed Musk [PDF], writing “thanks for the tour , you would have had fun at xmas,” to which Musk replied “I see [smiley emoji]”. In the weeks that followed, a pattern would emerge in the two mens relationship, with Epstein gently but persistently insinuating himself into Musk’s good graces, and Musk responding in a brief but friendly manner, always referencing his workload. One particularly solicitous March 2013 exchange [PDF] even sees Epstein suggesting “nuvigil” (Armodafinil, a relative to Modafinil, a potent non-stimulant eugeroic) as a way to offset his lack of sleep, a rare exception to Epstein’s horror of drug use.

...

A couple of months later, Epstein attempted to reconnect [PDF] with Musk on the same level, asking “will you come to caribean [sic] this xmas? woody allen with me, you might enjoy.” “Yes,” Musk replied. By mid-December the strategy had worked, and now, at long last, Musk was the one emailing Jeffery Epstein [PDF]. “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays,” he wrote the convicted sex offender. “Is there a good time to visit?” 

 

 

Of course, this story is still in the process of being told, with journalists only beginning to dig through these documents and who knows how many still waiting to be released. Aspects such as Russia using connections with Jeffrey Epstein for spying and influence have only begun to be explored.

The Epstein files are also opening up considerable insights into the role that countries like Saudi Arabia and Dubai have been playing behind the scenes for decades. That is a topic that Niedermeyer is currently exploring later in the thread.