Jeffrey Epstein Linked To Napa Valley 'Billionaire's Dinner', Records Show

NAPA VALLEY, CA — An exclusive Napa Valley retreat planned in St. Helena became a quiet meeting ground for some of the world’s most powerful tech executives — and a point of connection to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — according to documents released by the Justice Department.

In the summer of 2010, Epstein and some of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures were invited to a private gathering in the rolling hills of Napa Valley, where participants were scheduled to discuss proteomics (a niche scientific field adjacent to genetics), democracy, and the new science of morality, according to the organization's website.

The event, called “EDGE Master Break,” was slated to take place in St. Helena and was hosted by John Brockman, a connected New York literary agent-publisher behind Edge Foundation and salons that for years convened elite figures in science, technology, and media.

Epstein's association with Edge gave him access to wealthy scientists and figures in the tech industry, something he sorely needed after his 2008 conviction and relationships with similar networks were unraveling.

Photographs from the 2010 Billionaires' Dinner posted the Edge website include Sergey Brin, Kara Swisher, Arianna Huffington, and Good Earth Catalogue founder Stewart Brand.

It remains unclear whether Epstein attended the 2010 Napa retreat. But he was a regular attendee at other Edge events, including one the following year, according to reports. Epstein was shown at the 1999 and 2000 billionaires’ dinners in photographs that were recently deleted from the Edge website and was also mentioned in a write-up of the 2004 dinner, according to BuzzFeed. Epstein was also present at Edge events in 2011, while he was on probation following his 13-month prison term in a Florida state jail for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, according to BuzzFeed.

In 2015, Epstein emailed himself a photograph of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other high-profile guests dining together, the SF Gate reported.

Since 1999, Edge hosted a series of these invitation-only events known as the “Billionaires’ Dinners,” which brought together influential figures from tech, science, and media. Brockman has called Edge a gathering place for the world’s most “complex and sophisticated minds.”

Other emails released in the Epstein files show Brockman maintained regular contact with Epstein years after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor. Brockman’s name appears 2,508 times in the trove of emails released by the Department of Justice.

Epstein helped to finance Edge and its exclusive events, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News of Edge's IRS filings. After Epstein made his final recorded donation to Edge in 2015, the group stopped hosting the annual billionaires’ dinners.

Brockman often emailed Epstein about events and moneyed people he wanted to meet. In an email from March 20, 2018 included in the Department of Justice Epstein correspondence, Brockman writes, "I need someone to back a meeting on AI for the participants in my book. Here's the TOC. 50k will do it."

In another email, this one from March 19, 2018, explaining the appeal of the Billionaire's Dinner to Epstein, Brockman asks, "Do you remember when we first met, your idea was that all your friends were swimming in and would welcome opportunities to do interesting things in science?"

He goes on to complain that, in reality, most of them only want to be in each other's company or alone on their private islands, space capsules, and private, genetically altered gene pools. "The reason the master classes and the billionaires' dinners worked was that the billionaires could not afford NOT to be there."

Brockman has not yet responded to Patch's request for comment.