Jonathan Farkas wanted to know whether the woman he had been seeing could be trusted. In the spring of 2017 he put the question to Jeffrey Epstein, and the reply came back fast and exact. The woman was an alcoholic, Epstein wrote. She used drugs, she was unstable, and she lied. Farkas had asked whether she might be a prostitute. What he got was closer to a background check.
By then Epstein was a convicted sex offender who had served time in Florida for soliciting sex from a minor. Farkas, heir to the Alexander’s department store fortune, had a wife rising fast in Republican circles. She had just been named to a White House commission by Donald Trump and would later become his ambassador to Malta. Farkas knew exactly what Epstein had been convicted of. He wrote to him anyway, and Epstein answered like a man who had checked.
That is the detail worth holding onto. Farkas did not take the question to a lawyer or a private investigator. He took it to Epstein, because Epstein was the one likely to know.
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Who is Jonathan Farkas?
Jonathan Farkas is a New York socialite and heir to the Alexander’s department store fortune, a Broadway producer, and the husband of Somers Farkas, the United States ambassador to Malta. He drew public attention in November 2025, when his private emails to Jeffrey Epstein appeared in documents released by the House Oversight Committee.
| Name | Jonathan Farkas |
| Known for | Heir to the Alexander’s department store fortune; Broadway producer |
| Spouse | Somers Farkas, US ambassador to Malta |
| Epstein link | Personal emails released in the 2025 House Oversight files |
| Charged with a crime | No |
His roots run through one of New York’s old retail families. His father, George Farkas, founded Alexander’s in the Bronx in 1928. His mother, Ruth Farkas, served as US ambassador to Luxembourg under Richard Nixon. His older brother, Alexander S. Farkas, ran the company as chief executive. The chain closed in 1992, though the business carried on as a real estate trust and still trades on the New York Stock Exchange.
The socialite himself went into theater. His Broadway producing credits reach back to 1987, and he has worked on shows that earned Tony nominations. His latest is the 2025 revival of the musical Chess, which opened at the Imperial Theatre last November.
None of that explains why people now recognize his name. That came from his wife, and from the inbox of a dead man.
A four-decade friendship with Jeffrey Epstein
The two men went back about forty years. Farkas told New York magazine in 2011 that he had known Epstein for roughly 35 years, which puts their first meeting in the mid-1970s. He thought of Epstein as a sharp financial mind, leaned on him for advice, and the friendship held even after the conviction.
It held through prison. Farkas visited Epstein in Florida while he was serving his sentence. After the release, in the autumn of 2010, he attended a Yom Kippur break fast that the publicist Peggy Siegal hosted inside Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. About 120 guests came. Some brought their children.
Speaking to New York magazine around that time, Farkas described the figure in the headlines as someone he did not recognize:
“The side I’ve been reading about is a side I don’t know.”
He called Epstein one of the smartest people he knew and said he still went to him for investment advice. Farkas had watched the man plead guilty to a sex offense against a minor and had visited him in jail over it. The friendship carried on regardless.
What Farkas wrote to Epstein
The released files hold two exchanges that matter, and each points somewhere different.
The May 2017 message. This is the one that spread after the documents came out. Farkas wrote that he was seeing a woman and was unsure where it was going. “I am a bit old and not tall enough but she seems intelligent and kind,” he wrote, noting in the same message that his wife had just received a Trump appointment. Epstein told him the woman could not be trusted. Farkas pushed for more. “Jeffrey please help me,” he wrote, “is she a hooker.” Epstein replied with the rundown of her supposed faults quoted at the top of this piece. Mediaite first reported the exchange, drawn from the House Oversight release.
The April 2019 note. On April 18, 2019, Attorney General William Barr put out his summary of the Mueller report and said the president would face no charges. Farkas emailed Epstein that same day: “Told you Barr would protect Trump known him for 50 years.” The note was political rather than personal, and the timing is what stands out. Epstein had under three months of freedom left before federal agents arrested him on sex trafficking charges, and Farkas was still confiding in him. NBC News was among the outlets that reported the email.
Has Jonathan Farkas been accused of any crime?
No. He has not been charged with anything, and the point is worth stating plainly, because the online reaction often muddled it.
His name does not appear in Epstein’s flight logs. No accuser has named him, and no civil case has been brought against him. What the files hold are his entries in Epstein’s address book and a small set of emails that embarrass him without tying him to any crime. In legal terms he is a bystander.
Is Jonathan Farkas related to Andrew Farkas?
Yes, and the two get confused constantly, which matters because their ties to Epstein were not remotely alike. Andrew Farkas, a real estate billionaire and the son of Jonathan’s late brother Alexander, was a business partner of Epstein’s. He co-owned a marina in the US Virgin Islands with him and exchanged almost 2,000 emails with him. Through a spokesperson, Andrew has said he regrets the relationship and condemns Epstein’s crimes. The uncle’s link to Epstein was a personal friendship. The nephew’s was a financial partnership that ran far deeper.
Why the emails matter
The weight of the emails sits outside the law. They show something about how Epstein kept the powerful people around him.
The usual account of his influence is blackmail, the idea that he held compromising material and used it for leverage. That may be true of some. The Farkas emails suggest a plainer mechanism underneath. Epstein was useful. He was the man who could tell you, in a sentence, what was wrong with a woman you were seeing. He was worth a call about money or about people. The friends who stayed did not all stay against their better judgment. Many went on asking him for things well after the conviction, well after the jail term, once the public already knew what he had done.
Farkas is not the villain of the story. He is something more ordinary, and harder to sit with. He was a steady guest at Epstein’s table who never set foot on the plane, and no prosecutor will ever name him. His emails still say a great deal about what he understood Epstein to be.
Where things stand now
Somers Farkas presented her credentials in Malta on November 26, 2025, and she remains in the post. Her own name later surfaced in the files. A 2010 email released earlier this year quoted her telling an Epstein publicist, “I do know Jeffrey, and I like him.” When reporters asked the US Embassy about it, they got no answer. The Maltese newspaper MaltaToday reported the exchange.
Farkas himself has said nothing publicly about the emails. The Chess revival he co-produced is due to close on June 21, 2026, earlier than planned, after its lead Lea Michele left the show, with the producers acknowledging they will not recover the roughly 15 million dollars put into it.
He has stayed silent throughout. The emails remain, and they leave a question no courtroom will ask. Farkas broke no law. He simply kept writing to Epstein, year after year, for advice he trusted, from a man he had once visited in jail. No charge will follow from that. The emails are their own kind of verdict.
