Following a media storm provoked by The Daily Beast’s revelation that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak visited the private Caribbean island owned by jailed financier sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, Barak has announced he will sue a British tabloid for alleged slander. Barak, who recently announced his return to Israeli political life as chairman of a new party he’s called Democratic Israel, was responding to a Daily Mail post reprinting January 2016 photographs taken of him entering Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, wearing heavy winter gear. Barak told The Daily Beast he’d met Epstein “more than 10 times and much less than a hundred times” but had “never attended a party with him.” “I never met Epstein in the company of women or young girls,” he said. Regarding his visit in early 2016, Barak said, “It is me in the picture. It was so cold the Middle Easterner had to put on a hat. I was there, for lunch or chat, nothing else. So what?” 

In an article heavy on insinuation, the Daily Mail said “a bevy of young women were also seen going into the multi-millionaire’s lavish home on the same day that married Barak was snapped.” In a statement, Barak said he rejected the article’s “nauseating hints with disgust.” “There is no news in the article and not even an intimation of the truth. They are total lies.” Reacting to his planned lawsuit, the Daily Mail told the Israeli public television channel Kan: “We published the story and all the pictures in 2016, but we didn’t recognize Ehud Barak, and the photographer until suddenly started receiving phone calls from Israel… The women arrived on the same day he did, at different times throughout the day he was there. We do not know if Barak knew or not—this is a 7-floor house, the largest in New York City. So we cannot say he was in the same room or area as they were.”