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 assess decided on Wednesday that the United States Virgin Islands can serve suit for Elon Musk to his electric car company Teslaas part of the government’s lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s ties to dead sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein.
The ruling came days after lawyers for the USVI government told Judge Jed Rakoff that they had been unable to personally serve the Tesla CEO with atmosphere demanding documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan.
The Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan in US District Court in Manhattan for enabling and financially benefiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women. The late financier and sex offender had been a client of the bank from 1998 to 2013. JPMorgan denies wrongdoing.
On April 28, the USVI issued a subpoena to Musk on suspicion that Epstein “may have referred or attempted to refer” Musk as a client to JPMorgan, according to a court filing on Monday.
That lawsuit requires Musk to turn over any documents showing communications involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, as well as “any documents reflecting or relating to Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex.”
The USVI said in a court filing Monday that an investigative firm it had retained had been unable to locate Musk to personally serve him with the subpoena, which is the norm.
The filing also said an attorney for Musk did not respond to a request that the attorney accept the subpoena for his client.
Rakoff, in his order Wednesday, authorized the USVI to “arrange alternative service of its subpoena to produce documents by serving Elon Musk via service on Tesla Inc.’s registered agent.”
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The USVI has also issued similar subpoenas for documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brinformer Disney CEO Michael Ovitz, Hotel in Hyatt executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled to be ousted on May 26 over the lawsuit and a related lawsuit against the bank by a woman who says Epstein sexually assaulted her.
Muks, in a tweet on Monday evening, blasted the idea that he would receive a lawsuit in the case.
“This is idiotic on so many levels,” Musk wrote on Twitter, which he bought and took private last year.
“That moron never advised me on anything at all,” he wrote, referring to Epstein.
“The notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a stupid crook is absurd,” Musk added. “JPM let Tesla down ten years ago, even though they had Tesla’s global commercial banking business, which we then withdrew. I have never forgiven them.”
2018, Epstein said The New York Times he had advised Musk after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into Musk’s comments about taking Tesla private. A Tesla spokesperson told The Times, “It is incorrect to say that Epstein ever advised Elon on anything.”
Epstein took his own life in August 2019, a month after federal authorities arrested him on an indictment charging him with child sex trafficking. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state charge of soliciting sex with an underage girl.
Before his fall from grace, Epstein and his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell socialized with many rich and powerful people, including former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as Britain’s Prince Andrew, brother of King Charles III.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in late 2021 in federal court in Manhattan of soliciting underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison.
Musk responded in July 2020 to a Twitter post that showed him posing in a picture next to a smiling Maxwell.
“Don’t know Ghislaine at all,” Musk wrote. “She photographed me once at a Vanity Fair party years ago. The real question is why VF invited her in the first place.”
The New York Timesin a 2022 article describing that photo, a Vanity Fair staffer who had been standing next to both Maxwell and Musk at the party reported that “the pair were chatting.”
“Ms. Maxwell asked Mr. Musk if there was a way to remove himself from the Internet and encouraged Mr. Musk to destroy the Internet; Mr. Musk demurred,” The Times reported, citing the staff, who shared contemporaneous notes from the meeting. .
“Ms Maxwell then asked Mr Musk why aliens had not yet made contact with humanity, to which Mr Musk replied that all civilizations eventually end – including Maxwell’s hypothetical alien – and raised the possibility that humans are living in a simulation.”
[pub1]