Venture Capital’s Showing in the Epstein Files

On Monday, our reporter Jemima McEvoy broke the news that venture capitalist Masha Bucher had deep ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Their correspondence, released in a dump of more than 3 million pages from the Justice Department Friday, showed Bucher—née Drokova, the name she was using at the time—working as a publicist for Epstein, setting flirty texts and getting advice for her early-stage fund, Day One Ventures. 

The library of email and chat logs provided further detail on what has previously been established: Epstein claimed and tried to cultivate deep connections to rich or connected figures in Silicon Valley. From around 2011 to 2018, he wrote about mingling with the tech elite at private dinners, holding meetings at his house—and occasionally inviting them to visit him on his island in the Caribbean. Mentions of VCs were rife: In one set of emails, bankers and other intermediaries emailed him about getting him to invest in SpaceX. In another, he discussed a friend’s efforts to set up a fund.