As more photographs from the estate of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are released, there are more revelations as to who the late financier associated with. One figure, New York Times columnist David Brooks, was spotted in a new batch of photos released by Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The photographs, released on Thursday (December 18), show Brooks at an event dining with Epstein, although there is no information given initially as to where and when the event took place. He’s also shown seated next to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
“As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event,” a spokeswoman for The New York Times said after the release. “Mr Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”
According to The Daily Beast, Brooks spoke with Semafor reporter Max Tani about the photos, saying: “I don’t think we met or exchanged a word. I never heard of Epstein until I read a Miami Herald story about him in 2018. I’ve never had any contact with him by email or any other means.”
Brooks has railed against the public’s fixation on Epstein, most recently publishing a column in the Times in November. “Why is Epstein the top issue in American life right now?” he wrote. “Well, in an age in which more and more people get their news from short videos, if you’re in politics, the media or online it pays to focus on topics that are salacious, are easy to understand and allow you to offer self-confident opinions with no actual knowledge.”
He also blasted the Democrats for focusing on the files in the column, claiming “they are undermining public trust and sowing public cynicism in ways that make the entire progressive project impossible. They are contributing to a public atmosphere in which right-wing populism naturally thrives.”
“To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with attending the same event as Jeffrey Epstein,” Business Insider journalist Jacob Shamsian wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “I just find it odd to not write about the topic when you’re a journalist and he’s the biggest story on the planet.”
