Recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation emails show federal agents in 2021 tracked a super yacht formerly named after Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell while it sat in port in Palau.
The email chain is part of millions of documents the Department of Justice released last month, related to criminal investigations into sex trafficking by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Communications took place two years after Epstein was found dead in a New York City jail cell, in what the FBI concluded was a suicide, and six months before Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to help Epstein abuse multiple minors over the course of a decade.
In a December 2021 email, a person, whose name is redacted, asks an FBI official about “Jeffrey Epstein’s yacht” which is “parked down here in Palau.”
The name of the email recipient is also redacted. But their email signature block indicates they are an attaché for Legat Canberra, an FBI field office in Australia.
“Apparently they’ve changed the name of it to The Dancing Hare,” the email sender wrote. “Not sure if the Case Agents care or if there is any kind of seizure order floating out there.”
The Dancing Hare, formerly named the Lady Ghislaine, was built in 1986 and once owned by Ghislane Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell.
Robert Maxwell, a British politician and businessman and alleged international spy, reportedly hosted a party on the yacht in 1989 attended by now President Donald Trump, according to USA Today.
The British magnate drowned in 1991, after falling overboard the Lady Ghislaine, The Independent reported.
A sale of the vessel in 2017 is recorded in magazine Boating International. By that time, it had already been renamed once, to the Lady Mona K. She had an asking price of $14.5 million.
In a December 2021 email about the ship’s docking in Palau, the unidentified FBI agent indicated the ship’s ownership was “a little murky.”
Referencing open-source reports, the agent indicated that “the ship spent a lot of time since at least the beginning of 2020 docked in various ports throughout NZ. Other reports mention the vessel being docked in Sydney for some period of time prior to arriving in NZ.”
They reference a news report indicating the vessel was flying under the flag of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and refers the email sender to a case agent in New York, for any relevant seizure orders.
Later that day, the email exchange appears to have been forwarded to the FBI New York Field Office by a person who identifies them as the “ALAT,” or assistant legal attaché covering “Compact States” for the Australia office.
The forwarder’s name is also redacted.
“Physically I’m sitting in Koror right now and the below referenced ship was brought to my attention by a Palau official,” the forwarder wrote.
They indicate that they have “no idea” if the recipient cares about the vessel.
“If you need to search it, seize it, have someone talk to the crew or whatever, just let me know and we can probably facilitate things here on the island,” the forwarder wrote. “If you don’t care, that’s fine too, I’ll just pass along to the government that we don’t have any interest.”
In a final email chain, the forwarder’s message appears to be sent to another person, identified as a special agent with the FBI’s New York Field Office. The New York agent’s name is redacted.
“Sure feel free to send him my way,” they wrote. “I don’t think at this point we have any investigative interest but I can connect with him.”
A review by the Pacific Daily News found no further emails about the Dancing Hare in the Epstein files.
This past October, USA Today reported the yacht caught fire while docked in a wharf in Washington, D.C. No injuries were reported, and fire officials attributed the incident to an electrical issue.
Still named the Dancing Hare, the vessel reportedly belongs to Australian-American media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, Anna Murdoch Mann.
The vessel’s former namesake, Ghislaine Maxwell, was transferred to a women’s prison in Texas late last year, NPR reported.
She is scheduled to testify virtually this week, before the congressional committee investigating the federal government’s handling of the Epstein files, according to the BBC.
