Epstein to Bannon: Orbán scaring the shit out of Europe

Europe is completely terrified of Viktor Orbán's potential re-election victory, according to messages exchanged between Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon on the evening of the 2018 parliamentary elections in Hungary. We found additional messages mentioning Orbán among the Epstein files released at the end of January. What's more, these mentions did not come from people Epstein was communicating with, but Epstein himself.

On January 30, the US Department of Justice released more than three million pages of documents from the Epstein files, more than ever before. We previously reported on the mentions of Hungary and people from Hungary in these documents, after discovering that they mentioned Epstein's visits to Budapest, an apartment on Király Street, Hungarian girls, and the name of a Hungarian scientist, Albert-László Barabási.

It was already evident at that time that Viktor Orbán’s name also came up in the documents, but all that emerged then was that Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former White House adviser, had also advised the Hungarian PM. The former head of the right-wing news site Breitbart News regularly met and exchanged messages with the businessman during the last year and a half of Epstein's life. In March 2018, he bragged to him that he was advising Viktor Orbán and severalEuropean far-right parties.

However, we have now discovered additional messages between the two about Orbán. Some of these were already published in November, but the messages were difficult to find because

Epstein consistently misspelled Orbán's name, referring to him as "Orbahn" and "Urban."

The most interesting exchange between Epstein and Bannon took place on April 8, 2018, the day of the Hungarian parliamentary elections. Epstein, who was in Paris at the time, messaged Bannon in the early afternoon European time, who mentioned the Hungarian elections in his reply.

J.E.: When are you next in Europe?

Bannon: 1 May in Nice – have been invited to speak at a gathering of the tribes – big day today in Hungary

J.E.: Good boy

The two men exchanged dozens of messages throughout the day that had nothing to do with Hungary. They joked about labia (agreeing that they were "the worst aspects of women"), and Epstein boasted that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had reserved the entire Louvre for himself and he was on his way to join him at the museum.

In the evening, shortly before the election results came in, which ultimately gave Fidesz another two-thirds majority, Epstein wrote to Bannon again.

J.E.: Urban scaring the shit out of Europe

J.E.: Urban

J.E.: Orbahn

Bannon: Uve seen my quote all over about him

J.E.: No

Here, Bannon was almost certainly referring to a March 2018 interview he gave to the New York Times, in which he spoke of Orbán as a “hero” and “the most significant guy in the European scene.” This statement was later quoted by the Washington Post, Politico, and AFP, among others, in articles about the Hungarian election.

After that, Epstein and Bannon did not mention the Hungarian election again, either that day or later. However, Orbán did come up two more times in Epstein's messages.

In May 2018, Epstein asked Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen if "your friend Kurtz" (Sebastian Kurz, then Austrian chancellor) would like to meet with Bannon, noting that "Steve is currently in Budapest with Orbahn." The day before, Bannon had given a speech at the Hungarian government's conference at the Várkert Bazár in Budapest.

Then, in 2019, two months before Epstein's arrest, Orbán reappeared in a message sent to Bannon. In his May 2019 message, Epstein advised Bannon to focus on Europe, for example on Salvini and "Orbahn." The exact context of the message is unclear.