World Economic Forum President Resigns Over Ties To Epstein

Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister, claimed he was “completely unaware of Epstein’s past and criminal activities.” However, previous claims he has made have been proved untrue. He had, as recently as November 2025, denied knowing Epstein, Business Insider said.

As Semafor noted, Brende is among other high-profile Norwegians to face repercussions over their associations with Epstein, including former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland, the crown princess, and Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq Mona Juul.

The Epstein fallout has not only been seen among Norwegians. There has been a string of global figures who have faced professional or criminal consequences for their ties to Epstein:

• Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former UK Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson were arrested this month;
• Sarah Ferguson, Mountbatten-Windsor’s ex-wife, announced she was shutting down her UK-based charity Sarah’s Trust in February;
• Larry Summers, former Harvard University President, will step down from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until that time;
• Thomas Pritzker, chairman of Hyatt Hotels, announced on 16 February that he is stepping down;
• Kathy Ruemmler, former chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs, announced on 12 February that she was resigning from her job;
• head of the prestigious law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, announced on 4 February that he was stepping down as chairman;
• George J. Mitchell, former Democratic senator from Maine and envoy to Northern Ireland during the Clinton administration, resigned from his position as honorary chair of the Mitchell Institute in February;
• Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, an influential Emirati businessman, was replaced as chair of DP World;
• Casey Wasserman, CEO of Wasserman Media Group, announced in February that he was putting the company up for sale;
• Peter Attia, scientific adviser at AGI, chief science officer at David and wellness influencer, parted ways with AGI and David;
• Miroslav Lajčák, the national security adviser to Slovakia’s prime minister, resigned;
• Former French Culture Minister Jack Lang is under investigation in France and resigned in February as president of the Arab World Institute;
• Mohamed Waheed Hassan, a former president of the Maldives, resigned his post as special envoy to the current president;
• Richard Axel, a molecular biologist who won the Nobel prize for his work studying how the human brain processes smells, announced on Feb. 24 that he was stepping down from a prestigious post at Columbia University;
• David A. Ross resigned from his post as chair of the MFA art practice programme at New York’s School of Visual Arts;
• Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University who served as treasury secretary during the Clinton administration and head of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration, announced in November that he would step away from his teaching duties at Harvard, and he stepped down from the board of directors at OpenAI and resigned his membership with the American Economic Association; and,
• Jes Staley, former CEO of Barclays, stepped down in November 2021;
• Leon Black, former head of Apollo Global Management, announced he was stepping down as CEO in January 2021.

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media