Michael Ovitz, the cofounder of powerhouse Los Angeles talent agency Creative Artists Agency and a prolific tech investor, effusively praised Jeffrey Epstein and made arrangements to meet him at his New York home and off the coast of St. Barts, newly released files reveal.
The disgraced financier invited Ovitz to his private Caribbean island in 2012 and said he knew Ovitz “well” in emails to a Microsoft executive and his publicist, Peggy Siegal. In 2013, Ovitz emailed Epstein, lauding his “outstanding multiple talents,” with Epstein emailing Ovitz, “great to see you smiling again,” later that year.
A spokesperson for Ovitz denied that he was on anything more than cordial terms with Epstein.
“Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Epstein did not know each other well, no matter what Mr. Epstein said to Peggy Siegal. They had very limited interaction and correspondence,” a spokesperson for Ovitz told Business Insider. “When Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Epstein did correspond, Mr. Ovitz was cordial.”
Ovitz co-founded CAA in 1975, where he represented stars like Tom Cruise and Robert De Niro, leaving the firm in 1995 for a stint as president of Disney. The superagent later built deep links to Silicon Valley: he has invested in hundreds of startups, and has served as an advisor to the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Ovitz is also a senior advisor to Palantir and has recently invested in AI startups, including the Google-backed AI studio Promise and the image generator Black Forest Labs, where he serves as an advisor.
Documents released last week by the Justice Department from its investigation into Epstein provide a deeper look at his ties to Ovitz. It’s not the first time Ovitz’s name comes up in relation to Epstein: in 2023, Ovitz was subpoenaed by the US Virgin Islands as part of its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for banking with Epstein. That lawsuit has since been settled.
The new material shows communication between Ovitz and Epstein in the early and mid-2010s — after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor, but before his 2019 arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges — which ended with his death by suicide in a jail cell.
In a 2010 email exchange, Ovitz wrote to Epstein, “hope you are well” and “been a while” after a dinner with Jes Staley, the former Barclays CEO who later came under close scrutiny for his Epstein dealings.
“Had dinner with Jes last night and your ears should still be burning,” Ovitz wrote, adding that he and Epstein should get together.
“Great idea,” Epstein replied.
JPMorgan Chase declined to comment to Business Insider for this article.
In February 2012, Epstein planned to see Ovitz at an undisclosed location, according to a Google Calendar reminder. A few months later, in April, Ovitz emailed Epstein that he would drop by the financier’s Manhattan home for a drink, writing, “would love to see you.”
In December 2012, after learning that Ovitz was wintering in St. Barts in the Caribbean, Epstein invited him to his private island, Little Saint James, writing, “will you be near my island, come visit.”
Ovitz declined, saying his boat was stuck in St. Barts after he dropped a rudder. He told Epstein his boat was located about 500 yards from the yacht Al Mirqab, owned by former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani — which Epstein said he was visiting at the time — and suggested Epstein could stop by. It’s unclear if Epstein did.
In a January 2013 email, Ovitz wrote to Epstein that he and Steven Sinofsky, a former Microsoft executive, had been “raving about you and your outstanding multiple talents.” Sinofsky had been relying on Epstein to negotiate his Microsoft exit at the time.
Sinofsky later asked Epstein in an email if he knew Ovitz, whom he had just met at Andreessen Horowitz, and Epstein replied, “very very well.”
In May 2013, Epstein emailed Ovitz again, writing, “great to see you smiling again.”
In 2014, Andrew Farkas, a real estate magnate who co-owned a marina with Epstein in St. Thomas, also asked Epstein for an introduction to Ovitz to discuss naming a new performing arts degree at Harvard University.
Epstein’s most recent reference to Ovitz in the files is from 2017, when Epstein emailed his publicist Siegal that he knew Ovitz “WELL.”
The Epstein files are full of recognizable names who had correspondence with him, and some of the content is anodyne. The latest documents have caused headaches for some of the movers and shakers whose names appear on them.
On Wednesday night, powerhouse lawyer Brad Karp stepped down from the chairmanship of his firm, Paul Weiss, saying his ties to Epstein had become a “distraction” for it. Prominent longevity influencer Peter Attia publicly apologized for his crude email exchanges with Epstein and stepped down as chief science officer for a protein bar company.
Ovitz’s CAA has become one of Hollywood’s most powerful talent agencies. The firm rose to prominence by driving ever-higher actor paydays by demanding larger box-office cuts for stars like Brad Pitt.
CAA served as an inspiration for Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz when they built Andreessen Horowitz, which prides itself on being founder-friendly.
“An important part of A16z’s origin story, which you may already know, is that we were founded by Marc & Ben to be ‘CAA for the tech industry,'” reads the firm’s website.
Besides his involvement with A16z, Ovitz also chairs the VC firm Treville Capital Group and announced last year that he was launching his own startup, SoundPatrol, that uses AI to fight copyright infringement in music.
Read the full article here
