Former French minister says he is ‘clean as a whistle’ – but what about his ‘splendid time’ sponsored by the sex offender?

The pressure is mounting intensely on Jack Lang, the former French culture minister, as officials in Paris are now demanding his resignation as president of the Arab World Institute due to his documented connections with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This is serious stuff; the foreign ministry actually summoned Lang to discuss the whole messy situation.

Lang, who is 86, has been the head of the Arab World Institute since 2013. While he hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing himself, the recently released files from the U.S. Department of Justice show Lang’s name appearing over 600 times. It raises questions about a relationship that Lang characterized as a casual acquaintance.

According to Reuters, the most damaging piece of evidence is from an email Lang sent to Epstein on April 7, 2017, a decade after his initial conviction for child prostitution. In the email, Lang thanked Epstein for what he called a “splendid time” the previous day. He went on to write, “Your friendship, the amazing pl=ne (sic)m and your extraordinary generosity really touched us.” 

Friendship with a convicted criminal is really bad for optics

Lang has tried to downplay the connection, saying that he was unaware of Epstein’s 2008 conviction when they first met around 2012. He claims the financier was introduced to him by U.S. filmmaker Woody Allen, and was simply an acquaintance with interests in art and cinema. Speaking to French radio RTL on Wednesday, he insisted, “I fear nothing, and I am clean as a whistle.”

However, the documents show that Epstein and Lang corresponded intermittently for years, specifically between 2012 and the financier’s death by suicide in jail in 2019. It suggests a deeper connection than an acquaintanceship.

This deepening controversy has prompted the French political establishment to push for Lang to step down, to “think about the institution.” The Arab World Institute is a significant cultural and research institution located in Paris, dedicated to promoting understanding of the Arab world. The foreign ministry confirmed that they summoned Lang for a meeting on Sunday to hash this out.

The fallout isn’t just limited to Jack Lang himself. His daughter, Caroline Lang, resigned as the head of France’s Independent Production Union after her own links to Epstein came to light. Like her father, Caroline denies any wrongdoing. She told BFMTV on Thursday that she only discovered the details of Epstein’s 2008 conviction in 2014, when he allegedly told her to look him up on Google. 

Lang is the latest in a line of European public figures, including former Prince Andrew and the WEF President, to receive growing political pressure because of their ties to Epstein. It’s clear that as long as the Epstein files keep generating headlines, anyone associated with him is going to find themselves facing serious, intense public scrutiny.