Analysis: So What's The Deal With John Sununu And The Epstein Files?

By Leonard Robinson, NH Journal

On social media Thursday, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown posted images of an email from the Epstein files that includes the sentence, “John Sununu has good stories.”

Brown, who is running against John E. Sununu in the New Hampshire GOP U.S. Senate primary, added his own commentary.

“Recent reports regarding long-time D.C. insiders and their connections to the Epstein files have raised serious questions,” Brown wrote. “This isn’t about politics; it’s about the trust that the people of the Granite State place in their representatives.

“Voters shouldn’t have to guess who, or which one of their representatives were associated, or what ‘stories’ are being referenced in federal documents.”

On the Democratic side, U.S. Senate candidate Karishma Manzur, who is challenging frontrunner Rep. Chris Pappas from the left, is calling on Sununu to drop out of the race over the email.

“The email thread is deeply disturbing, with mentions of girls, salivation, and the ‘need to celebrate,’” Manzur said. “It suggests that John Sununu was associated with a convicted sex offender and pedophile.”

So how significant is the reference to “John Sununu”? Does it refer to John E. Sununu or his father, former Gov. John H. Sununu?

A search of the federal government’s Epstein database for the name “Sununu” yields exactly 10 results — none of which are emails directly from a member of the Sununu family.

The email in question comes from a 2010 thread between convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Boris Nikolic, a physician and former adviser to Bill Gates.

The thread spans four emails. In one, Epstein writes: “John Sununu has good stories.”

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. on May 29, 2010, Epstein emailed Nikolic, suggesting they strategize about potential people for Nikolic to meet at an upcoming conference in Doha, Qatar, which Nikolic was attending.

Roughly an hour later, Nikolic apologized for the delayed response, citing flight delays en route to Amsterdam. He wrote that there were “not many interesting people” at the conference, but said he wanted to “maximize [his] return” since he could not cancel the trip.

Epstein replied, “You are the most interesting person there,” adding that conference organizers should be reaching out to Epstein for an introduction to Nikolic. It was in that response that Epstein mentioned “John Sununu.”

Nikolic later thanked Epstein for the suggestion and wrote that he had lunch with Jaime Bourbon de Parme, an uncrowned prince of the Netherlands and Spain.

“You should meet him,” Nikolic wrote. “He always has beautiful girls around him,” adding a smiling-face emoji.

In the same email, Nikolic wrote that when Bourbon de Parme previously visited him in Seattle, a woman named Melanie “salivated over him.”

Toward the end of the email, Nikolic asked about Epstein’s well-being and wrote that it was only a matter of weeks until Epstein would have “full freedom,” adding that the two would “need to celebrate.”

Epstein was released from probation less than two months later.

The Epstein email threads — and the powerful people associated with them — are controversial and troubling. However, the single sentence mentioning “John Sununu,” without additional context, differs significantly from the documented interactions between Epstein and New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen.

Communications between Kamen and Epstein reference travel to Epstein’s private island and arrangements involving “the girls,” among other remarks.

The Sununu campaign dismissed the political attacks.

“This is a complete fabrication by someone proven to be a compulsive liar,” a Sununu campaign statement reads. “Neither John nor his father ever met or communicated in any way with Boris Nikolic or Jeffrey Epstein. John believes Epstein was a despicable human being.”

For Brown, the central issue is not any specific allegation — he has been careful not to accuse Sununu of wrongdoing — but what he says the Epstein files reveal about political and social elites.

“It’s the insiders, the people with money, the rich, the famous with names like Sununu and Clinton who are or were being protected,” Brown said Thursday on the NHJournal podcast. “His name was mentioned, and he needs to explain why. And to say that it was a fabrication is not the right answer that people want to hear.”

Leonard Robinson is a freelance politics and finance journalist. He wrote this for NHJournal.com

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.