Jeffrey Epstein wanted Robert Kraft to hire his lawyer amid Patriots owner’s prostitution case, documents show

Local News

After the Patriots owner was charged in 2019, the lawyer he eventually hired was directly connected to Epstein.

By Darin Zullo

February 4, 2026 | 5:44 PM

2 minutes to read

Patriots owner Robert Kraft is among the myriad of high-profile people mentioned in the most recent wave of files on Jeffrey Epstein. 

Kraft was charged in February 2019 for allegedly soliciting prostitution at a Florida massage parlor. In records of email and text messages released Friday by the Justice Department, Epstein told his lawyer, Jack Goldberger, that he wanted Kraft to hire the attorney as counsel.

“See kraft got arrested,” Goldberger wrote in an email dated Feb. 22, 2019. “Should take local news away from us.”

“yes im trying to have him hire you,” Epstein wrote back, according to the documents released by the Justice Department.

Immediately after that interaction, Epstein sent an email to Brad Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, a law firm in Manhattan.

“if your buddy Kraft, needs local palm rep let me know,” Epstein wrote.

In fact, Kraft was never arrested, but he did end up hiring Goldberger. The misdemeanor charge against him was eventually dropped in September 2020.

Three days later, after the affidavit for the charges against Kraft was released, Epstein sent Karp a link to an article about the case, with the subject line “oy.” Karp replied with “yuck.”

Epstein also sent an opinion piece about the case to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, but he did not comment on it beyond sending the link. The article’s author compared the Kraft case to the ongoing scandal involving Epstein at the time.

“There are actually two cases involving billionaire Palm Beach neighbors that are blowing up right now — those of Kraft and the convicted teen-sex-abuser Jeffrey Epstein,” columnist Will Bunch wrote in the piece. “In different ways, both men exploited women who were very young and very poor — and whom they considered disposable.”

About two weeks later, Epstein communicated about the case with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who sent him a link to an article about Kraft’s legal team in handling the case.

“90 percent inaccurate,” Epstein wrote in response to the article. “wow. hes ok.”

Based on a series of Feb. 23 text messages between Goldberger and Epstein, there seemed to be confusion surrounding who was actually going to represent Kraft.

“…too many people advising him but after call he calked [sic] back and said wants me and my Quinn Emanuel guy to handle it,” Goldberger wrote in reference to Kraft.

In response, Epstein wrote that Goldberger needed to “know about a past issue with Kraft that may come to light.” The information in the released files gave no further indication as to what that “past issue” was.

Though the newly released documents contain several instances of Epstein talking about Kraft, there was no indication that the two directly communicated.

The Kraft Group did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.