Ghislaine Maxwell and Elon Musk attend the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014 in West Hollywood, California.
Kevin Mazur | vf14 | Wireimage | Getty Images
A federal judge dominated Wednesday that the U.S. Virgin Islands can serve a subpoena for Elon Musk to his electrical automobile firm Tesla, as a part of the federal government’s lawsuit towards JPMorgan Chase over the financial institution’s ties to lifeless sexual trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The ruling got here days after legal professionals for the USVI authorities instructed Judge Jed Rakoff they’d been unable to serve the Tesla CEO personally with the subpoena demanding paperwork associated to Epstein and JPMorgan.
The Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for allegedly enabling and financially benefiting from Epstein’s intercourse trafficking of younger girls. The late financier and intercourse prison had been a buyer of the financial institution from 1998 via 2013. JPMorgan denies any wrongdoing.
On April 28, the USVI issued a subpoena to Musk due to suspicion that Epstein “could have referred or tried to refer” Musk as a shopper to JPMorgan, in accordance to a court docket submitting Monday.
That subpoena calls for that Musk flip over any paperwork exhibiting communication involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, in addition to “all Documents reflecting or concerning Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of women or girls for consensual intercourse.”
The USVI mentioned in a court docket submitting Monday that an investigative agency it had retained had been unable to find Musk to serve him in particular person with the subpoena, as is the norm.
The submitting additionally mentioned {that a} lawyer for Musk didn’t reply to a request that the legal professional settle for the subpoena for his shopper.
Rakoff, in his order Wednesday, approved the USVI to “organize various service of its Subpoena to Produce Documents by serving Elon Musk through service upon Tesla Inc.’s registered agent.”
Musk did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
The USVI additionally has issued related subpoenas for paperwork associated to Epstein and JPMorgan to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Disney government Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels government chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire actual property investor.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled to be deposed on May 26 for the lawsuit and for a associated go well with towards the financial institution by a lady who says Epstein sexually abused her.
Muks in a tweet Monday night time had blasted the thought of that he be given a subpoena in the case.
“This is idiotic on so many ranges,” Musk wrote on Twitter, which he purchased and took personal final yr.
“That cretin by no means suggested me on something in any respect,” he wrote, referring to Epstein.
“The notion that I would wish or hear to monetary recommendation from a dumb criminal is absurd,” Musk added. “JPM let Tesla down ten years in the past, regardless of having Tesla’s international business banking enterprise, which we then withdrew. I’ve by no means forgiven them.”
In 2018, Epstein instructed The New York Times he had been advising Musk after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a probe into Musk’s feedback about taking Tesla personal. A Tesla spokesperson instructed The Times, “It is inaccurate to say that Epstein ever suggested Elon on something.”
Epstein killed himself in August 2019, a month after federal authorities arrested him on an indictment charging him with little one intercourse trafficking. He had beforehand pleaded responsible in 2008 to a Florida state cost of soliciting intercourse from an underage lady.
Before his fall from grace, Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, socialized with many wealthy and highly effective individuals, amongst them former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, in addition to Britain’s Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in late 2021 in federal court docket in Manhattan of procuring underage ladies to be sexually abused by Epstein. Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in jail.
Musk in July 2020 replied to a Twitter publish that confirmed him posing for a photograph subsequent to a smiling Maxwell.
“Don’t know Ghislaine in any respect,” Musk wrote. “She photobombed me as soon as at a Vanity Fair social gathering a number of years in the past. Real query is why VF invited her in the primary place.”
The New York Times, in a 2022 article detailing that photograph, reported {that a} Vanity Fair employees member who had stood subsequent to each Maxwell and Musk on the social gathering mentioned that “the pair chatted.”
“Ms. Maxwell requested Mr. Musk if there have been a method to take away oneself from the web and inspired Mr. Musk to destroy the web; Mr. Musk demurred,” The Times reported, citing the staffer, who shared contemporaneous notes of the encounter.
“Ms. Maxwell then requested Mr. Musk why aliens hadn’t but made contact with humanity, to which Mr. Musk replied that each one civilizations ultimately finish — together with Maxwell’s hypothetical alien one — and raised the likelihood that people live in a simulation.”