The journalist wife of CBS News’ MAGA-adjacent editor-in-chief appeared in the most recently released tranche of the Epstein files, telling the pedophile about her personal life.
Nellie Bowles told Epstein how she had introduced her new partner—now her wife, Bari Weiss—to her family, a month after apparently meeting Epstein at his townhouse.
The emails show how Bowles, who co-founded The Free Press with Weiss and will share in the reported $150m for which it was bought by billionaire nepo-baby David Ellison, was in touch with Epstein when she was a New York Times reporter.
At The Free Press, Bowles is head of strategy and a weekly columnist, and describes herself as a satirist. She had described the Epstein files as an “everyone thing,” and a problem for “elite” liberals.
“I do think it’s funny that Dems are trying to make the Epstein files a Trump thing when the Epstein files are an everyone thing," she wrote last November.
"And if we had to pick, this little piggy honestly seemed mostly to circulate in elite lib spaces (seemingly every professor at MIT and Harvard; heck, even I met him once right before the end, when he wanted an NYT profile)," she added.
The outlet’s Joe Nocera also attacked journalists who appeared in the files when the first tranche was released, including Michael Wolff, the co-host of the Daily Beast’s hit Inside Trump’s Head podcast, and said, “Epstein’s correspondents could have tried to stop him, or reported him to the authorities, or at least decided to have nothing to do with him. Instead, many of them circled the wagons, protecting a horrific sexual offender.”
In a post on X on Saturday, Bowles dismissed the emails, saying her “reporting” was not “secret” and had been in the Times when she worked there.
Based on 17 entries from the Department of Justice’s release of more than 3 million documents on Friday, Bowles appeared to have a meeting scheduled with Epstein for 11:00 a.m. on Sept. 5, 2018, at his New York City home. The meeting was scheduled through Lesley Groff, who worked as an assistant to Epstein for over two decades.
It appears Masha Drokova, a Russian public relations specialist who worked for Epstein around this time and is now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, had originally pitched the meeting with Bowles to Epstein. The emails are dated in August 2018, about a week before Bowles and Epstein’s Sept. 5 meeting.
In emails exchanged directly between Bowles and Epstein, the disgraced financier asked how a meeting between Bowles’ parents and Bowles’ partner went. Bowles began dating Weiss in 2018.
The scheduled September meeting came a decade after Epstein first went to jail in Florida for his sex crimes, and one year before he was indicted in federal court on sex trafficking charges.
“I have a new friend who’s fun and smart. She’s New=York Times reporter,” Drokova, wrote, linking Bowles’ author profile at the Times. “She’s visiting NYC from SF. Let me know if you’d like to meet her. No agenda. Just for =un. I like her a lot.”
“happy to but not there till until evening o= 3rd . can skype anytime with anyone you choose or meet :)” Epstein responded.
Email correspondence also shows Bowles confirming her meeting with Epstein.
“Hello Nellie. Jeffrey will be in NY tomorrow and Wed....might you be around and available to come meet him? Masha believes,” a redacted name, whose title on the email said “Assistant to Jeffrey Epstein” wrote Bowles.
“Wednesday at 11 am is perfect! I’ll be there then!” Bowles responded.
The redacted name confirmed that Bowles would be there on the morning of the meeting.
“Good morning Nellie. Reconfirming you will come see Jeffrey today at 11am. Thanks!” they wrote.
Bowles responded: “Confirmed!”
Bowles’ emails featured her position at the Times in her signature. She covered tech and internet culture at the outlet for about four years.
One month after the scheduled meeting, an email exchange shows direct correspondence between Bowles and Epstein, in which Epstein asks her about how introducing her partner, Weiss, went. Weiss and Bowles reportedly met in 2018 when they both worked at The New York Times.
“how did it go introducing your partner to mom? even better than the good career move? :)” Epstein wrote.
“Ahahahaha I missed this and just figured out who you are. It actually went great!” Bowles responded 10 days later.
“When ste [sic] you and your babe back in nyc,” Epstein said back.
The same day, Epstein wrote her what appears to be correspondence about sex offender Bill Cosby. Cosby had been sentenced for his own sex crimes one month before this correspondence, and also owned a home in the same street as Epstein.
Bowles did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
On X, Bowles replied to a post sharing photos of the correspondence between Bowles and Epstein by former Daily Beast editor Marlow Stern. Bowles wrote, “So secret that I wrote about the meeting and used the reporting from it .... twice ... for the NYT” and linked two articles, one of which she wrote and one which states she “contributed reporting.”
She wrote about it once, in Sep. 2019, in a first-person interview with Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, a defender of taking cash from Epstein, saying, “I was interested in reporting out a story connected to him...” Such a story does not appear to have been published.
She was also credited with having “contributed reporting” to a New York Times story describing the pedophile’s house after his arrest, which did not mention that she had interacted with Epstein.
Bowles and Weiss co-founded The Free Press in 2021. Last year, CBS News acquired the blog for $150 million and installed Weiss, who had no prior experience in TV news, as editor-in-chief.
Other journalists have appeared in the files, mostly named because of emails from Epstein’s inbox.
They include Wolff. Epstein asked him to write his biography, and after Epstein’s death, Wolff wrote a chapter about the sex offender in his 2021 book, Too Famous: The Rich, the Powerful, the Wishful, the Notorious, the Damned, then published recordings of their conversations about Donald Trump just before the 2024 election.
The New York Times journalist James Stewart wrote about meeting with Epstein two days after his death, revealing that he had contacted him to report on allegations he was advising Elon Musk on how to take Tesla private, which both vehemently denied; Musk, however, appears in the files begging to “let loose” at parties on Epstein’s island.
Also mentioned in the files is an infamous dinner party Epstein hosted for the then-Prince Andrew in 2010, after Epstein’s conviction, which was attended by the journalists Katie Couric (at the time the CBS Evening News anchor), George Stephanopoulos (the Good Morning America anchor), and Charlie Rose, who is now disgraced but who at the time was a CBS 60 Minutes contributor and PBS interviewer.
Only Couric has addressed it, claiming she did not know much about the convicted pedophile, writing in her memoir, “I should have done a little more research… But a lot of the stuff about him hadn’t come out yet.”
