MEA dismisses Epstein email referencing PM Modi’s Israel visit as ‘trashy ruminations of a convicted criminal’

New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday dismissed a reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel in an email purportedly sent by late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in July 2017.

“We have seen reports of an email message from the so-called Epstein Files that has a reference to the prime minister and his visit to Israel,” Randhir Jaiswal, the MEA spokesperson, said. “Beyond the fact of the prime minister’s official visit to Israel in July 2017, the rest of the allusions in the email are little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal, which deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt.”

The US Department of Justice on Friday disclosed an extensive cache of investigative records connected to Epstein, placing more than three million pages of documents, over 2,000 videos, and roughly 180,000 images in the public domain.

An email Epstein wrote on July 6, 2017, referred to Modi’s first visit to Israel, beginning July 4, 2017. He was the first prime minister of India to visit Israel. His visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and his meetings with his counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, de-hyphenated India’s relations with Israel and Palestine. He visited Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, too, a few months later.

“The Indian Prime Minister Modi took advice and danced and sang in Israel for the benefit of the US president,” Epstein wrote in an email on July 6, 2017.

The email also referred to a meeting between Modi and US President Donald Trump a few weeks before, and noted: “It worked.”

Modi and Trump met in Washington DC on June 26, 2017, a few weeks before the prime minister’s visit to Israel.