Top magazine editor reveals her chilling encounter with Epstein
Recalling her encounter with Epstein, Tina said the disgraced financier had 'cold, snake-like eyes' and warned her to halt the Daily Beast's reporting on his abuse.
Tina, who launched the Daily Beast alongside media mogul Barry Diller, said the chilling face-off came in 2010, just days after the outlet ran a major investigation into Epstein's sordid history and suspicious plea deal.
She told the Daily Beast Podcast: 'He said, "Just stop". And he looked at me with this kind of snake eyes, cold, and it was menacing. It was really menacing. And he pointed his finger and he said, "Just stop".
'It was a very chilling experience. I mean, it was scary, actually.'
The article, headlined 'Jeffrey Epstein, Billionaire Pedophile, Goes Free,' broke new ground by revealing how victims had told investigators they were as young as 12 when Epstein trafficked them - years before prosecutors brought federal charges.
Before the uninvited visit, Tina said she'd already fielded calls from both Epstein and his attorney, trying to quash the story. She refused.
But when she returned from lunch one day, she found him sitting in her office - having bypassed her security. She said: 'I was stunned. I stood at the door, aghast.'
'He was a master-class con man, so maybe he was just able always to kind of get what he wanted,' she added.
Tina told him the reporting wouldn't stop – and that's when he dropped the threat.
'He said, "There will be consequences if you don't stop,"' she said. 'And he just got up, and he left my room.'
Tina, who had crossed paths with Epstein during New York's glitzy social heyday in the '80s and '90s, said the disgraced financier's behavior during their brief office encounter made one thing clear: intimidation was his goal.
At the time of the article, Epstein had already been convicted in Florida for soliciting a minor – but had served just 13 months in a county facility under a highly controversial deal that allowed him to spend most of his days outside the jail.
It would take nearly another decade before he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, with the medical examiner ruling it a suicide.
His death sparked widespread suspicion, political finger-pointing, and an ongoing storm of conspiracy theories.
This comes just after the Justice Department announced it would not release further records related to the case, and denied the existence of a so-called 'client list' implicating powerful allies.
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