New York Times columnist David Brooks appeared in newly surfaced photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate on Thursday, just weeks after he bashed Democrats for releasing information related to the disgraced financier’s crimes.
Brooks, who has been a columnist at the newspaper for 22 years, was seen talking at a table with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a 2011 event in the photos released by House Democrats.
The event was held two years after Epstein first went to prison for sex crimes, according to a 2019 report from Buzzfeed News.
In another image, the conservative columnist appears by himself and smiles widely into the camera.
The photos come after Brooks last month penned an op-ed titled “The Epstein Story? Count Me Out.” in which he critcized House Democrats for releasing information related to the sex offender.
He went as far as to compare the Democrats interested in the Epstein files to those who subscribe to the QAnon conspiracy.
“I know a thing or two about the American elite, ahem, and if you’ve read my work, you may be sick of my assaults on the educated elites for being insular, self-indulgent and smug. But the phrase ‘the Epstein class’ is inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible. Say what you will about our financial, educational, nonprofit and political elites, but they are not mass rapists,” Brooks wrote in the column.
“If I were a Democratic politician (this role-playing is kind of fun) I’d add that America can’t get itself back on track if the culture is awash in distrust, cynicism, catastrophizing lies and conspiracymongering. No governing majority will ever form if we’re locked in a permanent class war,” Brooks added.
The Daily Beast reached out to Brooks for comment.
The New York Times told the Daily Beast in a statement that “As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”
The 2011 event in Long Beach, California, was organized by New York literary agent John Brockman, who ran an exclusive intellectual club, Edge. Epstein frequently attended them before his 2006 arrest, according to BuzzFeed.
That year’s event was attended by many prominent people in the tech industry, including Brin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and tech mogul Elon Musk. Epstein attended another Edge event later that year as well.
The photos released from the Epstein estate had been previously published on the Edge’s website. Epstein, however, is notably not in these published photographs despite having attended the event.
Brooks, who was seemingly the only journalist at the event, told Buzzfeed at the time that he was unaware of who Epstein was, having only learned about him in 2018 after the Miami Herald’s explosive investigation into Epstein’s predatory behavior. Brooks told the outlet that he was invited by Brockman and did not know who was attending the dinner beforehand, noting he was “surprised” at its “high powered group of people.”
By the time of this 2011 event, Epstein had already finished his 13-month prison sentence in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl stemming from his 2006 arrest.
That non-prosecution agreement has been characterized as a “sweetheart deal” afforded to him by Alexander Acosta, who was then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta served in the first Trump administration as Labor Secretary before resigning over the Epstein plea deal scandal.
Brooks, 64, has been at the New York Times since September 2003. He is married to Anne Snyder, his former research assistant, who is 23 years his junior.
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