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ANDREW CUOMO HAS A JEFFREY EPSTEIN PROBLEM  
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Branko Marcetic
September 2, 2025
Jacobin
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_ A surprising number of Andrew Cuomo’s allies, donors, and friends
have close ties to the late pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey
Epstein. _

Andrew Cuomo formally announces decision to stay in NYC mayoral race:
'In it to win it', Andrew Cuomo formally announces decision to stay in
NYC mayoral race: 'In it to win it'

 

For or the past few months, Donald Trump’s presidency has been
roiled by the ongoing scandal over his intimate, yearslong friendship
with Jeffrey Epstein. But he’s not the only prominent New York
politician with potentially embarrassing links to the billionaire
pedophile and sex trafficker. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo
has his own, too.

Cuomo’s links to Epstein were recently highlighted by his opponent
for the New York mayor’s office, Zohran Mamdani, in a campaign video
that brought up his private consulting work. Mamdani pointed to
Epstein’s 2007 real e
[[link removed]]s
[[link removed]]tate
deal
[[link removed]] in
the Virgin Islands — where Epstein owned the infamous private island
that he would allegedly carry
[[link removed]] out
some of his abuse on  — with department store scion Andrew Farkas,
whose nonprofit Epstein also donated generously
[[link removed]] to.
In light of this, Cuomo’s own relationship to Farkas has raised
eyebrows: the two began a lucrative friendship
[[link removed]] in the
2000s that saw the property developer hire Cuomo to the tune of more
than $2.5 million, before serving as the finance chairman for his
attorney general run and donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to
his campaigns.

The Farkas case is only one of many examples of those around and
supporting Cuomo having troubling ties to the deceased pedophile.
Cuomo was himself famously personally listed in Epstein’s “little
black book,” together with his then wife, Kerry Kennedy. This is, by
itself, not necessarily damning. But over the course of his political
career, Cuomo has counted as allies, donors, associates, and friends
— sometimes all of the above — a number of figures who have been
closely connected to Epstein.

Cuomo has not been accused of any sexual misconduct connected to
Epstein or involving minors — his alleged misconduct remains limited
to the serial sexual harassment of his adult staffers that led him to
resign in disgrace from the governor’s office in 2021 (allegations
that Cuomo denies). What these associations do suggest is Cuomo’s
friendliness with the same New York elite that Epstein at once courted
and was a part of, and which Cuomo will be tasked with confronting and
overcoming to solve the city’s problems.

Friends in High Places

The Epstein connection closest to the former governor is Dan Klores,
former public relations guru to the New York elite. Klores was a
longtime, close political ally of Cuomo’s: the candidate was the
first and, for a time, only client of Klores’s newly formed PR firm,
which ran his initial, unsuccessful run for governor in 2002, and for
which Klores served as Cuomo’s chief advisor. Klores, at Cuomo’s
urging, set up and represented
[[link removed]] the
Committee to Save New York (CSNY) eight years later, the
corporate-funded shadow lobby that worked to steamroll union
opposition to Cuomo’s first, austerity budget. Later, Klores’s
firm was among the top lobbyists for the gambling industry as Cuomo
pushed hard to legalize casino gambling in the state.

Klores was also a longtime close friend. He, Cuomo, and _New York
Daily News_ columnist Mike McAlary “were inseparable for a
while,” Klores said in 2011, holding a joint three-way birthday
party every December. He was there at Cuomo’s bachelor party as well
as at the family meeting following his separation twelve years later.
Klores has given the maximum $2,100 to Cuomo’s current mayoral run
and donated a total of $144,500 to his various statewide campaigns
over the years.

Another client of Klores’s: Jeffrey Epstein. Klores was part of
Epstein’s high-powered defense team following his first arrest in
Florida in 2006, one half of a crack PR duo looking to protect
Epstein’s image in the face of accusations of abusing underage
girls. Epstein’s team was ready “to get their story out,”
Klores told
[[link removed]] the _Palm
Beach Post_ that August.

In other words, one of Cuomo’s closest friends, who helped push his
first-term agenda and with whom he threw shared birthday parties for
years, spent a decent chunk of his time doing damage control for
Epstein after his sprawling sex abuse operation came to light.

The other half of Epstein’s PR duo that year was also a Cuomo
associate: Howard Rubenstein, another New York PR titan, whom Klores
had gotten his start
[[link removed]] in
the industry working for. Rubenstein served as Epstein’s
spokesperson throughout his initial arrest and prosecution, earning
a reported
[[link removed]] $200,000
to defend him in sometimes strikingly personal terms.

“I’ve known him for a few years, and know that for thirty years,
he’s been one of the most charitable individuals I’ve ever met.
He’s given tens of millions of dollars without seeking publicity for
it, and he’s also known as a brilliant financial adviser,”
Rubenstein told
[[link removed]] the _New
York Post_ about Epstein in 2007. “So this was clearly out of
character for a man who’s led a very decent life.”

At times, the job meant attacking Epstein’s accusers. Rubenstein
dismissed one lawsuit brought by an alleged teenage victim of
Epstein’s by claiming
[[link removed]] that his guilty
plea in Florida had made him a target “for money-seeking lawyers and
their women.” When three women sued in 2008 to revoke Epstein’s
backroom “sweetheart deal” — with its stipulation that Epstein
wouldn’t face federal prosecution and that neither would any alleged
coconspirators — Rubenstein protested that their lawsuit “has
absolutely no merit.”

“They’re just looking for money,” Rubenstein said
[[link removed]].
“These women have lied repeatedly, and in no way shape or form were
they victims. They were at his place freely and voluntarily. And one
of them showed Epstein a fake ID.”

One of Andrew Cuomo’s closest friends spent a decent chunk of his
time doing damage control for Epstein after his sprawling sex abuse
operation came to light.

Twelve years later, when Rubenstein died, Cuomo warmly paid tribute to
the “NY icon,” tweeting
[[link removed]] that “both my
father and I were lucky to have his friendship.” That friendship
translated into $107,000 worth of donations for the younger Cuomo
between 2007 and 2018 as well as parties
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fundraisers Rubenstein hosted at his home for Cuomo, including a
January 2010 affair where he told guests, “This is totally off the
record. I don’t want to read about this on Page Six,” as duly
reported by the _New York Post_’s _Page Six_.

Rubenstein also sat on [[link removed]] the executive
committee of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), which
the _New York Observer _once called the more-than-century-old
“group that secretly runs the city.” At the time, REBNY was a
“center pole
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of the same CSNY that was integral to pushing Cuomo’s first-term
agenda over the line. (REBNY members have spent big against Mamdani
and for Cuomo in the mayoral primary, including its chair, who gave
$250,000 to a pro-Cuomo Super PAC.)

There’s also newspaper magnate Mort Zuckerman, former owner of
the _New York Daily News_ and the _Atlantic_, and the current owner
and publisher of the _US News and World Report_. Besides being listed
in Epstein’s “little black book,” Zuckerman is one of the five
dozen people who contributed
[[link removed]] a
letter to the sex trafficker’s now-infamous fiftieth birthday book
in 2003, grouped with around twenty others under the label,
“Friends.” That was the same year Zuckerman teamed up
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Epstein and several other business partners to make a failed bid to
buy _New York Magazine_, and a year before he and Epstein went in
together to fund gossip magazine _Radar_, which shut down after
three issues [[link removed]].

Like Klores and Rubenstein, Zuckerman, a bitter
[[link removed]] foe
[[link removed]] of unions, also played
a role in Cuomo’s first-term austerity push. Multiple outlets
reported at the time on how Cuomo had “rounded up the two most
powerful publishing magnates in New York,” Zuckerman and Rupert
Murdoch, and subsequently “went after pensions and the state
workforce” with their support.

“Andrew is a ‘new Democrat.’ He’s saying, ‘I’m going to
take on the unions, I want smaller government.’ And he’s got
Zuckerman, Murdoch and Bloomberg on his side,” former CEO of
Northeast Public Radio Alan Chartock said at the time. (Incidentally,
Murdoch was also a Rubenstein client
[[link removed]] and had two
numbers listed in Epstein’s address book.)

Zuckerman was close enough with Cuomo that when the then governor went
on an official trip to Israel in 2014 with top state legislators —
his first
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trip as governor and one of his few trips outside the state at all at
that point — Zuckerman was the only nonfamily member that he took
with him
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a guest, the others being three of his brothers-in-law.

In the years since, the two appeared at numerous events together,
often announcing state government-backed programs that Zuckerman was
involved in to different degrees, as when Cuomo appointed him honorary
chair of the New York-Israel Commission he launched in 2017. At a
separate event in 2015 about free English training for immigrants,
Cuomo heaped praise on the magnate: “A publisher who lives this
message and has always been a champion of citizens, not just in this
city and this state but around the globe who need a champion.”

Then there’s current Department of Health and Human Services
secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Cuomo’s former brother-in-law, who
was among the motley, elite group (alongside former Donald Trump
acolyte Roger Stone) assembled by Klores in 1997 to celebrate
Cuomo’s appointment to head the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD). But he and Kennedy continued to associate long
after Cuomo divorced his sister, Kerry: the newly elected
governor appointed
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to his transition team; a series of conversations between the
two reportedly
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him to delay approving fracking in New York in 2013; and eight years
later, the two were on the same side
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the push to close down Indian Point nuclear power plant.

Convicted Epstein coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell recently told
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Department of Justice that “Bobby knew Mr Epstein,” and that the
trio went on a dinosaur bone–hunting trip in the Dakotas in the
early 1990s. Besides being listed in Epstein’s address book, Kennedy
has admitted
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twice flying on Epstein’s private jet, and photos
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the two socializing in the mid-1990s recently surfaced. In the same
Department of Justice interview, Maxwell disclosed that she knew Cuomo
through Kerry and attended their 1990 wedding, though she denied
Epstein and Cuomo had a relationship. (Incidentally, when Kerry was
later charged with drunk driving, her lawyer
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the same Gerald Lefcourt who was part of Epstein’s legal team in
Florida.)

Donors With Epstein Ties

The Epstein connections also abound among Cuomo’s current donors.

Maybe the most prominent Epstein associate backing Cuomo is
billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, who gave a total of just
over $27,000
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mayoral campaign, most of it to the record-breaking Super PAC
supporting his run.

Dubin had an unusually close relationship with Epstein. His wife, Eva
Andersson-Dubin, dated Epstein for eleven years before the billionaire
pedophile introduced the two, and the Dubins remained
[[link removed]] friends
with him even after his 2008 conviction. Their daughter, who Epstein
reportedly considered
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for financial reasons, called him “Uncle Jeff.” The
couple received
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least one nonerotic massage from one of Epstein’s victims, while
another survivor charged
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had been trafficked to Dubin, which he denies.

This relationship extended into business. Epstein brokered the deal
that saw Dubin’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, get sold to JP
Morgan in 2004, which David Boies, an attorney representing some of
Epstein’s victims, has alleged became folded into his criminal
activities. Highbridge “trafficked young women and girls on its own
private jet from Florida to Epstein in New York as late as 2012,”
Boies alleged in a January 2023 complaint
[[link removed]],
a charge he later repeated in open court.

Dubin’s relationship with Cuomo also goes beyond these most recent
donations. Dubin gave a total of more than $126,000 to Cuomo’s
campaigns for attorney general and governor between 2002 and 2017,
including more than $50,000 in 2006 alone. This generosity might be
why Dubin ended up
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Cuomo’s Council of Economic and Fiscal Advisors after he won the
gubernatorial election in 2010.

There’s also Michael Bloomberg, the third media magnate (and former
New York City mayor) Cuomo had tried to ally with early on in his
gubernatorial career, who poured a massive $8.3 million
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the pro-Cuomo Super PAC earlier this year — one-third of its total
haul.

Like Cuomo, Bloomberg was listed in Epstein’s address book. Unlike
Cuomo, he had five separate phone numbers listed under his name for
Epstein to use to contact him. The two shared
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social connections in common, including Zuckerman, Rubenstein, and,
most significantly, Victoria’s Secret owner Les Wexner, who had
mysteriously given
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virtual control over his enormous wealth. When Bloomberg in 2013
decided to personally fund the creation of four New York City charter
schools, Epstein put out a press release
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him, and calling himself “a long-time supporter of Bloomberg.”

The Trump Connection

But probably the most heavily Epstein-connected New York billionaire
backing Cuomo’s run is also a secret one: current US president
Donald Trump.

Trump’s scandalous, more-than-decade-long friendship with Epstein is
at this point extensively documented: the two shared
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girlfriend and ogled
[[link removed]] women together
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they exchanged cryptic messages
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a mutual “secret,” Epstein brought
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girls he was seeing around
[[link removed]] Trump
and recruited
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least one of his victims from his resort, while Maxwell, his
coconspirator and fellow abuser, was known
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Trump.

Trump has not donated to Cuomo’s campaign, but he is backing him in
other ways. Following a reported phone call between the two about the
race, Cuomo disclosed
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a Hamptons fundraiser that Trump planned to intervene in the election
on his behalf and direct Republican voters toward him. “here will be
opportunities to actually cooperate with ” if Cuomo wins, Cuomo told
attendees. When asked if he was communicating with the White House, he
replied: “Let’s put it this way: I knew the president very
well.”

It is, to put it mildly, highly unusual for a political candidate of
any kind to have had this many allies, friends, and political backers
linked to the most notorious pedophile and sex trafficker of the
century.

Cuomo said the same thing back in 2016, shortly after Trump had told
an interviewer he and Cuomo “get along very well.” By that point,
Trump and his family members had given Cuomo a total of $64,000,
donations he defiantly refused to return. Cuomo mused
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Trump’s election win that year that his New York roots would be a
“bonus” and refused
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criticize him for a  spate of hate incidents that followed his
victory.

But that doesn’t do justice to the yearslong association between the
two, whose families knew each other
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back to the mid-twentieth century. During the 1980s, when Trump became
the top corporate donor to Cuomo’s father, he was also one of
the high-profile clients
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a newly formed law firm where Cuomo and his dad’s top fundraiser
were partners, and Cuomo was reportedly
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to retain him as a client. (Another client of the firm: Bear Stearns,
where Epstein had gotten his start in finance and whose top executives
he continued to be intimately close with
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the following decades.)

Trump donated generously to the younger Cuomo’s homelessness
nonprofit in 1989 and was seen that year at a Klores-hosted birthday
party for Cuomo, where he reportedly
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half an hour “huddling” with him. Trump was a onetime client of
the same Rubenstein whom Cuomo counted as a political ally, who also
at one point allegedly advised
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future son-in-law after his father was sentenced to federal prison.

Over the coming years, Trump contributed a video message to Cuomo’s
bachelor party (“Whatever you do, Andrew, don’t ever, ever fool
around”), gave him private advice for his divorce (“That call
never happened,” Cuomo’s spokesperson later said), and made Cuomo
leave a party they were at to show him
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incredible” in his car — namely, his second wife-to-be, Marla
Maples (“How amazing is this?” Trump reportedly said).

Allies in Common

There are other cases: Alan Dershowitz, for instance, the friend and
lawyer who secured the “sweetheart deal” that allowed Epstein
to keep abusing
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in prison, and who, among other things, hired
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investigators to discredit one of Epstein’s teen accusers. Cuomo is
serving alongside
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as part of what the attorney called his “legal dream team” to
defend Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu against war crimes
charges, after having repeatedly
[[link removed]] and vehemently
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[[link removed]] Cuomo
against his sexual harassment accusations.

 

There is former president Bill Clinton, who endorsed
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shortly before the primary vote and gave him his first political post
in 1997, appointing him his HUD secretary. Clinton’s
yearslong friendship
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Epstein, which began
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the White House, is as well-trodden
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with Clinton having flown seventeen times on Epstein’s jet and also
contributing a message to his birthday book.

There is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, with whom
Cuomo met with
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times
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his various trips to Israel, and with whom he worked on joint economic
development agreements between the country and New York. Barak’s
ties to Epstein are now infamous: he flew on Epstein’s plane, began
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business partnership with him, and met with
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dozens of times, including once when he was photographed
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Epstein’s Manhattan home while covering his face — all of it years
after Epstein’s original conviction.

There is also Larry Summers, who has called
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friend, alongside whom
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Clinton administration. Though Summers has not officially endorsed
Cuomo’s mayoral run, he has waded into the race by repeatedly
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and fearmongering
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his chief rival, Mamdani. Summers, too, had a longstanding friendship
with Epstein, with the _Harvard Crimson_ reporting
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their “special connection” as early as 2003, and
Summers appearing
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the flight logs during the Clinton years and continuing
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meet with and solicit money from Epstein well into the early 2010s.

It’s a Big Club

Looking over these associations, what becomes clear — beyond the
surprising number of people close to Cuomo or politically backing him
who have deep ties to Epstein — is the degree to which US politics
has been dominated by a clique of New York elite. Through his wealth
and physical proximity, it is a clique that Epstein worked hard to
ingratiate himself into.

The ongoing Epstein scandal likely won’t cause the same kinds of
problems for Cuomo that it has for Trump. But it is, to put it mildly,
highly unusual for a political candidate of any kind to have had this
many allies, friends, and political backers linked to the most
notorious pedophile and sex trafficker of the century, often both
during and long after he was accused of his terrible crimes. Beyond
the deeply unsavory nature of that connection, there are real
questions about what that says about Cuomo’s closeness with the
city’s rich and powerful, and his ability or willingness to defy
them if he becomes a mayor.

_[BRANKO MARCETIC is a Jacobin staff writer and the author
of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.]_

_Jacobin‘s fall issue, “Borders,” is out soon. Follow this link
to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful print quarterly.
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* Andrew Cuomo
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* Jeffrey Epstein
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* Ghislaine Maxwell
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* Sex Trafficking
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* child sex-trafficking
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* sexual predator
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* sexual assault
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* Women
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* Donald Trump
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* Rich people
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* Politics
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* New York City
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* New York City mayoral election
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* Billionaires
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* 1%
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* the 1%
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* super rich
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* Zohran Mamdani
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