Jean-Luc Brunel & Steven Mnuchin
/
“Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.”
In the late 1970s, model scout Jean-Luc Brunel and his associate Claude Haddad were suspects in the murder of a young girl. The case mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps it was because these men came from privileged backgrounds or perhaps it was because the modeling industry changed. Instead of the utilitarian concept of clothing, the fashion industry transformed itself into a collage of pop art. A theatre of costumes on a revolving door of new faces and new bodies.
Models were used to espouse unattainable ideals of feminine beauty. By mimicking porn culture, it made everyone expendable. Girls were made to look like women and women, in turn, were made to look like girls. One only has to remember 10-year-old Brooke Shields in the 1976 issue of ‘Playboy’, heavily made up, posing naked in a steaming, opulent bathtub. Shields mother, Teri (who died in 2012 and who was a friend of a friend) accepted $450 to allow Garry Gross to photograph her child in images that were meant to reveal the “not-so-latent” sexuality of the prepubescent child.
Jean-Luc Brunel ran his “modeling” agency like a brothel. If he received a request from one of his wealthy friends that a girl look a certain way – he’d find a girl that met the specifications and sold her. His modeling agency, was like many others, only a superficial “modeling” business. Allowing your friends to pay for the privilege of sleeping with your young charges – that is where the real money was.
By 1988 many people in the industry knew the ugly details about Jean-Luc Brunel. His reputation as a rapist preceded him. So much so that ‘60 Minutes’ included a segment on Brunel in their ‘American Girls in Paris’ episode. Several young models accused him of groping, drugging and raping them. Once again Jean-Luc Brunel escaped any potential legal inquiries that should have been triggered by these allegations.
“Brunel, it appeared, was untouchable.”
Brunel, it appeared, was untouchable.
In the same year, 1988, one of Brunel’s wealthy friends, Steven Mnuchin – who would later become the 77th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Donald Trump (despite having no previous political experience), helped Brunel set up one of his modeling companies.
Steven Mnuchin was the point of contact for ‘Next Management Corporation’ as the Department of State (DOS) process person. That means that anyone wishing to communicate with, or perhaps, sue, the corporation would have to contact Mnuchin. And, as with almost every other man connected to the fall-out of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell child trafficking ring – Steven Mnuchin said he was “not clear” how he ended up in that role for the Brunel brothers and that he did not “recall” ever meeting either one of them.
Skull & Bones
“All the models knew Steven Mnuchin who hung out with Brunel all the time.”
Various victims of Jean-Luc Brunel have reached out to me during the time I’ve been researching the Jeffrey Epstein case. Some have echoed, “All the models knew Steven Mnuchin who hung out with Brunel all the time”.
In 1985, three years earlier, Mnuchin graduated from Yale University. While at univeristy, he was a member of America’s most secret society – the ‘Brotherhood of Death’. It is perhaps better known as ‘Skull & Bones’ – with draconian initiations for the 15 new members that are selected every year.
Initiates spend their senior year in the basement crypt of the Bones Tomb taking turns lying in a coffin and, in two long, intense, psycho-drama autobiographical sessions in these coffins, recount their sexual history to the other 14 chosen ones. Its members make lifelong, multi-generational alliances and are extremely feared. These young men leave Yale exerting more power than members of the Cosa Nostra.
Skull & Bones is thought to be part of the “Illuminati” and is believed to control the Central Intelligence Agency. Other members have included George H. W. Bush (head of the CIA who became President of the United States in 1989), his son, George W. Bush (who became President in 2001), and his father Prescott Bush (who during World War I is alleged to have broken into Geronimo’s grave and stolen his skull and two bones), along with members of Congress and some of the most powerful people on the planet.
In the book ‘Cloak and Gown’ by the late Yale history professor Robin Winks, he suggests the university’s connections to the CIA run deep. In 1943 he writes, “at least 42 members entered intelligence work after graduation”.
Virginia Giuffre, the most well-known and outspoken of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims claimed in the defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell that Epstein instructed her to have sex with Jean-Luc Brunel multiple times. Further, she states that Epstein bragged about having had sex with “over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls”. At the direction of Epstein, she had sex with Prince Andrew three times — once in London, when she was 17, the second time in New York, when she was 17, and a third time, as part of an orgy on Epstein's ‘Little St. James’. It was Brunel, Giuffre states who supplied the other 8 girls who were younger than her and spoke no English and were therefore “the easiest girls to get”.
Brunel became an important pipeline of girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking organization. So much so that at one point, Epstein gave him a $1 million line of credit so that he could keep supplying the never-ending stream of young girls.
The depravity of Brunel’s actions is perhaps best seen in his birthday gift to Jeffrey Epstein of three 12-year-old girls that he flew from France to New York.
In my book ‘Bonnie’s Clyde: The true story of Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell,’ I recreate the horrific scene:
“The three 12-year-old girls arrived in New York from Paris, France with a promise from their model scout, Jean Luc Brunel, that they would meet an important man. A man who could help them with their new modeling career. Brunel had a sordid past as a modeling scout and was known to fill his apartment with young aspiring models. It was whispered Brunel would often drop a pill into the wine and liquor he plied them with, and then when they passed out, he’d rape the girls.
Brunel’s method of finding new talent was to prowl the streets in the poorest neighborhoods throughout different parts of the world where the children were easy pickings. When he spotted a pretty little girl, he quickly made the acquaintance of her parents. Often it was a single mother or parents on the edge of poverty who could barely afford to feed their children. He made outrageous promises of fame and wealth; and eager to believe that dreams come true, they handed him their child with utmost confidence.
In other cases, it was more transparent, as he would outright purchase the children from their parents. It was in this latter manner that Brunel obtained the three girls he planned on sending to his patron, Jeffrey Epstein. Acquiring girls of any age had become second nature to him as he was quick to offer his business card and pour on the charm complimenting each girl on her unique beauty.
He paid the children’s parents the usual sum of money and added the obligatory promise of a better life for their daughters in the field of modeling. Brunel obtained their visas in an unexpected expedited manner and the parents, in turn, handed their daughters to the 52-year-old man.”
. . .
Steven Mnuchin’s days as the 77th United States Secretary of the Treasury will end in January 2021.
However, with his old model scout pal, Jean-Luc Brunel’s recent arrest and with more women stepping forward and sharing their experiences with these two men and others, will Mnuchin’s memory improve? Or will he remain, like Prince Andrew, a man who denies meeting them at a time in their lives when they were young teenagers, and in some cases, mere children?
Bonnie’s Clyde
The True Story of Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell. by Kirby Sommers
