Peter Thiel said to have met with Jeffrey Epstein

In 2014, venture capitalist Peter Thiel was gaining prominence as one of Silicon Valley's most successful entrepreneurs and investors. He had made billions of dollars as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, of which he was chair; and he sat on the board of Facebook, where he was the company's first outside investor.

That made him an ideal contact for Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender with a knack for cultivating the rich and powerful.

Thiel apparently had several meetings with Epstein that year, according to scheduling records of the disgraced financier that were reviewed by The New York Times.

The records — in the form of emails that Epstein's assistant sent to remind him of upcoming events — show that in

September 2014 Thiel was scheduled to meet with Epstein on at least three occasions, either in one-onone meetings or with others over lunch or dinner. Two other times, Thiel was listed among more than a dozen other well-known people Epstein should try to see while at his New York mansion.

It's unclear from the records whether all the meetings with Thiel took place. Some were listed as tentative or “TBD” — for “to be determined.”

Jeremiah Hall, a spokesperson for Thiel, declined to comment.

The Times obtained the records through a public records request to the attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands, which had sued Epstein's estate. (Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sextrafficking charges.) The records suggest that Thiel may have had a closer relationship with Epstein than was previously known.