Epstein files: Milwaukee recruiter tried to find assistant, emails show
MKE recruiter tried to find Epstein assistant
A Milwaukee recruiter and real estate mogul for the rich tried to send a made-to-order personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein.
MILWAUKEE - A Milwaukee recruiter and real estate mogul for the rich tried to send a made-to-order personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein and Mahler
The backstory:
Epstein is the wealthy financier who died by suicide in a federal jail cell in 2019 while under investigation for sex trafficking underage girls on his private Caribbean island.
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Peter Mahler owns a high-end real estate firm and elite staffing agency in Milwaukee.
In 2013, the two men and their staffs exchanged dozens of emails as Mahler tried to meet Epstein's specific demand for an Asian female assistant. By that time, Epstein was already a convicted sex offender and had been accused by more than two dozen girls and young women of sexual misconduct.
Website shows Peter Mahler
Email exchanges
Dig deeper:
The U.S. Justice Department's library of Epstein files is now contained in a searchable database. The name Peter Mahler yields nearly 400 results.
In March 2013, Epstein hired Mahler to recruit people for a variety of positions on Epstein's staff, including Epstein's own personal assistant. The two men met in person in June 2013.
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Over the next two months, Mahler fed Epstein a series of female candidates. Epstein would interview each one himself, but candidates were told his name was "Mr. Stone."
The emails show Epstein didn't just want a female assistant, he preferred someone "Asian." But each time Mahler delivered a candidate, Epstein shot them down – describing one as "a 5," another "not better than a 3" and another as a "zero. Not even a one."
By the end of July 2013, Epstein told Mahler it wasn't working out, and he wanted to part ways. Mahler said he refused to break up. Two weeks later, he offered up a woman he described as having "education" and "breeding" and said she "presents well."
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When Mahler told Epstein he'd been hospitalized, Epstein told him, "Don't die before I find someone." Mahler replied, "…count on me living and staffing all of your homes."
Epstein ultimately stopped responding to Mahler's emails and went to someone else looking for a "Chinese assistant."
To be clear, there is no evidence in any of the emails that Epstein's staffing requests were sexual in nature or that Mahler had any such intent.
Mahler's response
What they're saying:
In an emailed statement to FOX6, Mahler wrote:
"While our firm doesn’t comment about the thousands of staffing searches and interviews we have conducted over the past three decades, I am making an exception under these circumstances.
"The revelations about Jeffrey Epstein are abhorrent.
"We were conducting searches for professional administrative staff and property management positions for Jeffrey Epstein. These ultimately failed because he did not like the qualified candidates we identified for him to interview.
"Knowing what we know now, we would never have worked with him under any circumstances."
The Source: FOX6 Investigators reviewed the U.S. Department of Justice Epstein files library and reached out to Mahler for a statement, which he provided.